Cohabitating in Utah

When U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups determined that Utah’s constitutional ban on polygamy was unconstitutional last month, I thought my lifelong Mormon dream had finally come true. I jumped in my car and drove eight hours from Memphis to Atlanta, so I could catch a JetBlue flight to Salt Lake City (keep the money in the family, you know).

I went immediately to the county clerk’s office.

“I’d like a marriage license, please.”

I went through the obligatory “name, rank, and serial number” with the grotesquely polite fellow behind the desk. As he handed me the paperwork, my phone rang. Following accepted protocol, I answered it without deferring in any way to the human being with whom I was carrying on a face-to-face conversation.

“Y-y-yellow,” I chirped.  It was my wife, wondering where I’d gotten myself off to. “Uh-huh. Yep. Nope. Yep. Okay, see you in a bit. Love you, Honey. Bye.”

I hung up, but the paperwork had retreated. The clerk had it close to his chest and he had hiked up an eyebrow.

“Sir, what is that?” He cocked his nose at the wedding band on my left ring finger.

“Oh, that,” I said, “don’t worry about that. I’ve got seven more fingers.”

“Sir, I can’t give you a license to marry someone if you are already married.” His voice was no longer grotesquely polite, but rather overtly contemptuous.

“But polygamy is legal in Utah now,” I said. “The TV said so.”

“Sir, what you do in your bedroom is none of my business,” the clerk canted, half-closing his eyes, “and I don’t care who you do it with. But you can’t marry more than one person.  Not even in Utah.”

I complained that I had come all this way to realize my lifelong Mormon dream of being married to several women at the same time.  He put his elbows on the desk and sagged between his shoulders.

“Sir, I can’t speak for your wife,” he drawled, “but if you want to cohabitate with someone, Utah won’t prosecute you.”

What—live together?  Until last week Utah could arrest me for having a roomie?

“Well, not just living together, Sir.  Cohabitating.”

The clerk desperately wanted to let the matter drop.  But the blank look on my face and the absence of a line for marriage licenses behind me compelled him.

“In the late 1800’s, the people of Utah, many of whom were Mormon polygamists, were desperate to join the union as a state.  But the federal government was determined not to let U.S. citizens be polygamists.  So, the LDS church ended its polygamy, and to show the federal government that it was serious about being a respectable, American state, Utah wrote very, very strict anti-polygamy statutes into its state constitution.  Including the express prohibition of cohabitation.”

The same blank stare from me.

“It’s nineteenth-century jargon for having sex with your roomie.”

Ohhh.  I see.  This ruling does away with obsolete legalese.

“That’s about the size of it, Sir.”

And the consequence is that, in Utah now, I can have sex with however many people I can fit in a room, and I don’t have to worry that Utah will throw me in the slammer and prosecute me as a heathen on account of a narrowly-conceived statute designed to demonstrate Victorian bona fides to a scandalized nation.

“Is there anything else I can do for you, Sir?”

I began to turn away, and then a little bulb went on.

“Sooo, there’s nothing stopping me from calling all my roomies wives, if I feel like it.”

“You’re not as dumb as you look, Sir.”

It all made sense.  But one thought nagged me.

“What if one of my roomies is a fourteen-year-old girl?” I asked, carefully.

“If you have sex with that roomie,” said the clerk without any change in expression, “Utah will throw you in the slammer and prosecute you for rape.”

Ah.  So, this earth-shattering federal ruling is really just to tell Utah that in the United States, these days, consenting adults can have sex with each other when they mutually consent.

“That’s right, Sir.  If you want to cohabitate, seven-consenting-adults-to-a-room, knock yourself out.  But I can’t give you a marriage license if you’re already married.”

Well, shoot.  All that hysterical energy for nothing.  And the JetBlue back to Atlanta doesn’t leave until morning.

“No, Sir.  You cannot crash at my place tonight.”