S. Congress' prohibition of the practice and the Court's refusal to allow the practice, conflicted with the rights of individuals engaged in such practice. The actions of a religious group which are normally protected under the First Amendment and the laws of states like Utah that might wish to turn a blind eye to the practice were not allowed.
The states claim the social contract has been broken because the U.S. government has infringed upon individuals' liberty to marry more than one person and the states' rights to regulate matters not specifically delineated in the Bill of Rights. However, if this were the case that a state could secede every time the federal government disagreed with a state's definition of individual liberties. Virtually every constitutional dispute in the history of the nation, regarding the Bill of Rights, from abortion, to affirmative action, to gay marriage, to free speech, could justify secession, when the policy of a state conflicted with that of the federal government.
True, in this instance, in contrast to slavery and analogous to same-sex marriage, so long as the union is entered into freely, it could be argued, what is the social harm? Perhaps these individuals are Mormons, practicing their own faith and exercising their 1st Amendment rights. But marriage is both a private practice and a state policy. The paradox is that as society grows more diverse, more tolerant practices are required to accommodate new interpretations of the right way to enjoy religious...
The controversies surrounding the nature of marriage in the example illustrate how American government is never merely a perfect system constructed like a watchmaker that will run "indefinitely" if left alone (Moore 1). There must be constant negotiation as to what society will allow.
Conservative constitutional scholars like West might argue that both respondents' actions fly in the face of the "temperance" advocated in the language of the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, which became the model for the Declarations of other states, but this principle is not enshrined into law. Yet West ultimately comes down on the side of a universal faith doctrine for the nation, praising the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 for stating that: "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged" (West 591). This is problematic when subjected to actual, modern constitutional scrutiny, where school prayer is prohibited, for example, because it conflicts with the 1st Amendment. At the heart of the prohibition of polygamy seems the creation of some sort of universal system of morality for all Americans that flies in the face of the allowance of the individual to marry whomever he chooses. However, the right way for the states to challenge this is through the courts, not military resistance.
