Posted on Friday 9 July 2010
Under federal statutes, Samuel Davis had been convicted, fined, and sentenced to jail for bigamy and polygamy. He appealed, and before the Supreme Court his attorneys argued that laws against bigamy and polygamy: 1 were a violation of the First Amendment because they interfered with Davis and other Mormon’s free exercise of religion; and 2 the Idaho law under which he was convicted was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment which prohibited the States from making laws that interfered with the rights of their citizens.
The Court rejected those arguments; its response was very straightforward and succinct: Bigamy and polygamy are crimes by the laws of all civilized and Christian countries. They are crimes by the laws of the United States and they are crimes by the laws of Idaho. They tend to destroy the purity of the marriage relation, to disturb the peace of families, to degrade woman and to debase man. To extend exemption from punishment for such crimes would be to shock the moral judgment of the community.
To call their advocacy a tenet of religion is to offend the common sense of mankind. There have been sects who denied as a part of their religious tenets that there should be any marriage tie, and advocated promiscuous intercourse of the sexes as prompted by the passions of its members. Should a sect of either of these kinds ever find its way into this country, swift punishment would follow the carrying into effect of its doctrines and no heed would be given to the pretence that their supporters could be protected in their exercise by the Constitution of the United States? Probably never before in the history of this country has it been seriously contended that the whole punitive power of the government for acts recognized by the general consent of the Christian world must be suspended in order that the tenets of a religious sect may be carried out without hindrance.
The constitutions of several States, in providing for religious freedom, have declared expressly that such freedom shall not be construed to excuse acts of licentiousness looseness and immorality. The constitution of New York of 1777 provided as follows: “The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever thereafter be allowed within this State to all mankind: Provided, That the liberty of conscience hereby granted shall not be so construed as to excuse acts of licentiousness.”