The Laubs live in a polygamous community of perhaps 400 people in rural Missouri between the towns of Humansville and Stockton. The residents call it “the Ranch”, though the agriculture is limited to a hay field and a few cows and chickens. People in the neighboring towns refer to the community as “the Compound”, but you won’t see any high walls or armed guards — just brown dirt roads winding through clusters of trees and homes. [...]
Today, some fundamentalist Mormon polygamists believe plural marriage is necessary to reach the highest level of heaven. Others practice polygamy simply to follow Smith’s teachings. These polygamists tend to believe in big families: women often give birth to 10 or more children. While some of the polygamist leaders have been known to have 20 or more wives, most men have two or three. [...]
A review of marriage licenses in south-west Missouri shows most residents of the polygamous community marry in their 20s, though a few brides and grooms have been as young as 17. In Mormon polygamy, the husband usually has one legal wife; subsequent marriages are ordained in a religious service, but there’s no license on file with any county clerk.
In Missouri, you can be convicted of bigamy if a married person “purports”, to quote the statute, to marry another person. The offense is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. That’s a lesser punishment than, say, Utah, where polygamy is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison or 15 years if it’s committed in conjunction with a fraud or violent offense.
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