As well as this, Henrickson and his family have to conceal the fact from everyone, including the neighbours, that they are polygamists.
Polygamy, or plural marriage, is practiced by self-proclaimed fundamentalist Mormons, despite being illegal in the US since 1890. By then, they had spilt from the mainstream Latter Day Saints Church. LDS members had strong objections to plural marriage, and still do today.

Warren Jeffs, a fundamentalist Mormon prophet, has been on the run since 2006, wanted by the FBI. Last year he was caught and put on trial for accomplice to rape, for which he was convicted. Some critics have suggested that it is not Jeffs on trial here, but the FLDS church and polygamy itself, and he is being vilified by the law for practicing his religion. There has been debate in some quarters as to whether the ban is an infringement of human rights. Should consenting adults be able to marry whomever they choose?

In Australia, polygamy is illegal under the Marriage Act of 1975. The act states: “Marriage means the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others.” But is the act a true reflection of the state of romantic relationships today? A recent television commercial by a car manufacturer highlighted the flexibility of the families these days. The versatile seats in the car could accommodate the single parent family, the sporting couple, or the “fur family”.

Andrew Sullivan, a prominent gay author, known for his influential book Virtually Normal, believes that “any change in (marriage) opens up a host of questions about what the union of two people means, what it has become, and what it could stand for – for everybody.

If Australia were to change the Marriage Act and abolish the phrase “one man and one woman”, it is likely that there would plenty of couples from the gay community ready to step up and take vows. The change could also legalise plural marriage. But would there be any takers?

Paul, a Melbourne man in his early thirties, entered into a plural relationship earlier this year. “I met this couple through a friend. From the start, the girl was giving me these looks. I told myself it was in my head – she already had a boyfriend. Then the three of us became quite good friends. We had a good dynamic. Eventually the other guy took me aside. He said, ‘I want you to sleep with my girlfriend.’ I thought he was winding me up, but he wasn’t. He explained that his girlfriend was really into me and that anyway, he was seeing somebody else, another girl who started to hang out with us to. A few weeks later the four of us had a sort of group relationship going. Fred, the other guy, nicknamed it ‘the square of trust’ and talked about us all getting a house together. I started to come round to the idea, though my friends thought I was crazy. In the end though, it all fell apart because of jealousy. Fred showed up at my apartment and threatened to kill me if I saw ‘his girlfriend’ again. I tried calling her, but she never answered, and I never saw her again.”

Karen, a Tasmanian girl now living in the inner suburbs of Melbourne, began a polygamous relationship last year. “I got involved with this French guy who already had a girlfriend. I thought it was really exotic, being his mistress. Then he started calling me his girlfriend as well. We would go out, the two of us girls flanking him. He loved it, telling us we were his body guards. It was really fun for a while, seeing the looks on our friends’ faces when we told them we were together. It was a kind of power. I got on okay with his girlfriend, but I knew she didn’t like me very much. Eventually, my boyfriend started giving me the cold shoulder, and that was that.”

Both Paul and Karen report that their friends were shocked by their plural relationship, or they didn’t approve. For dyadic relationships, whether they are straight or gay, there are plenty of role models in the community or in the media. For plural relationships, however, there are no role models, and no predetermined notions as to how this unusual type of relationship should function.

Perhaps in the current climate, where the template for relationships in Australia is defined by “the union of a man and a woman”, there just isn’t scope for relationships that lie so far outside those boundaries.

Photo Courtesy of  Guacamole Goalie  Creative Commons