E-mail:			The Little-Known Link... ...Between Polygamy and Speeding Offences! ...and other minor traffic violations. This is an analysis of the attitude to the law that permits speeding offences to show that it goes beyond what is required to permit polygamy.

The polygamist knows the marriage laws are there, but using them would mean breaking them, so he doesn't use them. He accepts the law and he lives his life so as to keep to it. So he doesn't register his plural marriage, but commits no crime. Marriage without a licence - a covenant between a man and a woman - often has no legal effect, but is morally acceptable to the polygamist. A civil regulation is there, but just not used.

However, the person who breaks the speed limit, or commits a parking offence, or breaks one of a thousand other regulations that have the backing of the law, has a problem if he wants to reconcile this behaviour with his Christian life. If he thinks it's OK to do this he must be going through the folowing mental process..."It's not really against the law, for this is the criminal law just guiding us in our behaviour, and breaches are treated as breaches of regulations, not as crimes...so it's not sinful to break the law, because it's really only a civil regulation, and if I break a civil regulation and lose out, fair enough..."

If this is wrong, and there's another justification, then tell me!

Notice one thing. The polygamist doesn't use the civil regulation. He doesn't commit a civil offence (such as negligently injuring someone) and he doesn't commit a criminal offence. He just gets on with his life. The speeder however has to recategorise criminal law so as to make his actions uncriminal, and even then has to concede a civil offence. The polygamist breaks no law. The guy who puts his foot down in his car, or parks in a restricted area, breaks the criminal law, and can only justify it by claiming "it's only a civil regulation really".

So, the person who violates minor traffic laws and has no conscience about it, already takes two steps more than the polygamist - he recategorises the law to be something different than it's paper meaning, and he acknowledges that breach of regulations is OK for Christians.

So, it then becomes difficult for him to criticise a polygamist for saying that what the law calls "marriage", and what really is "marriage", are different things, for he is saying that what the law calls "criminal", and what really is "criminal" are different things. And it also becomes innappropriate to have a problem with living your life outside the civil regulations provided by the state, for he not only lives outside them, but he breaks them and is punished by them.

Next time you break the speed limit, or leave the car illegally parked - think about it - you've just done worse than the polygamist!

Does your crime make the polygamist right? No! The Bible teaches he hasn't done anything wrong anyway. But if you think he had, you would find yourself in the situation of trying to get a speck out of your brother's eye when you have a great big log in your own. The Bible says you need to sort out your own problem first.

Of course, there really is an important analogy between polygamous marriages and speeding. If you break a speed limit on a public road, you commit an offence. However, if you take your car to a private racing track, you can go whatever speed you want and break no law.

It's the same with marriage. A polygamist will often marry in a way that the state does not recognise and will not apply any of its laws to. Does that mean he is not married? No! Only that he has made his own arrangements.

Like the man on the private race track he has obeyed the law, refused to break it, respected it, and done something he is legally and morally entitled to do.