Fundamental Mormons seek recognition for polygamy

By Jason Szep

CENTENNIAL PARK, Arizona (Reuters) - When Ephraim Hammon returns home from a day of working construction near Arizona's border with Utah, he's greeted by his wife SherylLynne. And then by his wife Leah.

Polygamy, once hidden in the shadows of Utah and Arizona, is breaking into the open as fundamentalist Mormons push to decriminalize it on religious grounds, while at the same time stamping out abuses such as forced marriages of underage brides.

The growing confidence of polygamists and their willingness to go public come at an awkward moment for mainstream Mormons, who are now in the spotlight as Republican Mitt Romney, a prominent Mormon, seeks the U.S. presidency.

The Salt Lake City, Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon church, introduced polygamy before the Civil War but banned it in 1890 when the federal government threatened to deny Utah statehood. Today, about 40,000 "fundamentalist Mormons" in Utah and nearby states live polygamy illegally.

Romney, whose great-grandfather had five wives and whose great-great-grandfather had a dozen, has dismissed the practice as "bizarre" -- a comment that infuriates Hammon, whose father and grand-father practiced plural marriage.

"If it was me, I wouldn't apologize for my past. My ancestors did what they did. I can't help that," said Hammon, 36, who legally married SherylLynne, 32, in 1994 and was joined with Leah, 21, a decade later as his "celestial bride" in a religious ceremony that has no legal binding.

Leah bristles at the idea of women being forced into polygamy. "The women in this society are educated," she said.

Her husband likened the struggle for acceptance with the civil rights movement. "It's like the work Martin Luther King did in relation with African Americans," he said, holding year-old Ava, one of his eight children, in the living room of his three-story home in Centennial Park, a dry, dusty Arizona town run by polygamists near the Utah border.