Utah
Sect Leader Criticizes Santorum
Associated Press, April 24,
2003
SALT LAKE CITY—The leader of one
of Utah’s largest polygamist sects has objected to Sen. Rick Santorum’s
comment lumping plural marriage with other practices the Pennsylvania
Republican considers to be antifamily.
Santorum has been under fire for comparing homosexuality
to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery.
Owen Allred, 89, head of the United Apostolic Brethen,
based in the Salt Lake City suburb of Bluffdale, agreed with Santorum in part.
“He is absolutely right. The people of the United
States are doing whatever they can to do away with the sacred rights of
marriage,” Allred told The Salt Lake Tribune.
But Allred said Santorum’s inclusion of polygamy in his
list tarnishes a religious tradition whose roots are traced to biblical
figures such as Abraham, Jacob and Moses—defiling them as “immoral and
dirty.”
In an interview with The Associated Press published over
the weekend, Santorum criticized homosexuality while discussing a pending
Supreme Court case over a Texas sodomy law.
“If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to
consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you
have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right
to adultery. You have the right to anything,” Santorum said.
“Whether it’s polygamy, whether it’s adultery,
where it’s sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy,
stable, traditional family,” he said.
Polygamy was abandoned by The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints more than a century ago and it excommunicates members who
advocate it, but it is estimated that tens of thousands in Utah continue the
practice. Membership estimates for Allred’s church range from 4,000 to
6,000, and there also are a number of independent polygamists loosely
affiliated with Allred’s group.
Santorum is chairman of the GOP conference in the Senate,
third in his party’s leadership, behind Majority Leader Bill Frist of
Tennessee and Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Gay
rights groups and some Democrats have suggested he be removed from the
conference post.
Speaking at a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania on
Wednesday, Santorum defended his comments and said they were similar to what
Justice Byron White wrote in the 1986 Supreme Court ruling that consenting
adults have no constitutional right to private homosexual sex.
“To suggest that my comments, which are the law of the
land and were the reason the Supreme Court decided the case in 1986, are
somehow intolerant, I would just argue that it is not,” Santorum said.
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