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8 J.L. & Fam. Stud. 363 (2006)
Turkey Is in Our Midst: Orientalism and Contagion in Nineteenth Century Anti-Mormonism

handle is hein.journals/jlfst8 and id is 373 raw text is: Turkey Is in Our Midst: Orientalism and Contagion in Nineteenth Century Anti-Mormonism Christine Talbot* When George Reynolds walked into the Supreme Court in 1878, he carried with him the hopes of thousands of Mormons in Utah. In October 1875, the prominent Mormon leader had been indicted for polygamy and convicted1 under the Morrill Act,2 an 1862 law prohibiting the practice of bigamy. Hoping to test the constitutionality of anti-polygamy legislation, Mormon leaders had pursued the Reynolds case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. When the landmark Reynolds decision, handed down in 1879, upheld the constitu- tionality of federal anti-polygamy legislation,3 Mormons across the board were deeply disappointed. However, anti-Mormons, who for decades had marshaled support for anti-polygamy laws, were elated.4 Over the next decade, the federal government unleashed an unprecedented legislative and judicial campaign against the Mormon practice of plural marriage.5 Legal campaigns against polygamy attacked Mormon polygamic theocracy by taking aim at Mormon citizenship rights, most notably, the rights to hold office, serve on juries and vote.6 Legal campaigns against polygamy during the 1880s, legitimized and given new life by the Reynolds decision, were built on a foundation of * Professor Christine Talbot is presently an Adjunct Faculty member in the Gender Studies Program at the University of Utah. She received Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees in 1995 from the University of Utah. She also received a Certificate of Women's Studies from the University of Michigan in 2005 and her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2006. ' Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 146 (1878). 2 Morrill Act, ch. 126, 12 Stat. 501 (1862). ' Id. at 168. 4 For analyses of the Reynolds case, see SARAH BARRINGER GORDON, THE MORMON QUESTION: POLYGAMY AND CONSTITUTIONAL CONFLICT IN NINETEENTH- CENTURY AMERICA 119-46 (2002); NANCY F. COTT, PUBLIC Vows: A HISTORY OF MARRIAGE AND THE NATION 113-18, 129-30 (2000); EDWIN BROWN FIRMAGE & RICHARD COLLIN MANGRUM, ZION IN THE COURTS: A LEGAL HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER DAY SAINTS, 1830-1900, at 151-59 (1998); Pamela Sheingorn & Carol Weisbrod, Reynolds v. United States: Nineteenth-Century Forms of Marriage and the Status of Women, in DOMESTIC RELATIONS AND LAW 345- 75 (Nancy F. Cott ed., 1992); and Ray Jay Davis, Plural Marriage and Religious Freedom: The Impact of Reynolds v. United States, 15 ARIZ. L. REv. 287, 287-306 (1973). 5 See GORDON, supra note 4, at 147-220. 6 See Edmunds Act, ch. 47, §§ 5, 8, 9, 22 Stat. 30 (1882); Edmunds-Tucker Act, ch. 397, §§ 13, 24, 24 Stat. 635 (1887).

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