Don’t forget that Utah Territory was denied State Utah until 1896 because Mormons were polygamists. It was not all just about muslims, although they love to take on the aggrieved role. Although, it might have been done with a wink and a nod, Utah had to outlaw the practice prior to Statehood.
Presumably, there were Mormon polygamists in Canada and Mexico who were hoping the law would not apply to them and they could walk back in. They just needed to await ubama’s so-called “executive amnesty” I guess.
I’ll take Mormon polygamists over Muslim polygamists any day.
Even with the prairie dresses, identical hairdos, Stepford wife blank stares, & cloned looks.
Better than burkas with mass murderer genes.
The 1890 Mormon Church manifesto only ended new marriages of the type, it did not dissolve existing marriages, particularly in their colonies in Alberta and Mexico where there was no civil law against it.
While the Canadian colonies stayed put and grew, many in the Mexican Colonies wanted to return to the United States for the obvious dangers of the Mexican Revolution. This presented them with a dilemma of which wife and family to abandon to conform to the U.S. law. In my friends case, the father was able to bring both wives and families back under the stipulation that they would live in separate houses. They basically lived that way until one wife died and the households were again combined, by which time most of the children were grown and gone anyway.
TR was savvy enough to understand that a law targeting Mormons (very unpopular at the time) would have little effect on them, but keep out the Mohammedans.