A federal judge in Utah has issued a controversial ruling in favor of polygamous or 'plural' families. The ruling, in response to a suit brought by the stars of the reality television show Sister Wives, strikes down Utah's ban against cohabitation, though it does not legally recognize plural marriage.

Sister Wives, now in it's fourth season, chronicles the lives of the Kody Brown, his four wives, and their 17 collective children. Utah's anti-polygamy laws had made the Brown's family arrangement illegal. In spite of the ruling's limited scope, Kody and the Sister Wives have celebrated it as a victory. The Browns belong to a fundamentalist Mormon off-shoot group called the Apostolic United Brethren Church and are not part of the mainstream Church of Latter Day Saints. The LDS no longer condones polygamy and polls show that the vast majority of Mormons similarly disapprove of the practice.

Judge Clark Waddoups ruled that Utah's ban on cohabitation violates the first and 14th amendments of the US constitution. Importantly, his ruling only has bearing on the state's right to legislate living arrangements of citizens. It does not challenge or overturn laws against bigamy, only the overreach of those laws in prohibiting constitutionally protected choices of where and how to live.

Predictably, many in Utah are upset over the ruling. Utah Governor Gary Herbert said he was "concerned" and is likely to appeal Judge Waddoups's decision.

Perhaps also predictably, conservative groups have latched on to the case as way to critizice the legalization of gay marriage. They argue that the definition of marriage has been undermined, creating a slippery slope towards the destruction of the traditional family.

Tony Perkins, president of the anti-gay marriage Family Research Council, responded to Judge Waddoups's ruling by saying that "same-sex marriage advocates have told us that people ought to be able to 'marry who they love' but have also always downplayed the idea that this would lead to legalized polygamy, a practice that very often victimizes women and children ... if love and mutual consent become the definition of what the boundaries of marriage are, can we as a society any longer even define marriage coherently?"

Proponents of gay marriage consider such arguments to be convoluted and irrelevant sophistry. They argue that right to choose whom one marries does not equate to the right to decide how many people they marry.

The case does, however, highlight the growing divide between civil libertarian conservatives and the Christian right over the role of government in the private lives of citizens.