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Rhetorical Holy War: Polygamy, Homosexuality, And The Paradox Of Community And Autonomy, Gregory C. Pingree

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The article explores the rhetorical strategies deployed in both legal and cultural narratives of Mormon polygamy in nineteenth-century America. It demonstrates how an understanding of that unique communal experience, and the narratives by which it was represented, informs the classic paradox of community and autonomy – the tension between the collective and the individual. The article concludes by using the Mormon polygamy analysis to illuminate a contemporary social situation that underscores the paradox of community and autonomy – homosexuality and the so-called culture wars over family values and the meaning of marriage.