Sarah Barringer Gordon

Sarah Barringer Gordon

Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law and Professor of History

Sarah Barringer Gordon, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and director of the Penn Legal History Consortium, is a scholar on the historical role of religion in American political life and on the separation of church and state.

She wrote The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America (University of North Carolina Press, 2002). She says there were and are women who find happiness in polygamy because they believe they are living their religion. Gordon says that, technically speaking, permitting two people to participate in a traditional, monogamous marriage doesn't mean opening the door to polygamy because gay marriage doesn't change such legal-administration matters as inheritance and parental issues.