A Day In The Life

As far as minister Steve Butt is concerned, his family is much like anyone else's - with one small difference. Butt has three wives. 48 Hours Correspondent Susan Spencer reports on how this unusual arrangement works.

Last summer Butt moved to tiny Circleville, Utah, from Salt Lake City with his three wives: Diane, in her 50s; Mary Ann, in her 40s; and Dawn, in her 30s, his most recent wife. The family has six kids, four of whom live with them in the church. They make their home in a ramshackle church.

Steve Butt spends his days online, raising the donations his family lives on and recruiting a kind of virtual congregation for his own brand of Christian fundamentalism. "People don't realize that there actually is a longstanding history of Christian polygamy," he says.

Unlike 95 percent of America's polygamists, Steve Butt is not a renegade Mormon. To those who say he is simply trying to justify a lifestyle he likes, he says that the lifestyle works.

Though Steve Butt is clearly master of the house, Diane, Mary Ann and Dawn Butt claim they love the arrangement. They home school the kids, do all the housework and share the mothering. And they go about their days with a togetherness that traditional families might envy.

According to polygamy expert Janet Bennion, an anthropologist at Utah Valley State College, some women actually find polygamy liberating, because it allows them to share resources and responsibilities. "Female bonding is so important," Bennion says, adding that it involves having "a sister wife, a co-wife, who understands exactly what you're going through."

She notes that 80 percent of the world's cultures practice polygamy. But, there is also a hierarchy among the wives, and it can be "brutal," Bennion says.

But Spencer didn't find anything of the sort during her brief visit. It happened to be Diane Butt's 52nd birthday, and everyone took part in the celebration.

"We feel that we're all equal," Diane Butt says. "We feel that we're really all sisters." She admits that there are sometimes conflicts and jealousies, but that every marriage, even a two-person arrangement, involves compromises. It is, she admits, a big adjustment.

What about sex? The wives say they decide where Steve Butt sleeps on any given night. The arrangement works really well, he says. "I think I have it pretty good," he says. "I'll tell you one thing: I'd never go back."

Butt says he didn't choose polygamy: "I didn't go into this thinking 'Oh wow, I'm going to take a second wife.' I went into this dragging my feet all the way." Diane Butt agrees.

Steve Butt was married to Diane for 23 years when Mary Ann came to him for counseling after leaving a cult. "God spoke to me," Steve Butt says. "And he commanded me to marry er."

Two of Butt's wives, Dawn, left, and Mary Ann, share a laugh at home.

"I prayed that she would be somebody that would meet Steve's spiritual needs and that he could completely fall in love with," Diane Butt says.

Her prayers were answered days later in an email from Dawn. "I didn't really have any close friends in my life at this point in time," Dawn says. She struck up a relationship with Steve Butt on the Internet. "It felt like this was the other half of my heart somewhere," she adds.

Steve Butt and his wives came to Utah precisely because they thought people would be more tolerant of polygamy here. But Circleville, which has 500 residents, most of whom are Mormon, is definitely not pleased.

"It's illegal, it's immoral, and we don't want them in our town," says Renee Daffer. "They're on the Internet. They've put articles in the paper. Now, they're going to be on national television. They're just inviting all people that believe this way to come here."

There are up to 60,000 Americans in polygamous families. The number is growing, which worries Daffer.

Another resident says that before he moved to Circleville, Butt didn't tell anyone that he was a polygamist. But Butt says he was not obligated to warn the town: "Let's say we were a Muslim family. Would we have to move into town and send out a notice to people that we were a Muslim family?"

He says the town shouldn't be afraid of a takeover either. At most, he says, there will be three more polygamous families. And he says that he is not looking for another wife. "I'm where God wanted me to be in my family."

Produced by David Kohn;