This one is weird on multiple levels, but I didn't really get into the creepier aspects of it. For instance, familial attachments were discouraged - parents who got too attached to their biological children would be separated from them. Children were really children of the whole commune, so close families weren't really allowed. Also, sexual "initiation" took place at around age 12, and it was usually with a much older member of the group - one who had achieved a greater spiritual purity. Gross. The teenagers weren't thrilled about this policy, but they endured it so that they could then be given formal permission to... you know...
The whole point is that Noyes justified his want of a married woman by pretending that marriage didn't really matter, and he liked it so much that he built a whole philosophy out of it. Like a lot of these eccentric characters we've seen, he's always one step ahead of the law and usually wearing fast shoes.
Of interest is how they practiced birth control - in a 20-year stretch, despite frequent fornication between all the hundreds of the members of the commune, only 40 babies were born. I guess I'm going to have to Google what "male continence" is.
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