The Case Against Polygamy
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in ReligionI suppose I could have posted this in the comments section of Justin’s post about polygamy, but it’s rather long. Besides, Justin gave me posting privileges and what better way to use them than to question his reasoning?
Justin asks: “what’s so bad about polygamy?� Well, here’s the answer:
The problem with polygamy is that it is very likely to be an exploitative relationship where one person in the relationship (almost always the man) lords over the other members (almost always the women). It may sound very open and tolerant to think all members of a polygamous marriage would be 100% willing and not at all disadvantaged, but that’s pretty much ignoring that the history of polygamy is tied fairly directly into the subjugation of women.
Furthermore, allowing polygamy would lead to a fairly radical reordering of society in a way gay marriage simply wouldn’t. Gay marriage is still a traditional marriage, albeit between two people of the same sex. But it’s still about two people in a consensual relationship. Even now, without gay marriage, many gay couples are living together in committed, healthy relationships. So, in many ways, gay marriage is just making official something that already exists.
But legalized polygamy could lead to the structures of family and society being radically realigned. And anyone who thinks that realignment wouldn’t favor men (even in our happy, open society) is forgetting basic biology. A man can father many children and so would have use for many wives. A woman can only have one child at a time and thus needs only one husband. Thus in a polygamous culture, it is the men who have the power.
I am sure there are a few hippy-dippy polygamous relationships out there where everyone involved is loved and treated as an equal. But that is simply not the natural state of polygamy and those rare examples are no reason for us to even consider legalizing the act.
Gay marriage is fine by me but polygamy is horrid idea.
Those of us arguing for gay marriage would do ourselves a great disservice if we start seriously considering the legalization of polygamy. That’s what the social conservative want us to do�take that one step too far. If we start thinking polygamy is acceptable, it would give the social conservatives some very real ammunition to label us as anti-family and more than a little-bit crazy.
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March 17th, 2006 at 10:50 am
It’s tough being a moderate. There’s always competing adages to consider. You’ve got “the more, the merrier” on the one hand and “three’s company” on the other. I’m so confused.
March 17th, 2006 at 10:55 am
I jotted the second adage down incorrectly. I meant to say “two’s company, three’s a crowd.”
And lest anyone get confused, I’m kidding.
March 17th, 2006 at 10:59 am
Either way, it shows that marrige is not simply a self-evident human right defined as a union between any two people. “Traditional marrige,” despite what all the evangelical zealots say, is polygamy, where the parents are heavily involved in the decision making. This is the way marrige was defined for the majority of human societies throughout history right up until the 4th century in Europe.
Marrige is arbitrarily defined by cultural heritage, and in a democratic society it is the people or their elected representatives who should set the limits by which their government recognizes such heritage, if government is to recognize marrige at all.
March 17th, 2006 at 11:02 am
Somehow I get the feeling that if legalized polygamy ever becomes a real issue in America, the ones pushing it the hardest won’t be either gay-marriage advocates or fundamentalist Mormons.
I also get the feeling that if gay-marriage proponents come out against legalized polygamy, they will quickly be accused of double standards and Islamophobia. (A similar dynamic has been playing out in Europe, where Islamists have wondered aloud why gay-bashing is considered beyond the pale but the mocking of Islam is not.)
March 17th, 2006 at 11:26 am
Joshua is right. This situation has arisen recently in Canada. Read about it here:
http://www.nationalreview.com/kurtz/kurtz200602030805.asp
Its interesting how left-wing feminist groups were behind the protests against polygamy regarding the revivalist Mormon movements in the 1980’s. These are the very same people who will most likely be leading the charge advocating polygamy for Muslims in the future. Oh, if Mormons were only people of color!
March 17th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
An interesting factiod is that while the Bible abounds with stories of polygamous relationships, none of them are stable and wholesome - the husband necessarily prefers one wife to the others, and the wives conspire and work against each other.
I think it’s fascinating that even 3,000 years ago, it was recognized that polygamy didn’t lead to happiness…
March 17th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
My problem with polygamy is that a lot of times the man is marrying 15 year old girls.
March 17th, 2006 at 1:38 pm
I saw a documentary about a tribe in South America where the women took multiple husbands and, IRC, sometimes those same men had multiple wives. They all share parenting duties, as none of the men honestly know who the biological fathers of any children are.
I tried to find a link to the show, but am limited on time and can’t remember the name. I did find a brief report about it Share Paternity. Maybe that’s why there are so few indigenous tribe exist now.
Anyway, I don’t think there is a perfect formula for marriage any way you llook at it. Americans certainly aren’t good at it- a 60% divorce rate is a testament to that.
March 17th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
I have enough trouble with one woman.
Add a very lovely daughter and it gets worse.
Want more than that?
Nah.
March 17th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
Let me say, for the record, that I don’t think polygamy and gay marriage are really comparable. I didn’t make that clear, and I should have.
But it’s not quite a logic leap for the religious types to think polygamy is coming down the pipe when a much more “liberal” interpretation of marriage is accepted into law. And as one commenter here pointed out, the Bible abounds with examples of polygamy, and whether they’re good relationships or not, it’s still much more a part of the marital history of Christianity than gay marriage is. That’s why the argument is being made, although I think it’s an unfair comparison.
In any event, thanks for the thoughts Alan. I posted a link to your thoughts over at The Moderate Voice.
March 17th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
A wife, a daughter, two step-daughters, a female Bischon that thinks she is another step-daughter… an aspirin bill that Bush’s drug plan can’t help.
I believe there is a sect of Mormans that still practice polygamy but I don’t want to know what that aspirin bill looks like.
Think of the boost for divorce lawyers (head price). Imagine the interrogatories for prop settlements. That alone should curtail this one becoming law.
Gays and Women’s advocates fighting it? I think that is proof positive of how mainstream gays and women’s advocates really are. That should be enough to shut up the fundies. But … it’s not.
I tell my son-in-law to be patient because the first 25 years are an adjustment period, but he doesn’t seem to get it. When I mention polygamy as an alternative life style to him …. his eyes glaze over and his lower lip quivers. Go figure.
As it stands … I am only partially through my own adjustment period. I haven’t got the time or inclination to concern my sel with what gays, mormans or muslims do for fun.
March 17th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
As a political stand let me just point out:
The fundamentalists want to tell the Gays what they cannot do.
The gays want to tell the polywannabes what they cannot do (ostensibly because it might not look good to the fundamentalists)
The Muslims have figured out how to bring religion into the fray from the other end. (and jab at the fundamentalist and the gays)
And I have absolutely no idea what the hell Mitt Romney is thinking!?
What ARE these people thinking? Does anyone, anywhere have a full dance card? We should all be too busy living our own lives(any way we want to) to be worrying about what other folks are doing.
March 17th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
I saw this comment over at The Moderate Voice and I think it’s a good one. Reprinted in full here.
I think that sums up the differences pretty succinctly.
March 17th, 2006 at 5:11 pm
Listen, I like Andrew Sullivan as much as the next person, I’m in favor of allowing gay people to get the same legal benefits as straight people and if that means having the state recognize same sex partnerships as equal to opposite sex partnerships, also great. Put it on a referendum, I’ll vote for it. But do you really believe that “there is no innate desire to marry multiple partners the way there is an innate desire to marry one person”? I’m sorry, but that argument is just restating the premise as a conclusion. Why do you think that people have no “innate desire” to marry multiple partners? Or, for that matter, an “innate desire” to marry anybody?
March 17th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
What about gay polygamy? What about couples marrying other couples.
What in bilateral marriage implies equality?
My instinct is to say consenting adults should be left to form their own relationships of their own free will. The government’s role ought to be limited to such matters as regulating inheritance and setting standards for spousal insurance coverage and providing protection to its citizens from physical harm.
The insurance question is an interesting one, though. In the current situation, where millions lack healthcare, if you legalize polygamy, what’s to stop one woman with a good job from marrying a dozen jobless men simply to get them on her insurance plan?
March 17th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
Sullivan’s being political here. He’s trying to advance an issue by walling it off from the “slippery slope” and quelling the fears of his opponents. But Sebastian’s right: he’s making an artificial distinction of “innate desires.”
March 17th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
Cal,
I think you can wall-off gay marriage from the slippery slope. It really is a much greater leap to say polygamy is ok than it is to say gay marriage is ok.
You say your instinct is that consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want. But how do you define “consent?” What may seem to be consent to the idle observer may in fact be coercion. And polygamy is often based on coercion as well as exploitation.
It is true that many traditional marriages are neither equal nor free of coercion/exploitation, but at least there is a pretty strong opportunity for traditional marriages (at least in the West) to be based on love and equality. Polygamy, on the other hand, rarely has such opportunities as it is based primarily on the subjugation of women. That’s why it’s most often practiced in highly misogynistic cultures. Assuming you believe that society should set a certain number of standards, I do not see how it is at all healthy for us to accept a form of marriage that exists mainly to subjugate one gender.
Marriage is indeed a social construct. Not long ago, I’d have been accused of trying to tear down the foundations of society by saying marriage should be based on love. Of course, now we consider marriages based on love to be far preferable than the arranged marriages of our ancestors. That, I think, says something very positive about the culture we wish to nurture. And it would also say something positive if we were to allow gay marriage, as that would be an acknowledgement that our society supports commitments outside of the self. But permitting polygamy would not say anything positive. It would say that we are comfortable with a system that promotes harsh inequalities.
Sure, there are exceptions that existâ€â€?not all polygamous relationships involve one man and many woman. And sure we can make all kinds of what-if arguments based on whatever wacky “marriagesâ€Â? we can madlib together–but the fact is: polygamy is not conducive to a healthy society of equal opportunity and we should not accept it.
March 17th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
Which is why you have waiting periods and signed consent forms and opt-out clauses.
I’d best not argue this one, because my feelings are based on personal experiences that probably are not currently legal in all states of the union. Just because some people might abuse something is not necessarily a reason to make it illegal for everyone.
March 17th, 2006 at 8:19 pm
I cannot understand one agreeing that marriage is a self-defined right that is enumerated by the Constitution yet excludes polygamists in any context other than pandering to a specific group. One may, in your opinion, seem more natural than the other but isn’t that what th entire debate is about - who defines marriage?
March 17th, 2006 at 10:04 pm
What about the case for Incest? Marriage between consenting adult syblings is illegal in every state, I believe, and 1st cousin marrige is banned in some if not most. Royal families used to do it all the time; brother-sister marraige is not unheard of amongst tribal castes in south-east asia today.
Don’t say its wrong because of a potential for birth defects, try to tell Andrew Sullivan that marraige is for birthing children. Can you deny that syblings love eachother =P ? It might even simplify insurance, inheritance, hospital visitation, child custody ect….Call Ruth Ginsberg! Its my constitutional right to marry my sister! or my brother! or both!
March 18th, 2006 at 12:18 am
Society, as represented by government, has no particular interest in restricting marriage rights to those who intend to use them to have children. It does, arguably, have an interest in discouraging — or at least not sanctioning — types of sexual unions that are highly likely to result in severely deformed children.
[I'm aware that this confuses "incest" and "inbreeding," but so does this whole post. If it's illegal to have a child by your sister, that doesn't automatically make it illegal to have sex with her. Ew. But this thread wasn't my idea.]
Actually, I think I’ve read that first cousins are pretty safe, genetically, as breeding partners. According to Wikipedia, 24 U.S. states prohibit marriages between first cousins, but 7 permit them under special circumstances and the rest don’t restrict them.
March 18th, 2006 at 9:17 am
I’m with Cal on the basic libertarian notion that consenting adults have the right to enter whatever contracts they want. So long as all parties are of the age of majority, and so long as we don’t somehow repeal current laws on child abuse and spousal abuse, and continue to adopt a liberal standard on divorce, I’m at a loss to explain why it should be the business of the government to tell anyone how to configure their personal relationships.
March 18th, 2006 at 11:08 am
Legalize gay marriage and single gays can get married, this doesn’t change the dynamic in existing straight marriages. Legalize polygamy and suddenly the dynamic in all existing monogamous marriages is changed. Women who entered monogamous marriages would now be threatened by the possibility of being forced into accepting polygamous marriage-due to dependent children, or illness or age. Many women enter marriage because it is a monogamous state, and the majority of women want a monogamous relationship. Legalize polygamy and marriage loses its sense of security, what woman wants to turn 40 or 50 or 60, and after investing decades into a family and relationship, have her husband bring home wife number two. (Not to mention if she works outside the home the years spent contributing to the family’s wealth only to see it being spent on another woman’s children.) If polygamy was legalized I’d tell my daughter to plan on a lifetime of staying single, because risking being dependent on a man would be too dangerous.
March 18th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
From my dim recollection of high school anthropology classes, I don’t think it’s the women who lose out with polygamy - but the men who are left wifeless. It’s the problem of these guys-sans-wives that poses the strongest argument against polygamy.
Societies that have a lot of polygamy going on have to answer the question of what to do with all the left over men. Back in the day when war was a constant fact of life, extra men would just go off and get killed. With no war, the theory goes, they just stick around and - without the mollifying influences of estrogen and dopamine - get into trouble.
March 18th, 2006 at 1:28 pm
As it so happens, my grandparents were first cousins. (Yuck, but I don’t get to pick my grandparents.) Given that, genetically, everyone seems to have turned out just fine, I’m gonna say it probably is fairly safe. Who knows what the actual percentage of genetic disaster is, but from my own, completely unscientific, empirical experience, it doesn’t seem to be a problem. But I don’t need to tell you why my grandparents never mentioned it, and that the only reason I know at all is because I happened to look at the family tree and got confused why there were multiple entries on it for the same person.
On the subject of polygamy and gay marriage, I personally, on a moral level, don’t like either one. But like Callimachus, I don’t see any reason why my moral opinions should have any effect on what you and other consenting adults are able to do. I agree with Alan that there’s more potential abuse that may need to be regulated with polygamy, but the solution that America traditionally tends to have for that is simple enough. Leave it up to the states to figure out. And conveniently, Utah will be the only state that cares enough to want it to be legal. So they get to deal with the quandry that is polygamy, and the rest of us get to shrug while they work it out. If they find a fair and equitable solution, the rest of the states can later adopt it. Or at least, that’s the general idea.
The problem only comes in when the religious right puts their foot down and starts demanding ammendments to the Constitution to outlaw polygamy and/or gay marriage for everyone in order to “defend” their narrow views of the “sanctity of marriage.” And I love how they just prefix whatever issue they want to push with the word “sanctity” (see abortion, capital punishment, gay marriage, polygamy, whatever) and they get instant credibility with their constit’ency without any real thoughtful examination involved. It’s neat, really.
March 18th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
Julia:
High school anthropology, of course, over-simplifies. Statistically, the most productive years of a man’s life are prior to getting married. Ostensibly, because the guy spends lots of time innovating and producing in a crazy attempt to impress the female. As soon as a man gets married, risk becomes anathema, and innovation and production drop off drastically. So you have lots of girlless guys who suddenly become very productive in a strange attempt to rectify their girllessness, and eventually, they become productive enough to impress the girl or else they burn out early. Many will burn out early and even die off, but because the conception rate should theoretically stay around the same, society doesn’t quite collapse. And you get lots of extra volunteer soldiers.
The question, if you want to look at it from this angle, really turns into, is the higher productivity worth the higher crime rate? And since we don’t really have a sufficiently polygamous modern society to study, I’d say, on a guess, it’s probably not, since crime (at least stealing anyways) is pretty much the arch-enemy of capitalism.
March 18th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
My eye was caught by a phrase in one of Alan’s comments — “the culture we wish to nurture.”
That is of the essence. We have a choice here. We are not at the mercy of gravity. This slope is not slippery. Every step “down” it (and some of them may be “up”) is optional and can and must be weighed and considered.
The culture I wish to nurture is one in which homosexuals are recognized to exist as a fact, not a problem, and encouraged to live a good life like anyone else, rather than shoved into the closet, shamed, and made to feel that there’s no point in aspiring to a stable, open, loving life since they’ll be despised anyway.
The culture I wish to nurture is also one that encourages the face-to-face intimacy of two people. I was thinking yesterday, “Marriage is really the only relationship in which you come to see and know and love another person a little bit the way God does — that is, as he or she is.” I don’t mean the word “love,” there, as a good feeling. I mean it as knowledge and profound acceptance regardless of your own tastes and annoyances. That’s such hard work and it can really only be done one on one, or it is diluted and provided with escape hatches (which of course we tend to find anyway).
March 18th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
Bob Aman: I know first cousins who are married. Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were first cousins. It’s not uncommon, and it’s not illegal or even particularly “yuck.” Apparently this is based on an intuitive biological understanding that they don’t share enough genes to be a problem. (If you saw my assorted nieces and nephews, you’d have no idea that they were even related. One lot of them is over 6′ and blond, one looks like a Mayan Indian, and it goes on from there.)
March 18th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
Amba:
My “yuck” is a social “yuck”, not a scientific “yuck”. I simply wish I could have avoided social baggage that I don’t need, because of course, your Average Joe, upon hearing of cousins marrying, will go “yuck”. And even myself, I can’t help but instinctually go “yuck” despite knowing quite well that it’s not a big deal.
March 18th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
Good yuck with this one. The religious right will start self-exploding (on second thought go for it) I guess that I am ambivalent (Hi Annie) on this one because it seems so far down the list of items that we are all fighting (for/against/don’t care) about already.
I do want to note a slight aversion to the argument about defective offspring and point out that with all of the genus operandi that has survived thus far, we still have an alarming number of “defective”? children with CP, Mongoloidism, etc. so I am not so sure about the scientific basis for that point of view.
On the other hand, in the animal world where we have been able to “breed for characteristics” we get some pretty tempermental critters i.e. dobermans and shepards. …… so if you plan on marrying you sister … understand from the outset …. she may produce children who are really hard to get along with.
March 18th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
The problem with most arguments against polygamy, such as the one Alan advances here, is that they remain slippery-slope arguments. To wit: Gay marriage leads to polygamy; polygamy leads to underage marriage; underage marriage leads to wife-beating; and so on.
A compelling case against polygamy needs to show that polygamy is harmful in and of itself. The idea that it is simply because it prevents some men or women from getting married because others are married to multiple spouses doesn’t cut it for me, frankly. That doesn’t mean the proof can’t be made; it just means it hasn’t been made.
I should say that I’m of two minds about it. On the one hand, I generally agree with the principle that Michael stated, that adults should be allowed to enter into the contracts they desire. I think the case also could be made that, like drug use and prostitution , polygamy’s bad effects could be reduced through legality and regulation. But at the same time, there is no denying that most polygamous societies are cruelly abusive towards women.
Not to mention the thought of actually being in a polygamous relationship, at this point in my life, just makes me tired. Especially after watching the first episode of Big Love.
March 18th, 2006 at 6:54 pm
I like firefly’s point. Gay marriage doesn’t affect anyone else’s marriage, even theoretically (except possibly through some sort of dilution effect). Legalizing polygamy has an immediate theoretical effect on every married couple. That’s more of a reason why it will be opposed politically however.
My concern would be that if the supreme court ‘discovers’ a constitutional right of gay couples to marry (do heterosexual couples have a constitutional right to get married? maybe in the 10th amendment?), when there is no explicit language in the constitution forbidding discrimination on sexual orientation, then I don’t see how that right doesn’t extend to polygamists desiring to marry (as part of their religion), when there definitely is explicit language in the constitution forbidding religious discrimination.
We should change the rules based on societal fiat: gay couples can marry because we as a society say it’s ok. It’s a good solution for the same reason the Order of the Garter is good: because there’s no damn merit in it.
March 18th, 2006 at 6:58 pm
Three random thoughts for clarification here:
1) I think there was a bit more to the “social” issue of first cousins marrying. Back when more people stayed put–which meant more people spent their lives around extended families–marrying first cousins could pose a bit more complexity as far as churning up extended family relationships. That’s even when the marriages worked. Can you imagine when they didn’t?
Now, this isn’t such an issue because we’re all so very mobile and, it seems to me, less intertwined on a daily basis with extended family.
Of course, we also know more about genetics etc.
2) A picky, picky thing regarding Christianity and examples of polygamy: how many examples of those relationships are in the NEW Testament? While the OLD Testament is vital to understanding how Christianity developed, and–of course!–it tells of prophets foreseeing a Messiah, technically Christianity did not exist until, well, Jesus’ existence. Further, there’s an excellent theological argument to make that Christianity still didn’t come into being until AFTER the crucifixion. Think about it …
In any case, my point is that it is not precise, and probably not really fair, to use the Old Testament tales as evidence of a history of polygamy in Christianity, as such.
3) Finally, I agree that the divorce rate is sad commentary on how much we really value marriage. But I would caution as to how we throw around statistics about divorce to say that “we’re” not good at marriage. Remember that the divorce rate includes people who “fail” (I use that word ONLY in the context that “not good at” brings up; I don’t view divorced people as failures) more than once. While more than half of all marriages may end in divorce, that does not mean that more than half of all people ever married have divorced, or that a minority of people are “successful” at marriage (as measured by divorce, at any rate).
We can’t address the issues if we’re inadvertently mistating the facts.
See this, for example.
“How many American marriages end in divorce? One in two, if you believe the
statistic endlessly repeated in news media reports, academic papers and
campaign speeches.
The figure is based on a simple - and flawed - calculation: the annual
marriage rate per 1,000 people compared with the annual divorce rate. In
2003, for example, the most recent year for which data is available, there
were 7.5 marriages per 1,000 people and 3.8 divorces, according to the
National Center for Health Statistics.
But researchers say that this is misleading because the people who are
divorcing in any given year are not the same as those who are marrying, and
that the statistic is virtually useless in understanding divorce rates. In
fact, they say, studies find that the divorce rate in the United States has
never reached one in every two marriages, and new research suggests that,
with rates now declining, it probably never will.
The method preferred by social scientists in determining the divorce rate is
to calculate how many people who have ever married subsequently divorced.
Counted that way, the rate has never exceeded about 41 percent, researchers
say. Although sharply rising rates in the 1970’s led some to project that
the number would keep increasing, the rate has instead begun to inch
downward.”
(By the way, I’m not endorsing the web site on which this article appears; it was just the quickest hit for the NYT article I’m referencing.)
March 18th, 2006 at 9:07 pm
Advocates for expanding marriage rights would do well to remember to use the term “same-sex marriage” rather than “gay marriage.” The difference is, gays can already marry members of the opposite sex (a la Brokeback Mountain); they cannot marry their same-sex lovers. Advocating same-sex marriage is not quite the same thing as advocating gay marriage.
There is a principled line to be drawn between same-sex marriage and plural marriage — the government has to draw a line for the extension of welfare benefits (like social security, etc.) somewhere. Yes, it’s an arbitrary line, but an arbitrary line based on economics rather than religion.
March 19th, 2006 at 12:28 am
Those are all good points TL. I think there should be a pretty clear line drawn between same-sex marriage and polygamists, but something tells me that eventually polygamy is going to be accepted. Of course, that is many years down the road and probably after I’m long dead. But the world is only becoming more and more liberal, and eventually the governments will have to respect the will of the people, as opposed to the people respecting the will of the governments.
March 19th, 2006 at 8:57 am
The history of polygamy cannot be painted simply as one of male abuse of women. The early Mormon case is actually rather ambiguous and feminist scholars have been constantly baffled by the fact that, where they expected early Mormon polygamous wives to be harrassed, beaten, subjugated women with low self-esteem, the actual reality was often quite the opposite.
If you actually take the time to read the profiles of Emma Smith and Eliza R. Snow, you’ll find some of the most compelling, tough and powerful women in American history. I don’t doubt that there were abuses as well, and maybe quite a few of them. But the history of Mormon polygamy is not purely one of men subjugating women.
The problem is, when the Mormon church officially denounced polygamy and started excommunicating anyone who practiced it, the practice lost a lot of its social legitimacy. Not only was it illegal, but now it was socially unacceptable.
The result was a culture-of-secrecy among those who still practiced polygamy that is a breeding ground for the type of abuses that Mr. Stewart is probably thinking of.
The end point is that Tom Green and other noteworthy examples do not prove that polygamy is inherently abusive. Modern Mormons are of two minds on this issue. On the one hand, most are children of their generation and find the idea of having more than one wife, or of sharing a husband, personally repulsive. However, they are also faced with the religious need to justify HISTORICAL polygamy as practiced by the early Mormons.
The reality in Utah is rather complex. I don’t think you can make the case that all modern Mormons are secretly waiting for polygamy to make a comeback. Most of them are just as turned off by it as most of the Christian Right is. But their are definitely more reasons for Mormons to be sympathetic than are found in mainline America.
I should note, I don’t advocate bringing the practice back. Best leave well enough alone.
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:58 pm
The problem with polygamy and gay marriage has NOTHING to do with how people FEEL about those relationships.
Last I checked, getting a polygamous or gay marriage from a religious or other institution is quite possible.
What this discussion really boils down to is government benefits vfor having such a relationship.
I don’t buy the “anyone against gay marriage is a racist bigot homophobe nasty-person!” argument because it is a non-argument. It is nothing more than personal invective against people. You can already GET gay marriages in some churches, what you are seeking is government recognition(and thus benefits) to such a union. Therefore, the onus is on you to provide the incentive of the government to provide you those priviledges, and saying “people who don’t agree with me are flawed” doesn’t cut it. What is the state’s interest in gay marriage? How can stuffing genital A into orifice B derive any benefit for the government? In the case of heterosexual marriages, the likelihood is that a ‘lil taxpayer will result.
In the case of polygamy, you have to deal with a whole hoard of insurance concerns and other marriage rights. Do all spuses get to visit or just one?
The point is the debate is not about “lifestyle choices” it is about “what is the governments interest in giving benefits for your chosen union”.
March 22nd, 2006 at 5:20 pm
I guess happy hour started early today, eh Bri?
December 13th, 2006 at 12:44 am
Polygamy doesn’t have to pragmatically work for it to be legal.
Heterosexual marriage in all senses doesn’t work. Half end in divorce.
Saying polygamy should be illegal b/c of arguments like women could be subserviant aren’t logical in holding with freedoms.
There are women who are the ‘bitches’ of their husbands who don’t give a crap about them but it’s still a right for them to marry.
There are only really 2 options with the government and marriage.
1. All marriage is legal no matter how sick and wrong it might sound.
2. The government should just drop legal marriage and just say people can call their relationships whatever they want.
Personally if marriage was dropped in the legal sense, I would still buy a ring, ask the girl to marry me, and go to a church and have a wedding. I could care less if the government said it was official or not.
December 4th, 2007 at 11:59 am
The truth of the matter is that polygamy is in favor of both sexes, because it allows men to exercise their polygamous natures in a responsible manner, while at the same time, protecting the women’s rights of protection and sustainance.
Alot of women would rather be second wives than mistresses, because being a wife means that the husband has to take care of you, while being a mistress means that he doesn’t have to pay a penny.
The fact that I found funny is that most of the people who are fighting tooth and nail againt polygamy are men…and why is that? Because they don’t want to be responsible for other women, they would rather “play around”.
The bottom line is that forcing monogomy down people’s throats is what is degrading women.
Polygamy is the natural way to go in my book, it’s been practiced by almost all (if not all) the major religions of the world, and throughout the ages.