Who's Afraid of Polygamy?

NY Times ^ | March 11, 2006 | John Tierney

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

If gay marriage becomes legal, its opponents have been warning, the next step in America's moral deterioration will be legalized polygamy. These conservatives won't be happy with "Big Love," the HBO series starting tomorrow night.

[CollegeRepublican]

I'm still waiting for a good argument against plural marriages as long as it is between consenting adults...la

I am sure that you are joking about the argument against plural marriage, but I have a serious argument against it; it is called fumarole deficiency. It is one of the byproducts of inbreeding that takes place by practitioners of plural marriage in Utah.

[colorcountry]

This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.

[Eagle Eye]

Sorry, I don't recall you listing those incidents.

It could be that I stopped responding to you when I saw how distraught you were from being such a vicitm of tortuous upbringing of some sort. Your emotion in this is undeniable.

A brief reading of some of this indicates that political corruptness and a strong criminal element sanctioned by the government had more to do with the massacre and the Army being sent to replace Young as governor.

" The Mormon writer William E. Berrett gives this description of the massacre: "It was a deliberately planned massacre, treacherously carried into execution. On the morning of Sept. 11, a flag of truce was sent to the emigrant camp and terms of surrender proposed. The emigrants were to give up their arms. The wounded were to be loaded into wagons, followed by the women and children, and the men to bring up the rear, single file. Thus they were to be conducted by the whites to Cedar City. This was agreed too, and the march began. ... The white men at a given signal, fell upon the unarmed emigrant men...only the smallest children were spared." (The Restored Church, pp. 468-469) "

Not exactly what you're implying, I don't think.

Additionally, with a state sanctioned religion, the governor had rather unique powers as head of government and head of religion, didn't he?

Didn't Joseph Smith help lead a group of citizen militia called the Nauvoo Legion? And since the political leadership in Utah was corrupt, didn't that itself lead the Legion to be a corrupt organization that oppressed the opponent of the policiticians?

These weren't just simple unhappy single men who couldn't find wives as you say.

This was a wholly corrupt system and would have been criminal with or without polygamy.

YOu're trying to blame polygamy for the criminal and treacherous hearts of Utah's early politicians.

[bonfire]

"As long as you watch it as purely entertainment I suppose... but if you start thinking that's actually how polygamists live... you are grossly misinformed."


It's not the History Channel. It's HBO for pete's sake!

[Eagle Eye]

Everything that I described is taking place there.

Famine and poverty and HIV are rampant in Africa.

Is polygamy the blame for that, too?

[BJungNan]

Why shuld the govment tell me how many wife I can have. If I have only one it make it much more difficult for everyone. With more than one, everyone can share the work in the house and to pay the bill and we all have more time for whoppie!

[Eagle Eye]

I agree with you, though - I don't see the advantage of setting up several wives (and sets of children) and have to handle and deal with the emotional components of maintaining several married relationships. I'd think one is enough

Is it possible that you are viewing this from a cultural view point that will not allow you to understand it?

Is it possible that as long as you only understand the 'traiditional' American version of marriage and the roles of men and women in that marriage that your understanding is permanently limited?

[TheSuaveOne]

It's all about tearing down the family for the purpose of destroying America.

So now, people who support plural marriage are for the destruction of the country? I suppose it's folks like you that keep me investing in the Reynolds Corp...la

[colorcountry]

This was a wholly corrupt system and would have been criminal with or without polygamy.

Prove it.

Additionally, with a state sanctioned religion, the governor had rather unique powers as head of government and head of religion, didn't he?

That is probably why he and a handful of other prominent men had married up most of the eligible young women in the Territory.

Your responses to me show why you may want a harem of women. What did you say before? Oh yes, FIVE - - you need five women other than your wife. Is it possibly because your opinion of an strong woman with a definite view is that she is "distraught" and "emotional?" Get over yourself, "stud." You couldn't keep up with me, let alone four others.

[Valpal1]

You might study up on the testimony of adult males driven out of Utah's polygamist clans because another more powerful male wanted their wife or wives. Many sons are driven out in late adolescence because they are viewed as competition by older males.

These older males are also trading their adolescent female children as property.

It ain't a pretty picture. For a man to control more than one women he has to engage in cultic domination and subjugation techniques. Polygamy is just a form of female slavery wrapped in rhetoric to hide it's true nature.

I guess you forgot that we live in the US and warfare against another person is usually and already illegal.

Yet people die every day in the US from criminal violence.

[Jibaholic]

Famine and poverty and HIV are rampant in Africa. Is polygamy the blame for that, too?

Why don't you try reading the article? Polygamy in Africa.

[Antoninus]

So now, people who support plural marriage are for the destruction of the country? I suppose it's folks like you that keep me investing in the Reynolds Corp...la

They've already got a name for folks like that: Useful Idiot.

[HitmanLV]

Not at all. My comment clearly was primarily based on a matter of enjoying a functional life. It's much more possible that I am viewing this from an entirely personal matter of function and taste.

I just don't like the idea of having to keep up my emotional end of the bargain with several women. Doesn't pass my internal cost-to-benefit test. That's all.

[Dead Corpse]

Using the force of voluntary association to influence society at large is one thing. Using government to enforce arbitrary edicts is EVIL. I don't care how high minded your goals are, human history more than points up ample evidence to prove out that giving a select body of people POWER over everyone else is a really BAD idea that WILL be corrupted.

Look at it this way, what if the polygamists become the majority and make single man/single woman marriage ILLEGAL?

Don't presume to tell me to "go away and think" when you so obviously are clueless yourself.

[slightlyovertaxed]

On the one hand, we have the problems in India and China due to a shortage of women. The idiots who practice female feticide are now reaping what they sow as bands of young men steal women from villages because there are too few wives to go around.

On the other hand, the US does have laws that require the woman to have a say in her marriage. This is unlike Saudi Arabia or other countries where the average car has more rights than the average woman. If she does not CONSENT to the marriage, it is null. If she is forced into the marriage by violence or other means of coercision, she is no longer consenting. If she is not able to consent via law (underage, mentally deficient), the marriage is void. If the marriage is obtained through trickery, i.e. she marries thinking she's a singleton and there are many, she would have excellent grounds for a divorce.

Are we all operating under the delusion that being married keeps you from cheating? Already in society, the powerful are able to access more mates than the poor. Why not legitimize it? No man or woman has a RIGHT to a mate.

[Jibaholic]

The powerful in life almost always get more than the weak and that is just the way it is. And should be.

The meek shall inherit the earth. This is particularly true because those non-alpha males (who otherwise would blow themselves up for 72 virgins in heaven) are just as good (or better) at doing things like entrepreneurship, engineering, and designing advanced weapon systems.

[Eagle Eye]

Ideally there'd be no divorce and no young widows with children.

But there is.

And frequently those women with children become dependent on the State.

What is so terrible about a man accepting the woman and her family?

In this culture it is not permitted primarily because women are jelous. Forget that there are those who could participate VOLUNTARILY and for whom there could be many significant benefits.

But the shallow opponents will focus on the man and insist it is all about lust. By doing that they hide the fact that they'd prefer to see women with children dependent on the state or charity than to see them become a part of someone's family.

Obviously men who have these jealous wives are not candidates for second wives.

But what about those whose wive consent?

Should the insecurities and jealousies of some dictate life to others?

Yeah, I know...men all claim that its all about women's jelaousy while women all claim that it is about men's lust. All the other arguments are verbal static.

[colorcountry]

My request was related to the whole paragraph. Give me a concrete reason why the law was created against polygamy in the first place. If you can see THAT reason, along with a corresponding reason to do away with it, then we should listen to you.

Until you understand the dynamics behind society and the way it regulates marriage, you are the last one who should be reforming it.....that is what was in the post.

[napscoordinator]

It is certainly something I don't stay awake nights about worrying about it. In fact the title of the story was Who's afraid of polygamy? I DEFINTELY am not. Why should I be? Knowing you as well as I do (as much as I can on internet), I doubt that you are afraid of polygamy either.

[Yo-Yo]

Naps,

Sheesh, who said it bothered me? You want to know the humorous part of the woman/dolphin wedding? The Bride's name was Sharon Tendler, and the Dolphin's name was...are you ready?...Cindy!

Cindy, however, was still a male Dolphin, which I suppose makes this the first human/cross dressing Dolphin marriage!

Doesn't bother me in the least. Life is too short to try to run other peoples'.