Posted on 05/18/2008 12:35:02 AM PDT by ansel12
What is wrong with polygamy?
Nineteenth-century Americans coupled it with slavery, calling both "the twin relics of barbarism." Today, it is used as a scare image to deter people from approving same-sex marriage, lest it lead down a slippery slope to that horror of horrors.
But what, exactly, is bad about it? Looking at the Texas sect at the Yearning for Zion ranch, so much in the news, will not tell us, because that sect allegedly forced underage girls into marriage. The case then becomes one of child sexual abuse, a crime hardly unknown in the monogamous family, although it gets less splashy publicity when it occurs there. Disturbing things are fun to contemplate when they can be pinned on distant "deviants," but threatening when they occur in families like one's own.
Mormon polygamy of the 19th century was not child abuse. Adult women married by consent, and typically lived in separate dwellings, each visited by the husband in turn. In addition to their theological rationale, Mormons defended the practice with social arguments - in particular that polygamous men would abandon wives or visit prostitutes less frequently. Instead of answering these arguments, however, Americans hastened to vilify Mormon society, publishing semi-pornographic novels that depicted polygamy as a hotbed of incest and child abuse.
Self-righteous Americans hastened to stigmatize Mormon marriage as "patriarchal," while participating contentedly and uncritically in an institution (monogamy) so patriarchal that, for many years, women lost all property rights upon marriage and could not even get a divorce on grounds of cruelty. In one respect, Mormon women were miles ahead of their sisters living in monogamy: They got the vote in the territory of Utah in 1871, 49 years before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment gave the vote to women all over the nation.
The hypocrisy of the monogamist majority reached its height in the denial (often heard in Congress) that there could be a serious religious argument for polygamy: hypocrisy, because the monogamists were denying their own heritage. Joseph Smith did not pull polygamy out of the air. He found it in the Old Testament, where many patriarchs are represented as polygamous. The very wording of the Ten Commandments, a chief pillar of American public morality then as now, presupposes polygamy. In Deuteronomy, the commandment not to "covet" is divided into two parts. The command not to covet the neighbor's spouse is addressed only to men, and the command not to covet the neighbor's house, field, etc., is addressed to all of the people of Israel. A standard Torah commentary used in my temple puts it this way: "Because men could have more than one wife, an unmarried woman could covet another's husband and even end up married to him."
Yet in 1878, the U.S. Supreme Court would uphold an anti-polygamy statute with these words, extraordinary from justices who were supposedly Bible readers: "Polygamy has always been odious among the northern and western nations of Europe, and, until the establishment of the Mormon Church, was almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and of African people." (The Jews were in fact an Asiatic people, but mainstream Christians usually forgot that, thinking of Jesus as a blond, blue-eyed child. So the justices did not see themselves as repudiating their biblical heritage, although this is precisely what they were doing.)
All this shows us a deplorable, if ubiquitous, human tendency: People who feel threatened by a new group demonize the group by imputing to it allegedly nefarious practices in the areas of gender and sexuality. Think of anti-Semitism in European history, Islamophobia, and - perhaps above all - fear and loathing of gays and lesbians.
But what should we say about polygamy itself, in our own time? What, if anything, is really wrong with it?
First, as traditionally practiced, polygamy is one-sided. Men have rights that women do not. Sex equality could, then, give the state a strong interest in disallowing religious claims to practice polygamy, as long as the one-sidedness is maintained.
What about, though, a practice of plural contractual marriages, by mutual consent, among adult, informed parties, all of whom have equal legal rights to contract such plural marriages? What interest might the state have that would justify refusing recognition of such marriages?
Well, children would have to be protected, so the law would have to make sure that issues such as maternity/paternity and child support were well articulated. Beyond this, a regime of polygamous unions would, no doubt, be difficult to administer - but not impossible, with good will and effort. It is already difficult to deal with sequential marriages and the responsibilities they entail.
The history of Mormon polygamy shows us that the state and public opinion are very bad judges of what adult men and women may reasonably do. When people are insecure, they cling to the "normal" and vilify those who choose to live differently. Someday down the road, we may recognize that adults are entitled, as John Stuart Mill saw long ago, to conduct such "experiments in living" as suit their own plans and projects, as long as they inflict no harm on nonconsenting parties. The state must protect vulnerable dependents: children and the elderly. It must also protect adult men and women against fraud and force. Beyond that, it should leave the field of intimate sexual choice to a regime of private contractual arrangement. If polygamy turns out to be a bad idea, it won't survive the test of free choice over time.
Then again, little is built on offering snarky zero-content replies. See this post for an excellent example.
One -- that's a formula for a terrible marriage, that a woman caters to a man's every whim. Two -- do you know of any marriages where a woman caters to a man's every whim? Three -- the recipe for a healthy marriage is not quite that a husband gives in to his wife's every whim, but it is close.
And that applies to mono, serial, or poly.
Thou art still a debtor, content-wise, imo.
And she's not actually very interesting either.
Her starting point is usually to attack some idea of patriarchy or the autonomous individual or ethnocentrism and draw conclusions from that.
But she doesn't do much to support her premises and if you aren't convinced by them, you won't find her conclusions very compelling either.
I still see nothing substantive here...
King David’s polygamy was for the most part, happy. He avoided taking on too many wives, and as King, he certainly could afford them all.
I am opposed to polygamy as well, but it just seems everything that made America great in the 1940s and 50s is looked down upon as being a great evil. The idea of living like the Cleavers is foriegn to modern America.
A woman should do things to make her husband happy. When she’s doing them to curry favor and one-up another wife, that’s sick.
You obviously think women are chattel and valueless. Any man who would marry a woman and think she would be thrilled to have him bring home another one is delusional.
Any man that could do that to a woman is cruel and sadistic.
Let’s just forget that he felt he had the right to have another man killed to add onto his harem.
He wasn’t satisfied with what he had, he had to steal from someone else.
Selfishness, jealousy, spite, favoritism, abuse, all products of polygamy.
I did say that monogamy is the ideal! I've been at some points to stick to the theme that polygamy is a lesser condition, but that it can be preferred in some cases. In the case of kings, marriages are also joins of state to state -- so many wives was the norm, and a happy thing.
You are so very right. I didn't take it as advocation of polygamy. I took it as relativism. In the sense that we're being assaulted by so many evils at once, pick one...It's hard to believe it's not coordinated.
How in our own day does the media and the sheeple they lead distort the honest records and words of President Bush! So it was then too.
Happy for whom? Have you ever met women who were part of a bonding of property and estates? Happy for one, but not the rest......
Fairy tales are made of such.
That is very true. The other thing is that in Marxism, relationships between people are depersonalized and made utilitarian. Individual love is frowned on, and certainly committment is anathema(because it means there just might be something greater than the all-powerful State). The Marxist goal is barracks of men and women who come together occasionally and randomly for sex, and then go back to the main project in life, which is making life nice for the Party leaders.
But come to think of it, that's true of any cult...
LOL! Too true. Just because something appeared in the Bible does not mean that it was recommended. In fact, it usually appeared because it was being held up as a bad example and God was going to do something about it...
Bookmark, great post!
It’s rather typical of Martha Nussbaum to just blather on about things, oblivious to her own errors. For example, isn’t it rich how she brings up the polygyny aspect cited in the Torah in support of Joseph Smith...despite the fact that Joseph Smith’s version of polygamy had him involved with the wives of other men.
Great post. That’s a keeper.
Very good point.
Also most folks don't know that divorce in 19th century Utah was quite high for that century. One historian took a look at a case study of hundreds of polygamous men and found that almost 1 in 5 were divorced. Brigham Young himself of 56 wives were divorced by 9 of them. (That's a 9-time divorcee!)
Sure. One of David’s sons raped his half-sister, then another one went on a murderous rampage, and then he raped David’s concubines on the palace roof.
The women were constantly trying to increase their own prestige, and that of their own children. Sounds really “happy”.
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