Posted on 12/08/2012 5:28:00 AM PST by Kaslin
My buddy, Glenn Beck, has made a great contribution to the TEA party movement and to a renewal of popular interest in our Founding Fathers and their ideals. For all that he deserves praise.
But, I believe, he is making a serious error in abandoning the civil right of marriage. The Republican Party was founded in opposition to two historic wrongs. The party’s first platform in 1856 denounced “slavery and polygamy—the twin relics of barbarism.” Slavery was finally put down with a terrible toll—630,000 Americans dead in the Civil War. The new movie, Lincoln, tells the dramatic story of the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery.
Polygamy was successfully fought with laws. Throughout the latter third of the nineteenth century, Republican presidents and Republican Congresses fought against this relic of barbarism. President Rutherford B. Hayes called upon Congress to make it a law for the western territories: an American must take an oath he is not a polygamist before he could vote for statehood, before he could even serve on a jury! That’s a pretty strong stance for marriage.
Faced with this unyielding opposition, the Mormon Church wisely reconsidered its position on polygamy. Mormons desperately wanted to be included in the American Union. They were willing to give up a sincerely held tenet of their new religion in order to gain acceptance.
This turnabout led to one of the funniest episodes in congressional history. When Church Elder Reed Smoot was elected by Utah to serve in the U.S. Senate, he was vigorously opposed. Critics said that even though Smoot was not a polygamist himself, he had strongly supported polygamy as one of the Mormon Council of Twelve. Idaho Sen. William E. Borah, a fellow Republican and also a Mormon with only one wife, rose to argue for seating Smoot. “I would rather serve in this august body with a polygamist who doesn’t polyg than with a monogamist who doesn’t monog.” Smoot was seated. Washington scuttlebutt had it that T.R.’s daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, was only with difficulty dissuaded from naming her newborn daughter Deborah (from Borah).
The LDS Church has since become a mainstay of support for traditional marriage. BYU Family Science Ph.D.s have provided some of the best scholarship supporting the tradition family. They clearly understand the difficulties that arise for the dignity and standing of women—and especially the hardships for children—that stem from plural marriage.
Glenn should have been at the Newseum four years ago. There, before an overflow crowd, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said: “I know opponents of gay marriage say it will lead to polygamy. Well, I’m for that.”
Turley’s shocking comments were wildly cheered by the room full of journalists, liberal congressional aides, and federal law clerks. True to his word, Prof. Turley has gone to court trying to overturn bans on polygamy.
Glenn told an interviewer: “The question is not whether gay people should be married or not, the question is why is the government involved in our marriage.”
Okay, it’s a civil question that deserves a civil answer: Children need and children have a right to the married love of a mother and father. Every reputable social science study shows that children do best when they have a loving, married mother and father in the home. They have better outcomes for health, education, and welfare. Children of married parents are less likely to commit crimes, far less likely to be victims of violence and sexual abuse, far less likely to fail in school, far less likely to drop out, use drugs, get pregnant out of wedlock.
If we care about children and the future of this nation, we cannot casually dismiss the institution of marriage.
Secretary Tim Geithner certainly understands the fiscal impact of out-of-wedlock births. Liberal that he is, Geithner said we cannot cut Medicaid spending—the main driver of deficits—because forty percent of all children born today are eligible for Medicaid. He means the 41% born out of wedlock.
Married parents want to care for their own children. They usually do not want the Nanny State. Single parents and cohabiting parents are often forced to rely on government assistance.
If you want Socialism, abolish marriage. If you want “Julia” to be the future of America, vote against the civil institution of marriage. Julia, of course, was the Obama campaign team’s fictional single woman target voter. Julia goes from Head Start to college, parenthood, to retirement in a seamless web of dependency on government. She decides to have a child at age 29. No man in her life is even hinted at—no husband, no father, no brother, not even a male friend or business partner. Except one. The One: Mr. Federal Government.
It's hard to understand why anyone would want to end traditional marriage. It’s the HOV lane to the Welfare State. Why any conservative, libertarian, or Republican would want to advance this process is a mystery.
Hollywood star Mae West was certainly no model for married life. WWII sailors called their buoyant life jackets their Mae Wests. But Mae West was onto something when she said: “Marriage is a great institution. I’m just not ready for an institution.”
I invite Glenn to spend just one hour with the Family Research Council’s Marriage and Religion Research Institute’s (MARRI) scholars. They are his type of intellectuals, and I think he would be moved by their body of work
Traditional marriage is a great institution. And it’s never been in greater danger.
Kid you can “try the entire” Old Testament until youre blue in the face...
but you wont find ANYWHERE in the Bible where God told someone to commit adultery...
nor said it was OK when someone did...
Abraham had sex with his wife’s SLAVE on his own without God...
and we suffer today because of that...
and Jacob went along with his FILs scheme because he wanted Rachel...
Leah was his legal wife, Rachel and the 2 slaves were concubines...
Jesus didnt come from the line of Joseph nor Benjamin..
He came from the line of Judah, Leah’s legitimate son...
Jesus didnt come from the bastard Ishmael, the father of the Moslems...
He came from the line of Isaac the legitimate son, the son of the free woman...
Polygamy is unGodly and unBiblical...
Polygamy is adultery...
its against the Commandment of God...
Davids first son from his adulterous laiason with Bathsheba died...
Well said.
instead takes the pet lamb of a poor man and cooks it up.
________________________________________
No kid...
David took the only EWE lamb the man had...
Theres a distinction...
Nathan wasnt there to say that the polygamy/adultery David was engaged in with his other concubines was OK with God...
He merely pointed out that David already had several, unattacthed girlfriends to have sex with...
but now he had taken the wife and only woman of another man...
Next you’ll want to tell us the wives of the quite still alive 11 men that Joey Smith had adultery with were given to him by God......
(at least one was already pregnant so Smiths 10 virgins he was entitled to story is kaput right there)
If we're going to use the descendants of polygamous relationships as a argument against polygamy, I think it falls apart pretty quickly.
Jacob took four wives, and for no particularly urgent reason. There is nothing in the Bible record about him to indicate God was displeased by his doing so.
Most obviously, our Lord and Savior (not Barack) could not have had the ancestry he did without polygamy. He was descended from David via two lines, by two different wives, with his legal (though not blood) relationship through the royal line via Bathsheba and Solomon, and his true blood relationship through another wife.
Kings in the Middle East had harems, at the time. That was just a fact of life, and the Israelite kings were no different.
Well, no it doesn't.
16 The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the Lord has told you, “You are not to go back that way again.” 17 He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.
This is very obviously a warning against ostentation and decadence. The king is not supposed to take "many wives" for the same reason he is not to accumulate large numbers of horses or large amount of gold and silver, because doing so would require oppression of the people to be able to afford the extravagance.
It also clearly says "many wives," not "more than one wife." Just as the reference to large numbers of horses can't be taken to mean the king should only have one horse.
Also, polygamy is addressed in Malachi 2.
Well, no it's not, or at least that's not the obvious primary meaning of the verse.
14 Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant.
Based on other scriptures with similar references, this refers to divorcing the "old wife" in order to marry the hot new number, a practice that is still popular in the USA and unfortunately not unknown among those claiming to be Christians. And of course America has advanced so far women can indulge in it too.
I suppose it could be stretched to include taking an additional wife, but that would be a lot less treacherous than tossing the old one out into the street without a way to support herself.
My reading of it is that Jacob wanted one of them (Rachel) in particular, was tricked by his father-in-law Laban into marrying her sister (Leah) first, then each wife, exercising sibling rivalry expressed by proxy childbearing, urged him to take her maidservant as another wife as a means of producing children.
Therefore the foundation of the twelve tribes of Israel was through deception and rivalry, yet despite this God still brought good out of it.
There is no discussion of polygamy I've read that doesn't involve rivalry and bickering among the multiple wives. Each wife gets less than a whole husband.
Left to his own devices, I'm not sure Jacob wouldn't have been satisfied with Rachel alone. Jacob's favorite children (Joseph and Benjamin) were her sons.
"Neither shall he multiply wives" was a commandment to Israel's king.
Christ Himself pointed back to Adam and Eve's union (monogamous) as the divine blueprint for marriage. Anything beyond that was due to man's "hardness of heart" provision for which was given in Mosaic law.
True. And Jesus descended from his second son with Bathsheba, as well as from a later son of their union.
(I was wrong in a previous post in assuming that Nathan had a different mother. Mea culpa.)
In any case, Bathsheba was most definitely not his first (according to you, only legal) wife. She was probably not in his first couple dozen.
As part of a command not to accumulate a lot of gold and silver or many horses. IOW, not to be extravagant.
Didn't mean the king could only have one item of gold or silver, or one horse, or one wife.
Okay, I'll buy that. Bud this of course recognizes that polygamy was allowed by Mosaic Law, which is all I've said from the beginning.
I never said God endorsed or approved it. The original post to which I responded said that he never "sanctioned" it. Well, in the Law he certainly did.
Sanction - verb: Give official permission or approval for (an action).
To sanction means to allow, not necessarily instruct or command to do something.
I'm not getting all judgey on the divorced. I was making the point that if Jesus spoke frankly about divorce being evidence of our "hard hearts"--then polygamy is a similar hard-heartedness. The argument is being made that because the patriarchs were polygamists, that was part of God's plan.
Beautifully said.
And this is why I am a conservative.
Progressives and Libertarians are much the same as to the means -they both want government tyranny and as such are both leftists. Where they differ is in the ends. Progressives wish for complete government control while Libertarians simply seek government imposed Anarchy.
What of social order -what of common law, tradition, and institutions time tested such as marriage? Progressives wish to transform while Libertarians wish to abandon...
That is why I am a conservative.
As to marriage -government is tasked with promoting and protecting the institution. NOT transforming it -NOT abandoning it.
I think we should end no-fault divorce also, since that and the homos are both destroying the traditional family.
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