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The Prospects for Polygamy
The New York Times ^ | May 30, 2015 | Ross Douthat

Posted on 05/31/2015 10:31:45 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

ON every issue save abortion, social liberalism is suddenly ascendant in America. The shift on same-sex marriage has captured the headlines, but the change is much more comprehensive: In just 15 years, we have gone from being a society divided roughly evenly between progressive and traditionalist visions to a country where social conservatism is countercultural and clearly in retreat.

This reality is laid bare in the latest Gallup social issues survey, which shows that it’s not only support for same-sex marriage that’s climbing swiftly: so is approval of unwed parenthood (45 percent in 2001, 61 percent now), divorce (59 percent then, 71 percent today), and premarital sex (53 percent then, 68 percent now). Approval of physician-assisted suicide is up seven points and support for research that destroys human embryos for research is up 12, pushing both practices toward supermajority support.

Oh, and one more thing: The acceptance of polygamy has more than doubled.

Now admittedly, that last one is an outlier: Support for plural matrimony rose to 16 percent from 7 percent, a swift rise but still a very low number. Polygamy is bobbing forward in social liberalism’s wake, but it’s a long way from being part of the new permissive consensus....

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Government
KEYWORDS: homosexualagenda; polls; polygamy
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To: Cicero

They may allow polygamy, because after all, we know that they love to piss off traditionalists, or at least try to anyways.


41 posted on 05/31/2015 2:27:43 PM PDT by Morpheus2009
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To: ilovesarah2012
There are no more moral boundaries in America. Anything goes.

Yep. I tell my husband of 34 years, that he and I are now the rebels.

42 posted on 05/31/2015 2:31:49 PM PDT by LibertarianLiz
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To: grania

There was a recent article on a man who joined up with two lesbians. They each have a baby with him, he pays toward the household bills and helps with the kids, and the women can have sex with him or each other.

And they sold it as so great, the kids have both another mom AND a dad.


43 posted on 05/31/2015 2:51:36 PM PDT by tbw2
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To: tbw2
There was a recent article on a man who joined up with two women

It's not surprising. With the traditional family, religion, and community ties dying out, something like that almost has to replace it.

The world is spinning too fast to even try to keep up.

44 posted on 05/31/2015 4:12:41 PM PDT by grania
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To: Sherman Logan

“You may not like to recognize that America is changing around us,”

The change happening around us is NOT one of natural progression, but of a demonically controlled agenda. Men are not elk, or any other animal who takes on a kingdom of bitches for himself. Nor are homosexuals going to be any more accepted by their partaking in blasphemy against God’s holy & sacred institution of marriage.

America is not changing for the better. That is what needs to be recognized.


45 posted on 05/31/2015 4:42:33 PM PDT by ourworldawry
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To: Monorprise

“The only good news is all of this will destroy itself and probably the country along with it.”

If that is what it takes to return to civilization (gay marriage and polygamy both being characteristics of barbarism) then it is an acceptable result.


46 posted on 05/31/2015 5:31:19 PM PDT by GenXteacher (You have chosen dishonor to avoid war; you shall have war also.)
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To: ourworldawry

I agree.

Whether it is”natural” or forced, it’s happening. That was my only point.


47 posted on 05/31/2015 6:01:10 PM PDT by Sherman Logan
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To: grania

I’ve waded into these muddy waters before and have to once again since there are so few people with actual experience with polygamy. I will treat the subject from the POV of a man with two wives.

There are a lot of misconceptions about the motives for taking a second wife. Reading this thread it appears many – if not most – attribute the whole thing to sinful sexualism. I’m sure that plays a part in many situations... but not all. There are no rules – written on paper or scribed in stone – that dictate who or how people fall in love. It sometimes happens, catching you off guard and different people handle it in different ways. Some opt for divorce from wife #1 and subsequent marriage to #2. Strange as it may sound to some, the man may still love #1 but is going through motions that satisfy only those who are watching from the outside. Another alternative is to cut off all contact with #2, which may be just as painful but more “deserving” of the respect of those aforementioned outsiders.

But a third alternatives still there: Polygamy. Few people in our society accept such an arrangement, either for themselves or for their friends, neighbors or relatives. Mentioning that you have two wives is much like casually dropping a remark about your previous experiences as a child molester. Getting and holding a job brings other trials too. Renting a house or apartment gets dicey too; “You only need one bedroom? For the three of you?”

Let’s see... that’s three paragraphs. That should be enough for the uber-religionists to trot out their arguments about God ordaining marriage as between one man and one woman.

To get past that dead-horse, let me point out that NOWHERE IN THE BIBLE does it say that. God was pretty definite when he laid down his rules for us humans, beginning each commandment with “Thou shalt...” There’s not much equivocation there folks. I think he meant what he was saying and tried hard to keep us poor, flawed humans from having to “interpret” his meaning. Many will point out that Adam had only Eve. That was God’s choice in THAT case. I’m a fairly bright man but I won’t try to extrapolate from such scant data that God meant all humans had to pair off in similar unions. YMMV! There is one passage in the New Testament (I’m not going to look it up now) where Paul said that certain high-ranking clergy should be husband to only one wife, so polygamy must have been more or less common then.

So... one more time: I’ve been there and done that and I can’t recommend it. In our society and in this time it will probably not work. Perhaps differences between the people involved will cause a break-up but the greatest hazard is from those “outsiders” I mentioned earlier. That is what broke up my family. A veritable host of do-gooders trying to “help” us drove #1 away. Fortunately, #2 stood by me. Death claimed #1 about a year ago. I still cannot think of her without choking up. I am joined in my sorrow by #2. We all loved each other and continued as friends for over 25 years. I have one photo of my family; me, my two wives and our three children. Those were the happiest days of my life.

There are a few basic truths about Love: Real love is constant and doesn’t ebb and flow with the tide – lunar or hormonal. Real love is forgiving, even the most painful injuries must be forgiven. Real love understands the trials suffered by the object of their love or of their inadvertent injury. Real love is unconditional, it does not depend on what someone else says or does. Love is not like a pie where you cut a certain number of slices, pass them out and let everybody else go hungry. Love is like pi, never ending and irrational.


48 posted on 05/31/2015 6:36:44 PM PDT by oldfart
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To: wintertime

Thanks. I get yelled at a lot. But the truth is what it is, not what we want it to be. Seems to me the fundamental conservative value is a willingness to face the truth.

Back in 2012 I read all these articles with inside baseball stuff about why all the polls were wrong. I went to bed firmly expecting to wake up to a President Romney.

Obviously I was wrong and, as it turned out, the polls were very nearly 100% correct. Since then I’ve been really, really skeptical of claims that “the polls are wrong.”

It’s a possibility of course, but claims that they are wrong need to be based on something other than whether you like the result or not.


49 posted on 05/31/2015 6:46:43 PM PDT by Sherman Logan
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To: grania

Polygamy at least goes back to the Bible and has religious rules around it in several major faiths.
Homosexuality was NEVER seen as equal to male-female marriage, in no major culture in human history.
The Greeks held it as an ideal for male bonding mentor to adolescent student who had to stop when HE became a man. Romans saw men as the penetrators, unless he was an inferior rank or slave. That’s why FU is such an insult, it is both a sexual violation and reduction in status.
The Chinese and Japanese had varying tolerances for homosexual behavior, but they also required the men to have a wife to perpetuate the line.
And in every society that tolerated homosexual behavior with men, women were always treated as inferior. Per Dennis Prager’s brilliant article, it is only when Judaism confined sexuality to the marriage that men started to respect women more, eventually leading to equality for them.


50 posted on 05/31/2015 7:17:42 PM PDT by tbw2
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To: grania

I think of Will and Grace and other shows in the 1990s that seemed designed to normalize homosexuality.
And “Big Love” and “Sister Wives” of the early 2010s to normalize polygamy.
Now there is “Transparent” on Amazon instant video and “Orange is the New Black” and some other show to normalize transgenderism.
It is a non-stop PR campaign to normalize these things.


51 posted on 05/31/2015 7:24:27 PM PDT by tbw2
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To: oldfart

Thank you for that thought provoking post. Perhaps we’d all do well to remember Bob Dylan’s dictate “Don’t criticize what you don’t understand”.


52 posted on 06/01/2015 3:17:41 AM PDT by grania
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To: tbw2
and in every society that tolerated homosexual behavior with men, women were always treated as inferior

Food for thought.

53 posted on 06/01/2015 3:27:30 AM PDT by grania
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

I just don’t get the argument against polygamy.

It’s just A-Okay for people to sleep around with no commitment or care to any children that come along. The single mom can always go on welfare.

But let a man commit to providing for the women he has children with and that’s somehow wrong?

And it’s all (wink-wink, nod-nod) when Hugh Hefner or Charlie Sheen has multiple women openly living with him in the style of Caligula but it’s wrong when some of these reality TV people do the same thing.

It’s all a hypocrisy of this society that will sooner or later have its day in court and then poly will be just as legal as everything else.

Or we can pass a Constitutional Defense of Marriage Amendment.

There will be no in-between.


54 posted on 06/01/2015 2:52:50 PM PDT by MeganC (You can ignore reality, but reality won't ignore you.)
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To: Rockpile
"I want to marry my recliner 😊" If you do then someone on FR will blow a gasket because you also live with a bed and a sofa! The HORRORS!!!
55 posted on 06/01/2015 2:56:59 PM PDT by MeganC (You can ignore reality, but reality won't ignore you.)
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