What exactly Is Wrong with Polygamy anyway?

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Moksha
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Re: What exactly Is Wrong with Polygamy anyway?

Post by Moksha »

malkie wrote:
Mon Nov 28, 2022 10:11 pm
And not just unattached - in the case of FLDS, apparently forcibly detached.
And the inevitable child brides depending on which version of Mormonism is performing the marriages.
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Re: What exactly Is Wrong with Polygamy anyway?

Post by Rivendale »

Moksha wrote:
Mon Nov 28, 2022 8:58 pm
There is a bit of irony about the Church holding itself out as a staunch advocate for man-woman marriage when they still hold to the concept of polygamy.
It is worse than that. They claimed that throughout history one man one women has been the norm. It has not. Polygamy by far has been the dominant form of relationships.
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Re: What exactly Is Wrong with Polygamy anyway?

Post by Analytics »

KevinSim wrote:
Mon Nov 28, 2022 8:47 pm
On this forum every once in a while someone will mention polygamy in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as if that's a guaranteed way of scoring points against that church.
I would say the guaranteed way of scoring points against the Church is to look at the details of how Joseph Smith practiced "polygamy." I put "polygamy" in scare quotes, because his relationships with women other that with Emma weren't really marriages. Consider:
  • He lied to Emma about being in most of these "marriages"
  • He manipulated the girls with promises of salvation for their entire families and the threat that Joseph would die by a flaming sword if she didn't do it. But hey! It's your choice!
  • He publicly denied that these relationships even existed
That isn't marriage. In our culture (and in Joseph Smith's), being "married" means you are publicly committed to somebody with the implicit understanding that you don't hit on people who are married, that you don't sleep around if you are married, and that the married couple is responsible for the children they have.

That is not what Joseph Smith did.
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Re: What exactly Is Wrong with Polygamy anyway?

Post by Gadianton »

Res Ipsa wrote:
Mon Nov 28, 2022 8:57 pm
Nothing, in theory. In practice, look at the FLDS. If it’s just men marrying multiple women, the result is both discarding young men and marrying off younger and younger girls.

On the other hand, I have several friends who have had or are in polyamorous relationships. I don’t think I’m cut out for that, but I don’t think it is inherently harmful.

Out of the context of a top down authoritarian power structure, I’m fine with it.
Yep, that's what I was going to say. Consenting adults can do wtf they want. But often this exists in exploitive context.

An additional point about point scoring, is that Mormons have often waxed condescending in their "family values" and insistence on sexual purity. Anything from snubbing LGBQ as unnatural to DCP thinking the dictionary will explode if marriage is defined as anything other than one man and one woman; but just as important to me is the extreme emphasis on "purity" that goes so far as to make the Bishop an assumed party to your sex life from the time you turn 8 and don't know what sex it yet, to married for 30 years, to 85 and widowed. Mormons can get off their high horse when it comes to preaching and enforcing sexual purity because their leaders were a bunch of horn dogs that structured the church in a way for those with power to get all the sex. And then whitewashed everything to make general members believe that it was just this doctrinal test that BY and a couple others practiced for a short time, and only for practical reasons.
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Re: What exactly Is Wrong with Polygamy anyway?

Post by IHAQ »

The position of the Church in relation to plural marriage is fungible. Nelson and Oaks, for example, have signed up to having multiple wives. The Church is fine with polygamy in the past, fine with it in the future, but abhors it today.
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Re: What exactly Is Wrong with Polygamy anyway?

Post by Philo Sofee »

KevinSim
but if three adults (of any gender combination) want to join into a marriage relationship, why should anyone else care?
Definitely you need to cc Russell M. Nelson on this...
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Re: What exactly Is Wrong with Polygamy anyway?

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KevinSim wrote:
Mon Nov 28, 2022 8:47 pm
On this forum every once in a while someone will mention polygamy in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as if that's a guaranteed way of scoring points against that church. I personally have no desire whatsoever to be married to more women than just my one wife, but if three adults (of any gender combination) want to join into a marriage relationship, why should anyone else care? I heard one source say polygamy is bad because it exploits women. Why is it that a man marrying two women means he's exploiting women, but another man marrying just one woman means he is not exploiting women?
Would you be okay with your wife having multiple husbands?
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Re: What exactly Is Wrong with Polygamy anyway?

Post by Physics Guy »

The often-stated reason for Utah Mormon polygamy was to accelerate population growth. Polygamy itself, however, cannot possibly do that—and it is obvious that it cannot. Polygamy does not increase the number of mothers, but only reduces the number of fathers.

In a population that is not rapidly growing, the only way to sustain large-scale polygamy is to have a large population of involuntarily celibate males whose wives have been taken by the polygamous men. So most women get only a time-share in a husband instead of a whole one to themselves, and many men have no wife at all, just so that a few men can have many wives.

While polygamy does not drive population growth, population growth can support polygamy, by providing an alternative to that scenario. In any rapidly growing population there are always more younger people, of both sexes, than older people—and the differences in numbers increase with difference in age. So if girls all marry at 15 and men not before 25, for example, then in a rapidly growing population there will be many more marriageable girls than marriageable men, and so polygamy will be the only way to avoid having marriageable girls remaining unmarried. In effect one still has a large population of involuntarily celibate males, but they consist of all the younger males, and they can expect their involuntary celibacy to end when they get old enough. Women only get a fraction of the spousal relationship that they could expect with a monogamous mate, but it's enough to keep them 100% pregnant, so population can boom.

By ensuring that all those marriageable young girls are getting pregnant on schedule, in spite of the fact that younger men are kept celibate, polygamy can sustain rapid population growth. The younger the marriage age for girls is set, in fact, the more rapidly the population will grow, because the feedback time in exponential growth will be that much shorter. If both boys and girls were to marry at the same younger ages, however, then the same acceleration in population growth would be achieved with monogamy. The connection between rapid population growth and polygamy only appears if one makes men wait to marry until they are significantly older than the girls.

The age gap has to be substantial, because to get even just two wives per man, with no older men taking additional wives, the age gap has to be equal to the population doubling time. Short doubling times cannot be sustained environmentally, so quite large marriage age gaps are necessary. To get population growth high enough, furthermore, the marriage age for women has to be as low as possible.

Getting all the girls married to fractions of husbands, while keeping many men celibate, is still the necessary logic of large-scale polygamy. Rapid population growth and a large marriage age gap between genders is one way of doing that; stable population with a large pool of permanently celibate men is the other way. What is wrong with polygamy as a social norm is that it is either (a) permanent involuntary celibacy for most men or else (b) very young girls all marrying much older men. And in either case it is also (c) women having only a fraction of a monogamous relationship.
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Re: What exactly Is Wrong with Polygamy anyway?

Post by Dr. Shades »

KevinSim, what's your opinion of the rightness or wrongness of polygamy now that you've read--and hopefully carefully integrated--all of these responses?
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Re: What exactly Is Wrong with Polygamy anyway?

Post by dastardly stem »

KevinSim wrote:
Mon Nov 28, 2022 8:47 pm
On this forum every once in a while someone will mention polygamy in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as if that's a guaranteed way of scoring points against that church. I personally have no desire whatsoever to be married to more women than just my one wife, but if three adults (of any gender combination) want to join into a marriage relationship, why should anyone else care? I heard one source say polygamy is bad because it exploits women. Why is it that a man marrying two women means he's exploiting women, but another man marrying just one woman means he is not exploiting women?
I'd say it's problematic on the face of it. If one institutes polygamy, no matter what, the outcome is going to result in some level of misogyny. I think that'd be inescapable considering the history of humanity. Women will be mistreated, even if one can find instances where the mistreatment seems so minor it's nearly unnoticeable, particularly to dudes who don't think polygamy on the face of it is bad. In personal instances, say if one man marries two women and they are say they're happy...I mean whatever. I don't have much to say about particular instances. But in the long run, if society embraces that as the norm...it'll lead, I'd wager, to exploitation of women.

Doesn't seem like a good idea to me in any sense. And thus, seems to be an immoral practice.
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