Let’s say those that say that gay marriage will absolutely lead to polygamy being legal are right and ta-dah! Polygamy is now legal in the entire US.
Two questions:
Absolutely not. They are way too invested in becoming a mainstream religion. Not to mention that it’s just not part of the culture anymore and few people would want to do it.
Polygamy’s self-limiting even in small enclaves, I don’t see any large group adopting (or re-adopting) it without quickly running into the basic problem - a surplus of males.
I think I’ve read that there actually is a surplus of females in the LDS church.
Erdosain, do you think they would have abandoned polygamy even without it being illegal?
Just to expand on my previous answer, modern Mormons crave acceptance like crack-cocaine. Actually, acceptance, growth, and good PR. They desperately want to be part of the conversation in the same breath as Catholicism and the major Protestant sects. They’ve long understood that polygamy is an embarrassment and an impediment to mainstream acceptance. If polygamy was legal tomorrow, they’d probably lead the charge against it (although probably a little half-heartedly since it’s not like icky gay people).
Polygamy was an integral part of the original religion, but really it was an accidental remnant of Joseph Smith’s implacable libido.
This is an interesting question, one I’ve never really thought about. I guess if polygamy was tolerated by wider society, then no, they’d never have got rid of it, even if it made them objects of ridicule. It really did take an existential crisis (federal troops occupying Salt Lake City and thousands of church leaders in prison) to force the Mormon church to abandon polygamy.
The Church has changed a lot since those days and has a lot of new priorities and obsessions that its founders would abhor.
I would agree with most of what you have said here. The average member does not long for polygamy. And would prefer not to practice it even if it were made legal again in the US.
But at least as of 5 years ago when I was still attending, you could hear polygamy being taught in priesthood and Sunday school meetings. It is still an official doctrine. God has just put it on hold until civil law recognizes it. Supposedly it will return on Earth when it is legally recognized by civil authority, and in any case is still practiced in heaven.
And I think there would be a fair amount of soul searching and argument within the church about it, if it were to ever be legalized again. However I think as long as any country continued to ban it, the church would use that ban to keep the internal ban in place. Like you said the leadership views it as an embarrassment and really doesn’t want to be a “peculiar people” again.
I can’t imagine illegality is keeping Mormons from practicing polygamy now. After all, there isn’t really anything keeping a bunch of adults from shacking up together and calling it marriage. I doubt lack of official gov’t recognition would keep people from doing so if they felt it was a religious obligation, just as lack of gov’t recognition hasn’t kept tens of thousands of gay couples from marrying.
Thus, the reason polygamous marriage amongst Mormons is limited to fringe sects is because the mainstream doesn’t want to engage in it, not because of legal problems.
Plus, the Mormons control at least one state gov’t, if they were really wanting to return to polygamy, they’d already have made it legal in Utah.
I agree with everything you said except the part bolded above. My impression is that most Mormons think polygamy (like the Law of Consecration) is gone until the Millennium or some comparable fundamental sea change in society (like a Mormon majority theocracy or something crazy like that). Modern American society and the current Mormon Church just aren’t ready to live these higher laws right now.
This is evident in the vanishingly few places places where legal polygamy and modern Mormonism intersect (like Nigeria): being polygamous in a society where it is legal would still result in instant excommunication.
The federal government may have de-polygified the Mormon Church at gun point, but they’ve internalized the lesson now. Blend in at all costs, and some day there might even be a Mormon president.
But Heaven, yeah, that’s going to be polyg-city!
In Utah, there is. It is illegal there to “live a polygamous lifestyle”. I don’t think the law is enforced much, but if people really tried to mainstream in large numbers, that might change.
True, but these laws were enacted by the Utah legislature which is controlled by Mormon legislators. If Mormons suddenly wanted to do something, they’d simply change the law. But the underlying point is true, it’s not legality or illegality that’s preventing mainstream Mormon polygamy. There is simply no desire for it, either in the leadership or the general membership.
It also doesn’t hurt that any Mormons who DO want to be polygamous can easily join any of these hundreds of offshoot groups located in Utah, and polyg it up. Thus, there is no pent-up demand for this lifestyle within the mainstream church.
I’ve always found that a fascinating point of Mormonism, they claim direct revelation but then apparently don’t pass that on to the membership. What is taught at the local level is taught by completely untrained lay people. And the only thing the top level talk about are the core beliefs. They’ll talk about repentance every General Conference, but no one ever goes into detail about when or how polygamy will return. So you are left to the devices of whoever you have teaching Sunday School. Get one guy who’s been reading a lot of Lorenzo Snow and you’ll get the distinct impression that the return to polygamy is right around the corner. If they have been reading more Gordon Hinckley you may forget that it was ever a doctrine at all.
About 15 years ago I had a member tell me that he and his wife kept a running tally of the unmarried women in the ward, so just in case it returned quickly they would have candidate wives pre-selected for approval. They wanted to reap the spiritual benefits of polygamy as quickly as possible. But you are right I think the vast majority of the church really wishes it had never been practiced and would simply go away.
I remember reading somewhere (anyone have a cite?) that LDS missions in Japan overwhelmingly attract young girls to the religion. Given that they believe in eternal marriage as a necessity to achieving the highest level of exaltation, and that they no longer practice polygamy, this is kind of a problem, given that all these converts have to compete for husbands.
The typical LDS missionary is a clean-cut, probably quite cute, American boy.
I am currently reading Orson Scott Cards novel “Saints”. It describes the emerging church back in the 1850’s. The novel’s heroine, Dinah, a strong woman, finds herself wishing to be, and then being, one of Joseph Smiths extra wives. She and Joseph have passionate conversations about how their god-ordained love is a soul marriage made in heaven, and how it all is very different from hypocrisy and adultery. Even though Smiths official wife can’t know about it. And even if Dinah does get pregnant, Smith can’t acknowledge the relationship or the child for fear of losing mainstream acceptance. Fascinating stuff. Reminds me a lot of the discussions I had back when I was open to polyamory.
So I looked up the wiki page on current Mormon polygamy.
I was hoping more active mormons would post here.
I am intensely curious about what the answer to this might be. If polygamy was made legal suddenly, and the church still did not condone it, then the church would be in direct conflict with its own canonized scriptures. How would active believing mormons reconcile what it says in D&C 132 with “well it’s legal now, but we’re still not gonna do it?” I believe that is exactly why there are fringe sects that broke off from the mainstream church. Because the church wanted statehood, they had to give up polygamy to get it. If they got polygamy back, the church would be a big ole hypocrite if the practice wasn’t brought back.
Or they’re going to have to seriously re-brand “The new and everlasting covenant”.
I don’t even understand how polygamy is ILlegal now, in that the state only recognizes the first marriage if there has been no divorce, so whatever you call your other wives, they are not wives, legally speaking, they are just other women you share your life with and have children with. The last time I checked, in America we can have sex with any other consenting adult we like (unless we plan to pay cash for it, which is also bullshit), we can live with any other consenting adult we like, and we can label ourselves anything we like. So how do laws against polygamy actually manage to define polygamy in a manner that makes it illegal, vs. an exercise of our freedom?
I understand that bigamy is illegal because (and I might have this wrong, I"m assuming based on sensationalistic Dateline stories and the like) it is a type of fraud: the bigamist is deceiving the various spouses into believing they are the legal spouse, and that’s clearly not the same situation.
Anyone care to enlighten me?
Polygamy and bigamy statutes generally make cohabitation with multiple partners illegal. So, yes, you can sleep with whomever you please, but, no, you can’t just live with (and sleep with) any number of sexual partners.
I’m not in favor of this, but that is how the laws are written. I’m guessing they’re not often enforced, and I’m curious to see how a post Lawrence v Texas court would view them.
ETA: Apparently they won’t view them at all
Further ETA:
That’s because a lot of guys despaired of polygamy being reinstated and lost interest. 
Well thats what we have war for.
Besides men don’t go to church as much as women.
Dinah is based on Card’s great-great-grandmother, Zina Diantha Huntington, who married Smith and later Brigham Young. (Neither was bothered by the fact she was already married and had kids.)
As for whether the LDS would return to polygamy, that would depend on whether the president (aka Prophet, Seer and Revelator) got a revelation.