I think it is necessary to understand why polygamy was almost necessary for the survival of Mormonism. To a lesser extent a similar argument applies to most denominations of churches today.
Issue 1:
We go back 2000 years ago. 2 Corinthians 6:14 "be ye not unequally yoked with non believers.
Back further still: Deuteronomy 7:1 “You shall not intermarry with them: do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons. For you will turn your children away from Me to worship other gods…”.
Issue 2:
On the Sabath/Sunday morning Church service a survey of the pew occupants will show about 80% or more are women.
Take the concerns in Issue 1 alongside issue 2 and polygamy is a most practical scheme for the survival of the faith. This assumes a goal of not having children turn away from the faith due to a mixed marriage.
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Especially true in the early days of Mormonism when gentiles were extremely suspicious of Mormons, to the extent of religious riots occurring around Mormon settlements. A mixed gentile-Mormon marriage back then was unlikely to produce a peaceful situation compared to for instance an observant Baptist marrying a nominal Catholic today.
I am always loathe to go to the anti-racism well, since it is mostly cheap and nasty, but for all these it is possible the good burghers of Oregon were as much influenced by wanting to discourage Asiatics from settling in, as much as that old-time religion.
Still better than setting them on fire though, or chopping them into small pieces, as happened in other parts of the USA.
The fundamental problem is that we have no model on which to base fair polygamous marriages.
Traditional monogamous marriages were, historically, unfair for a very long time. That was a problem in and of itself, in addition to all of the other problems it induced in other forms of marriage. Eventually and gradually, we recognized that it was a problem, and restructured traditional marriages to be fair.
Once we had done that, it was a simple matter (though still one which took much longer than it should have) to permit same-sex monogamous marriage, since it can follow exactly the same model as fair monogamous opposite-sex marriage. All of the problems had already been solved.
However, we do not have any fair model for polygamous marriage, upon which to base solutions to the new problems polygamy raises. Can two people both be married to the same person, without being married to each other? Who has the authority to decide to permit or exclude a new person from a marriage? What happens when one member of a marriage dies, or leaves the marriage? What if two people leave the marriage together: Are they (or can they be) still married to each other?
All of these questions have already been addressed by the traditional model of polygamous marriage, but the answer given by that model is that the lone husband has all of the power, authority, and status, and the relationships between the multiple wives are irrelevant. Not only is this not an acceptable solution, it doesn’t even point the way towards an acceptable solution.
I think we have a perfectly cromulent model, in corporate law. When a board member leaves the board, is the corporation still a corporation? Of course, until and unless the remaining members take action to dissolve it.
Traditional marriage also arises from patriarchal ideals, and for millennia the lone husband had all of the power, authority, and status. We got over it.
Prenups and parenting agreements and wills are already a thing. Divorce court is already a thing. I’ve already got two husbands and two baby daddies (three men), only sequentially. We’ve got four parental units in every parent teacher conference, and my ex and I share custodial, legal and financial responsibility (and tax benefits, on alternate years) for our minor daughter, all while I’m filing married status with my current husband. None of this would have been conceived of 200 years ago. We changed it.
Logistics is a terrible reason to restrict consenting relationships, especially in a day and age when the cost of living is so high that two incomes are required to meet the minimum standard of living in most cities. With additional adults in the household, stay at home parents can become an attainable goal again. Won’t someone think of the children?!
That’s a horrible model for marriage. What about property? If the original owner of a house decides to end his/her part of the marriage, does everyone else move out? How do you determine how much of their money has gone into the house?
How about bank accounts?
If the marriage(?) buys a car and one of them leaves a few years later, is he/she owed a portion of the current value?
Corporations and corporate officers own property, hold bank accounts, and buy and sell cars. This has already been worked out.
My car title is in my name. If I leave my husband, the car goes with me. Why would that be different if I was leaving two husbands at once?
If two people are on a car title, or three, or four, then they work it out in the divorce agreement, or they get lawyers to do it. Same as in a monogamous divorce.
The corporate officers do not own the corporations property nor do they own the other officers’ property or bank accounts.
I’m not against polygamy but I see a nightmare trying to write family law to cover all possible combinations.
I also see that having 3,4,5 or more lawyers involved with every change could well force people to stay in a bad situation even more than what happens currently.
To be clear, I don’t think that polygamy necessarily should be prohibited. But I’m also not strongly invested in it. If it’s going to be made legal, then there’s a whole lot of groundwork that needs to be put in place, first. If the proponents of polygamy want to put in that groundwork, I’ve no objection, but I have better uses of my time.
That’s because there’s only one combination-two people who are married to each other.
Imagine you’re in a marriage of 2 women, 2 men. Are you married to all three? What if you only want to be married to the other woman or to only one of the men?
How about if you want to be married to one of the men and the other woman?
Later, how about if she wants to be divorced from you but stay in the marriage otherwise?
I find it’s only non-poly people who get tripped up in these webs. Those of us who have lived it have negotiated these things long before cohabitation is on the table, much less (theoretically) marriage.
Why is it so important to monogamous people that there be a single model? Why can’t one of the requisites of marriage license be the writing of a marriage contract specific to that marriage? That has plenty of historic precedent.
If people want to co-habitat with multiple persons of various genders, as long as it’s all consensual that’s fine by me. People tend to be repulsed by the notion because in many places with “traditional” polygamy it is NOT consensual; often the women are forced into it. But that doesn’t mean the concept is flawed, just that certain forms it may take is bad.
I do however question why do we even need marriage of any kind nowadays? It was invented back when women were chattel, and their ownership was transferred from the father to a husband via marriage. Since women weren’t allowed to work outside the home, the marriage contract forced the husband to financially support her, so it was sort of a win-win situation.
But today, women own themselves and can and do support themselves. So why on earth do we still have marriage contracts? People can and do form relationships, co-habitat, and have children without bothering with marriage. If we just discard the notion and treat everyone as individual people, society will work just fine. If two, three, or even more people decide to merge their possessions, they can draw up a legal contract. If people are religious and want to get married for that reason, their church can do so but it shouldn’t have any legal implications.
If you’re concerned about children not being supported by their parents, well, we have that problem already. With DNA testing we can identify the parents and try our best to force them to support their children.
If you’re concerned about women not being supported by men, I think we’ve moved way past the idea that women should be supported by men. If three people make a private agreement among themselves that one will stop working for a few years to raise children and the other two will work to support the family, that’s their business. We don’t need marriage contracts.
Polygamy works best when a wife is considered the property of the husband … if a man can afford to care for two goats, he’s allowed; similarly if a man can afford two wives he should be allowed. It makes things so much easier if the women have no say in any matter.
But that was then, and this is now.
If we turn to nature we can see the advantages of polygamy. A herd of twenty females will all bear young only needing one male, the other nineteen males can be used to keep the carnivores’ bellies full, thus saving the females and young. I believe this is the reproductive strategy the closest relatives to humans use, that being chimps and gorillas.
Monogamy is actually quite rare among mammals, but a little more common among birds. The big advantage for birds is that the individual need only expend the resources to court a mate once in their lifetime. Once they find one, they never have to spend the resources again (unless the mate dies, but the principle still holds). Where this fails in humans is their propensity of the men-folk to slaughter each other off. When the tribe sends their women and children away and lose half the men in battle, then there becomes a need for the men to double up on their wifeage, just to keep the babies coming repopulating the tribe.
But that was then, and this is now.
The religious patriarch of nearly half the world’s population, Abraham, had two wives … and it did not end well … indeed it’s not that far of a stretch to say the current problems in Syria goes back to the problems of Abraham having children by two women.
Perhaps there was a time in pre-history when polygamy was a good idea, but today it’s not. It’s hard enough keeping a “one man, one woman” marriage together, imagine how bad it would be if a man had a mess of women-folk ganging up on him !!!
Just to be clear, I’m not against poly marriage, but I agree with Chronos that there are many issues to be worked out. Marriage confers something like several thousand legal rights (or so I remember from the gay rights debates) and these would be conferred upon poly marriages as well. For example, there are tax benefits that are conferred to the spouse for 401(k) accounts and social security accounts. If there were, say, 30 husbands and 25 wives, would social security continue to be paid until the final spouse died? If 3 women had 10 husbands, would all the husbands be equally responsible for child support? If one of the non-fathers decides to leave the poly marriage, is he responsible for full child support? Would paternity have to be determined for each child in the poly marriage? It’s not required for non-poly marriage.
Right now, the spouse has the authority to make medical and legal decisions if the other spouse is incapacitated. How does that work if there are multiple spouses? Dozens of spouses? Yes, this can be figured out if there were powers of attorney in place and other legal documents, but we don’t require regular marriages to have that done – would we required poly marriages to have powers of attorney, etc., always in place?
Is there a limit to the number of spouses? Could a cult leader decide to conduct a giant marriage, marrying the thousand members of his/her cult to each other and to him/her?
So, again, I’m not against it for any moral reasons, but there are many, many details that have to be worked out. This is unlike gay marriage, where the only real change was changing husband/wife on forms to spouse 1/spouse 2. I don’t care if multiple men and women want to be together and present as a single family unit, but legal marriage, with all the legal rights and responsibilities that come with it, is a tougher nut to crack.
It’s only a solution if you have one dominant member of each marriage, which re-opens the whole can of worms that we only recently painstakingly managed to close. What happens if all but one of the submissive members die or divorce-- Is the previous dominant member still dominant over the one remaining spouse? What if one of the submissive spouses wants to marry someone else-- Shouldn’t we recognize that person’s right to do so, too?
In a country that has declared gay marriage a right, and accepted the challenge of dealing with the complications that come with figuring out the new issues involved, it’s hard to oppose polygamy.
As you point out, there are plenty of countries which allow polygamy today, though in all but a few cases it’s only available to men. I don’t see why, in principle, it would be impossible to import the same structure but allow it for both men and women. (Wikipedia says Gabon has a law like that, but then, it’s Wikipedia).
Gay marriage and polygamy are two entirely separate issues that have nothing to do with each other other than the fact that, for lack of a better word, “orthodox” Christianity opposes them both. You can make arguments for one that don’t apply to the other, and vice versa.
Personally I’m quite skeptical of monogamy, but then again I’m also increasingly skeptical of marriage, so as long as the law allows people to cohabit and arrange matters of inheritance, power of attorney, hospital visitation rights and so forth on a case by case basis, I don’t think it’s super necessary for nonmonogamists to be allowed to technically ‘marry’ each other. Other than the social approbation, but that’s going to happen eventually. Fewer and fewer people these days are getting married anyway.
