I just finished reading another case of a 15-year-old girl running away because her Morman family was going to force her to marry a 45-year-old man. My opinion is that if an adult woman, of her own free will, wants to marry a man with several wives, go to it. Children of that kind of union are a thorny issue. But for an older man to marry a 13-year-old child seems to just be an excuse for perversion and child sexual abuse. These people quote the bible to justify their behavior. They can’t really be that ignorant; I believe they but use freedom of religion to disguise their real motives. Also, you’ll notice women aren’t allowed to have more than one husband. How convenient. Does anyone feel there is any possible moral basis for these marriages? What in the world could an older man have in common with a 13-year-old? Or isn’t that the purpose. What is the purpose then? Would a psychologist say that the man is anything other than a sicko (to use a technical term).
If you do some careful research, you will find that the Mormon Church no longer supports multiple marriages. There are still those out there who are doing it, and claiming that they can because of their religion, but they actually have no backing from the Mormon Church. I suppose they could start their own branch of the church and say it’s allowed, and spout freedom of religion. But if they use the Bible, they will need to note that the Bible instructs believers to “Follow the laws of the land.” Polygamy is illegal in all 50 states now, including Utah.
If by “these marriages”, you mean the arranged, polygamous union between an older many and several younger women who may or may not be involved of their own free will, I’d say there’s absolutely no moral justification whatsoever. Although, my objection would be the arrangement and lack free will (not to mention the one-sidedness of the structure) rather than the multiple marriage concept itself.
Personally, I’ve always thought the structure Robert Heinlein described in “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” was kind of interesting. Several men and several women are all married to each other and form kind of a collective unit, with unanimous approval necessary to marry in. It sounds a lot more stable to me than the “traditional” approach, even if it could be more of a logistical challenge. Then again, settling those logistical issues might be kind of fun in itself. YMMV
IIRC, the purpose of polygamous (specifically polygynous) marriages is to grow the flock, be fruitful and multiply. A man can get as many women knocked up as he wants; polyandry doesn’t work the same way. A woman, no matter how many husbands she had, could only be pregnant one at a time.
OK, I’m Mormon, and I agree that forcing a 13-yo girl to marry her uncle is horrible. But the LDS Church did outlaw polygamy in 1890–these days, it gets you excommunicated right quick. These guys are splinter groups who, I suppose, like the power trips and the young, submissive girls. If they were all grownups, OK…but bringing children into it is just awful.
That Heinlein setup sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. Complicated, bloody, VC Andrews-esque disaster.
Well, Heinlein’s MIAHM setup wasn’t actually standard polygamy, it was what he called line marriage. As the oldest people in the marriage grow older, they add younger people to the group. Course, the Moon was originally a prison colony, so standard family structure was pretty much whatever you wanted to build from ground zero.
If I didn’t have a close immediate family, I’d really enjoy having a family that consisted of some older members about my parents’ age, and some people younger than me who had kids. Heinlein even specifically said that the “marriage” wasn’t all about sex between all the family members, but more of a social or support group.
The only problem I have with polygamy (or polyamory in general) is a practical one. Seems like one person always gets stuck being the emotional patcher-upper, and then wears out, and then the relationship crashes and burns. Not that traditional relationships don’t do that, too, of course.
Corr
AFAIK, the only reason the church outlawed polygamy was so that Utah could gain statehood–it was a condition. Again, AFAIK (as IANAM-Mormon), the church usually overlooks polygamous families and does nothing to discourage them.
Just my recollection from a few Mormon friends and a few episodes of Dateline.
To clarify: The LDS Church quit polygamy for several reasons. Many of the men, including the President and just about all of the Apostles, were in hiding all the time, and it was awful for the families and hard to run a church that way. They also wanted to be a state, but not all that badly–may of them still harbored a lot of dislike for the gov’t that ran them out of town in the first place. And of course, they firmly believed that the only reason to quit polygamy was direct revelation, which is what they got (you can argue about that, but the important thing is that they believe/d that). Even so, many were prepared to keep it up. Nowadays, polygamy or other illegal activites will get you excommunicated.
You’re thinking of the state of Utah, which has long overlooked polygamous families and has not bothered to prosecute them in the courts. They would probably still be doing so if some of them didn’t insist on publicity-mongering — and if the Olympics weren’t pretty soon. Perhaps someone who actually lives in Utah knows more.
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You’re thinking of the state of Utah, which has long overlooked polygamous families and has not bothered to prosecute them in the courts. They would probably still be doing so if some of them didn’t insist on publicity-mongering — and if the Olympics weren’t pretty soon. Perhaps someone who actually lives in Utah knows more. **
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As a fellow Utahn, I have to agree with this statement. The LDS church DOES Not just ignore polygamy. They actively discourage it. The problem is it is VERY hard to prosecute polygamy. The polygamist cults are incredibly tight mouth and very suspicious of outsiders. They are intensely paranoid. And from a legal point of view they really havent done much wrong, UNTIL they start beating the children, forcing them into marriage and a host of other domestic abuses. PLural marriage isnt legal here so the plural wives have little or no legal claims to the man, so he can legitimately say “What! I am marriage to so and so not her”
Although most of the old goats do brag about their wives. Polygamists keep the women in line by violence and fear and so few dare to come forward to escape it.
Also, contrary to popular rumors, the LDS CHurch does not run Utah ( they just think they do:D )I personally think the recent attacks on the cults are a rather shameful way of airing one’s nasty laundry. But then they had to get the world’s attention off of the bribery scandal.
The LDS church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) does not nor has it for quite some time approved of plural marriages. In fact it is one of the fastest ways to get yourself excomunicated. Here is an excerpt from what is known as The Manifesto or The Official Declaration 1, dated October 6, 1890. This is considered Scripture to church members.
However there are several other “Mormon” churches. The RLDS Church (The Revised CoJCoL-dS) is the second largest “Moromon” church. They split off of the main group when Joseph Smith died. The RLDS believed Joseph Smith III was the rightful suceessor rather then Brigham Young. They have never accepted polygamy. They deny that Smith ever had multiple wives. They also deny that those ‘revelations’ regarding polygamy attributed to Smith. Most other early splinter groups, including the one which tried to set up a seperate kingdom in Northern Michigan, also deny polygamy.
The “Mormons” who practice polygamy today are generally formed by members who were either excomunicated from the LDS church or left volountarily. I believe all of them date from after the 1890 Declaration. They believe themselves to be the only “true” followers of the faith and most of these churches number from a few dozen to a few hundred. Any generalizations can be hard to make as the various groups are quite disparite. They range from Quaker style fundamentalism to yupies where the wives are encouraged to get educations and carrers. I knew one family with 5 wives. Two had decided to be stay at home moms, one was a doctor, one a lawyer, and one was a student. Of course they were never in the news.
As far as why the main body of the LDS Church dropped the practice, statehood was a minor reason at best. The church had at the time a persecution complex. (Not undeservedly as at the time it was still legal to kill Mormons in Missouri). They wanted statehood so that they could have political representation. As a territory local political leaders were appointed in Washington. These were inevitably non-mormon, and generally antagonistic to the church. Antagonism to polygamy had been building for the better part of the century, and it generally focused on the LDS Church. One speach in the 1850’s in the senate railed against the “twin evils” of slavery and polygamy. By 1890 the federal government had confiscated all church properties, fined it into debt, imprisoned many of the church officials, and had driven the rest into hiding. Once the appeal to the Supreme Court had failed they really had no choice. Portions of several speeches given at the time can be found here http://scriptures.lds.org/od/1 .
As far as the state of Utah goes polygamy is against the law. In fact as a condition of gaining statehood Utah added it to the state constitution. However there have been virtually no prosecutions since around 1950. Enforcement stopped around the same time as it did for sodomy and similar bedroom crimes. However because Utah tended to ignore polygamous families on that basis, they have only recently become aware of the rampant child abuse that frequently occurs in such situations.
To answer the OP. The problem here is not polygamy per say. As far as I am concerned what two concenting adults do in their bedroom is their concern only. They can invoke whatever religous basis they want. Live and let live, I say. The problem is the involvement of underage girls. While it is very true that historically (for example 15th century Italy) girls have been married much younger, sometimes even as young as 12, we now know the kind of psycological damage this can do. As a society we have decided this is unacceptable and have outlawed it (statutory rape etc.). I think that they put these guys away for a long time. I personally don’t see any difference between them and any other sexual predator.