As I read summaries of some early cases, i.e. Reynolds v. US and the anti-bigamy law passed by Lincoln, I find that I cannot see the rationale in them, beyond an attempt to limit some Mormon actions. One might see that as an anti-Mormon stance, but if it isn’t, what is it? What was the foundation on which such law was made? Was there something other than some sort of moral opprobrium against bigamy, something other than, “it just ain’t right,”? (I am trusting that there is a legal, definitive answer to the question, which is why I’m posting it here and not in a forum for simply opinions).
Perhaps we should wait 'til the same-sex issue is settled, before we roll down that slippery slope.
Marriage in, a legal sense at least, involves joining exactly two people as one legal entity for for issues ranging from medical decisions, taxes, to survivorship and property rights. The whole system breaks down when there are more than two people involved and the U.S. and state legal systems cannot handle it so it is illegal.
It could possibly be made legal in some way if the will was there but there would be tons of legal issues and thousands of individual state laws that would have to be changed to accommodate it.
You may wonder how some countries that allow polygamy (like harems) deal with it. The answer is that they they have very different cultures and systems of government and the women involved generally have few rights to be concerned about. In some of them, the oldest male child inherits most everything anyway when his father passes away so there is no need to be concerned with many of the rights our legal system grants married couples.
If you are asking why people can’t have as many devoted, intimate partners as they choose, the answer is that they can right now. Shack up with as many people as you want for as long as you want. Have all the girlfriends or boyfriends at one time that you want just don’t legally marry more than one of them or claim publicly that more than one of them is your spouse. Marriage is primarily a legal contract, not a romantic or spiritual ideal. Confusion on that leads to all kinds of basic misunderstandings.
WAG 1: It just seems to fly in the face of Judeo-Christian ethics. Basically, it just sounds like something God wouldn’t approve of.
WAG 2: It’s a child welfare issue. If a guy marries a bazillion women, there’s just no way he can support all the kids, and then the burden of providing for them would fall to the state.
WAG 3: What Shagnasty said, much better than I could.
Cuz Jesus said no man can serve two masters!
I think that if polygamy was allowed, a few men would partner with a much larger number of women. This would leave several men of lower status with no potential mates and would be unfair to them.
It’s hard to support this argument, if one really wanted to look for it in the Bible (Old Testament anyway). So this must be a latter-day ethical rationalization. (Even if “latter-day” means going back as far as Jesus.)
How many wives did Abraham have? Jacob? David? Solomon?
Heck, David even coveted his neighbors wife! Wasn’t there supposed to be a Commandment about that? And he schemed to get that neighbor killed so he could get his wife! And succeeded! And nowhere in that sordid little story, as far as I can tell, is there any expression of moral disapproval, from either God or anyone else! Did I miss something there?
Judeo-Christian ethics (well, Judeo ethics anyway) my ass!
Well, you must not have read that ‘sordid little story’ too closely; there’s definitely moral disapproval; from God, from the prophet Nathan. David shows regret once he’s faced with what he’s done, and God lays down punishments.
Of course, the disapproval is centered around the scheming, the coveting, and how David abused his power to take what he wanted from a man who had less than him, not the bigamy; as you pointed out, for one men to have many wives was part of the Israelite culture.
What are you talking about? God’s disapproval is the very last sentence of 2 Samuel 11:26. And then Nathan rebukes David in 2 Samuel 12.
My impression is that most people who are picked up for bigamy are really committing marriage fraud. The old story about a spouse and kids in two different cities, and gotta juggle to make sure one set doesn’t find out about the other? If you can’t introduce them to each other, it’s marriage fraud.
I suspect that the main motive for prohibiting bigamy was to combat this type of marriage fraud, but wouldn’t be surprised if anti-Mormon sentiments were part of it.
Have there ever been times when larger marriages were legal?
Can we make one important distinction here? Polygamy, including the particular subset of one man and two women or two men and one woman, is a relationship which all parties, in theory at least, enter into in the awareness that there are more than one other parties involved. Bigamy, on the other hand, is historically the criminal offense of entering into an (exclusive) marriage relationship with more than one other person simultaneously (as opposed to divorcing one before marrying another, etc.).
The fact that both concepts include more than two persons in marital relationships is the only similarity. While it would be a highly complex process to set up a legal system allowing for multiple marital partners, involving resolution of a plethora of What If questions, and it would be objected to by a large portion of the religious public, it would nonetheless be a contract freely entered into by consenting adults aware of what they were committing to. A bigamist marrying two women, neither of whom is aware of the other’s existence much less relationship to her “husband”, is a completely different, and fraudulent, set of behaviors.
The answer is that there is no good answer. Think of the analog with a parent and multiple children. How does the state handle next-of-kin issues or issues of survivorship or who makes medical decisions? Maybe Shagnasty can answer that. Washoe mentions child welfare re: support but what stops a guy from having a bazillion kids out of wedlock?
The only legal issue I can see is let’s say a man marries two women. Are those two women married to each other in a legal sense including divorce, medical decisions, etc.
I think Groucho said it best…
Groucho: “Well whadaya say girls? Are we all gonna get married?
Woman: “All of us? But that’s bigamy!”
Groucho: “Yes, and it’s big-a-me too.”
morgensd
Moved to Great Debates.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Except this doesn’t happen in any of the present day countries that actually practice polygamy.
It’s not men who are exploited or wronged by polygamy but women.
There’s a reason why most western Imams who come from a tradition which allows it increasingly interpret Muhammad’s claim that a man could have up to four wives but had to treat them all equally as being a ban on polygamy because it’s “impossible to treat more than one wife equally.”
Sorry, but that’s Nice Guy logic. Nobody is owed a mate - if every woman in the world would rather be a part of George Clooney’s harem than touch any other man, every other man has to either step up their game or deal with it.
Nope. A marriage is still a union between two and only two people. The only difference between polygamy and monogamy is that people are allowed to have more than one marriage at a time.
I think the “ban polygamy because women would become scarce” argument is wrong, not because it’s “nice guy logic”, but because its premise is false. Most humans, whether male or female, favor monogamy. And the few that don’t favor it will go ahead and have their harems, regardless of if they are legally considered “marriage” by the state.
I agree, they are really separate matters entirely.
An attitude that tends to lead to social instability and bloodshed, not to mention “excess” males being disposed of like garbage. You aren’t going to be able to “step up your game” very well if you’re discarded by your parents without resources.
And “deal with it” in practical terms would likely boil down to “kill George Clooney and take his women by force”. In a society where most women are in harems, you’ll have millions of desperate men with no means of gaining a mate save by force, and whose socialization consists of being abandoned to live or die according to the law of the jungle. The morality of using force to get women and treating them like property likely won’t even occur to them.
That’s totally incorrect. In a five person marriage of two men and three women, where’s the “monogamy”?
This is less of a problem then it first appears, at least in societies with decent population growth. Polygamist socities tend to have older men marrying woman one or two generations younger then they are (if for no other reason then you need to be pretty well established to support all those wives). As long as the population keeps growing, there will be several woman in generation N for each man in generation (N-2), and so no men end up having to go wifeless.
But as to the OP, bigamy is a type of fraud, so it seems obvious why its illegal. Maybe your confusing bigamy with polygamy?
I’d like to chime in with another reason why there’s a huge divide between gay marriage and bigamy. Opponents of gay marriage try to equate that to any sorts of slippery slope, but the most important thing, in my opinion, that separates the two is that being gay is an inborn trait. Its as immutable as being born black or Korean. Outwardly, one can change how one looks, but once a Russian always a Russian. Therefore, we are talking about a class of people here, not simply a behavior
People are born gay. Therefore its wrong to discriminate against it. However, nobody is born a polygamist. Polygamy describes not a class of people but a choice, a behavior one chooses to engage in. And its very easy to move in and out of that group. An unmarried person is never a polygamist, though he may desire it. And people who are polygamists can simply get divorced. However, a gay person will always be a gay person, no matter how many crock Christian science reeducation camps they try to put themselves through.
The problem is that opponents of gay marriage try to confuse the two. I have heard countless times from people who call gays a behavioral lifestyle. And while, unlike being born Hispanic, one can convincingly fake being gay and then change, or convince themselves they can change, being gay is not changeable. So because gays are a class of people, not a behavior, it is wrong to ask them to change and the argument will NEVER be the same as polygamy.