Should polygamy be made legal?

[Krill]

Originally posted by Heraclitus


The great banana is displeased.

CFMFT.

[DinoDoc]

If gay marriage is illegal, no. If we decide to expand the definition of marriage to include gays, polygamy should be legal for the same reason.

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by Cartimandua


This is already the norm.

I doubt it.

[Cartimandua]

Originally posted by VetLegion
I doubt it.

Think about it, how many people do you know who are already on their 2nd or 3rd spouse? I live in a very morally conservative area and I can still think of many, many people.

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by Cartimandua


Think about it, how many people do you know who are already on their 2nd or 3rd spouse? I live in a very morally conservative area and I can still think of many, many people.

I live on a different continent and here divorce is quite unusual, traumatic and carries a great social stigma.

[rah]

Originally posted by Cartimandua
I also think that it may make the man feel that he has all the power, a situation that inevitably turns to abuse.

Very insightful.

[Arrian]

Depends on how it's done, but I'll offer up a wary "yes."

Basically, so long as everyone involved is a consenting adult and signs off on it (spouses 1 and 2 both sign off on spouse #3, and so on)... yeah.

-Arrian

[Agathon]

Of course not. Making polygamy legal would inevitably lead to a rise in polygyny and virtually no polyandry. In polygamous societies having many wives is a status symbol. Feminists are actually wrong when they say that polygamy advantages men. It advantages some men, but disadvantages others.

The social consequences are usually an increase in violence, caused by men who cannot find wives.

Legalizing polygamy in the US might seem a good idea, because only a minority of people would engage in it at first (including the Mormons, who I suspect would immediately start practicing it again), but having more than one wife has historically been a status symbol, and I'm sure that a lot of rich men would justify doing it as a form of edgy social rebellion.

[BeBMan]

Poly

[Alexander I]

Originally posted by Agathon
(including the Mormons, who I suspect would immediately start practicing it again)

Not a chance. You must not know many LDS people. Mormons are not exactly hankering to start it up again, you see. Our predecessors already went through it once, that's more than enough for us.

It took ten to fifteen years and an official revelation to get the few original LDS pioneers who did practice plural marriage to start; it took forty years and another revelation to stop the practice, despite heavy government persecution.

It would take a lot of time and another official declaration or two (those don't happen very often) to motivate the people, and even then, only about 5% of the 19th century LDS population ever practiced it to begin with, unlike the FLDS, who are 100% polygamist (that was the reason they left the LDS to begin with, they didn't want to stop).

The rest of the world could be polygamist, but no Mormon would be because of the official church policy that plural marriage is not to be practiced, and unless that were revoked, it would stay that way.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

How many mother-in-laws can any one man take?

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by Agathon
Of course not. Making polygamy legal would inevitably lead to a rise in polygyny and virtually no polyandry. In polygamous societies having many wives is a status symbol. Feminists are actually wrong when they say that polygamy advantages men. It advantages some men, but disadvantages others.

The social consequences are usually an increase in violence, caused by men who cannot find wives.

Legalizing polygamy in the US might seem a good idea, because only a minority of people would engage in it at first (including the Mormons, who I suspect would immediately start practicing it again), but having more than one wife has historically been a status symbol, and I'm sure that a lot of rich men would justify doing it as a form of edgy social rebellion.

I agree with this.

However, I'm not sure what legal reasoning there is for making it illegal. It would suck, and I hope it remains on the social fringe, but there isn't much need for a ban on it.

I agree on geting gov't out of marriage.

[Krill]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
How many mother-in-laws can any one man take?

You could mary multiple sisters...

[Agathon]

Originally posted by OzzyKP


I agree with this.

However, I'm not sure what legal reasoning there is for making it illegal. It would suck, and I hope it remains on the social fringe, but there isn't much need for a ban on it.

I disagree.

Issues like this expose the poverty of much contemporary political thinking. People always think from the point of view of individual subjects of the law, when they should give consideration to the viewpoint of the rulers. Consider the terrible state of affairs in India and China due to selective abortion (the unintended consequence of the one child policy in China). They already have an increasing number of men with no hope of marriage. Surplus male population almost always results in violence.

http://www.amazon.com/Bare-Branches-Implications-Population-International/dp/0262083256

One solution if the practice was adopted in the US is the importation of foreign women to counteract the shortfall. Apart from an increase in trafficked women, this would merely export the problem to other countries.

Libertarian attitudes towards this face the same problem they do in other areas. If you focus on individual freedoms, you often end up with situations where everyone is worse off.

[Arrian]

Sayeth the communist. How suprising that individual liberty is unimportant to you.

-Arrian