Polygamy question for same-sex marriage supporters

[Dakota_Roberts]

Why not tax them the same way as married couples? Or, alternatively, eliminate all tax laws organized around questions of marriage and family?

Why not allow a brother-sister domestic partnership to adopt?

Marriage is specifically for the production and raising of posterity thus it merits extra benefits. No adoption because the relationship isn’t for that.

Polygamy does not violate the natural law. Homosexual acts do.

It violates it most egregiously

I agree, nice to see some progressive thinking…

Bruce Ferguson
Trickster…

Honestly it is oneupmanship over the LGBT lobby in a way that circumvents any moral issues keeping Catholic organizations safer.

 

[DJ_Pius_X]

I don’t see anything wrong at all with polygamy, as long as all parties involved are consenting adults.

 

[Jocko_VT]

Well, I certainly don’t doubt your expertise on the current practice of polygamy!!

I don’t know of any polygamous communities where the role of women isn’t devalued.

For me, the question here is which came first? My suspicion is that the devaluing of women came first. Thus, there’s no reason to think that polygamy would lead to the devaluation of women, though the devaluation of women may lead to polygamy.

as human biology, in the absence of Christian moral codes, supports polygamy but not polyandry.

As long as women are reproducing within the community at replacement rates, biology won’t stand in the way. If polyandry has some sort of political or social benefit within the community that encourages, say, peace and food sharing, it’s biologically beneficial. Certainly, it’s rare, but it’s not a biological dead-end.

nterestingly, Polygamous communities generally outlaw polyandry.

Interesting, but not surprising, right? After all, these communities probably *start *with the devaluing of women. Polygamy comes afterward. Polyandry won’t be an option in a community where men hold all the power, probably.

There have been some American communistic societies, such as the Oneida Community, that practiced Group Marriage (with no set partners) and various 1960s hippie communities, and all fell apart because of the inherent instability in such relationships and the natural human desire for closeness with one mate.

This is why I don’t think it would be problematic in places like the US. Most people will *never *accept it. But, perhaps certain groups of people *would *tend to accumulate more wives, and that would lead to some sort of social strife (e.g., the rich and wealthy practice polygamy, and the working class doesn’t–just adds another twist on the occupy wallstreet stuff!.

I am most familiar with the polygamous communities of the American southwest. In those communities, and from what I know of African and Muslim communities, the most wealthy men are able to support the largest harems (and politically support the institution of polygamy, which benefits them) As they have the most financial resources, they are able to attract those women who seek material assets, and to force or pay poorer families to agree to offer their younger, most desirable, and most fertile daughters in marriage. Inevitably, this produces relatonships where the wife does not share complete psychological union with her husband, the resulting children do not have the full attention of their fathers, and competition between the numerous half-brothers for inheritance increases societal friction and violence.

It’s hard for me to see this happening on a nation-wide scale in a place like the US. African and Muslim communities start with a devaluing of women, don’t they? And while the US isn’t perfect regarding the equality of the sexes, it’s a bit better, I think. Likewise with those places in the SW. But, perhaps, given several decades, this would become a problem.

It could be, as you suggest that polygamy as practiced in a larger community would reduce some of these societal ills. However, they still are widespread in the Muslim nations where not every marriage is polygamous, and so I doubt this would be the case.

The trouble is arguing that polygamy is a cause of those social ills, rather than just another consequence.

Many men practice de facto polygamy without the benefit of marriage in western society (such as many of the socially dysfunctional men of the inner cities of America and Europe), and we can see the same evils. Some cult leaders, such as David Koresh, practiced similar systems with their followers. None of these are healthy communities.

Again, I have trouble extrapolating from “socially dysfunctional men” or “cult leaders” to the general population.

But, you clearly have a handle on all this, and I’m just being speculative. You’ve given me plenty of food for thought. Perhaps it is enough, regardless of the causal relationship between polygamy and the social ills that have been mentioned, that polygamy and those social ill always *have *existed side-by-side.

 

[Castello]

Interesting point Castello…I support state defined same sex marriage and argued originally that in the interest of consistency our state ought to legalize polygamous marriage…your point is interesting…could you elaborate on it?

Bruce Ferguson
Trickster (Aboriginal Word for Transformation)

There are things in natural law that can be changed - for instance, God has permitted both incest and polygamy at times in human history. God has NEVER permitted homosexual acts.

IIRC, the Summa explores these.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

Well, I certainly don’t doubt your expertise on the current practice of polygamy!!

For me, the question here is which came first? My suspicion is that the devaluing of women came first. Thus, there’s no reason to think that polygamy would lead to the devaluation of women, though the devaluation of women may lead to polygamy.

As long as women are reproducing within the community at replacement rates, biology won’t stand in the way. If polyandry has some sort of political or social benefit within the community that encourages, say, peace and food sharing, it’s biologically beneficial. Certainly, it’s rare, but it’s not a biological dead-end.

Interesting, but not surprising, right? After all, these communities probably *start *with the devaluing of women. Polygamy comes afterward. Polyandry won’t be an option in a community where men hold all the power, probably.

This is why I don’t think it would be problematic in places like the US. Most people will *never *accept it. But, perhaps certain groups of people *would *tend to accumulate more wives, and that would lead to some sort of social strife (e.g., the rich and wealthy practice polygamy, and the working class doesn’t–just adds another twist on the occupy wallstreet stuff!.

It’s hard for me to see this happening on a nation-wide scale in a place like the US. African and Muslim communities start with a devaluing of women, don’t they? And while the US isn’t perfect regarding the equality of the sexes, it’s a bit better, I think. Likewise with those places in the SW. But, perhaps, given several decades, this would become a problem.

The trouble is arguing that polygamy is a cause of those social ills, rather than just another consequence.

Again, I have trouble extrapolating from “socially dysfunctional men” or “cult leaders” to the general population.

But, you clearly have a handle on all this, and I’m just being speculative. You’ve given me plenty of food for thought. Perhaps it is enough, regardless of the causal relationship between polygamy and the social ills that have been mentioned, that polygamy and those social ill always *have *existed side-by-side.

Yeah, I’d agree it is a chicken-or-the-egg kind of problem. If a society didn’t devalue women, would there be a desire or need for polygamy?

The traditional argument has been that polygamy has flourished when a small population needed to produce children rapidly to survive with a unique cultural or religious identity (as with the early Jews, or the early Mormons) and polyandry thrives as a population control measure when there is a need to exist within finite resource boundaries. Polygamy tends to outlive the demographic imperatives because powerful, wealthy men like it.

There’s an additional evil associated with societally-sanctioned polygamy and polyandry that I didn’t address earlier - demographic data indicates that both promote infanticide. There are more male babies in cultures that practice polyandry (such as the Junsar and Bawar parganas of the Dhun) and more female babies in cultures that practice polygamy, such as the tribes in the Gurhwal Hills, As each gender would be more valued as a source of dowry and as “breeding stock” (which is a terrible way to look at humanity) in each respective culture, Victorian-era anthropologists looking at this issue suggested that in some way, “nature” was adapting the female biology to produce the more valued gender in their children, which is probably nonsense. The ethnologist Sir Richard Francis Burton suggested the far more likely cause was gender-selective infanticide.