Polygamy

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FireFromHeaven

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I recently heard on a radio news station that there is a movement to legalize polygamy? How can we Catholics stand against this? Do we have arguments for it? If not we better get started.
 
FireFromHeaven said:
I recently heard on a radio news station that there is a movement to legalize polygamy? How can we Catholics stand against this? Do we have arguments for it? If not we better get started.
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How about “you people are nutcases”. But in all seriousness, we should oppose it because it’s evil.
 
FireFromHeaven said:
I recently heard on a radio news station that there is a movement to legalize polygamy? How can we Catholics stand against this? Do we have arguments for it? If not we better get started.
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Keep in mind that polygamy is part of the teachings of some religions, for example muslims and some LDS groups. If it’s part of part of one’s religious teachings it becomes more complicated than when it’s a secular person’s mere preferences.
 
FireFromHeaven said:
I recently heard on a radio news station that there is a movement to legalize polygamy? How can we Catholics stand against this? Do we have arguments for it? If not we better get started.
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Legally, in the secular world, I don’t see any argument against it. That’s because in many cases gay marriage is legal. Historically, polygamy has been accepted in major cultures and religions in the past, and still is in some parts of the world. That is to be contrasted with gay marriage, which was never accepted by any major culture or religion. If a marriage that was never accepted in history is deemed legal, I cannot see any reason why a marriage that has been accepted historically would not be allowed.
 
In jurisdictions where same sex marriage becomes legal and accepted, polygamy and group marriage are inevitable.
 
FireFromHeaven said:
I recently heard on a radio news station that there is a movement to legalize polygamy? How can we Catholics stand against this? Do we have arguments for it? If not we better get started.
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The traditional arguments against polygamy have included that it is exploitative to women and children, that is violates natural law, and that is is contrary to Scripture.

The natural law argument has several lines of support. One is that humanity is split roughly 50/50 between males and females (though I think the actual figure is like 51/49). That suggests that we should be in pairs (excluding roughly equal amounts of single vocations on both sides). Another line of support is biological: our hormones are made to attach us to one person, and when we “cheat” on that person (our hormones don’t know whether it’s “legal” cheating or not), our hormones go berserk. That suggests that we are designed for one man, one woman relationships.

Another natural law point is pregnancy: it takes nine months, and that sets a limit on how much sex we can have, because if guys just keep jumping from girl to girl, all the girls would be pregnant in no time, because guys do their part faster than girls do their part. So the limiting factor is females, and it suggests that guys should stick with their females until after the baby is born, and then continue procreating. (Assuming there’s no reason to stop. Prudence would suggest not procreating as much as possible.)

Another reason against polygamy is conflict. Multiple spouses creates conflicts that don’t appear in a monogamist marriage. Polygamy creates multiple lines of authority that can’t always be clearly delineated. In Christian marriage, male headship and female subordination (which doesn’t violate the doctrine of female equality, once the relationship between the two is properly understood) creates a clear line of authority and reduces conflict. Polygamy erases all that.

There are probably other arguments that aren’t coming to mind right at the moment, but that’s a start. 🙂
 
I find it utterly bizarre that we ended up in the situation where most people are seriously arguing that same-sex couples can be legitimately married, but then balk at the idea of polygamy, which actually does have a natural law case in support of it.

Polygamy is almost as legitimate from a basic natural law standpoint as our institution of monogamous marriage. The main detraction arises from its subsequent effect on society. Human society, if not under extreme internal or external pressures, produces an almost equal number of men and women. Polygamy robs some percentage of men their ability to live out their lives to the fullest since there now are insufficient numbers of women.

In certain circumstances, however, this may have been a preferable situation in the past. Especially when you had a society living on the brink and only a small number of men were able to maintain the land, resources, and defenses to support those women and the children that come with them. A situation also can arise after a very long series of martial conflicts in which a significant portion of the male population was lost. The society still needs population growth for the sake of its economy and armed forces, so wedding multiple women to a single man makes a lot of strategic sense.

But with respect to the rights of children to have their mother and father… it’s all there in polygamy. The most evil aspects of same-sex “marriage” are not present in polygamy. There is nothing inherently dishonest or corrupting about polygamy. It doesn’t seek to get around nature. Nor does it seek to subvert the truth. That doesn’t mean I support it, but I find it utterly insane that people can be so fiercely supportive of same-sex marriages and then lash out at the idea of polygamy. It’s irrational and baseless.
 
The oddity is that the monogamous marriage laws once stood alongside laws against fornication and adultery. For good or ill, society*** no longer maintains prison cells*** for fornicators and adulterers and the whole thing is a total mess.

Even the same-sex marriage proponents understand it’s all about getting legal–mostly monetary–benefits from government or government-mandated benefits. Yet homosexuals gain a certain moral "high ground" if they cannot visit one another in the hospital or designate anyone they choose as a beneficiary for some benefit. It seems as though–since we can’t punish them for the truly aberrant things they do–let’s screw them out of the everyday benefits the rest of us enjoy.

Christians and the Church happily played the game, thinking we could harness the coercive power of government to supplement moral teachings. Now the worm has turned and the whip is in another hand. The coercive power of the government is now aimed at us.

Most of us are learning nothing from this experience. We are in the toilet, circling the drain, but still reaching for the handle. Stupid.

I pray that if we ever recover our moral sense as a society, we will think hard about using the government to punish moral violations of this sort. As Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas have both pointed out, making sexual morality subject to the criminal laws simply causes more harm than good.
 
Reep said:
The oddity is that the monogamous marriage laws once stood alongside laws against fornication and adultery. For good or ill, society*** no longer maintains prison cells*** for fornicators and adulterers and the whole thing is a total mess.

Even the same-sex marriage proponents understand it’s all about getting legal–mostly monetary–benefits from government or government-mandated benefits. Yet homosexuals gain a certain moral "high ground" if they cannot visit one another in the hospital or designate anyone they choose as a beneficiary for some benefit. It seems as though–since we can’t punish them for the truly aberrant things they do–let’s screw them out of the everyday benefits the rest of us enjoy.

Christians and the Church happily played the game, thinking we could harness the coercive power of government to supplement moral teachings. Now the worm has turned and the whip is in another hand. The coercive power of the government is now aimed at us.

Most of us are learning nothing from this experience. We are in the toilet, circling the drain, but still reaching for the handle. Stupid.

I pray that if we ever recover our moral sense as a society, we will think hard about using the government to punish moral violations of this sort. As Saints Augustine (here) and Thomas Aquinas (here) have both pointed out, making sexual morality subject to the criminal laws simply causes more harm than good.
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good analysis, thanks for the references.
 
Rete said:
I find it utterly bizarre that we ended up in the situation where most people are seriously arguing that same-sex couples can be legitimately married, but then balk at the idea of polygamy, which actually does have a natural law case in support of it.
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I agree. In fact, if you researches primitive tribal groups largely unaffected by modern culture, you’ll find that polygamy (and variants thereof), exist.

You won’t find any of those cultures accepting homosexuality though. I’ve had anthropologists tell me that gay people do exist in those cultures, but it is not accepted.
 
Honestly, it would not surprise me in the least if there wasn’t a movement to legalize polygamy. After all, there is most definitely an active and somewhat successful movement to legalize “gay marriage”. I honestly wonder what else activists have in store for marriage? I wonder if they wouldn’t just like to completely destroy the entire institution of marriage?
 
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