Report: "More wives, fewer penalties? Utah debates partial decriminalization of polygamy."

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Tis_Bearself said:
LDS had a tradition of polygamy in the early days of their church. It got them hounded out of several states. Some of the members have continued to secretly practice it even after the LDS forbade it. They believe there’s a religious basis for it. It’s not a case of television rewriting society.

As for “we will probably try it”, people are already having poly relationships all over the place. They generally don’t try to legalize them because the type of people who have poly relationships are not really interested in playing by the legal rule books, plus those types of relationships outside of the context of cultural support (like a group of LDS all practicing it) tend to fall apart. Too much jealousy and hassle.
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I don’t mean LDS acceptance. I mean acceptance outside of LDS. By “we will probably try it,” I mean that the United States will probably have an experiment at making it legal.
 
Um, it’s already legal in the sense that nobody is going to send the police after me (at least as a non-LDS living outside Utah) for living with three people and saying I’m married to them all. Like I said, people do that all day every day now.

The US is not going to legislate poly marriages into existence. It would be an administrative nightmare and would defeat the purpose of what marriage is supposed to be in the eyes of the state (not morally, not religiously, but in the eyes of the state). Also, there is no need for it, by which I mean we have legal mechanisms to force a man to support his children even if he is not married to their mother, and women are no longer considered dependent on men for their own support and thus get very little.

Most legal changes are driven by economics. There is no economic positive to creating a whole legal structure for plural marriage in USA. There may be economic incentives to not criminalize it into a felony, but that’s not the same thing as supporting it legally.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
Um, it’s already legal in the sense that nobody is going to send the police after me (at least as a non-LDS living outside Utah) for living with three people and saying I’m married to them all. Like I said, people do that all day every day now.
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Nobody was sending the police after gay couples living together, either. It wasn’t legalized.
Tis_Bearself said:
The US is not going to legislate poly marriages into existence.
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I don’t remember the US legislating same-sex marriage into existence either.

Which has more precedent in human history?
Tis_Bearself said:
Most legal changes are driven by economics.
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The kind that come about because of Supreme Court decisions?
 
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Genesis315 said:
I’m surprised our society still objects to polygamy. If same-sex marriages, gender fluidity, no-fault divorce and remarriage, and sex out of wedlock, are all cool, why not this? What’s the rationale?
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Whenever people think of polygamy, they think of a LDS fundamentalist with multiple wives and over a dozen children catering to his every need. Naturally, that mental image (as unrealistic as it may be) is upsetting to most.

As others have mentioned, polygamy would be a train wreck in the United States. Young men are already disinterested in marriage as it is thanks to (among other things) the divorce laws; wealthy older men have little reason to risk their assets by marrying the young women they exploit (see: Hollywood), and no man wants to have multiple elderly wives; young women are finding themselves involuntarily single as it is and could not realistically attract and be married to multiple men at once (nor would the men tolerate that), and older women marrying multiple men is pure fantasy. As for multiple people of the same sex marrying, that seems highly unlikely as well.

If polygamy ever becomes legal, only the Fundamentalist Mormons and a handful of other religious groups would take advantage. No one else could get it to work.
 
This is wrong of course, but I don’t see what’s the big deal. The USA and most Western countries have had serial polygamy on demand for decades. This is actually not AS bad an attack on marriage as are many things which our governments have okayed or even actively endorsed and promoted. Some of them so widespread that it is assumed that you must be doing it unless you specifically deny it - “same sex marriage”, “no-fault” divorce on unilateral demand, contraception, abortion, adultery, sodomy, fornication, deliberately “single” parenting, etc.
 
PetraG said:
Nobody was sending the police after gay couples living together, either. It wasn’t legalized.
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Actually people did used to send the police after gay couples. There were sodomy laws on the books. They went before the Supreme Court twice.

And by “the US” I mean “Individual states with the blessing of the federal government”. The feds blessed this by allowing federal tax filing status and federal benefits. I didn’t think I needed to spell that out.

I’m leaving the thread as I don’t think you’re understanding anything I write. If you want to go around thinking poly marriages are just around the corner because the US likes to “try” different types of marriage, that to me is just another example of “sky is falling” thinking from people who don’t want to see law in a legal and economic context. You’re entitled to your opinion but I’ll bow out of that type of discussion. Have a nice day.
 
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Blow me over with a feather! Who could have seen that coming?

In 2003, society let practicing homosexuals “out of the closet”. In 2015, SCOTUS mandated same-sex marriages.

Encouraged by this chain of events, polygamists now want to be "out of the shadows". The principled argument for traditional marriage is trumped by an unprincipled tolerance for any acts that deviants find pleasurable. Soon the traditional “family reunion” will morph into just another “dating game” opportunity. And, how long before the bestial ones wants to be “out of the doghouse”?
 
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Well, whatever else polygamy may be, at least it’s not a violation of the “natural law.”
 
I am somewhat surprised that no one is taking the “religious freedom” angle here. Don’t these folks, Fundamentalist Mormons, have their right to religious freedom also? Why not? These folks, they are mostly very, very conversative folks, truely believe that polygamy is a calling from God.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
I’ve wondered this myself. The only thing that makes sense, is that if a man is “married” to several women, somehow this oppresses them. Or you could turn it on its head and say that if a woman has several husbands, she is oppressed as well. Modern secular society is so determined that no social group (other than white, straight, conservative Christian males) will ever be “oppressed”, that it’s easy to find it when you’re looking for it.
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I think it has more to do with the inability of a man to support all of the children brought into the world through these unions. Many, if not most, rely on government assistance to meet the family needs.
 
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This is often ignored, with polygamy as well as most other things like second marriages after divorce and gay marriage. Why people want the government convincing people to live by a Catholic (or any single faith’s) definition of marriage is odd to me. It’s abdicating the church’s responsibility to the government, the same government that has to follow equal protection laws which led to many of the talked about legal rulings in the first place.
 
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This

There haven’t been criminal prosecutions for many decades, whether in Utah or elsewhere, unless welfare or other fraud was involved. (most often, I believe, by “rotating” the legally married wife amongst them to manipulate welfare benefits)

To the point that a few months ago, a legal challenge to Utah’s bigamy statute was dismissed on the grounds that the plaintiffs could not show a danger of prosecution).

Historically, polygamy was a consequence, not there cause, of the persecution: they had a lot of widows because people were shooting mormons. Something had to be done with all of these widows, so they adapted. (mormons will violently deny this history . . .)
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Actually people did used to send the police after gay couples. There were sodomy laws on the books. They went before the Supreme Court twice.
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Not in my lifetime.
Tis_Bearself said:
I’m leaving the thread as I don’t think you’re understanding anything I write. If you want to go around thinking poly marriages are just around the corner because the US likes to “try” different types of marriage, that to me is just another example of “sky is falling” thinking from people who don’t want to see law in a legal and economic context. You’re entitled to your opinion but I’ll bow out of that type of discussion. Have a nice day.
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Just to clarify, I don’t think the Supreme Court just makes stuff up. I do think that they have to judge based on what the actual working definition of marriage is in this country. When the actual expectations of marriage eroded to the point that it was more about a relationship of mutual care between sexual partners than a relationship founded on the place of parenthood in society, the grounds that SCOTUS had for upholding restrictions on the institution of marriage changed.
 
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Dan123 said:
Why people want the government convincing people to live by a Catholic (or any single faith’s) definition of marriage is odd to me. It’s abdicating the church’s responsibility to the government …
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As government has abandoned the principle of sexual complementarity as defining for marriage, we think government should abandon all legislation and regulation that recognizes and privileges marriages of any kind.

Such laws and regulations initially were promulgated to promote marriage to make men and women responsible to each other and to any children they might have rather than have vacated spouses and children fall upon the commweal for support. As the redefined marriage is now simply any emotional attachment, what business is it of the government to promote or regulate the “feelings” between two or more people?
 
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o_mlly said:
As government has abandoned the principle of sexual complementarity as defining for marriage, we think government should abandon all legislation and regulation that recognizes and privileges marriages of any kind.

Such laws and regulations initially were promulgated to promote marriage to make men and women responsible to each other and to any children they might have rather than have vacated spouses and children fall upon the commweal for support. As the redefined marriage is now simply any emotional attachment, what business is it of the government to promote or regulate the “feelings” between two or more people?
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Why wouldn’t we want to promote gay and polygamous couples being responsible to each other and any children they have?
 
CathoRick said:
As others have mentioned, polygamy would be a train wreck in the United States.
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Its scary to imagine the health consequences due to the creeping effects of consanguinity multiple generations down the road.
CathoRick said:
If polygamy ever becomes legal, only the Fundamentalist Mormons and a handful of other religious groups would take advantage. No one else could get it to work.
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Ya never know, especially with how fast unusual behavior spreads nowadays with the Internet. Take transgenderism for example. Fifteen years ago most people had no idea about it, however today it seems to be all the rage with more and more people claiming to be transgender. I wouldn’t be surprised if something similar happened WRT polygamy.
 
Dan123 said:
Why wouldn’t we want to promote gay and polygamous couples being responsible to each other and any children they have?
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The law typically ascribes certain responsibilities to persons who have lived together in mutually dependent relationships and who have brought children into the world or were responsible for their care.

Gay couples can’t have (by which I mean produce) children. Typically one Member of the gay couple is not involved (biologically) and a third person is involved given the need for sexual complementarity to procreate. That third person then typically exits the scene and the law typically ascribes no responsibility at all for the children they have produced.
 
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