Merrywives' Blog

Peeling the Onion

El Guapo — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:11:45 +0000

Polygamy advocate Mark Henkel provides great arguments for Polygamy:

A Snapshot of Polygamy: Stories (Part 1)

El Guapo — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 17:59:43 +0000

I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah. Mine was a young suburb filled with new trees planted in the easement strip. Dotted and dashed along the sidewalk, driveways stitching neighbors into the commonness of the neighborhood. On each side of us and in just about each home on the street were kids my age and most in my class at school. Young families, filled with promise, living the American Dream. All were equal, right? It was supposed, but not practiced.

We believed in Plural Marriage, and despite our best efforts, and the fact that my Dad had only one wife, the secret would slowly leak out. We were the odd ones, sectioned out, teased and name called by our peers, sniffed at by the adults, and in most cases blatantly talked about and snubbed. This was true at the corner store, at the gas station, and for me, in school by my teachers, whom at first I was enamored with, but then as the coolness turned cold, I learned not to trust.

It was not this treatment though that kept us quiet and secluded into our own home. It was the threat of being found out for our beliefs. We had to watch every reference made in public and around our LDS relatives. We could not let on to our religious leanings. My grandfather had been put into jail for the practice of Plural Marriage, arrested in the 1944 raid. This a man I knew as a good and honest man, and if they could put Grandpa Dave into prison I wondered how would my Dad possibly be protected? In fact when he was 12 years old he and his younger siblings were taken into court and called on to testify against their Dad. How would I ever, ever be able to do such a thing as that?

I remember full well coming out of a “cottage meeting”, we dared not meet formally in a church, I was holding my father’s hand as we came down the gravel drive, when we spotted the men in black suits standing behind the parked cars taking down the license plate numbers in their little spiral notebooks. I don’t know for sure if they were FBI, or just spies for the Mormon Church. I do know my father’s hand tightened as he stopped right in his tracks and I could feel the worry travel through him and into me. I knew at that point I would never talk, never share with my friends, my cousins, and associates who we were and how we believed. No one was going to steal my Dad from me, no one. I would protect him the best I could and silence was that way.

Well, that was the early sixties, and this is a new millennium, right? Not so much. Fear still exists. With dealings such as the 2008 raid in EldoradoTexasthe specter becomes real, giving fear flesh and bone.

Living with the shroud of being underground, secretive and not forthcoming cheats a person out of fullness, out of legitimacy and slants their life in unreasonable ways. I don’t want this for my children or my grandchildren. I don’t want fear of raids, of separation, imprisonment haunting their lives. So, if I want change I must bring about that change…each generation is entitled to build their own institutions, and I am able to build upon the steps of those that have moved before me, aiming for a stronger foundation for the exercising of our rights for those that are our future.

~Written by A Woman’s Place~

A Feminist Studies Mormon Polygamy And, Remarkably, Finds That It Liberated the Wives

El Guapo — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 20:43:17 +0000

Here’s an interesting archive from the July 10, 1978 Vol. 10 No. 2 edition of People Magazine.

A Feminist Studies Mormon Polygamy And, Remarkably, Finds That It Liberated the Wives

By Linda Witt

For her Ph.D. thesis in counseling psychology at Northwestern University, Utah-born Vicky Burgess-Olson felt herself drawn to an examination of her Mormon roots and the peculiar institution of early Mormon families—polygamy. The great-great-granddaughter of a man with four wives, Dr. Burgess-Olson, 33, studied the diaries kept by Mormon pioneer women between 1847 and 1885. She followed up her ground-breaking research by editing Sister Saints, a study of 19th-century Mormon women, published by Brigham Young University. A confirmed feminist and mother of two sons and two daughters, Burgess-Olson recently completed summer training at Fort Sam Houston as a major in the U.S. Army Reserve. She is a school psychologist in Provo, Utah, where her husband, Eric Olson, 34, an Egyptologist, teaches at Brigham Young. Dr. Burgess-Olson talked with Linda Witt of PEOPLE about her research.

The 341 pioneer Mormon women you studied shared 104 husbands. How many were happy with their situation?

Just like today’s marriages, some were, some weren’t. But the idea that polygamist wives were necessarily jealous of each other is false. Some 91 percent of the wives I studied gave consent for the second and further marriages. Often it was the woman who suggested, “Maybe we’d better take another wife,” and sometimes the first wife gave the subsequent bride away at the wedding.

Still, some wives must have objected?

Well, yes. One disgruntled wife sent all the kids into the parlor, where her husband was courting his newest.

What was the role of sex?

We really don’t know. Even in their diaries, these women were stereotype Victorians. They only referred obliquely to sex—writing how they wished their husbands were around, or saying how cold their beds had gotten. We do know polygamist wives had fewer, but healthier, children than monogamous wives.

How did wives adapt to each other?

Most women went through a period of adjustment to having another woman share her husband. But then they would describe how they had “overcome jealousy” and were happy. There is a great deal of evidence that these women genuinely came to love each other. They celebrated birthdays together and wrote poetry to one another. One of them talked about the enjoyment of being a member of a family with three other wives and only having to deal with the husband one week a month.

How did polygamy become a Mormon practice?

Basically through “divine revelation” in 1843 to Joseph Smith, who founded the church. Mormons called polygamy “living the principle” and believed that all partners to a marriage were “sealed” together for eternity. Much has been made of Brigham Young’s 56 wives. But only 15 of them bore his 57 children. Some of his marriages were likely made for spiritual convenience. Unmarried Mormons cannot enter the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom.

What other factors explain polygamy?

One is history. Joseph Smith grew up in New York State when many religious sects, such as the Shakers and Oneidas, were trying all sorts of different social patterns, many of them involving sex and marriage.

Were there more women than men in Utah in those days?

No, that’s a common misconception. Polygamy didn’t originate because of numerical imbalance. In fact, many young men felt bitter that young women often chose to marry older, established and already married men.

Why did women make this choice?

Throughout history women seem to have been very calculating about whom they marry. They often choose rich and older men. In the same way Mormon girls often married the prominent local bishops rather than the fuzzy-faced young farmers their own age. Bishops even stole the girlfriends of their young sons.

You write that plural marriages were often liberating. How?

When the husbands were away visiting other wives in other houses, the wives they left behind ran farms, ranches or silkworm operations, and were literally heads of households. If the families shared the same house, the women had different assignments and could usually do what they liked best. Not being stuck with so much of the housework freed them for things like going to concerts or church. Of the sister wives I studied, 54 percent had full-time jobs outside the home.

What did they accomplish?

The first woman state senator in America was Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon of Utah. Ellis Reynolds Shipp is another plural wife who became a doctor. Her sister wife, Maggie, went East to medical school first, but dropped out temporarily. Since the family had already paid the tuition, Ellis left her children, traveled East and got the degree. Maggie followed, then the husband. Finally the three M.D.s started a public health journal together.

Isn’t that an unusual case?

No, other women became poets, lawyers, businesswomen, newspaper publishers. One of the first newspapers for and by women west of the Mississippi was the Woman’s Exponent, launched by Mormon women in Utah.

Did they back women’s liberation?

Today’s concept didn’t exist for them. Yet many were involved feminists. One reason women got the vote in Utah as early as 1870 was because the church hierarchy wanted to show the U.S. that Mormons weren’t suppressing women in spite of polygamy. Brigham Young also encouraged feminism because he needed women to build the state. He once said the church wanted women to run the stores as well as sweep the houses.

Were prominent Mormon women among the activists?

Many were, including Brigham Young’s daughter, Zina Young Williams, who attended the 1879 National Woman Suffrage Association meeting in Washington and asked Congress to legitimize the children of polygamous marriages. And Susa Young Gates, Brigham Young’s 41st child, was a friend of the suffragette Susan B. Anthony, who journeyed to Utah in 1896 to attend the statehood ceremonies.

Why was polygamy abandoned?

Under pressure from the federal government, the Mormon church had to give up the principle in 1890 simply to survive.

What happened to the multiple wives?

It became terribly difficult. No one knew who was married and who wasn’t. Some went underground. Other men divorced their first wife and married their second, then divorced her and married their third and so on, in order to make the children legitimate. Families were wrenched apart, and often husbands and wives were jailed.

Polygamy seems to have surfaced again in Utah. Is it accepted by the church?

No. Every Mormon is encouraged to go to the temple frequently, but must first get a temple “recommend.” If you are sympathetic to polygamists, you are denied the recommend. If you are a polygamist yourself, you are excommunicated. That’s the official position. But in reality, there is a great deal of tolerance of polygamy.

Do you know anyone who is practicing plural marriage?

Yes. I found out about one family when we got an invitation to a daughter’s wedding under a name I didn’t recognize. The wife explained, “Didn’t you know we’re polygamists? The name I use publicly is just one I picked out so the authorities couldn’t trace it.” She added, “We have two other wives.” Later on I learned how it works. All the babies are born at the individual mother’s home with the help of a circuit-riding doctor and a midwife. The husband considers himself a Mormon, even though he is excommunicated; all the children attend church regularly. There are no real statistics on how many polygamous families like this exist. The civil authorities seem to want to ignore the situation and not prosecute.

Do you think polygamy will come back in fashion?

No, it’s too expensive, too complicated. Most modern Mormons are very typical, middle-class Americans with typical middle-class aspirations. Polygamy wouldn’t work for them.

Then why is a study of polygamy relevant?

Many modern communes are essentially polygamist; it is a very real issue today.

Would you ever consider polygamy?

No, I wouldn’t want to share my husband. But then sometimes I think, well, maybe—if we could get a good housekeeper, one who could sew, and I was still the sexy cute wife.

The paradox of polygamy II: Why most women benefit from polygamy and most men benefit from monogamy

El Guapo — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 20:35:33 +0000

The paradox of polygamy II: Why most women benefit from polygamy and most men benefit from monogamy

By Satoshi Kanazawa

Created Feb 21 2008 – 7:10pm

Contrary to popular belief, most women benefit from polygynous society, and most men benefit from monogamous society. This is because polygynous society allows some women to share a resourceful man of high status. George Bernard Shaw (who was one of the founders of the London School of Economics and Political Science where I teach) put it best, when he observed, “The maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first rate man to the exclusive possession of a third rate one.”

Or, as the comedian Bill Maher asked his panel on his TV show Politically Incorrect on January 7, 1998, “Would you rather be the second or third wife of Mel Gibson or the only wife of Willard Scott?”, to which one of the panelists, the conservative commentator and activist Susan Carpenter McMillan, responded, “If it comes to Mel Gibson, I wouldn’t care if I was one, two, or three.” Of course, this was back when Mel Gibson was highly desirable. Substitute Matt Damon for Mel Gibson. The cast of characters changes in a decade, but the principle remains the same.

In contrast, most men benefit from monogamous society. Given a 50-50 sex ratio, monogamous society virtually guarantees a wife for every man, even a third-rate one. Under polygyny, some third-rate men may not find a wife at all, or, even if they are lucky enough to find one, their wife will not be as desirable as the one they can secure for themselves under monogamy, because under polygyny more desirable women would have become the second, third, or tenth wife of more desirable men.

The exceptions to this rule are highly desirable women, who benefit from monogamous society, and highly desirable men, who benefit from polygynous society. A highly desirable woman can marry a highly desirable man under any circumstances, but under polygyny she’d have to share her desirable husband with other women, whereas under monogamy she can monopolize him. A highly desirable man can acquire multiple wives under polygyny, but must confine himself to only one wife (albeit a highly desirable one) under monogamy.

It’s the nature of the statistical (“bell curve”) distribution, however, that most people are not extreme on either side; for example, most people are not extremely tall or extremely short, but of more or less average height. Similarly, most men and women are neither extremely desirable nor extremely undesirable. So most men benefit under monogamy, and most women benefit under polygyny.

When men imagine what living in a polygynous society might be like, they imagine themselves married to several wives. What they don’t realize, however, is that, more than likely, they would be left without any wife in a polygynous society. Polygynous marriage in a polygynous society is always limited to a minority of men. If 50% of men have two wives each, then the other 50% cannot have any wives. If 25% of men have four wives each, then the other 75% cannot have any wives. When women imagine what living in a polygynous society might be like, they imagine themselves having to share their current, no-good loser of a husband with other women. What they don’t realize is that they could be sharing Matt Damon or Bill Gates with other women.

Once we begin to look at things through the lens of evolutionary psychology and biology, they start to look quite different. Something that we previously thought was quite bizarre and morally wrong, like polygyny, begins to look quite natural and common. The perspective also gives us a new insight, like how women, not men, mostly benefit in polygynous societies.

The paradox of polygamy I: Why most Americans are polygamous

El Guapo — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 20:32:47 +0000

The paradox of polygamy I: Why most Americans are polygamous

By Satoshi Kanazawa

Created Feb 17 2008 – 8:07am

Polygyny has been in the public eye and many Americans’ water-cooler conversations lately, from the success of the HBO series Big Love to the trial of the Mormon sect leader Warren Jeffs. Most Americans consider polygynous marriage to be exotic, unusual, bizarre, and even morally wrong, hence the attraction of Big Love or the titillation of the Jeffs’ trial. But polygyny is not that exotic; many — even most — Americans are already in polygynous marriages.

First, let’s get our terms straight. Polygyny is the scientific term for a marriage of one man to more than one woman. Polygamy refers to both polygyny and polyandry – marriage of one woman to more than one man. Polygamy is often used synonymously with polygyny because there are very few polyandrous societies in the world.

Of course, simultaneous polygyny, of the kind depicted in Big Love and practiced by Jeffs, is illegal in all 50 states. However, many Americans (and others) practiceserial polygyny, through a series of marriage, divorce, and remarriage. For all practical purposes, the consequences of serial polygyny are exactly the same as those of simultaneous polygyny.

When a man like Bill Henrickson — the fictional polygynist on Big Love – has three wives simultaneously, the mathematical consequence, given a roughly 50-50 sex ratio, is that he is depriving two other men of their reproductive opportunities. Two other men cannot have a wife and children because Henrickson has three wives. When Donald Trump has had three wives sequentially, he too deprived two other men of their reproductive opportunities, because by the time he divorced his previous wives, they were past their reproductive age. The strongest predictor of remarriage after divorce is sex; men typically remarry, women typically don’t. Neither Ivana Trump nor Marla Maples remarried after divorce from Trump (although Ivana was briefly married without children before Trump).

Extramarital affairs are another means of polygynous mating, and married men are more likely to engage in affairs than married women. When a monogamously married man has two unmarried mistresses or girlfriends, the consequence is essentially the same; he is depriving two other men of their mating opportunities. So any man who’s ever divorced and remarried, any woman who’s ever married a divorced man, any married man who’s ever had long-term affairs, or any woman who’s ever had affairs with married men, are all practicing polygyny at some level, with the same consequences as simultaneous polygyny of Henrickson and Jeffs.

Whether simultaneous or serial, polygyny is common because humans are naturally polygynous. Scientists agree that anthropological and archeological evidence shows conclusively that humans have been mildly polygynous throughout evolutionary history. (But remember the danger of the naturalistic fallacy — deriving moral implications from scientific facts. “Natural” means neither “good” nor “desirable.” Nor does it mean “inevitable.”) Humans are not as polygynous as gorillas, whose silverback males keep a harem of several females, but not strictly monogamous like gibbons, whose male and female mate for life.

In the next post, I’ll address the question of who benefits from polygynous society: men or women? The answer might surprise you.

The Present State of Our Polygamous Future

El Guapo — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 21:59:14 +0000

The Present State of Our Polygamous Future

Jul 20, 2011

Joe Carter

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2011/07/the-present-state-of-our-polygamous-future

In an interview on the science in science fiction, novelist William Gibson noted, “[T]he future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.” What Gibson meant was that the innovations in science fiction could already be found—at least in embryonic form—in our current ideas or technology. Much the same could be said about future social and legal norms concerning the institution of marriage—they are already here, they’re just not evenly distributed yet.

A prime example is the social and legal acceptance of polygamous marriage. The legal bulwark against polygamy was the first to go, dismantled by the Supreme Court rulingLawrence v. Texas. “Liberty presumes an autonomy of self,” claimed Justice Anthony Kennedy in the majority opinion, “that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct.”

As Justice Antonin Scalia recognized in the minority opinion, the decision could be used to legalize bigamy and would be a “massive disruption of the current social order.” Last week the New York Times featured a story about a polygamist who is suing the state of Utah to overturn its anti-polygamy law that proves Scalia a prophet:

The lawsuit is not demanding that states recognize polygamous marriage. Instead, the lawsuit builds on a 2003 United States Supreme Court decision, Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down state sodomy laws as unconstitutional intrusions on the “intimate conduct” of consenting adults. It will ask the federal courts to tell states that they cannot punish polygamists for their own “intimate conduct” so long as they are not breaking other laws, like those regarding child abuse, incest or seeking multiple marriage licenses.

One man’s slippery slope is another’s ladder of progress. Homosexual activists needed over thirty years to go from Stonewall to Goodridge. But they have paved a clearer path for polygamists. And, unlike gay marriage, polygamy already has a long-standing cultural precedent. All of the major world religions—Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity—have at one time in their history condoned the practice of taking multiple spouses.

The same holds true for most every culture on earth. Out of 1170 societies recorded in Murdock’s Ethnographic Atlas, polygyny (the practice of men having more than one wife) is prevalent in 850. Even our own culture, which has an astoundingly high divorce and remarriage rate, practices a form of “serial polygamy.”

Advocates for same-sex marriage often refer to polls showing the social acceptance of homosexual relationships as a justification for expanding the definition of marriage. From this we can adduce, a fortiori, that since polygamy has an even stronger claim to historical and cultural acceptance, it should be included in the new expansion of marriage “rights.”

The appeal to “rights” also undercuts any reason to give special preference to same-sex relationships over polygamous ones. The precedents established in Lawrenceand Goodridge are equally applicable to polyamorous relationships and homosexual couplings. As Scalia noted in his dissent, as long as polygamists are not violating established laws or committing child abuse, states no longer have the authority to regulate their living arrangements.

With this decriminalization comes the inevitable push for acceptance. It happened with homosexual relationships and it will happen with polyamorous ones too. And why should society deny a man the right to marry all the women he loves? What reasons do those who favor gay marriage have for excluding polygamy? Having rejected all arguments from nature and reason when they were used against their position, what do they have left to justify their discrimination?

The answer is nothing but arbitrary personal preference. Those who truly believe that homosexuals have a legal right to marry someone of the same gender have undercut the grounds for barring polyamorous groups from doing the same. If a man can marry another man why should he be barred from marrying two or three or four men if he chooses?

Unfortunately, many advocates of same-sex marriage are coming to the same realization, and instead of reconsidering their position, they merely shrug. They agree that allowing one requires allowing the other. But for them, polygamy is at worst an unfortunate but necessary tradeoff on the path to normalizing same-sex unions.

As usual, the progressive legal scholars are ahead of the curve. Six years ago Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, made an eloquent case for the legalization of polygamy:

When the high court struck down anti-sodomy laws in Lawrence vs. Texas, we ended decades of the use of criminal laws to persecute gays. However, this recent change was brought about in part by the greater acceptance of gay men and lesbians into society, including openly gay politicians and popular TV characters.

Such a day of social acceptance will never come for polygamists. It is unlikely that any network is going to air The Polygamist Eye for the Monogamist Guy or add a polygamist twist to Everyone Loves Raymond. No matter. The rights of polygamists should not be based on popularity, but principle.

Turley was far too morose in his assessment. It took less than a decade for Kody Brown—the polygamist plaintiff mentioned in the New York Times article—to get a reality TV show. In late 2010, TLC premiered “Sister Wives,” featuring Kody, his four “wives” (he’s legally married to only one woman), and their sixteen children. The promotional material on TLC’s website invites us to “Follow the Brown family and see how they attempt to navigate life as a ‘normal’ family in a society that shuns their polygamist lifestyle.”

After watching the entire first season I can testify that the Brown family is rather “normal”—at least by the standards of our twenty-first century “anything goes” culture. Sure, they’re a bit weird. But who isn’t nowadays? And by society’s moral logic, if you get to know someone and they seem nice and normal then you can’t condemn their lifestyle choices. As long as their flagpole is attached to a well-kept cottage, why shouldn’t they be able to let their freak flag fly?

My fellow Christians are already leading the apathetic shrug of “tolerance.” As one woman wrote on the TLC website:

First off I am not a Mormon, I am Baptist, and let me tell you, those who judge these people remember you shall be judged as you judge. This family is happy, these women all agreed to the arrangement. It is no different than a man having 4 mistresses and children by them. This way they all know about one another, there is no lying, no cheating, there is acceptance and an abundance of love. They need to be left alone to raise their children. God Bless the Browns and keep them safe.

That just about says it all, doesn’t it?

The social acceptance of polygamy is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed throughout society. At least not yet.

Commentary on “On the Morality of Polygamy Law: Freedom vs Harm”

El Guapo — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 01:01:34 +0000

Monogamy has been codified into the law of the land due to a nineteenth century religious bias inherited from a state religion tradition in government dating to the Romans where there was only one church. If there had been true separation of church and state in this country, the government would have been religion neutral and freedom would have trumped any alleged harm regarding polygamy—But, as black slaves had to fight for their freedom to overturn “Dred Scott” and eventually gain civil rights equality (in this America where all men are purportedly created equal), polygamists have had to fight as well for the reversal of “Reynolds” and continue to endure oppressive bias regarding a religiously mandated monogamy. This begs the question, “In a free state, why should the religious tradition (monogamy) of the majority be imposed on an unpopular religious minority?”

It is only recently (twentieth century) that women have had any kind of parity with men and monogamy has predominated as the marriage standard for about fifteen hundred years or so—So in actuality, women in general are only now in modern times achieving a hard fought for equality. Monogamy only served to keep them unequal with men for centuries past…

Women, who wish to live as sister wives, deserve the right to participate in the legal circle of marriage, and to share in the panoply of rights that monogamous women have finally achieved. Why should these rights be the exclusive benefit of monogamous women only, discriminating against those women who wish to associate as sister wives? Remember the old cliché, “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander?” No woman should be left out of the equality equation! This logical line of thinking has been used in the gay rights battle for a long time now and is winning bit by bit. It has already won in Canada where all the animals are equal except for polygamists.

In the referenced article, Craig Jones makes a false and unsupported statement when he asserts, “…all forms of polygamy contribute to the discrimination of women and the sexualization of young girls.”

The Canadian Reference Case has developed no trial record whatever wherein the polyamorist polygamists have exhibited any abuse record. Yet S. 293 proscribes all forms of polygamy. Craig Jones wants to ignore the amply liberated polyamorists and indulge in the selective prosecution of polygyny only. Selective prosecution is a twin brother to special prosecutor shopping for which polygamy charges were thrown out in the first place.

The tactic of using claims of alleged harm to restrict individual freedom is a dangerous road to travel and has proven to be faulty in regard to the gay marriage issue. Little evidence has surfaced supporting harm from legalizing gay marriage in Canada and certainly not enough to restrict consenting adult choice. After all, abuse is not unique to any religion or marriage arrangement and is the product of individuals and not institutions.

~Submitted by HJD

Polygamy Law: Freedom vs Harm

El Guapo — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 00:42:38 +0000

This blog post from “Progressive Proselytizing” caught our attention:

On the Morality of Polygamy Law: Freedom vs Harm

Should polygamy be legal? This question is at the core of the landmark polygamy case slowly working its way up the Canadian justice system. To answer this, we look at the balance between harm and freedom. The balance in this case is contrasted to the case of gay marriage.

That restricting the ability to legally engage in polygamy is restricting freedom is obvious. That it is often a religious freedom doesn’t specifically matter to me – although as a practical matter this will be argued in court as explicitly religious freedom being infringed on – for I think that whatever the justification, if people have a desire to do something then restricting that desire is a restriction of freedom.

On the other hand, there is the potential that polygamy leads to harm. As Craig Jones, a lawyer for the BC government puts it, “all forms of polygamy contribute to the discrimination of women and the sexualization of young girls”. Now polygamy has been heavily stigmatized as well as poorly represented by the occasional – but much publicized – genuinely predatory people or in very different cultures and so it gets a perhaps poorer representation as harmful than is justified. However, for the purpose of discussion let us just accept at face value all of this alleged harm.

The result is we now have to balance these two sides. On the one side, we are restricting freedoms and on the other we are preventing harm. It should be noted that the burden of proof is firmly in the latter camp to establish harm. That polygamy is sufficiently rare in Canada that this case is just now coming up is not a sufficient reason to objectively restrict freedoms; indeed, we should attempt to never do this unless clearly justified. The harm must be clearly proven to exist otherwise we default to the position that freedom must be allowed.

However, this still isn’t sufficient. One must further demonstrate that simply restricting the alleged predatory components is not sufficient to eliminating the harm. This is important because a lot of the harm gets conflated in this way. Is the problem consulting adults engaging in polygamy or sex with young girls, because the latter is illegal and polygamy laws don’t change that.

My view is that it should be legal. Polygamy has a very large cultural stigma that is impeding the legal freedom of people to marry how they choose. The alleged harm it does I think is both overstated and not at all obvious that restricting polygamy is fixing the specific problems we wish to address.

All of this has an interesting consideration with respect to gay marriage which has the same background of a cultural stigma and then an argument of freedom versus harm. With gay marriage however the alleged harm was very tenuous at best. People have argued things like that it breaks down the family unit, is bad for kids etc etc yet these statements have been proven wrong in study after study. Even if one falsely believes in a net harm, the freedom trumps the harm almost regardless; I don’t care how much harm gay couples might do it is still the right thing to do for them to have the right to marry. Even if the studies were wrong and one could demonstrate a small difference between, say, gay and straight parents as aggregates, the enormous diversity within either populations would utterly dominate this difference and allowing gay marriage is still unequivocally the right thing to do.

Returning to polygamy, we can learn something from the gay rights struggle. We can learn how this tactic of claiming harm to restrict freedom has been used before and proven false. We can learn how activities that are stigmatized as socially deviant get attacked on the basis of unjustified harm. We can deduce that thus is more than likely the case here as well and hence that we should support polygamy. I accept the framing of harm vs freedom for this is the framing by which we should consider all government impositions on freedom (such as locking up murderers, say) but what I don’t accept is that the balance in this case is on the ‘harm’ side.

We may not like Polygamy, but Decriminalization makes sense

El Guapo — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 17:14:18 +0000

The following article from the Globe and Mail, written by Marina Adshade (economist at Dalhousie University) makes an interesting arguement for decriminalization:

The overwhelming majority of Canadians do not want to live in a polygamous household and, from an economic perspective, that observation is a bit of a mystery.

For a country like Canada, in which wealth is very unequally distributed,economic theory predicts that wealthy men should have more of everything, including wives. This doesn’t suggest that wives are property. It suggests that if income matters then women who are maximizing their welfare, and the welfare of their children, should prefer to be the second, third, fourth wife of a very wealthy man to being the only wife of a poor man. Yet, despite high levels of inequality, the industrialized nations of the world all have adopted monogamy as the dominant marriage institution.
The explanation for why monogamy is preferred has to do with the way in which personal wealth is generated in industrialized nations.
In industrialized nations wealth is generated by those who are highly skilled. There is an economic argument for having only one spouse in an economy where wealth is a function of education – better educated men want to have better educated children and the best way to do that is for those children to have a well educated mother. Educated women have more bargaining power in the household and are better equipped to negotiate an arrangement where they are the only wife. Less educated women marry less educated men, but those men can only afford one wife anyway, and so monogamy pervades.
In Canada we don’t have monogamy because the laws enforce this marital arrangement, we have these laws because historically this has been the arrangement that the majority has preferred.
So the question is, if monogamy is the best arrangement for those who can afford additional spouses, why does this institution need to be enshrined in the law? In the economic sense a policy is not optimal if someone can be made better off without making others worse off. If this is the criterion, then it has to be that criminalization of polygamy not be an optimal policy. If we allow everyone to act in their own best interests when making marriage choices, and assume that parents act in the best interest of their children, then surely those who chose to live in a polygamous household are better off than they would be in a monogamous household. They have to be because that is the arrangement they have chosen.
You can’t make someone better off by forcing them to choose an alternative form of marriage that they do not prefer.
You may be worried that someone is being made worse off – the poor guys who can’t find a wife because some men are taking more than their share. But, there will never be so much polygamy in Canada that it will add to the pool of men who will never marry.
Anyhow, the fact that so many women prefer to remain single than to be married to man who they don’t desire as a husband is a much bigger contributor to bachelorhood than polygamy ever will be.

Link to article

Face to Face with the Polygamous Beast

El Guapo — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 21:03:00 +0000

The sarcasm and humor in this piece is just too much to resist sharing here on our blog. JRNorth articulates many of the talking points we’ve attempted to educate our society with. Many who have left the “monogamous” society will appreciate this piece.

I don’t know if there is something in the water, or what the reason is, but the mountains certainly seem to attract a great variety of philosophical extremes in the people there.

I met so many different people, with so many different philosophies, and that certainly included many different beliefs about marriage. I met some people who believed that marriage was no business of the government, and they followed an aboriginal custom of the Paux (spelling?). It is a simple custom: The two in love would decide if they wanted to marry and would make their covenants to each other and announce their marriage at a community function, or to their families.

A woman that I worked with had two husbands. The marriage seemed to work for them and they were normal people. They had a unique arrangement, one husband worked in a mine and was on a two week in – two week out schedule for work. During the two weeks that he was home, the other husband moved out to a different house, then during the two weeks that he was in the mine, the other husband moved in to the wife’s house. It was an interesting arrangement.

There were lots of free love spirits (the spirit of the 60′s is still strong in the mountains) who did not believe in any formal type of marriage, just a whole lot of free love. These people reminded me most of the “monogamous” families from my childhood. They would speak of freedom to do as they wanted, and that no one should interfere with them, but in the next breath put down another’s point of view. Blatantly hypocritical, but still there were a few nice people among them.

Then came the time that I met a mormon polygamous family. I was prepared for the worse. Surely they would immediately strive to kidnap me, then brain wash me, and then turn me into one of their drones, stealing my individuality and turning me into a monster. I waited. And waited. And they did not kidnap me. I watched them closely. Surely they were just biding their time and trying to gain my confidence and then they would pounce. But no matter how long I waited, they did not molest me. The monogamists that raised me were wrong!

I waited patiently to see all the classical signs of abuse, but never saw any. I could not believe it. I was told by my “monogamous” parents and “monogamous” church that these polygamists were devils, demons disguised as people. But where were the abused children? Where were the cigarette burns on their hands? Why could they sit down without wincing in pain from being whipped? I did not believe that they were acting normal. Perhaps they were just faking everything while I was around. Of course I don’t know how they could have healed the bruises and black eyes instantly. Perhaps because it was all a lie. Perhaps my monogamous family, and monogamous churches were wrong.

Well, if I could not find the signs of abuse in the children, surely it would show among the women. Those chattel who were traded back and forth between men. There was no way that they could hide the abuse and the mental damage that the media swore up and down was being committed. After all, according to the “monogamous” media, each polygamous man had a grand elevated gold plated throne in his house that he sat in, while his harem of women mulled about his feet, fulfilling his every whim. And if one of his wives batted an eyelash, then according to the stories that the “monogamous” told, the man would have his wife stripped naked and beat, then sold or traded to another man, only to start the entire proceedure all over again.

Being raised in a red-neck society, I was certainly familiar with the sight of abused women, and I was looking. But the problem was that not all polygamous families were actually polygamous. They believed in the doctrine, but not all of them practiced that principle. There were many families with perhaps two wives, sometimes three, but that was it. There were stories of men who had many more wives than that, but I have not met them in person. So maybe they are the ones with the throne rooms??? Anyway, there were many different types of women and they each had their own personalities, just like in “monogamous” society. There were many different body shapes and sizes, and different hair styles, different makeup, different shoes, and all the sorts of things that women like. The women even had straight teeth and fillings, and some even wore glasses. Now I could not figure out how they were so oppressed and never allowed to have anything, if they were free to go to the dentist and the optometrist. Another “monogamous” lie.

On the internet, I searched and found different blogs, and message boards, and chat rooms that polygamous families inhabited, and I joined some of them. Which is ironic in itself, since the “monogamous” media likes to point out how the mormon polygamous women are not allowed to watch TV, use the internet, have cell phones, etc. I can only ask, how are they on the internet if they are not allowed to use the internet? How do they know what happened on a TV show if they are not allowed to watch TV? How do we talk on the phone in the car, if they are not allowed to have cell phones?

The cell phone one is quite ironic. During the raid in Texas, where the government invaded a mormon polygamous community, and abducted hundreds of children at gun point, even the cops believed the media that polygamists were so oppressed that they did not understand cell phones and computers. They believed it so much that they did not think to thoroughly search their victims for and take away the cell phones of the teenage girls (whom they think are oppressed and uneducated and not allowed to use cell phones). And it was from those teenagers that we now have pictures of the inside of their prisons. The girls took the pictures with their cell phones and emailed them to the outside. They sent text messages to people on the outside, telling us what was happening to them. (Which pictures also helped fight against the lies that the government people were telling the media, concerning the treatment of the abducted children.) It is amazing how well, the girls knew how to use a cell phone, and take pictures, and text messages, since the “monogamous” media has been brain washing the american public into believing that the women in polygamy were oppressed and were forbidden to use technology.

There are unhappy women though. There are women in polygamous marriages who are just not happy with their situation and want out. And some get out. There are women in monogamous marriages who are just not happy with their situation and want out. And some get out. There are some women in polygamous marriages who perhaps should not be there. Just like there are some women in monogamous marriages who perhaps should not be there. There may even be women in polygamous marriages who are mean, spiteful, jealous, covetous, and even self serving, just like the women in monogamous marriages. And when they don’t get their way, they throw their temper tantrum, divorce their husbands, and then try to hurt them where ever they can do the most damage. Not much different from monogamous society. In fact, exactly the same.

If I can just digress for a moment. If there is any abuse, whether it is in a polygamous family, a monogamous family, or even a “monogamous” family, then help should be offered. No one, no matter what the marital situation, or religious situation, should have to live with abuse.

Yet, much to my surprize, I could not find the abuse that I was brainwashed into believing was there. I was raised in a very low class neighbourhood, and I saw the psychological damage that occured from abuse, but I have never seen that damage among the polygamists. Now I do not want to downplay anyone’s suffering. There are good and bad in all cultures, and I will not say that there have not been cases of abuse among polygamous cultures, but I do stand by my conviction that there is not the level of abuse present that the “monogamous” cultures claim there is among the polygamous.

The polygamous women are the same as any other women. They have the same freedoms as any one. They can come and go, drive cars, have careers, and get educations, and run for political office if they want. They do not spend all their time dressed in harem gowns and dancing in circles in front of their husbands. By now, you can imagine that I was losing faith in my “monogamous” upbringing and the elitist mentality of the churches that I had belonged to.

Surely the men would be no different than those I had grown up with. My own dad was abusive and lazy and indolent, as well as an alcoholic and smoker. He would womanize and spend his time and money in taverns, leaving his children with very little to eat. But at least he was a “monogamist”, and not as evil as a polygamist.

If you can imagine how much an honourable “monogamous” man has to work to provide for one wife and a few children, you can imagine how much a polygamous man has to work to provide for two or three wives and a dozen children. If you can imagine struggling to deal with the emotional needs of one wife, then try to imagine caring for the emotional needs of two. To find the time to have quality time with each of your children is often a challenge in the “monogamous” world, now do I really have to continue this sentence? Anyone who thinks polygamous men are in it for the sex, or to be waited on hand and foot, has absolutely no idea that the earth revolves around the sun.

In fact, another disturbing fact is that there are men in polygamous marriages that are being abused by their wives. It happens just like in the monogamous side of society. Some women are controlling, and abusive, always manipulating to get their way above all others. Just imagine dealing with the temper tantrums, fits, and manipulations of just one wife, then multiply it. It is quite obvious, as you can imagine, the level of abuse that one man has to live with when both his wives join forces and abuse him without mercy. Picking on him so much that he has absolutely no freedom or choice in his life. He becomes nothing more than a slave. If he leaves, he is ostracized and loses his family, and loses his salvation. No matter what, abuse is wrong, whether it happens to a woman, or to a man.

This is another long post, and I need to take a break, so to wind it down, I would just like to say that certainly there may be some situations in polygamous lifestyles that may not be for everyone, but that is why the good Lord gave us our freedom to choose our own paths. The scriptures tell us of the war in heaven and how satan tried to take away our freedom to choose. The question seems to be, which side will I be on? The side that allows for free choice, or the side that seeks to take freedom away by every means possible, including politically? I may not agree with everything that the polygamists, or even the “monogamists” do, but I will stand up for the freedom of all.
Posted by JRNorth at 11:34 AM