A lot of people are quick to assume that my opposition to polygamy is due to intolerance of religion or the personal lives of others. Nothing could be further from the truth. Too often when we question the ethics of polygamy, the issue of adult liberties obscures other considerations. Rarely do we hear anyone speak of the rights of children or other society members who may be affected by such a pursuit.

It isn't about religion. I'm a cosmopolitan thinker. I welcome diversity and group solidarity. Religion is one of the most fascinating things about the human condition. But it's a mistake to avoid criticizing a behavior simply because it's an unusual cultural behavior. In ethics, particularly the cosmopolitan variety to which I ascribe, we have to look past cultural differences to identify actual human rights abuses. In anthropology, the emphasis is on observing culture without making moral judgments, but in ethics, moral judgments are the name of the game. It's all a matter of making appropriate moral judgments when the occasion arises. We can't refrain from making moral judgments. It's part of being human. But as the proverb says, judge not lest ye be judged. I interpret this to mean that there should be no hypocrisy in making judgments, but I don't think the proverb was intended to mean that we should refrain from making moral judgments altogether. I would know how to do that.

To ignore harms caused by some cultural activities is to be guilty of moral relativism. Again, we are not doing anthropology when we discuss ethics. Moral (cultural) relativism is a trap we should always avoid in ethics. When we forget this, we lose our ability to judge without hypocrisy. Some cultural practices are harmful indeed, like female genital mutilation, so appealing to culture is no excuse in moral matters. If that was not the case, we would be wrong to condemn slavery too.

When it comes to human rights and justice, morality is universal; not relative. We aren't going to turn our backs on anyone's human rights simply because they are part of a foreign culture. That's unacceptable. Cultural-bound moral ideas are part of the private moral sphere, whereas justice and human rights are public matters. So as long as someone's cultural practices don't harm anyone else's human rights, there is no problem and public morality is unaffected. The same goes for our private lives at home. As long as we aren't harming the rights of anyone else, what we do in private should remain beyond public scrutiny. But there is a line to draw. If anyone's private behavior puts someone else's human rights at risk, it is no longer a private matter. Crime is a public matter. Keeping the public and private realm differentiated is crucial when it comes to balancing everyone's rights You can do as you please as long as you harm no one else. But remember that even indirect harms bring harm to others. So we have to prevent behaviors that even cause indirect harm, like polygamy in the case of "consenting adults only."

Polygamy causes indirect harms even in cases where everyone is a consenting adult. For one thing, nobody has the authority to engage in a practice that upsets the opportunity for everyone to have a spouse. This is what happens in polygamous societies. There will always be a limited number of women available to marry. And there will always be men who want to marry the available women. Nobody has the consent from general society to collect extra spouses from the pool. In a closed polygamous society, this causes severe shortages and men have to leave the society if they wish to marry. Nobody has consent to affect society this way. There is roughly enough for each person to have one spouse. That is equal. That is not excessive.

Certain human conditions are true everywhere, and that's why morality has to be universal. Your right to liberty and your right to be free from harm should be no more or less than that of anyone else, regardless of where you live and what is your cultural background. That's why we have to protect underage girls from being married off before they're capable of giving proper consent. When this happens, liberties are severely out of balance in favor of the adult man in the situation. Justice is impossible in such a situation. The man has taken liberties, but liberty is something the young girl will never know.

This feature of balanced liberties extends to religious liberties. My liberties in this regard end as soon as I compromise the liberties of anyone else. Steering children into a situation that forever restricts their religious liberties, so raising children to live a polygamous lifestyle according to your own religion is a threat to their own religious rights. In a just society, this should never be allowed to happen. If we didn't safeguard everyone's human rights this way, it would be pointless to claim that we have them. There are restrictions on what a person can do in the name of religion. If the law forbids it, that is the end of it. If the law is unjust, we can work with it but nobody has the right to break the law in the name of religion because the law is there to protect religious liberties in the first place. A decent society has more than just bare liberties. There are also liberties that come from having good governance. The point of justice is to ensure that everyone has an equal chance in life. And thus human rights must be universally-balanced for all.

Polygamy is a human rights concern. It deprives society of balanced liberties, which are the only liberties anyone has the right to have. When religion is the motivating force behind it, the injustices are guaranteed. Decriminalizing polygamy in the name of religious liberty is the worst reason of all, and for people who have no religious motivation behind their practice of polygamy, why is it necessary? Why should we decriminalize a dangerous practice for the few who want to go against the grain? If you have an open marriage, you have something very different from religious polygamy. Secular folks who want to call this polygamy just don't give us a good reason for decriminalizing it either. Formal, legal polygamy is just not a good move for a society and secular polygamists have not proven that it is. And religiously-motivated polygamy is a huge risk to human rights anyway

Prohibiting polygamy is not religious intolerance. There is no reason to assume that polygamy should be considered a legitimate religious practice. We have to have rules and limits when it comes to religiously-justified activities. If we didn't, we'd have no religious rights to discuss.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2011 09:31PM by Susan I/S.

Troy, that's the best argument against polygamy I've seen! Very well thought through ...

I like the argument from right and social harm: "No one has the right" to screw up society like that b/c polygamy institutionalizes inequality at a very basic level--the right to happiness in what societies have often taken to be a key element of that happiness: a mate, love, sexual needs expressed in ways that don't drive society into chaos.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/14/2011 01:23AM by derrida.

However, this one bothers me.
"There will always be a limited number of women available to marry. And there will always be men who want to marry the available women. Nobody has the consent from general society to collect extra spouses from the pool."
This seems to assume that women are a type of goods to be distributed by society. That is not the way it works. Women have the right not to marry any man, if they so choose, even though this also reduces the number of available women for men to choose a marriage partner from. It has nothing to do with whether the women are fairly distributed among the men as spouses. It has everything to to with the other points you made, regarding underage marriages to girls too young to consent and violation of established laws.

That part bothered me too. There's an implied entitlement there. "Nobody has the consent from general society to collect extra spouses from the pool" kind of sounds like the equivalent of a child's temper tantrum. Like you said, women have the right not to marry any man.

Women also have the right to be in an alternative lifestyle. Say, polyamory. This might involve one man and several women. So, Troy, if no children are involved, and religion is not involved, the outcome is still the same, one man taking more than his fair share from the "pool" without getting "general society's" permission. Does this amount to indirectly harming others? If so, than pretty much everything a person does could create indirect harm in some way.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/14/2011 01:35AM by wittyname.

Secondly, polyamory is an entirely different kettle of fish.

Marriage, even if it is merely an illegal (or perhaps I should say "non-legal") ceremony confers certain constraints on the persons involved. Since polyamory does not constrain women in that way, they are still part of the available marriage pool.

Secondly, no-one is claiming that women should be exempt from alternative lifestyles or forced into marriage or deprived of free choice. All that is being said is that one spouse to one spouse keeps the available pool of partners fairly equal. That is a just situation. One rich guy having 80 wives does NOT keep the available pool of partners equal. On rich guy having 80 mistresses also is not the ideal, but mistresses are not wives and actually have far more social and individual power over their positions than wives do.

Both of you have framed arguments that weren't actually present in Troy's position.

Rebeckah Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Secondly, polyamory is an entirely different
> kettle of fish.
>
> Marriage, even if it is merely an illegal (or
> perhaps I should say "non-legal") ceremony confers
> certain constraints on the persons involved. Since
> polyamory does not constrain women in that way,
> they are still part of the available marriage
> pool.
>

I know of many people in polyamorous relationships that are no different than polygamous marriages, they all live together, pool resources, etc. All but one relationship that I know of involves one married couple in the group. There is little difference between these lifestyles, and that of, say, the Browns from Sister Wives, except the lack of "spiritual unions" or whatever they call the additional ceremonies. If the additional partners are called "life partners" or anything else, is it any different than "spiritual wife" - I don't think it is.

This is not a different kettle of fish. Actually, in calling it that, you are missing my point. My aim was to reframe the discussion of polygamy in a way that didn't exclusively refer to FLDS-style polygamy. There are many forms of polygamy. Even when it is done within the framework of religion, there are many forms. Have you not seen the MANY polygamy dating sites out there? Jewish, christian, new-age, etc. That there are dating sites implies that there is choice involved with many versions of polygamy. To focus an argument about polygamy only on the mormon fundamentalist version is myopic.

> Secondly, no-one is claiming that women should be
> exempt from alternative lifestyles or forced into
> marriage or deprived of free choice. All that is
> being said is that one spouse to one spouse keeps
> the available pool of partners fairly equal. That
> is a just situation. One rich guy having 80 wives
> does NOT keep the available pool of partners
> equal. On rich guy having 80 mistresses also is
> not the ideal, but mistresses are not wives and
> actually have far more social and individual power
> over their positions than wives do.

There is no difference between men having a bunch of "spiritual wives" and men having mistresses. that's just getting caught up in semantics. If the additional partnerships are not legally recognized, then it's all the same thing. There's also a difference between something between a group of mutually consenting adults being legally recognized, and something being criminalized.

The argument that one guy having multiple wives is not sustainable (and 80 wives? Ridiculous, that's only within the FLDS (and similar groups). There are millions of people in the world who practice polygamy and mostly have 2-5 multiple spouses. In fact, in most of the countries that allow polygamy, 4 is the limit. Anyway, about sustainability, specifically in this country, last I checked (and admittedly, I haven't read a study for the past 5 or 6 years), the population was made up of more females than males. Additionally, that sort of sustainability isn't a good argument against polygamy, specifically. By the same argument, rich old guys getting divorced and moving on to a young trophy wife also takes women out of the dating pool for men that are in the woman's age group. So shall we discuss the ethics of trophy wives being taken out of the typical marrying age group, too?

> Both of you have framed arguments that weren't
> actually present in Troy's position.

No, we've disagreed with Troy's reasoning, and provided examples to back up why we disagreed with Troy's reasoning. Like Troy, you seem to be suggesting that disagreeing with him is the same as changing the argument against all polygamy, based on mormon style polygamy only.

There is a HUGE difference. Society has vastly different expectations and considerations for wives as opposed to mistresses. I get that you don't see it but it is reality.

http://aarticles.net/man-woman/8136-kem-luchshe-byt-zhenoj-ili-lyubovnicej-chast-1.html

"The relationship’s forbidden dimension also affects its balance of power, which is in part controlled by the unmarried mistress’s restraint and discretion. Though it forces on her considerable free time, especially during traditional holidays, it also liberates her from wifely domesticity into the mode and mystique of showing only her best face and her best behavior. The relationship may also feel or actually be egalitarian, with both partners bringing to it what they can and taking from it what they want."

http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/eabbott/2011/11/excerpt-from-mistresses-a-history-of-the-other-woman/

//The argument that one guy having multiple wives is not sustainable (and 80 wives? Ridiculous, that's only within the FLDS (and similar groups).//

I beg to differ:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/death-verdict-for-man-with-80-wives/2008/08/22/1219262540154.html

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/12/world/la-fg-nigeria-much-married-man-20110512

http://www.iranian.com/main/blog/kamran201/man-158-wives-and-260-children

Shall I go on? In polygamy, it doesn't matter why, men with power want more and more wives.

//By the same argument, rich old guys getting divorced and moving on to a young trophy wife also takes women out of the dating pool for men that are in the woman's age group. So shall we discuss the ethics of trophy wives being taken out of the typical marrying age group, too?//

It takes ONE woman out of the marriage pool. If he divorces her to marry another it ALSO takes ONE woman out of the pool -- that's kind of the point.

//No, we've disagreed with Troy's reasoning, and provided examples to back up why we disagreed with Troy's reasoning. Like Troy, you seem to be suggesting that disagreeing with him is the same as changing the argument against all polygamy, based on mormon style polygamy only.//

No, you created a strawman that wasn't Troy's reasoning and argued against that. You've made claims that you haven't sustained, such as the claim that wives and mistresses are the same thing.

+1

Rebeckah is right. Wittyname and sexismyreligion are misconstruing what the OP is saying.

Basically, on a human rights view, men and women can choose whatever lifestyle they want. In institutionalized polygamy (of any sort), many people of both genders are denied choice in how to pursue happiness.

The OP is talking the strict mathematics of gender ratios and the use of power to affect them and deny individuals equal chances or choices for pursuing happiness.

See my next to last paragraph here: http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,365206,365912#msg-365912

Polygamy as a system precisely does distribute women; it makes an economy of women's placement and circulation among men, and creates scarcity so that the remainder of disempowered men have to leave the community to find (female) partners. To object to that system, noting how it mis-distributes the genders among one another, one has to use its language and terms to clarify its drawbacks, seems to me. It's ironic to object to a critique of that system based on the very thing about that system that is being criticized.

Women as individuals not wanting to marry would be the only exception, but even that, if thoroughgoing, meaning all women chose that way, would create a radical new precedent for society. In that sense your point is hypothetical. The only societies to come close to that condition are polygamous ones and China with its one child policy and gender selection skewing toward males for over three decades, from 1978 to 2011. Now China has some serious social problems stemming from its creating more males than females. But they have a lot of single men under 30 for their massive army.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/14/2011 01:37AM by derrida.

Basically the argument is that if too many women are having sex with one man, that leaves other men with no female partner. If we assume that it is all consensual, with no underage coercion, then the only ones who are disadvantaged would be the males who do not end up with female partners. And what is the problem with that, exactly? It means the available females can be more selective in choosing partners - it empowers the women. It gives society a greater incentive for allowing gay men to marry other gay men, instead of encouraging them to marry women. It frees the single men to do other things - join the army, as you mentioned, but they could easily be encouraged to be more productive to society, since they don't have to balance work with family life. Society would be different, but that's not necessarily bad.
The problem is, polygamy seems to have underage marriage and the inferior treatment of women built into the system, along with extreme religious beliefs. Those would be my reasons for arguing against polygamy. Telling the polygamist men that they're being greedy by hogging all the women and not leaving enough for the single guys is an attitude that, to me, is every bit as disturbing as polygamy itself. Women aren't property.

But the point is that the single men aren't looking to be free to do other things. They want a spouse too, on the average. And I'm not the one who is turning women into property, which is exactly what happens. That's what I'M criticizing.

If you put my argument into terms of your choosing and re-cast it as my argument, you've committed a straw-man fallacy. There is no need for you to explain what I mean. That's what I'm here for. I was talking about polygamy; not just people having sex. You do understand the difference between being married and merely having sex with someone else, don't you?

I don't think you've understood my argument because you're criticizing things I don't claim. I'll explain my own position. You explain yours. Don't attempt to clarify my points.

You're speaking as if these excess single males will be glad to be free to work and avoid having families of their own. I think it's a lot safer to assume that people generally want to have spouses or at least a partner of their choosing.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/14/2011 05:41AM by Troy.

So let me see if I've got this right... you posted this not for discussion but for praise of your "philosophical" pontificating? We can't have our own thoughts on what you have posted, telling us what to think about your post is what you are here for. Kind of like when Troy the "philosopher" speaks, the thinking has been done? Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

wittyname wrote: "So let me see if I've got this right... you posted this not for discussion but for praise of your "philosophical" pontificating?"
______________________
Oh get real. If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.

"We can't have our own thoughts on what you have posted, telling us what to think about your post is what you are here for."
_____________________
You can think whatever you like. but if you misrepresent me, I'm gonna come down on you like a load of bricks.

"Kind of like when Troy the "philosopher" speaks, the thinking has been done?"
____________________
That's ridiculous. Everything I say is up for debate. But I'm only going to debate my version of my opinion; not your version of my opinion.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/14/2011 04:18PM by Troy.

The point I'm trying to make is that you are only talking about the mens' point of view - the men who are left without a spouse. Society is made up of everyone involved - the men in the polygamous relationships, the men outside of polygamous relationships, the women (who may want to be polygamous, monogamous, or not in a relationship at all), the gay men, the men who don't want to marry anyway. You haven't explained how what is best for the men who may be deprived of a spouse because of polygamy is necessarily best for the entire society.
Secondly, while polygamy actually treats women like property, I don't agree that we need to talk about women as property in order to argue against polygamy. Going back to your exact words, so that I'm not putting your argument into my own terms, you said: "There will always be a limited number of women available to marry. And there will always be men who want to marry the available women. Nobody has the consent from general society to collect extra spouses from the pool."
I disagree with the assertion, first, that there are more men who want to get married than women who want to get married - what proof do you have of that assumed fact? My main disagreement is with the idea that anyone needs "consent from general society to collect extra spouses". The only consent that I see as having any importance at all is the consent of the potential spouse. I'm trying to understand what "consent from general society" would even be, and the closest I can guess is that it means the consent of the government in the form of a marriage license. I can't see that as saying anything more than that polygamists shouldn't get married because it's illegal. But there are other types of marriages that are or were illegal without necessarily being harmful to society - interracial marriage used to be illegal, and gay marriage may soon become legal. I may very well have misunderstood what you mean by "consent from general society", but until you explain it more clearly, I can't say anything more than to tell you that your argument sounds demeaning to women, and possibly should be reworded if you didn't mean it that way.

No, he didn't say anything at all about sex. He is talking about marriage which is not just about sex.

"Basically the argument is that if too many women are having sex with one man, that leaves other men with no female partner."

I don't think that's an argument. It's just a fact of the arithmetic polygamy forces on its adherents: four individuals, two of each gender; one individual takes the two of opposite gender; that leaves the remaining individual out in the cold without a partner of the opposite gender.

We can't "assume it's all consensual" under polygamy as polygamy has shown itself time and again to disregard age consent set by the state.

Yes the males systematically denied female partners are "disadvantaged" reproductively and eudaimoniacally (in terms of basic chances for happiness and well being). Telling them they can give up family and go into the army rather than have a life partner (given that most men and women are heterosexual, polygamy is going to hurt a lot of people) is lame or disingenuous (or both) or you are just putting us on, which amounts to the same thing. You can't have as a key plank of your society: "Hey, most of you who are one gender won't be able to reproduce, have love, family, or a life partner of the opposite gender, AND you get to go into the army!" Seriously. You want to live in a sexist society like that?

"And what is the problem with that, exactly? It means the available females can be more selective in choosing partners - it empowers the women."

No it doesn't. Polygamy disempowers women. Are you arguing for polygamy?

Please recognize that you shift a gear when you go from the basic mathematics of possible reproductive choices systematically reduced by polygamy, to a pro-feminist, pro-gay point of view that moves to the individual's choice being violated not by polygamy but by a human rights critique of polygamy. Polygamy denies the choice; it denies the individual, primarily the individual women and most of the men who are not "advantaged" by the it. A basic human rights agenda does not deny choice (except the choice of polygamists). Gay men would not fair well in any known polygamous society--they wouldn't be allowed to practice their love. They would have to leave the society too.

"Telling the polygamist men that they're being greedy by hogging all the women and not leaving enough for the single guys is an attitude that, to me, is every bit as disturbing as polygamy itself."

The point isn't to "spread the wealth," as you seem to take it. That's where you go off the rails. The point is that polygamy is socially untenable (for example, what's wrong with the China single child model?) and denies basic human rights to a majority of men and women. It denies them choice to be gay or single or bisexual or to have a family (if you are a man) or to choose a singular mate (if you are a woman or a man). Do you get it yet? Under a basic human rights view, women can do anything they want. Under polygamy, they can't. As a point of natural history, most women have decided on monogamy. Why do many women object to polygamy?

"Women aren't property." Precisely.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/14/2011 01:42PM by derrida.

I'm not the one who is assuming that women are goods for distribution. It is societal polygamy that turns them into objects that get distributed to other human beings according to the power they possess.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/14/2011 05:42AM by Troy.

And I don't have a problem with polyamory that has children involved.

However, the term polygamy usually conotes religious sanctioned marriage between one man and several abused women. And this abuse is passed on from generation to generation.

Also, however, however, I have yet to see a way to legalize polyamory and NOT legalize the polygamy I have described.

Because of this (and other factors) - I can't support the legalization of polyamorous marriage at this time.

Thank you for this well thought out response. These are some of the questions, and the problem areas, that need to be under discussion so they can be eventually resolved.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/14/2011 03:53PM by Susan I/S.

There is no difference between exclusive polyamorous relationships and polygamy. Well, there's one difference: semantics. The thin line dividing the two is the term wife. But basically, in a situation where one person is exclusively committed to multiple people, who are exclusively committed to that person, and operate as a unit, people's title for each other can be "banana" and it would still be no different from polygamous unions.

You can ignore it if you like but that doesn't change the facts.

This was my understanding, too. That what we were talking about here was MARRIAGE.

I think it may influence those who already don't like polygamy.

I think that LDS theology though is immune to such egalitarian arguments. The whole concept of LDS men (in the beginning mostly LDS leaders) becoming Gods and adding to their glory by adding endless wives and children does not concern itself with what lesser men or even priesthood holders are left with. Brigham Young talked about polygamy in terms of the parable of the talents where the wives of monogamists would be taken from them in the hereafter and given to those valiant enough to have lived the Principle.

Polygamy is a market-based approach to marriage. There's a limited supply of wives and the most righteous P-holders are in demand. They are the winners— the one's with more, prettier wives. If any redistribution of spouses is going on it is done by those in power and the wives are "redistributed" upwards. Just ask Henry Jacobs.

I've used the 'supply of women' argument in my own discussion of polygamy and as a woman it didn't slip out easily. I wonder if there is some way to word it to both reflect the harsh realities of most polygamous women's lives as well as my own freer life.

Still not accurate. FLDS style polygamy limits a woman's choices in partners to a few, approved by others. However, that's not the case in all forms of polygamy. Basing one's entire view on polygamy on fundamentalist mormon polygamy creates a credibility issue with the argument.

That is because women, if given free choice, don't usually choose polygyny.

You are trying to argue for an ideal that does not realistically exist at this time. Let's deal with the reality of polygamy and then maybe your ideal will someday have a chance.

I don't have an ideal, there is no ideal with polygamy. I don't understand why someone would elect to practice it, but the reality is, many women DO elect to practice it, and there are many polygamous groups out there who are not the mormons, who do not pressure women into it, and who have dating sites set up to find partners, and many message boards dedicated to polygamists discussing their lives, etc. This is not some shangri la version I have dreamed up. I've done a lot of research on intentional, at-will polygamous settings (out of intellectual interest, not desire to join). I realize that the mindset here is geared toward mormon fundamentalist polygamy, but approaching polygamy based only on this style is leaving out a whole side of the story. But I guess that's irrelevant to point out, since Troy (and you) is adamantly against discussing anything other than his view of polygamy. But I'll give him a pass based on what I remember from his history and obsession with this topic.

wittyname, you're getting bogged down in definitions. You're never going to get anywhere in this debate with that approach. This argument has had a lot of influence in high places, like Canada. Polyamory and polygamy are not the same. The differences are huge. We can account for those distinctions legally too. There is no logical reason why we have to treat the two behaviors the same.

It is the act of polygamy and the efforts of men to collect as many wives as possible that are dehumanizing factors in polygamy; not dry arguments that expose the hidden reality of the situation.

I'd love to debate all of these things, but I will continue to balk when someone attempts to misrepresent me. If you disagree with me, reference my exact words if necessary. Don't change them around into something different so that you can prevail. I'm talking to you, wittyname. I will explain what I mean. You can explain what you mean. Don't cross that line. It's a dishonest debate tactic and a logical fallacy.

Troy's point was excellent - I guess anyone can turn it anyway they want and critize it, but the entire argument was point blank with little emotion involved and I did not get the feeling he was trying to give the impression women were 'possesions'. Maybe the words were not the best, but his argument was lacking in emotions so I can take it that no harm was intended.

I did not take any offense about the 'pool' since he was merely establishing a fact that men and women are fairly balanced in numbers by birth, and polygamy throws off that natural balance.

If that were not so, you would not see a commom problem in polygamy which is men (boys) having to leave or be thrown out because other men want to hord more wifes to themselfs.
Natural birth rates do not match up with polygamous practices.

Even between consenting adults - polygamy would not work on that basis alone.

Yes, man and woman may not want to marry, and have other choices, but we still seek relationships and generally speaking, one to one. Balance works. Legalized inbalance would guarantee many of us would be left in the dust even if the choice we wanted was to find a mate and love, there would be none to have. I think polygamy even with consenting adults is a bad idea. Just MHO.

Usually worse in modern industrial cultures than in isolated little agricultural areas or small tribal traveling bands.