Following the federal court case that effectively legalizes polygamy, feminists have gotten the green light to start supporting the institution that was once their favorite source for straw-man arguments. Just check out these (completely serious) writings from Jillian Keenan at Slate: Ms. Keenan makes a halfhearted attempt to downplay some of the social costs of polygamy: Just in case the weakness of this defense isn't immediately clear, notice that Ms. Keenan doesn't acknowledge issues of degree. It can certainly be true that siblings will compete with each other for a father or mother's attention in a normal, monogamous marriage. This doesn't make traditional marriage and polygamy comparable, for the nature and degree of this competition remain different. In polygamy, children from several wives compete with each other to the backdrop of the wives also competing with each other. In traditional marriage, generally fewer, full-blooded siblings from the same mother compete with each other. Intrafamilial competition in a polygamous setting could easily be several times, or even exponentially, worse than such similar competition is in a normal marriage. The fact that the two issues are somewhat analogous does not make them practically equal in nature, degree or effect. Many of us who follow these issues closely secretly expected that feminists would use the gay marriage precedents to start supporting polygamy in five years, or ten years, or even an entire generation later. It has only taken less than one year for this to begin happening. The truth is that, whether they know it or not, feminists have been arguing for polygamy this entire time. As proof, consider the intellectual crisis within feminism as succinctly stated by another Slate feminist, Jessica Grose: The reason Ms. Grose doesn't know what the solution is, is because there is no solution. The work people do still matters. Government can't legislate away the need for competition in the workplace or the economy. One person must prioritize their work in order to excel in their career and another person must prioritize raising the children in order to excel at raising the children. It can't be had both ways. The current intellectual crisis in feminism, as their dream-state of Sweden falls behind countries like the (ostensibly horrible) United States in areas of "gender equality," is that there is no solution for these kinds of fundamental aspects of life. I say aspects of life because the idea that they are "problems" is something that exists only in certain people's heads. People do better at the thing which they make their priority, to suggest that this is a problem is like trying to rebel against every law of physics, at the same time. So, let's tie this all together. Many feminists have decided to start supporting polygamy. No feminist has a working solution to the "priorities problem" as stated above. This means we have only three real options when it comes to effective family arrangements: have a stay at home wife, a stay at home husband, or have one bread winner and multiple stay at home spouses. Since polyandry (one woman with multiple husbands) is incredibly rare due to a woman being unable to have the children of multiple men at the same time, these are our only three options. There is no polyandry, there is only the breadwinner/housemaker combination and there is polygamy. While there is theoretically also "group marriage" such arrangements almost never last because they come with their own sets of problems. Some feminists may not realize it, but since there are only two or three possible combinations that actually work in the real world, they have been arguing for either polygamy or the chance to support a house husband this entire time. Since women are the ones who must go through pregnancy and nursing, the "house husband" is never going to be optimal as compared to having a house wife. All of feminists' efforts have been nothing more than an attempt to bring us full circle back to polygamy. Monogamous cultures conquered the world for good reason and there is still time to take a stand against feminism, polygamous chaos, homosexuality and other social deviants who would rot our culture away in the name of achieving total parity between things that are fundamentally different from each other.
I used to be completely against polygamy, but in later years, I've not been able to justify that position. I will agree that 1 man, 1 woman, is the ideal situation. However, I have come to realize that there is nothing inherently wrong with polygamy, unlike same sex marriage, or marrying your donkey or whatever. Personally, I don't grasp what either the men or the women, would get out of polygamy. As a women, your husband can ditch you, and ignore you, because there's plan B with wife 2 or 3. And there are numerous examples where women end up less happy, because they know their husbands prefer wife 2 or 3 over themselves. Equally, for the man, given how difficult it is to please one wife, I can't imagine the headache from trying to please multiple wives. So I don't grasp how that would be a plus. Seems to be a recipe for drama times 2 or times 3. However, while I don't grasp the appeal of such an arrangement, there is certainly nothing wrong with it. As for the house husband, theory... please. I can't see many men, willing to marry a girl with multiple husbands. I suppose it's possible, but it just isn't likely. I've heard of a few that tried this, with so-called "open marriage", but it was all a lie. They deceived themselves into thinking it would work. While they said they didn't care if each other slept around, the moment the girl got pregnant with another mans child, the guy walked out. The whole thing was a fiction. The girl might have let it go that the guy was sleeping around, but the guy most certainly did care the girl was sleeping around. The moment he couldn't deny it, by not knowing (she getting pregnant), he said screw it, and left. I would highly highly doubt that any man would get with a girl, knowing another man was screwing her too.
Why would a 'feminist' argue for polygamy? If anything that'd be dragging them back a few centuries Polyandry maybe? But polygamy sounds antithetical to feminist rhetoric
That's what I thought too. My theory is that Feminism has become a movement against anything "christian", and arguably Monogamy, is a 'christian' ideal. So in essence, even if it harms women, I think they'd be for it, so long as it was supposedly 'against Christianity'.
Yeah, it doesn't make much sense to me either. =/ Seems like working against what they generally want.
Then surely you will have no problem explaining why the first is morally benign and the others are not.
You have to first ask where morals come from. Are morals man made? If so, then nothing is wrong with murder, slavery, or rape... unless you happen to be strong enough by numbers, to enforce your morality on others. Or are morals given by G-d? In which case, G-d says what is morally right and wrong. Being a Christian like myself, that's where my morals come from, and the answer to your question.
Only if you don't already know - which I do. No it is not. An answer to my question, in your case, would include evidence of God saying polygamy is moral. Now of course if you're the sort of "Christian" who reads the Bible like a commie-lib shyster reads the Constitution, i.e., with an eye towards justifying injustice, you can find OT passages you can twist to suit your prejudice, just as defenders of homosexual perversity can find passages that make it look like David was hot for Jonathan; but outside of that, experience suggests you've got nothing.
Let's try and be adults, thanks. No, I don't assume that if the Bible does not specifically say "You can do X" then and only then is it ok, and if it is not mentioned, then it must be immoral. If we assume that everything not explicitly given approval is wrong, then we shouldn't be on this forum. Using computers, internet, electricity, is not Bionically approved. We should renounce American life, and all become Amish. As for my position, again, the Bible is my guide. Specifically how G-d reacted to David is what I look at. G-d made it very very clear what he was upset about with David. He didn't say he was mad about David taking another wife, when he was already married. Just like he never said anything about David's other wives. David married Michal. Then he married Ahinoam, before he was king, and G-d said nothing about it, and never mentioned it. Then he married Abigail a widow, and G-d said nothing about that. He married several other woman, and G-d never once had a problem with any of it. It wasn't until Bathsheba, and then G-d was ticked off. He stole another man's wife, and then covered it, and then killed her husband. And you remember how the prophet Nathan lead the confrontation. It wasn't about how many wives he had, but that he had taken another's wife. This along with numerous other examples, convinces me that G-d never had a problem with multiple wives.
If such behavior is indicated by the childish derogation of a perfectly truthful and appropriate remark, I'll pass. You're welcome. That was not true of the Apostles, but I'm pretty sure they were better Christians than you all the same. No, what you look at is what the author of those texts says about how God reacted to David, when even the authors do not represent their writings as an exhaustive account. As for polygamy among the children of Abraham, it should be clear that it was tolerated implicitly for the same reason divorce was tolerated explicitly: for the hardness of their hearts - yet, as the Messiah went on to observe, from the beginning it was not so.
Well that summed up everything I needed to know about you. Congrats, you have been added to my ignore list, and I'll never see your childish and idiotic posts again. Thanks for stopping by! Sorry, but I'm here to talk to adults. You just proved yourself to not be one, by your own words. That's all I need to know! I do appreciate you telling me up front. Normally I have to determine someone is a child, by numerous boring moronic posts. But you thankfully let me know up front. Saved me many wasted replies talking to someone what would never be worth my time. Good bye!
Polygamy tends to be associated with societies that regard women as property and we can see in societies that have them today, they generate a lot of angry young men with limited chances of marriage. Then of course they want to go blow up someone. Hard to believe that's the new feminist cause, but I suppose it's the logical conclusion of siding with gays on gay marriage. If this keeps up, eventually the feminists will help make it legal to beat our wives.
The vast majority of such men are angry long before they have any concerns about their marriage prospects.
I don't understand that. Did Utah or any other formerly Mormon dominated state that had legal Polygamy, have a higher level of suicide bombers than others? Singapore has legal Polygamy, and I don't see that they have roving bands of armed blood thirsty men blowing people up. I think perhaps it's more a matter of culture and law enforcement that effects blowing people up, more than Polygamy. Could be wrong..... I don't know.
I'm not sure Utah has the available records to be useful to social scientists, and there is a dearth of polygamous societies in the Western world to test various culture / law enforcement variables. But let me ask, since to me this is key, since there are approximately the same number of men and women in a given society, when a few older males get first dibs on the young hot (or not so hot) babes in a society, what do the left over single men do? The Warren Jeffs compound ended up kicking the excess males out. I'm not sure that's a formula that's translatable to the larger society. Traditionally there was warfare to burn off the excess in those societies. As far as Singapore goes, those polygamous marriages are under muslim law. I guess that's where the US is heading? Head long to the first century? Sheesh, dark ages here we come.
You don't need studies. All you need is to reflect on the fact that the average man in such a society has been raised by a woman who is one wife among several, and who therefore cannot possibly respect her husband - never mind all the invidious undercurrents which inevitably exist among wives of the same husband.
I would actually agree with most of that. I'm not in favor of Polygamy.... but I can almost guarantee it will be legalized. I never suggested that I was in favor of it, only that there isn't a Biblical (read Christian) prohibition. It's just not in the Bible as a sin. And further, I would suggest that it is likely that a dark age will come about. I don't think Singapore is in the dark ages though. I assume you do? Or? What was your point there?
I don't care what the Bible says about polygamy, but I would agree that long term, it will be legalized. I don't think Singapore is in the dark ages, in fact, I regard it's President is probably the most forward thinking and on of the most intelligent of world leaders, but because of it has a Muslim population, it's stuck with an archaic, primitive custom that is ultimately incompatible with a society that doesn't regard women as property. Long term, with polygamy I think you go backwards with the treatment of women.
Again, I would agree with nearly everything you said (obvious exception to the Bible, which as a Christian is the very authority of G-d, so obviously I care what it say about everything). However, I would point out that I don't really think that we in American society could really go backward in our treatment of women. We have pretty much renounced all all value of women. Women are treated like you can swap them out at any time you wish, and replace them with a million alternatives. Why? Because you can pretty much replace them at will, and there are hundreds of replacement available. I myself, have had numerous women offer themselves to me like a sampler at a grocery store. I had a co-worker who told me he was on his sixth divorce, and was already with another women. Flipping through women, meant nothing to him. I worked at a place that I liked to call 'little Arabia'. The place was full of people from the middle east. From Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, to Sudan, Libya and Kenya. Talking as guys do, the topic of course came up of women. A guy told me, that western women were cheap and easy. He said that in order to get a women in their country, they had to follow customs, and meet parents, and make pledges, and that the women wouldn't even go someplace alone, until they were either engaged or married. But in western culture, you can get a girl doing practically nothing. You can sleep with them, with no promises, no commitments, sometimes, not even buying them a drink or dinner. We have cheapened women so much, that I doubt that Polygamy would make it any worse. If we actually treated women with respect now, then I would agree with everything you said. But we don't. What was the poll where 15% of men said they had slept with a women whose name they didn't know yet?
