Polygamy (Split from Anti-Muslim Terrorist Attack)

[PhantomWolf]

I'm splitting this off from the Anti-Muslim Terrorist Attack thread because I suspect it would be a sizable derail...

It reminds me to some extent of the issue of men having multiple wives. In principle it seems like everyone agreed to the situation, so why should government prevent people from making personal choices? In reality you find for instance fundamentalist Mormon communities, where old men force young girls to marry them, and those girls have no real choice in the matter. How do we prevent that sort of oppression? By outlawing what seems at first inspection to be a simple matter of personal choice, but in reality is more complicated than that.

For me, I'm against any marriages that are forced, Full stop. This includes monogamous ones in other religions, in which young girls can still be forced into marriage with older men, with the girls having no choice in the matter. I'd note that we haven't banned marriage as a total because of this.

At the end of the day in sticking with my beliefs, I'd argue that it should not be polygamy that is outlawed, but rather the forcing of marriage onto someone without a choice, be it to a single spouse or in a case where there are multiple spouses.

I am also all for keeping it illegal where one spouse has multiple marriages without the knowledge and consent of the other partner(s).

However having stated that, I do know a few polyamorous people who are happy in their relationships, and the laws against polygamy are oppressive to them and their life style. This I do believe to be unfair. Why should they be punished because or other's abuse when the same abuse occurs in monogamous marriages, but the punishment doesn't?

So here I have to stand on making forced marriage a crime regardless of the number of spouses involved, and allowing polyamorous marriage for those that can show that they are in a genuine and freely entered into relationship.

I am aware that in the US this could cause some other issues, but I suspect that it would be easy enough to figure out a way to exempt multiple partners from the various laws.

At the end of the day, my general stance on laws and how we should make them is that we need to be wary of stepping on the rights of all the people because of the bad behaviours of a few. It is better to single out the bad behaviour itself, in this case the forcing of a marriage, than to ban everyone from partaking in a behaviour that can be beneficial to other non-bad actors.

We don't ban everyone from watching football just because a few thugs decide to have a brawl in the streets and stands. Rather we ban the Thugs. I would work polygamous marriage the same way. Hit the bad actors with the ban hammer, and leave the good actors alone to get on with their lives.

 

[ponderingturtle]

The problem is that what does this even mean? Currently you are in one marriage at a time to one person. So would this be multiple people in one marriage, or one person in multiple marriages? How does that work with respect to rights and responsibilities?

Of course the people who talk the most about this with respect to islam are happy with 12 year olds getting married in South Carolina

"The youngest wedded were three 10-year-old girls in Tennessee who married men aged 24, 25 and 31 in 2001. The youngest groom was an 11-year-old who married a 27-year-old woman in the same state in 2006.

Children as young as 12 were granted marriage licences in Alaska, Louisiana and South Carolina, while 11 other states allowed 13-year-olds to wed."

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/200000-children-married-us-15-years-child-marriage-child-brides-new-jersey-chris-christie-a7830266.html

But these are good christian marriages so they are the kind of thing republicans refuse to outlaw as is seen in numerous recent attempts to pass laws.

 

[Roboramma]

We don't ban everyone from watching football just because a few thugs decide to have a brawl in the streets and stands. Rather we ban the Thugs. I would work polygamous marriage the same way. Hit the bad actors with the ban hammer, and leave the good actors alone to get on with their lives.

I think your perspective is an entirely reasonable one, and it's actually the way that I would tend to want to go as well. Letting people make up their own minds about how to live their lives seems like a good principle to me.

But there can be circumstances where the difficulty in enforcing a law necessitates some other solution. If we can't tell whether or not some marriages are entered into freely, but we know that the majority of polygamous marriages aren't (even though we can't prove it in particular cases), then it would seem to make sense, from a societal level, to ban it in order to prevent a lot of abuse. The issue here being whether or not we have any other tools for the job and how effective they are. When it comes down to it the evil of young girls being raped and oppressed for their entire lives seems to outweigh the good of allowing polygamy when it's actually consensual.

However, I may be wrong that this is the best tool for this job. All I know about this subject was mainly from Jon Krakauer's book Under the Banner of Heaven, in which he spends some time discussing fundamentalist mormon cults.

For instance, regarding football, if we can prevent the violence by banning the thugs, that's the way to go. But if we find that we're unable to differentiate between thugs and good actors and our attempts to ban thugs don't prevent the violence, then we are forced to decide between just accepting some level of violence and banning football (or at least perhaps changing it in some other ways). In the case of polygamy, I think that the potential harm is too great to simply be willing to live with it, though I am willing to be convinced otherwise.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I'm all for the right for people to have as many romantic/sexual partners as they want. "Marriage" is weird because in my ideal word "marriage" wouldn't be a thing, but as long as "marriage" is a thing it should be applied to all consenting adults across the board.

"Oh but not if it's forced" is obviously true, but kind of beside the point since I'm against that regardless of the number of people involved.

 

[Roboramma]

I'm all for the right to people to have as many romantic/sexual partners as they want.

"Oh but not if it's forced" is obviously true, but kind of beside the point since I'm against that regardless of the number of people involved.

Well, the issue that I brought up in the other thread (and I think the reason that Phantomwolf wrote his OP in that way) is that where polygamy is practiced it just turns out that it's often old men forcing young girls to marry them. But because of the power they have over these girls, the state can't demonstrate the non-consensual nature of these relationships.

So, yeah, it seems like that framing is just "Well, duh." But, the issue I guess is how do we prevent those non-consensual relationships? Do we just ban polygamy, or do we try allowing polygamy and then investigating when it seems like it might be non-consensual and try to only stop those cases?

In the case of the latter my worry is that too many of them will be missed. We are in a position of balancing the harm of preventing legitimate consensual polygamous relationships with the harm of non-preventable non-consensual polygamous relationships. Of course the same is also true of monogamous relationships, but the question of the best course of action is really the empirical question of how that harm would balance out on based on one course of action or another, and I think it's clear that no good would come from banning monogamous marriages but polygamy is at least less clear cut.

 

[JoeMorgue]

While I don't disagree that such a thing would happen (hell the reason we have the most effed up child marriage laws in the developed world is because of that, old men marrying young women) I think the idea that we're going to see anything approaching "harems" in American is unlikely.

 

[JoeMorgue]

ETA: Indeed that would be the parallel I would draw.

We have old men marrying young women now. We don't ban marriage because of that. The same argument applies here, I would argue.

 

[Roboramma]

While I don't disagree that such a thing would happen (hell the reason we have the most effed up child marriage laws in the developed world is because of that, old men marrying young women) I think the idea that we're going to see anything approaching "harems" in American is unlikely.

I don't think it would become the norm, but I also don't think that polygamy would become the norm. I mean, how many people would be polygamous if only it weren't for that damned law? Probably pretty few. Of those few, I worry that the proportion who would be abusive is high enough that the harm they cause would be outweighed by the benefit of allowing those consensual relationships the freedom to exist.

If there were a huge number of people feeling oppressed about not being allowed to marry multiple partners, I might change my opinion.

(The OP mentions polyamorous relationships, which as i understand it are becoming more popular these days, but I think it's still a fringe movement, and it's not clear how many of them want some sort of marriage contract. Still, I could be convinced by an argument that that community is much larger and more interested in marriage than I'm aware of.)

 

[BobTheCoward]

If we can't tell whether or not some marriages are entered into freely, but we know that the majority of polygamous marriages aren't (even though we can't prove it in particular cases), then it would seem to make sense, from a societal level, to ban it in order to prevent a lot of abuse.

I guess the.next question is if we know this is true or not.

 

[Roboramma]

I guess the.next question is if we know this is true or not.

Yep. Can you offer any insight into that question?

 

[Roboramma]

ETA: Indeed that would be the parallel I would draw.

We have old men marrying young women now. We don't ban marriage because of that. The same argument applies here, I would argue.

Yeah, that argument works, but the cost/benefit analysis is different in those two cases, so the best action at least might also be different.

 

[BobTheCoward]

Yep. Can you offer any insight into that question?

No. Which would imply if I were the government, I wouldn't have the logical authority to ban it, right?

 

[JoeMorgue]

Yeah, that argument works, but the cost/benefit analysis is different in those two cases, so the best action at least might also be different.

And again I'm not disagreeing in any sort of direct way.

To clarification and to give you an idea of where I'm coming from this is an odd thing for me to parse because in my "ideal" world, marriage as now have it wouldn't be a thing. The government would not be in the business of "approving" certain kinds of interpersonal relationships.

But as long as we have it I think it should apply universally, to any group of consenting adults.

 

[ponderingturtle]

I think your perspective is an entirely reasonable one, and it's actually the way that I would tend to want to go as well. Letting people make up their own minds about how to live their lives seems like a good principle to me.

But there can be circumstances where the difficulty in enforcing a law necessitates some other solution. If we can't tell whether or not some marriages are entered into freely, but we know that the majority of polygamous marriages aren't (even though we can't prove it in particular cases), then it would seem to make sense, from a societal level, to ban it in order to prevent a lot of abuse. The issue here being whether or not we have any other tools for the job and how effective they are. When it comes down to it the evil of young girls being raped and oppressed for their entire lives seems to outweigh the good of allowing polygamy when it's actually consensual.

However, I may be wrong that this is the best tool for this job. All I know about this subject was mainly from Jon Krakauer's book Under the Banner of Heaven, in which he spends some time discussing fundamentalist mormon cults.

For instance, regarding football, if we can prevent the violence by banning the thugs, that's the way to go. But if we find that we're unable to differentiate between thugs and good actors and our attempts to ban thugs don't prevent the violence, then we are forced to decide between just accepting some level of violence and banning football (or at least perhaps changing it in some other ways). In the case of polygamy, I think that the potential harm is too great to simply be willing to live with it, though I am willing to be convinced otherwise.

So a 50 year old marrying a 13 year old is only bad if he already has another wife? We are happy as a society to endorse such marriages if they are monogamous after all.

 

[autumn1971]

And again I'm not disagreeing in any sort of direct way.

To clarification and to give you an idea of where I'm coming from this is an odd thing for me to parse because in my "ideal" world, marriage as now have it wouldn't be a thing. The government would not be in the business of "approving" certain kinds of interpersonal relationships.

But as long as we have it I think it should apply universally, to any group of consenting adults.

Marriage as an economic contract is extremely useful shorthand for the myriad contracts and documents otherwise needed in many situations.

I agree that, as far as the State is concerned, it should be easy enough to extend that to polyamory or other non-traditional partnerships.

 

[BobTheCoward]

Marriage as an economic contract is extremely useful shorthand for the myriad contracts and documents otherwise needed in many situations.

I agree that, as far as the State is concerned, it should be easy enough to extend that to polyamory or other non-traditional partnerships.

Of it could make dissolution for a judge extremely difficult.

But I think the difficulty of doing a government job should be low on the priority.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Marriage as an economic contract is extremely useful shorthand for the myriad contracts and documents otherwise needed in many situations.

I agree that, as far as the State is concerned, it should be easy enough to extend that to polyamory or other non-traditional partnerships.

Not exactly. Marriage isn't a contract being married is a status that various laws define, many of which include effects that simple contracts can't.

Legally what polygamy means and how the various forms of it could be implemented are not simple.

Lets start with this, does my girlfriends husbands wife's wife have a say on if we get married or not? Polyamory tends to end up in all kinds of networks not closed off groups after all. In a real conversation I have described someone as my wifes, boyfriends, girlfriends, fiance's, girlfriends, husband. How would that work with next of kin if more of those were marriages?

 

[Ziggurat]

Polygamy should not be legalized. It is socially destabilizing and harmful to women's rights. The consequences extend far beyond the people who choose to engage in it. It may not be popular now even if legalized, but legalization would likely expand it's popularity over time.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I don't want to hijack this thread too far away from the topic, but this does speak to context.

The legal recognition of some forms of relationships will always be required to some degree. But I think we are muddying the waters and making the question harder then it has to be in some cases.

I think it would be better if the parts of the relationship the government were concerned with where the only parts... well they are concerned with.

//Caveat// Assume "Consenting, mentally sound adult" for all cases //

X and Y want to form a relationship. This includes things like co-habitation, sharing of assets, giving a person proxy rights to make legal, financial and medical decision for another person, inheretence of assets upon death, things like that. And honestly I think things like that, the purely legal stuff, is all the the government interest in "marriage" should be limited to.

On a purely governmental, legal level the "Marriage Contract" should be just that, a contract. Basically little more then a glorified POA, Will, and Living Will combination.

It should not, in my opinion, be predicated on or catered to a specific type of monogamous, "Till death do us part," romantic love or indeed romantic love at all. The legal concepts should be no different then any two people entering into a legal agreement for reasons of convenience or business.

So X and Y can be any number of people. Ted and Mary, Ted and Bill, or Ted, Mary, and Bill for any reason.

 

[qayak]

Polygamy should not be legalized. It is socially destabilizing and harmful to women's rights. The consequences extend far beyond the people who choose to engage in it. It may not be popular now even if legalized, but legalization would likely expand it's popularity over time.

The issue with polygamy and women's rights come about because it is illegal so only the legally married woman has rights.

Legalizing polygamy would ensure all parties had equal rights and people would have to think long and hard before entering such a contract.

Polygamy shoud be legal in my estimation simply because consenting adults should be allowed to do what they want as much as possible.