- Joined
- Jan 28, 2006
- Messages
- 51,123
- Reaction score
- 15,259
- Location
- United States
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Independent
First, please forgive me for the one sided discussion of me assuming it is always the man taking additional women. Although nothing rules out women taking multiple partners, it is more prevalent for men to take multiple spouses in history, so that's what I'll focus on.As anyone familiar with the gay marriage threads knows, polygamy is often brought up to test the logical consistency of a given argument and identify what, if anything, would justify keeping polygamy illegal in a world where consenting adults can enter in any contract they wish.
I personally have never possessed nor read a strong argument against polygamy, and I become confused when pro-gm folks would not also support polygamy as such individuals can never articulate their reasons.
This thread does not need to involve gay marriage at all. I actually believe we could have a better discussion if gay marriage were included as little as passable.
I invite anyone with strong objections or support of polygamy to make their arguments known.
- Do you think legalized polygamy in society would affect you in any way? If so, in what way and to what degree?
- Do you think polygamy could help lower the divorce, juvenile crime or runaway rates; or improve academic performance?
- If you can argue the polygamy brings increased economic security, how would polygamy affect the abortion rate?
Those are just a few questions to get your thoughts moving, please feel free to make any argument you wish.
A general sense of fairness that most people have that everyone should be entitled to be with someone else. If men were permitted to be with multiple women, there would be an equal number of men without a spouce. It is a fight against "the survival of the fittest".
[*]A more moral objection. Men who take multiple spouses inherently have less time and resources to care for each additional spouse and child. Whether this actually leads to a poorer quality of life for them is another matter.
Wife two wants a divorce and she has 3 kids. Wife one wants to stay with hubby and also has 3 kids. How is property divided care etc. Just seems like it would create some serious problems.
As anyone familiar with the gay marriage threads knows, polygamy is often brought up to test the logical consistency of a given argument and identify what, if anything, would justify keeping polygamy illegal in a world where consenting adults can enter in any contract they wish.
I personally have never possessed nor read a strong argument against polygamy, and I become confused when some pro-gm folks would not also support polygamy, as such individuals can never articulate their reasons.
This thread does not need to involve gay marriage at all. I actually believe we could have a better discussion if gay marriage were included as little as passable.
I invite anyone with strong objections or support of polygamy to make their arguments known.
- Do you think legalized polygamy in society would affect you in any way? If so, in what way and to what degree?
- Do you think polygamy could help lower the divorce, juvenile crime or runaway rates; or improve academic performance?
- If you can argue the polygamy brings increased economic security, how would polygamy affect the abortion rate?
Those are just a few questions to get your thoughts moving, please feel free to make any argument you wish.
Jerry said:Do you think legalized polygamy in society would affect you in any way? If so, in what way and to what degree?
Jerry said:Do you think polygamy could help lower the divorce, juvenile crime or runaway rates; or improve academic performance?
Jerry said:If you can argue the polygamy brings increased economic security, how would polygamy affect the abortion rate?
Yes. I actually have a good friend who dates multiple women at the same time. He doesn't hide it, and although the women aren't overly pleased about it, none leave him. He is quite good to them and knows how to occupy a womans mind and keep her interested, unlike most men.Have you seen anything to suggest there'd be more people with multiple partners if polygamous marriage was legalised? There's nothing to stop this happening now. Marriage is irrelevant to this situation.
I'm not saying that I feel it should be this way, I'm just detailing why I feel that it has become a socially ostracized thing to do.Again, not relevant. People with multiple partners can do this whether they're married or not.
There would be more factors to consider and it would probably be more complicated but that is no reason for it to be illegal.
Yes. I actually have a good friend who dates multiple women at the same time. He doesn't hide it, and although the women aren't overly pleased about it, none leave him. He is quite good to them and knows how to occupy a womans mind and keep her interested, unlike most men.
Moderator's Warning: |
I don't have any particular MORAL objection to polygamy. However, I can think of a couple PRACTICAL reasons why it shouldn't be legalized in the eyes of the law.
1. Our legal code would need a massive overhaul to comply with this. What happens if someone decides to marry every single person in the world who wants to live in America? What happens if a hundred spouses show up in a hospital emergency room demanding to see their spouse? What happens to the estate if the spouses don't know about each other and their spouse dies? What if I have ten wives, each of whom has ten husbands, each of whom has ten wives? What would it mean to "jointly file" tax returns? All in all, it's simply not worth the expense to our legal system to try to correct all of these things.
2. Since men are naturally sluttier than women, polygamy would almost always entail one man with several wives, rather than the other way around. This means that there are lots of men who would not be able to marry at all, which would most likely increase the crime rate and cause social unrest.
I personally have never possessed nor read a strong argument against polygamy, and I become confused when some pro-gm folks would not also support polygamy, as such individuals can never articulate their reasons.
This thread does not need to involve gay marriage at all. I actually believe we could have a better discussion if gay marriage were included as little as passable.
Do you think legalized polygamy in society would affect you in any way? If so, in what way and to what degree?
Do you think polygamy could help lower the divorce, juvenile crime or runaway rates; or improve academic performance?
If you can argue the polygamy brings increased economic security, how would polygamy affect the abortion rate?
A general sense of fairness that most people have that everyone should be entitled to be with someone else. If men were permitted to be with multiple women, there would be an equal number of men without a spouce. It is a fight against "the survival of the fittest".
A more moral objection. Men who take multiple spouses inherently have less time and resources to care for each additional spouse and child. Whether this actually leads to a poorer quality of life for them is another matter.
However, I do not believe that civil marriage in the US is well equipped to do this. ... For technical reasons alone, trying to adopt marriage as is, to polygamy would make a legal mess.
if a child biologically belongs to two of the parents, but not the 3rd (or forth...), do the other parents have legal rights?
if there are two women involved, can the non-birth mother sue to take custody away from the birth mother?
if polygamy as practiced by the fundamentalist LDS church were to become legal and protected, a lot more people would be hurt, and it would be much harder to help them.
What I'm envisioning, though, is a giant social network; one man, married to four women, each of whom have multiple husbands, each of whom have multiple wives, and so on. ... What would stop this from happening?
Well I guess my point was that it is only a social construct which prevents men from wanting to be with multiple women and women from sharing a man. In this case, some people have gotten past that construct and do what feels natural for them. However, most people still feel constrained by societies norms.Sorry, I must be missing something here. How does that prove there'd be more people with multiple partners if polygamous marriage was legalised? People who want multiple partners are probably doing it already.
Considering we live in a pretty even numbers wise society its pretty obvous polgamy is a bad idea.
Not if you also include polygany in the mix. If men can have multiple wives and women can have multiple husbands, or you include group marriage with both men and women, then it should even out.
You don't honestly believe that there are as many women who would want multiple husbands as there are men who would want multiple wives, do you?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?