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After to he Supreme Court radically abused it's power with regards to the Obergfell decision, which legalized same sex "marriages" entirely without support from any legislative or constitutional amendment process, the institution of marriage has been severely disfigured and deformed to such an extent that this sort of additional perversion was seemingly all but inevitable. And it will likely continue to deteriorate further after this, although hopefully that 2ill somehow not be the case.
It's odd that people insist that marriage is only between one man and one woman since most of the Bible patriarchs and prophets had multiple wives. The rules on polygamous marriage were supposedly changed in the New Testament, but why would a god who can see the future need to change his mind? Did he make a mistake somehow? Or perhaps he didn't change his mind. The Bible doesn't directly come out and say that only one man-one woman marriages are allowed, so maybe the Mormons were right all along.
Either way, as some other people have mentioned here, multiple wives are going to be a problem with things like Social Security, etc. Also, will this change allow for women to have multiple husbands? Then there's an issue of not enough wives to go around, which is already a problem in some Mormon communities. They often kick the extra males out.
Last edited by Angry-Koala; 02-19-2020 at 12:48 PM..
The state of marriages impacts society as a whole. So while y'alls position sounds good and well intended, an orderly society requires input from the governing authorities. The first order of governance, is the responsibility to protect the citizens. However I am opposed to government requiring anyone to pay for a marriage licence. Funny how the government removes your freedoms, but will give it back, for a fee.
In regard to the op...
Polygamy should be allowed. A woman can have many husbands she wants to or a man can have many wives as he wants to. I see no issue with that. Requires consent and sanity check.
The practice of polygamy is nothing more than a type of sex slavery. In the polygamist cults of Utah in the past, such as the infamous one in Short Creek, young girls were forced to surrender their bodies and their lives, to a bunch of evil old men. If they are able to pass this current legislation into a parody of law, these kinds of what are essentially prison camps, may spring up again. The constitutional rights to freedom of the women held in those places are violated. It should be a federal issue. No state in our union should be allowed to do those things to a targeted segment of its people. Essentially, this is an American version of the Taliban.
But in those cases involving the cults were these people actually legally married by the state or just unofficially by the church?
Exactly...they should not be making ANY laws or regulations on marriage...PERIOD!
Then just live together and forfeit the government perks of marriage and let those who want those perks abide by the government rules of marriage. Simple.
Hi, banjomike. As always, you have written an informative and unbiased post. I do, however, disagree with you on a couple of points. (For those who don't know me -- which is probably most of you -- I am a lifelong Mormon and a lifelong Latter-day Saint (aka to many as "Mormon"). Here are my thoughts...
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Originally Posted by banjomike
The Mormons have a pretty unique problem; although the church officially banned polygamy over 100 years ago, the ban never worked. Try as the church might, there was nothing it could do to stop the practice in a few of its most faithful members.
The "most faithful members" were not the ones who continued practicing polygamy once it was officially banned by the Church. The "most faithful members" were the ones who actually acknowledged that one of the core doctrines of the Church is continuing revelation. The fact that polygamy had once been authorized had never, ever been intended to mean that it was to remain as a policy forever more. Policies change from time to time, and regardless of whether the Church was forced into a position where it had little choice but discontinue the practice of polygamy (which was necessary if Utah was to attain statehood), it was the individuals who did not respect the declaration of the Church's leadership in this regard who subsequently ignored it who left the Church and started their own sects.
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The Good Lord knows how hard the church as tried to vaporize polygamy. They've pushed their law enforcement as hard as they could to punish it away, have instituted one draconian law after another to stop it, have taken away children, broken up families, and wrecked lives.
And all the church got for all that work was a bunch of tough outlaws who were going to practice and worship just how they pleased, no matter what, and damned if they were going to let the church have their way with them. So the church's efforts did nothing but breed generations of fighters who practiced the faith and rebelled against the leadership.
Or, to avoid trouble with the law, the polygamists just became quiet hypocrates, and married sister-wives on the QT, keeping it all hush-hush. Working out the legal details as they could by skirting around the edges of the marriage laws.
The thing is, polygamy has, for well over 100 years, been an excommunicable offense. Any man or woman who identifies as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (i.e. LDS) and who enters into this practice is immediately removed from the Church's records. The vast, vast majority (I would say well over 99.5%) of the people who are involved in polygamous marriages today do not even consider themselves LDS. The Church itself has really done nothing to crack down on polygamy, once the offenders have been excommunicated. It's the state of Utah that has done that.
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Now, that's a real problem for a church. The LDS is still very much a tightly-knit, very family oriented, multi-generational faith that depends entirely on a family growing larger and remaining strongly true to the faith.
In Utah, that faith has to be kept strong or even the legal institution will crumble. So, after trying everything else, the Church finally tossed in the towel and gave up the fight. The law just reflects the will of the church, and in Utah, the will of the church is still the will of the people too.
But polygamy is only a problem in the LDS church. It's never been such in the other religions that are practiced here in the U.S., even though most of them have probs of their own. So Utah's solution is going to be theirs alone.
But polygamy really isn't a problem for the "LDS Church." The problem for the Church is that the average American still thinks of the Church as being comprised of a majority of people (i.e. millions) who are monogamists, and a few thousand who are polygamists. But that's not an accurate perception. The number of members of "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" who are openly practicing polygamy is ZERO! The rest are not part of our Church any more than Lutherans are a small group within the Catholic Church (even though their founder was a Roman Catholic priest).
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Since every state has the right to write it's own marriage laws and to change them as their citizens see fit, I doubt Utah's solution will ever be an issue in any other state. But I expect the change will bring a lot of polygamous families back to Utah to live again.
And for a religion that depends on tight families as much as the LDS does, that's a good thing. Entire extended families- mothers, fathers, grands, cousins, second-cousins and all their kids can now worship out in the open, under one roof, for the first time in a century.
It may bring some back, but the splinter groups that are part of the FLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or Warren Jeff's group) will continue to move back and forth between Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah. They will be no safer now than they ever were because most of the marriages in that church were not entered into by two consenting adults, but by an older man and an unwilling, much younger wife who was "assigned" to him. Now families like Cody's Brown's (think "Sister Wives") might be affected. Cody's wives entered into a polygamous marriage of their own free will and choice. I strongly believe, though, that they are in the minority.
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Maybe you see that as a perversion, but I'm pretty sure the Mormons won't. They are much more likely to see it as a great cause for rejoicing.
Honestly, Mormons will not see this new law as "a great cause for rejoicing." It won't change the lives of those of us who are LDS one single solitary bit. Polygamous families will not worship with the Latter-day Saints because they are a different religion. They do not accept, sustain or support the LDS Church leadership in any way, shape or form. Lastly, this new law is not going to mean that the LDS Church is going to re-institute polygamy. That's ancient history. We're monogamists and will continue to be so regardless of what the laws of the land permit.
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