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If Polygamy Was Up For A Vote...


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It's already essentially de-criminalized, in that nobody is prosecuted for this 'crime' anymore, much like the unenforced laws against fornication and co-habitation that are still on the books in some states.

The only people who are prosecuted are those who can be proved to have taken underage wives.

And no, it should also not be illegal, even if only technically. We (in the form of our governments and laws) have no right to control how consenting adults choose to conduct their personal relationships.

Society needs laws to govern marriage, otherwise nobody could tell the difference between marriage and just having sex. And if society needs to have such laws, then it also needs to define what constitutes marriage, and what kinds of marriages are legally recognized and which kinds are not, such as polygamy, polyandry, and gay marriages. Should you be able to marry your dog, or the trees in your garden for example? It is like traffic laws. Nobody likes traffic laws; but there would be chaos if we didn't have them.

Edited by zerinus
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...I don't get people who say the Gov. has no business in the marriage business and think it should be left to non-Gov. institutions... but refuse to make same-sex marriage legal.

If you think polygamy should be legal then the same thing goes with SSM if one is to be consistent. Both are not allowed by the Church anyways.

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...I don't get people who say the Gov. has no business in the marriage business and think it should be left to non-Gov. institutions... but refuse to make same-sex marriage legal.

If you think polygamy should be legal then the same thing goes with SSM if one is to be consistent. Both are not allowed by the Church anyways.

Two men or two women living together in a gay relationship, is not illegal. I think that one man and more than one women, living together in a polygamous relationship, shouldn't be either.

There is no double standard there and my position is completly consistent, without supporting SSM.

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I was just curious how members would react if their state had a proposition on the ballot that would legally recognize and decriminalize polygamous marriage.

I'm not implying this would/could happen because of, or in spite of the LDS Church. I'm simply asking a hypothetical question based on the idea of polygamy alone, not church policy or history.

Would you vote to legalize it or keep it illegal?

Do you have any thoughts as to how the LDS Church would react, if at all?

I would vote no as many times as allowed.

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I don't get people who say the Gov. has no business in the marriage business and think it should be left to non-Gov. institutions... but refuse to make same-sex marriage legal.

If "marriage" were not a governmental sacrament, homosexuals would not feel any need to be "married": the only concrete reasons ever given for wanting same-sex "marriage" to be rammed down the throats of the rest of us is for the benefits government gives to legitimately married couples.

The plain fact is, though, that none of those benefits (aside from the illusory one of tax preferences, a fable in any case) is withheld from any people (two, three, or five hundred sixty-four) who arrange their affairs properly. If people in general knew how tenuous their "benefits" are (the state can revoke any of them at any time, and may well do so in the near future), we'd all arrange our affairs properly, and ignore the government-provided incentives for marriage according to its contract.

In my view, homosexuals are idiots for wanting to put themselves under the thumb of the state. They're far better off without same-sex "marriage", and so are the rest of us. By entering in to such a legal arrangement, they invite the government into their bedrooms.

The only ones who benefit from same-sex "marriage" are divorce lawyers and policians'n'bureaucrats.

If you think polygamy should be legal then the same thing goes with SSM if one is to be consistent. Both are not allowed by the Church anyways.

There are two classes of things that are "legal".

The first includes things that the law specifically addresses; unfortunately, marriage is one of them.

The second category is those things the law ignores. Marriage should be one of these.

People have always had, and always should have (but this is in grave doubt), the power and right to conclude contracts. In the case of marriage, government has written the contract. Government retains the power (but not by right—solely by force of its monopoly on the use, and threat of, lethal power) to establish marriage contracts, and it can change the terms of the contract at its whim. The government is the third party (and while usually silent, it is by far the strongest of the three) in every marriage. If either of the other parties decides to withdraw, the state determines the conditions of the dissolution. If they wish to change the structure of their marriage, the state says "yea" or "nay". Any change in their status must receive approval by the state. Even when the couple chooses to have children, the sole legitimate goal of marriage*, the state sticks its nose into the matter and imposes conditions, restrictions, and limitations on that most intimate of choices.

* No, infertile couples and the aged who marry after their children (if any) are gone can still marry. It's an artifact of marriage, long seen as the remnant of the legitiamte form.

And, as I noted above, it can, and often does, change the rules in midstream.

Homosexuals are idiots for wanting state-sanctioned "marriage".

We normal people are just as much idiots for condoning it and desiring it for ourselves.

Lehi

Edited by LeSellers
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I would vote that all women would find me irresistible and want to marry me, but why should I make one woman miserable when I could be making thousands happy?

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle - Gloria Steinem

A man without a woman is like a fish run over by a bicycle - A wise man

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I was just curious how members would react if their state had a proposition on the ballot that would legally recognize and decriminalize polygamous marriage.

I'm not implying this would/could happen because of, or in spite of the LDS Church. I'm simply asking a hypothetical question based on the idea of polygamy alone, not church policy or history.

Would you vote to legalize it or keep it illegal?

Do you have any thoughts as to how the LDS Church would react, if at all?

It will be decriminalized eventually. The GLBTQ advocacy, winning their own definition of legalized "marriage", will ensure that to the degree they win in the Fifty States, polygamy is strengthened in its own advocacy demands.

When polygamy gets decriminalized, there will be a dramatic increase in the FLDS "camps". But I do not expect to see polygamy reinstituted in the mainstream LDS Church. The only condition under which it would be, is if a huge disparity of women to men occurred, necessitating polygamy to meet the needs of single mothers and their children.

Back in the day, when I taught lessons in Church, I always asserted that polygamy would be restored before the Second Coming, as it is part of the "restitution of all things", was briefly part of the Saints' religious practices, and must be again. I was talking it up to talk myself into being ready. But I have never liked the concept.

And once I learned about polyandry the whole subject of "plural marriage" turned nasty. I would no more engage in polygamy than I would open a brothel. If you find the comparison distasteful, then that is an indicator of how repugnant the concept of polygamy is to me....

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The answer is clear to me.

Polygamy was never designed to be practiced outside the church. Similar to the United Order, it was only a temporary practice to lead to its practice at another time.

Several hundred cultures that have practiced it far longer than those pioneer chaps in Utah would probably disagree with you.

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I was just curious how members would react if their state had a proposition on the ballot that would legally recognize and decriminalize polygamous marriage.

I'm not implying this would/could happen because of, or in spite of the LDS Church. I'm simply asking a hypothetical question based on the idea of polygamy alone, not church policy or history.

Would you vote to legalize it or keep it illegal?

Do you have any thoughts as to how the LDS Church would react, if at all?

I think the question of polygamy may actually become a real issue in the future. Not because of or in spite of the LDS church but because of the gay marriage issue.

I would vote to legalize all forms of polygamy not just poygyny. I would be very surprised if the church would take a stand against legalizing polygamy if it were on the ballet. Polygamy is in our scriptures, we believe in it, it's part of our doctrine and history. It's probable that the church would not condone or allow such marriages if it were legal but frankly it's entirely possible that church leaders might in fact begin allowing plural marriages if it were legalized.

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Strawman.

A dog or a tree cannot be a consenting adult.

Yet people have done these very things. One woman married, as I recall, the Atlantic Ocean (it could have been a bay or something, been a few years since it happened).

Lehi

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I do not expect to see polygamy reinstituted in the mainstream LDS Church. The only condition under which it would be, is if a huge disparity of women to men occurred, necessitating polygamy to meet the needs of single mothers and their children.

Do you have a reference point for this being the case in the past or are you speaking of a hypotehetical instance in the future only?

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It will be decriminalized eventually. The GLBTQ advocacy, winning their own definition of legalized "marriage", will ensure that to the degree they win in the Fifty States, polygamy is strengthened in its own advocacy demands.

When polygamy gets decriminalized, there will be a dramatic increase in the FLDS "camps". But I do not expect to see polygamy reinstituted in the mainstream LDS Church. The only condition under which it would be, is if a huge disparity of women to men occurred, necessitating polygamy to meet the needs of single mothers and their children.

Back in the day, when I taught lessons in Church, I always asserted that polygamy would be restored before the Second Coming, as it is part of the "restitution of all things", was briefly part of the Saints' religious practices, and must be again. I was talking it up to talk myself into being ready. But I have never liked the concept.

And once I learned about polyandry the whole subject of "plural marriage" turned nasty. I would no more engage in polygamy than I would open a brothel. If you find the comparison distasteful, then that is an indicator of how repugnant the concept of polygamy is to me....

I don't think we understand plural marriage. As you know, Joseph Smith engaged in polyandry and polygyny. Therefore, if we do plural marriage the way joseph Smith appears to have done it, we don't need a disparity of women to men, we just need to have the ability to love one another in our relationships no matter what type of relationship that is and how many people it involves.

However, a disparity of women to men might be what lies ahead. Isaiah Chapter 3 describes an event that will leave many women destitute and Isaiah 4:1 says that in that day seven women will take hold of one man.

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Society needs laws to govern marriage, otherwise nobody could tell the difference between marriage and just having sex. And if society needs to have such laws, then it also needs to define what constitutes marriage, and what kinds of marriages are legally recognized and which kinds are not, such as polygamy, polyandry, and gay marriages.

I simply don't accept that assertion. Why do you need to tell the difference? It's none of your business -- and it's none of mine -- what adults do with each other, and how many of them they do it with. There is no valid need to legally recognize (or prohibit) personal relationships. The only valid need is to protect those who might be taken advantage of (children, etc.).

Should you be able to marry your dog, or the trees in your garden for example?

I guess you missed where I said "consenting adult." Besides, why not? Why should we care what ceremony a person wants to conduct? The important thing is what that person does with the dog in your example. It wouldn't harm the dog to sit through a stupid ceremony; what we need to prevent is sexual abuse of the non-consenting party, which can (and does) happen regularly without ceremonies.

It is like traffic laws. Nobody likes traffic laws; but there would be chaos if we didn't have them.

No, it's not. It's not even close. It's more like the choice of religion. We don't have laws regulating religious beliefs, and there are a lot of different religions and beliefs as a result. But would you call that chaos? Maybe, but it's not harmful to society in general how or what people choose to worship. What if you want to worship your dog, or the trees in your garden? I just don't care, because it's none of my concern. Neither do I care if you want to call yourself married to them. But if you choose to rape your pet, I've certainly got a problem with that.

Again, government has no legitimate need to get involved in defining, prohibiting, or sanctioning adults' personal relationships. That goes for hetero-, homo-, poly-, whatever.

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Except that we are discussing decriminalization, of course.

Actually, the topic has run rather astray from the original query.

By this time we were (not unexpectedly) discussing the oxymoron "same-sex 'marriage'". The concept that the word "marriage" represents is central to the discussion at this point. That being so, knowing whether "marriage" could include unions involving a cat, a tree, or an ocean are wholly germane, irrespective of any connection to the legal side.

"Marriage" for the record, is the union of two different kinds of things. "Marrying" two things that are (essentially) the same is completely foreign to the definition of the word. One may marry art and science. One cannot marry art and art. It makes no sense.

Lehi

Edited by LeSellers
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krose:

People need ceremony. It not only gives society's approval of actions. It makes people feel better about it. Specific to marriage. It is society's recognition of the pair bond.

Personally I don't care if someone "does it" with a tree. But if a person and a tree were to show up to my office in my professional capacity, and that person asked me about getting married to the tree. We'd have a nice long talk.

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krose:

Personally I don't care if someone "does it" with a tree. But if a person and a tree were to show up to my office in my professional capacity, and that person asked me about getting married to the tree. We'd have a nice long talk.

You gave me a chuckle... again TSS...

GG

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People need ceremony. It not only gives society's approval of actions. It makes people feel better about it. Specific to marriage. It is society's recognition of the pair bond.

I don't need it, so that's not true for everyone, but that's fine. Those people who do can assemble with their groups, be it church, club, or other community group, and conduct all the ceremonies they want. But government approval doesn't need to be involved.

The FLDS and others have gotten along just fine without government sanction for their pairings. They do their own, and that's great.

Edited by krose
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@Expositor said:

Do you have a reference point for this being the case in the past or are you speaking of a hypothetical instance in the future only?

Future only. "The practice" was what separated the Mormons as a "peculiar people" from the gentiles. Without polygamy, the Mormons would have remained in the mid west and amounted to nothing more than a puny sect of fundamentalist Christians. Today, Mormonism is almost mainstreamed enough to fit into any community without notice. Polygamy would undo all that and to no good purpose. So unless our world changes dramatically, causing women to greatly outnumber men, I cannot see any reason for bringing polygamy back....

Edited by Questing Beast
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