Federal judge strikes down Utah's polygamy law.

"After learning of the ruling Saturday afternoon, Marvin Wyler exclaimed "hallelujah" and said polygamy never should have been criminalized in the first place. Wyler — who left The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints more than a decade ago but continues to believe in polygamy — said that in the past polygamists feared legal repercussions for their criminalized lifestyle. The ruling lifts that threat — which surprised Charlette Wyler, a wife of Marvin’s."

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 Well, well,  I went to grad School in Salt Lake and always have thought that Mormons are among the most civic minded and  decent people I have ever met.  Their theology is bizarre but, then, what theology is not weird?

The Utah Territory outlawed polygamy as a condition for admission to the Union as a state.  I have always though that was a senseless intrusion into what should be private family business.

My Fearless Forecast is that there will not be a an appeal by Utah against this decision and what will follow is an elimination of laws against polygamy.  this wil affect Mormons and Muslims across the country.  pl   

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/57264457-78/polygamy-ruling-amp-utah.html.csp

 

Comments

[Babak Makkinejad]

Yes, and then parts of Sharia will be incorporated into state codes in matters of marriage, divorce, inheritance etc.

If I recall correctly, there was no limits to the number of wives a man could marry among Mormons; and that women could also have multiple marriages.

One practical consequence of the absence of limit is that it will lead to rich men marrying unlimited number of women leaving poorer men wife-less - just like the late Sassanid period in Iran and the Mazdak Revolution.

I think Jews from the Cohen family can marry more than one wife.

And the Baha'ai also are permitted 2 wives.

[jerseycityjoan]

It seems to me that only way that polygamy can work in the small fundamentalist Mormons choose mates from within their own groups is how it does work: The older generations of men can only have 3, 4 or more wives by poaching the women of their sons' and grandsons' generations. Some of the younger men of each generation must be forced out so that the "winning" men can have a sufficient pool of young women. These communities are based on manipulation, fear and prioritizing the ability of the adult men to have multiple wives at the expense of everybody else.

I certainly don't want more of such groups cropping up. I feel ashamed we did so little to break them up in the past.

Polygamy has great costs, it seems to me, even when it is not conducted among closed groups of people where the competition for women is intense. Some are financial, others are not. A lot of the financial cost of the freedom of polygamists to have multiple wives and many children is paid for by the American taxpayer.

The poorest place in America is a Hasidic Jewish town where having many children [from one wife, mind you] is emphasized:

"Because of the sheer size of the families (the average household here has six people, but it is not uncommon for couples to have 8 or 10 children), and because a vast majority of households subsist on only one salary, 62 percent of the local families live below poverty level and rely heavily on public assistance [government welfare]"

...

"The per capita income for the village was $4,355."

The situation in Kiryas Joel, which is a place with many demands that also requires heavy subsidies, causes considerable tension and uproar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiryas_Joel,_New_York

All in all, more polygamy seems to me to be the last thing America needs.

[turcopolier]

JCJ

"The older generations of men can only have 3, 4 or more wives by poaching the women of their sons' and grandsons' generations." Poaching? You think of women as game animals? In any event this should be their business not yours. At the same time you approve of gay marriage? pl

[Will]

the district court case is narrowly addressing the cohabitation equals polygamy. the judge probably found it vague or overbroad as a criiminal statute. that would make David Crosby and Charlie Sheen criminals. Some south africans, including the present president, are polygamous even though they are not Muslim or Jewish. Semites were polygamous from antiquity. Ditto, the Hindus and Chinese. The Romans were monogamous but divorce was freely given. The Greeks were a mixed bag. Phillip of Macedon was polygamous. Mormon polygamy was founded on religious grounds. Anathema to the Abrahamic religion, Mormons believed they could become gods on their own planets thru the process of exaltation. Exaltation is achieved by becoming the father of many children. this goal is enhanced by having more wives, of course. The Church may have recalled polygamy but it's still practiced theologically, Consider that a divorced man can remarry in a sealed temple ceremony, but a divorced woman cannot. she still belongs to her former spouse''s celestial family.
the 19th century sureme court case
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_v._United_States

[Fred]

How soon until we have gay polygamist marriages?

[Babak Makkinejad]

You are right; once "gay marriage" became acceptable, the flood gates were opened for any alternatives to the traditional marriage.

"Who are you to infringe on my God-given rights to be a deviant and deny me and my sheep a license to marry?

Because God loves sheep."

US jurists should go to Qum and study with ayatollahs there to learn a few things about polygamy.

They need to go to India to learn about human-animal and human-plant marriages.

It would have been funny if the ramifications of this type of social experimentation were not so very grave indeed.

[shepherd]

I think your first point is important to reiterate. The mechanism by which polygamists got around laws against it was that their marriages are not legal, but merely religious. So the extra wives of the men involved do not have legal rights of inheritance, etc. Nor are they registered as such. If so, they seem to be playing by the rules.

[CK]

BM
None of your exemplars had to account for modern feminist American females. Which creatures are significantly missing in Utah also.
Having more than one wife is attractive only if the wives are feminine and useful and fecund.
Harems are expensive, putting the harem's inhabitants to work to earn their keep invalidates the idea of the harem.
It is possible that an alpha male might wish to have a harem arrangement; but not necessarily a legal marriage arrangement.
Marriage is a fine institution if you need to be institutionalized.

[CK]

Do dorms count?

[turcopolier]

CK

That is just nonsense. A lot of women in illegal Mormon plural marriages work outside the home. You are just bigoted against their way of life. pl

[Will]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/us/a-utah-law-prohibiting-polygamy-is-weakened.html?_r=0

and the 91 page district court opinion
https://ecf.utd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?211cv0652-78

Babak makes a point about the slippery slope. i was against gay marriage. civil unions should have been enough.

[Fred]

No, they do not. Neither does a barracks or a ship nor a drunken Friday night hook-up party.

[Babak Makkinejad]

You wrote:

"only if the wives are feminine and useful and fecund. Harems are expensive..."

Specially in US where wives are often self-supporting and money-making.

[Babak Makkinejad]

In Islam, just like in Judaism, marriage is a form of contract with rights and obligations of both sides clearly stipulated in the marriage contract.

Are you arguing that even under the current statutes, a Muslim man can marry multiple women in the United States?

[Peter Hug]

This sets the stage for a complete vindication of Robert Heinlein's vision of the future...

:)

[Babak Makkinejad]

Yes, and as the old Persian saying goes: "It is the goat that should like the grass." which these Mormon wives evidently do.

[Tyler]

Considering the low low low low rate of monogamous male homosexual relationships, I'd say they're already here to stay.

Remember when the slippery slope was just an urban myth and if you opposed gay marriage you were a bigot? Yeah.

[Tyler]

You know who else was a "feminist"? The wife of Tamerlane Tsarnev. I wouldn't put too much stock in them defending anything.

Watch the Left wig out about Mormon polygamy while defending Sha'ria polygamy as "their culture".

[Tyler]

Not sure how many of you are familiar with the Colorado City fiasco here in Arizona, but this is just paving the way for more of that.

[trooper]

Polygamous societies are violent, bc of the "frozen-out" young men--I am not particularly worried about Mormons, bc "soft-harems" are already present in, say, college and corporate life. This is leading to the male dropout problem and will end in violence and tears.

[Jose]

Does anybody know if this ruling also applies to Polyandry?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyandry

[Stephanie]

Unfortunately, contemporary polygamy as practiced in Utah and neighboring states such as Arizona often operates as jerseycityjoan describes. The "lost boys" phenomenon is a sad fact. The young men and boys were exploited for their labor and then expelled from the community on the flimsiest of pretexts, while the older men "marry" young girls - sometimes very young girls - in an atmosphere of coercion. It was also the practice to impregnate the girls promptly and keep them pregnant, to serve as a deterrent to any attempts to escape. All of this was revealed as part of the Warren Jeffs prosecution, among other things. Polygamous communities also tend to be heavily dependent on welfare and public services and intentionally so. In other words, not entirely a matter of consenting adults acting in private.

That said, it is difficult as a matter of logic to support one form of unconventional union and not another, even if there are obvious differences between two adults seeking to wed - regardless of whether you think they are right to do so -- and middle aged men and old farts "marrying" teenagers.

Scalia had a point - you stop legislating morality and there may be undesirable consequences. But I don't see any reason why there can't be a middle ground - no reason, in other words, for "floodgates" to be opened.

I know Mormons as family members and they're fine people. They also think contemporary polygamists are an embarrassment, although they also point, correctly, to the historical circumstances of life on the frontier that helped support the practice.

[abusinan]

Muslims in the US already marry more than one wife. This is common knowledge in the community and well known. The way it works is the man takes one wife as his "legal" wife and the second, third or fourth are then married Islamically with no state recognition.

The idea that softening of marriage laws will lead to loads of Muslim men taking more than one wife is unfounded. Those who want to take more than one wife and are able to support them, already do it. As to potential wives working, thus making more than one wife affordable for the man, that wont happen. Why? Because 90%+ of women who are okay with being a second wife do not work and would not work.

Most Muslim women who work and have careers would not be agreeable to being a second wife. I know first hand of several such situations and it almost always involves older men who are independently wealthy.

[turcopolier]

All

Having lived in the midst of societies in which polygamy was legal but fairly rare except among the rich, I must say that these societies are no more violent than societies in Europe where polygamy is forbidden by law. I do not understand why so many of you are so hostile to the idea that people could choose to live in family groups that do not correspond to the traditional form in the West. Is this not a matter of liberty? If women choose to marry old men that is their business. DOMA maintained that "marriage" was limited to relationships between one man and one woman. That's gone now. So what is the logical basis for forbidding polygamy? pl

[Babak Makkinejad]

There is none.

And there is none which forbid incest either.

"God loves us and who are you to tell me that I cannot be in a loving relationship with my son or daughter, or both."