What exactly Is Wrong with Polygamy anyway?

[KevinSim]

Marrying underage girls isn’t just an individual anomaly that could in principle be separated from institutional polygamy as such. It keeps happening in polygamous groups because it’s the only way to get the extra women.

Physics Guy, how did you come to the conclusion that that's the only way to get the extra women?

[KevinSim]

She could have had children without marrying a seriously wrong man. Her options only expand if she but gave up her belief in god, or her religion at the very least.

So requiring Shirley Cook to give up her faith in order to have children of her own, is better than requiring a woman to share her husband with Shirley Cook?

[Manetho]

In my opening post I asked what was wrong with three adults of any gender combination entering into a polygamous marriage. If this was ever incorporated into a bill that went before Congress, it would need to have a provision requiring that all three participants be adults.

Aha. What you're describing is more like modern polyamory, which, as I understand it, consists of groups or people who are usually all in relationships with each other. I think there are sometimes exceptions, where one member of a polyamorous group may be involved with only one or some members of the group, but in any case, it's a much more fluid, and much more voluntary, arrangement than Mormon polygamy.

As everyone else on this thread has pointed out, an arrangement where one man has multiple wives, but the wives depend exclusively on the one man for everything one expects in a monogamous marriage, in inherently inequitable. Polygamy and polyamory are not equivalent, and if you're advocating polyamory, you're not advocating anything the LDS church has historically supported.

[KevinSim]

I cannot help but wonder how someone now would know that every male wishing marriage married. The statement sounds speculative.

Perhaps it would be worth it to ask the author of that Gospel Topics essay how s/he came to the conclusion that every male wishing marriage married.

I do not see any absolute rule against polygamy though I would not recommend it. If the LDS church continues to be unable to hold male membership and the US culture grows more accepting of marriage variation it might just come back into practice. I would certainly stay away from it.

And thus consign Shirley Cook to a permanently single life. And you're good with that?

[KevinSim]

[T]he Gospel Topics essay on polygamy on the website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints points out that when that church was actively practicing polygamy, virtually everyone who wanted to be married (of both genders) was married.

The Gospel Topics essay is flat wrong. Look at the FLDS church today, which is actively practicing polygamy. Are "the lost boys" who want to be married, married?

The "lost boys" in the FLDS Church who want to be married aren't married, and therefore the surplus men in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints must have wanted to be married? How does that follow, Dr. Shades?

[KevinSim]

How is its practice of polygamy any different from the LDS church's former practice of it?

Dr. Shades, I don't know. Maybe we should find out. Part of that finding out needs to include contacting the author of that Gospel Topics essay and asking her/him how s/he came to the conclusion s/he did.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

[dastardly stem]

She could have had children without marrying a seriously wrong man. Her options only expand if she but gave up her belief in god, or her religion at the very least.

So requiring Shirley Cook to give up her faith in order to have children of her own, is better than requiring a woman to share her husband with Shirley Cook?

If her goal is to have children, yes. Her faith is silly anyway. But she also could just go have a child and come back to the faith if she needs. many Mormon women had children out of wedlock. While it's a sin there is forgiveness, or so I thought. Marrying another married man would be an idiotic solution for her, I'd say.

[Doctor Steuss]

Perhaps this question should be posed to the Church itself. If there’s nothing wrong with it, why is it a mandatory excommunicable offense, even if done in a country where it’s legal? Even teaching/advocating for it is excommunicable; one doesn't even need to practice it.

[KevinSim]

1. Why did Joseph Smith keep the the extra women ("wives") hidden if there is nothing wrong with it?

Smith kept it hidden because he knew Emma was strongly opposed to it. Just because one's spouse is strongly opposed to something doesn't necessarily make it wrong.

2. Where is the righteous seed of his extra marriages, to keep it in line with Jacob 2:30 of the Book of Mormon?

It's non-existent. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has run DNA tests on all yhe children born to Joseph Smith's polygamous wives during the times he might have fathered them, and none of them matched Smith's DNA. So it didn't keep in line with Jacob 2:30. This has puzzled me to no end. Joseph Smith was a very fertile man. He and Emma got pregnant nine times during the relatively short time they were married. How does a man as fertile as Smith was consummate forty marriages without a single plural wife getting pregnant? I haven't been able to figure this one out.

3. How is a plural "marriage" kept secret different than garden-variety adultery, which the LDS Church condemns?

If in the eyes of God Smith was married to them, then it wasn't adultery.