Polygamy Essay, Research Paper
Polygamy is the pattern of a adult male taking more than one married woman at the same clip. Polyandry is when a adult female takes more that one hubby at the same clip. Polyandry is rare compared to polygamy, because it is merely known to be inexistence in two parts of the universe. One is among the Nair people who are dwellers of India’s Malabar Coast. The other is in Tibet, where a adult female can take her hubby’s brothers as her couples. This paper will be focused purely on the argument over polygamy. It does more injury than good and should be banned and enforced strongly within the United States? boundary lines.
Bing married to more than one individual at the same clip has been illegal in the U.S. since 1862, but has non been enforced purely. The Mormon Church is good known for practising polygamy, but the church banned it in 1980. Over a period of 40 old ages, the church endured serious federal attempts to check down on the pattern of polygamy. Dr. Irwin Altman, a professor of psychological science at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City say, ? Today there are some twenty thousand to forty thousand people who are practising polygamy in the province of Utah. ? He besides states, ? Some forty old ages ago, the Numberss were within the 100s or low thousands. ? It has besides been estimated that there is an equal sum scattered around the remainder of the United States. This figure is said to be every bit big as a hundred thousand people, merely in America entirely. Most of these people reside in the western provinces of the United States.
The patriarch figure in these brotherhoods normally does one of two things when it comes to extra married womans. He either get married his first married woman lawfully and so is sealed to the other married womans, in a spiritual ceremonial or he divorces one married woman ( but stays with her ) before he marries another married woman and reiterate this procedure. So these work forces seek a civil matrimony licence merely one time and the brides to follow are taken in private spiritual ceremonials. In other words, since they do non hold legal matrimony licences, they have no right under the authorities to hold these matrimonies. Besides the hubby has two picks when it comes to the life agreements as good. He can maintain the full household in a individual place, whereas other polygamy hubbies may hold each of his married womans populating under different roofs. When it comes to spending clip with each of his married womans and his kids, there is a agenda that everyone follows, but it is flexible and can be moved around to suit about everyone’s demands. Carmen Thompson, a former married woman of a Mormon polygamist says, ? Depending on the figure of married womans a adult male has he normally spends one dark out of the hebdomad with each married woman and her kids by him. ? When particular events come up everyone does their best to do adjustments. It is highly difficult for birthdays and day of remembrances to suit into the agenda and so they are reasonably much nonexistent.
Carmen Thompson said that on her honeymoon one of the other married womans came to see. This other married woman wanted to hold another kid, and her ideal genteelness clip merely happened to fall right in the center of the honeymoon. So the new married woman had to watch the kids while the other married woman spent the dark with the hubby, in the sleeping room. How many adult females would desire this to go on to them on their honeymoon? Many polygamous groups believe that a adult female should hold a babe every twelvemonth. The thought is that there are liquors in heaven waiting to acquire a organic structure to come to earth in, and if they are non born into a Mormon household, they will be born into a bad household, one that is non Mormon.
The male parents normally force their teenage girls to get married one time they have started their catamenial rhythm. On an mean these younger misss are about 14 old ages old. The figure has, nevertheless gone every bit low as the age of nine, when a miss is married off. Keep in head that most of these misss have ne’er known things to be any different. Most of them feel that this is the manner the universe is, and that everybody leaves like this, or at least, this is the will of God.
If person of all time objects to these polygamous criterions so they are harshly punished for disobeying God’s wants. Earlier Mormon Bible states that God came to Joseph Smith in a vision and told him that in order for anyone to acquire into the Celestial City, Heaven, they would hold to be married to a polygamist hubby. Joseph Smith subsequently became the laminitis of the Mormon Church and faith. Carmen Thompson’s hubby told her that God gave him the disclosure that if any of his married womans think that they can go forth and do it in the outside universe ; He’s traveling to take them off this planet. This significance that the hubby would kill anyone of his married womans that decided to go forth him. If they did desire to acquire out of the relationship, so they were besides told that they were merely moving irrational. Or they were told that they were merely covetous of the other married womans. If a married woman had these feelings she was told that she was disobeying God. To arise against polygamy was to arise against God and there was non anything worse so arising against God. Most Mormon philosophies dictate that a adult female must be wholly submissive to her hubby. So many married womans feel that they have no pick but to make whatever their hubby wants. Plus if one married woman would non make what the hubby wanted, so he could ever inquire one of the other married womans to make it alternatively.
Some say polygamy is a victimless offense, but that is non true. If a adult male believes that he is God in his house, reasonably shortly he is traveling to stop up handling his married womans like kids who have to, harmonizing to him, be disciplined. Statisticss show that polygamous married womans reported that their hubbies started going abu
sive towards them and/or their kids once that married woman started oppugning the hubby’s absolute authorization. Many adult females stay in these bad state of affairss, because of their kids. They do non desire their kids turning up without a male parent in their lives. However, one time the hubby starts mistreating the kids, so the married womans feel that things have gone excessively far and they eventually decide to interrupt away, but non at all for the adult females’s interest but for her kids alternatively. The inquiry is to what extent does freedom of faith go manus in manus with adult females’s freedom and to what extent the freedom of adult females is restricted by polygamy. Besides many arguments are centered on adult females’s rights and the potency for maltreatment in a polygamous matrimony.
Tapestry of Polygamy, an anti-polygamy group that is made up of adult females who used to be married to polygamists, maintain that polygamy makes victims out of adult females and puts kids in injury’s manner. It was founded in 1998 and the group was named for the form their narratives create when woven together. The bulk of their work is reding work forces and adult females that want to go forth polygamous matrimonies, and they besides push for enforcements of Utah’s Torahs that ban polygamy. Within the last twelvemonth, more than three 100 adult females followed the illustration of the former polygamist married womans in the Tapestry, and left their plural matrimony. The organisation receives over two twelve calls from adult females and even some work forces who need person to speak to about their polygamist faith. The Tapestry of Polygamy provinces that, ? polygamy is the biggest con in the universe, work forces are in it for sex, non faith. ?
Polygamy besides means poorness, because there are so many kids in the household, and the hubby frequently does non keep a occupation. The hubby has no ground to keep a occupation. This is because many of these hubbies are passing each twenty-four hours of the hebdomad with a different married woman and kids. They stay the dark with the married woman so they do non hold to pay rent. The married woman provides that twenty-four hours’s repasts so there is no demand for nutrient or public-service corporation measures either. So in other words, the hubby lives off his married womans.
There are other states, besides America, that have polygamy being practiced within them. In Uganda, Africa polygamy is common. The statistics in this state say that between 40 to fifty per centum of brotherhoods are polygamous. In the rural countries it has become an economic necessity, since multiple married womans and kids provide unpaid farm labour. The right of a adult male to take as many married womans as he wishes is even protected under jurisprudence, provided he could procure their comfort. However there have been surveies that show that in many instances a 2nd married woman is put into mortifying functions, pushed aside, and her belongings is confiscated.
In Uganda though there are more and more adult females who are disputing this pattern. The FIDA, which is the Ugandan Association of Women Lawyers, has drafted a 54 page that defines the rights before, during, and after a matrimony. The Law Reform Commission set out to modulate polygamous brotherhoods. It recommends that each adult male be restricted to two married womans and that the demand for a 2nd married woman must be justified in forepart of a Family and Children Court foremost. Some say that the statement is non about married womans, it is about allowing people marry harmonizing to their beliefs. Beliefs should be healthy and non harm others or society. If it were person’s belief to kill their married woman after a twelvemonth and so remarry and reiterate this of all time twelvemonth, would it be tolerated and allowed.
Islamic Torahs permit a adult male to take up to four married womans, but there are rigorous conditions that this is allowed to take topographic point under. He must travel before an Islamic spiritual tribunal and prove he will be able to afford it, will be just and merely to all of his married womans, and he will non do injury to the bing married woman and the bing kids. Some opposing positions are that Islam’s codification of jurisprudence says that work forces have the right to four married womans and that any restriction of that right would make a immense misdemeanor of the freedom of faith. However the regulations and Torahs of Islam may stop up altering a small spot, because the Prime Minister of Islam, Mahathir Muhammad has been notably outspoken on the topic of polygamy. Some Parliament members have suggested that polygamy has been justified because adult females outnumbered work forces in the state of Malaysia by 14 to one. However, the statistic section reported there were really more Moslem work forces than adult females in the state. So adult females outnumbering work forces is no longer a strong plenty opposing statement.
There are so many things about polygamy that are different and merely non right compared to a conventional matrimony. The gender behind closed doors is non intimate, because the married woman knows that he is merely following his agenda and that yesterday and tomorrow he will be with a different adult female. It is about impossible to give yourself one hundred per centum to a adult male who you know for the following six darks will be kiping with about six different adult females. Some say that in sharing a hubby you are non losing anything, but alternatively you are deriving redemption and sister-wives. Yes the adult female derive sister-wives who can assist with the kids and family responsibilities, but is it worth all the negativeness that goes manus in manus with this sort of matrimony. Yet to others polygamy represents a tie to an earlier clip when their pioneering sires came to the west side of America and began a new hereafter at that place. Today’s universe is non the same as it was for their sires. Thingss do alter and people need to recognize this. Besides merely because a coevals before us did a certain thing, does non do it right, and it surely does non intend that we have to follow in those footfalls every bit good.
