Proposal to decriminalize polygamy in Utah

Marriage is special, a protected transaction in the U.S. and elsewhere, and that has led to odd situations as social mores change.  Same sex marriage is now legal in every U.S. state, but long before that happened, laws against homosexual sex had already been repealed. So same sex couples were able to live peacefully together before they could marry.*

In much the same way, it is not a crime in most places for unmarried people to live together, and start families.  The phrase 'polyamory' is sometimes applied to romantic relations among multiple adults.  But marriage, no longer defined as a relation between one man and one woman, is still defined as a relation between two people (but now they can also be of the same sex).  That "two-ness" may be starting to change too.

The WSJ has the story:

Utah Lawmakers Seek to Decriminalize Polygamy
Sponsor says bill will help ‘otherwise law-abiding consenting adults who practice polygamy’
By Talal Ansari

"Utah could decriminalize polygamy for the first time in 85 years.

"Lawmakers in the state House are considering legislation that would reclassify bigamy as an infraction in certain circumstances. The Republican-controlled Senate unanimously passed the bill earlier this week.

"More than 60% of Utah’s population belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, colloquially known as the Mormon Church, which practiced polygamy early in its history but banned it more than a century ago.

"Under current state law, bigamy is a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. Bigamy is a legal term, defined as marrying someone while being legally married to another person.
...
"Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes has said his office only prosecutes bigamy crimes “against those who induce marriage under false pretenses or if there is a collateral malfeasance.”

"Sen. Henderson has said her bill would essentially codify the attorney general’s prevailing practices into law.
...
"Polygamy was outlawed in the U.S. in the 1880s. The practice was banned by the Mormon Church in 1890, as Utah sought statehood. Utah wouldn’t become a state until 1896, under the condition that it explicitly ban polygamy in its constitution.


"Since then, the state and the Mormon Church have taken a hard stance against polygamy, with the latter excommunicating its members for engaging in plural marriage.

"In 1935, the state criminalized bigamy. Those moves pushed polygamists to the fringes of society and in geographic isolation.

"The law has been challenged over the years. In 2013, U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups declared unconstitutional a key portion of Utah’s polygamy law after it was challenged by stars of the reality-television show “Sister Wives.” An appeals court later dismissed that decision and the Supreme Court decided not to hear the appeal.

"According to a Gallup poll, acceptance of polygamy appears to be increasing in the U.S. In 2018, 18% of Americans believed marrying more than one person was morally acceptable. In 2003, 7% of those asked took the same stance."
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In common usage, I think "bigamy" refers to one person having two spouses (often a man with two wives), but it sounds as if, used as a legal term in Utah, bigamy includes what used to be called polygamy,  the situation of having more than one spouse at the same time. The usual form of polygamy is polygyny, when a man has more that one wife. A less usual form of polygamy is polyandry, when a woman has more than one husband.

All these terms arose when marriage, even multiple marriage, was thought of as between men and women.  We may need new terms for plural marriage now that we recognize same sex marriages.  For example, in a plural marriage of the future, will all the members be married to each other?

This would make legalizing plural marriage potentially more difficult, in terms of defining the legal status of all the spouses, than was legalizing same sex marriage.  In the case of same sex marriage, all the customary rights and obligations of traditional marriage in each state could be extended to same sex couples by a judicial order.  But, e.g. how does divorce work in a plural marriage--is it pairwise, or is it more like dissolving a partnership, or resigning from a partnership?  Can some parts of the marriage persist while other parts are dissolved?

This suggests to me that it may be some time before we see new, plural forms of marriage enshrined in law.  But I wouldn't bet the farm against it in the long term.

(In the meantime, I think we can say that if you support plural marriage, that's big o' you.)
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*In a geographically related story, the Salt Lake Tribune reported last week
BYU students celebrate as school removes ‘Homosexual Behavior’ section from its online Honor Code

Polygamy convictions in Canada

The CBC has the story:

Winston Blackmore and James Oler found guilty of polygamy by B.C. judge
Former bishops of Bountiful both have numerous wives and children
CBC

"Two former religious leaders in B.C. have been found guilty of polygamy after marrying more than two dozen women over the course of 25 years.

"Winston Blackmore and James Oler were convicted of practising plural or "celestial" marriage in the fundamentalist community of Bountiful, B.C.

"In B.C. Supreme Court on Monday, Justice Sheri Ann Donegan said Blackmore "subscribed to beliefs and practices of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints," a Mormon sect that believes in plural marriages.

"James Oler, another former leader from the same community, was accused of having five wives and Blackmore 24 wives.

"Both men are former bishops of the sect in the province's southeast. Neither denied having multiple marriages and Blackmore has fathered more than 145 children from his marriages.
...
"Blackmore's lawyer, Blair Suffredine, previously said he'd launch a constitutional challenge to the validity of the polygamy laws if his client were to be found guilty.
...
"The legal fight began in the early '90s when police first investigated allegations that residents of an isolated religious community were practising multiple marriages.

"A lack of clarity around Canada's polygamy laws initially led to failed attempts at prosecuting Blackmore, followed by several efforts to clarify the legislation, including a reference question to the B.C. Supreme Court.

"The court ruled in 2011 that laws banning polygamy were constitutional and did not violate religious freedoms guaranteed in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

"The mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, based in Utah, officially renounced polygamy in the late 1800s and disputes any connection to the fundamentalist group's form of Mormonism."
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Prosecution of polygamy in the U.S. has focused not on polygamy itself, but on the fact that some of the brides are underage.  Here's an AP report of the present case via ABC news, which includes the following:
"Oler was chosen to lead the Canadian community just north of the U.S. state of Idaho following Blackmore's excommunication from the sect in 2002 by Warren Jeffs, considered the prophet and leader of the group.

"Authorities have said Jeffs still leads the sect from a Texas prison, where he is serving a life sentence for sexually assaulting underage girls he considered brides."
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See my earlier posts on polygamy

Marriage, evolving

The New York Times has an unusually interesting discussion of marriage, motivated by NY State's recent legalization of same-sex marriage.

Two discussants speculate on what this might come to mean for incest and polygamy.

Ralph Richard Banks: "What now of the two remaining criminal prohibitions of intimate relationships: incest and polygamy? Even as same sex and interracial relationships are accepted, Americans are now imprisoned for incest or polygamy.

The cases against polygamy and incest are not nearly as strong as most people imagine. Yet they will not become legal anytime soon. To see why, it helps to understand the evolution of moral assessments of interracial and same-sex marriage.

"Courts and legislatures began to invalidate laws against interracial marriage after Hitler gave racism a bad name...

"The categorical prohibitions of incest and polygamy persist in part because people who commit either act are commonly reduced to that act (which is viewed as morally reprehensible) and, in turn, are not viewed as worthy of respect as people. More than a century ago, when the Supreme Court upheld the prohibition of polygamy the court reasoned that it was inimical to American values and identity, in part, the court stated, because polygamy was “almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and African people.” Historically, both polygamy and incest have been more widely practiced, and accepted, than the Supreme Court, and most Americans, seem to believe.

Over time, our moral assessments of these practices will shift, just as they have with interracial marriage and same sex marriage. We will begin to take seriously questions that now seem beyond the pale: Should a state be permitted to imprison two cousins because they have sex or attempt to marry? Should a man and two wives be permitted to live together as a family when they assert that their religious convictions lead them to do so?"

John Corvino: "Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Yes, New York’s decision to grant same-sex couples the freedom to marry was a big deal. So was Washington’s before it and New Hampshire’s and Vermont’s and Iowa’s and Connecticut’s and Massachusetts’s. And let’s not forget Maine and California, which had marriage equality and then lost it (for now)....

"Meanwhile, opponents continue to predict a slippery slope to polygamy, polyamory and other “untested, experimental” family forms.

"The grain of truth in their prediction is this: recent progress reminds us that marriage is an evolving institution and that not everyone fits in the neat boxes that existing tradition offers.

"But let’s not confuse issues. Whether it’s a good idea to allow people to marry one partner of the same sex is a separate question from whether it’s a good idea to allow anyone to marry multiple partners — or their siblings, pets, iPhones or whatever else doomsayers toss in. It’s worth remembering that polygamy is quite “traditional,” even biblical. It is no more logically connected to one side of this debate than the other.

"The truth is that New York granted same-sex couples marriage rights not because of a radical idea, but because of an old-fashioned one: when two individuals commit to a lifetime of mutual love and care, it’s good to support them — or at least get out of their way."

******

Several discussants note that long-lasting marriage is increasingly common in the U.S. among the prosperous and well educated, and decreasingly common otherwise. 

Judith Stacey: "Marriage never has been or will be an equal-opportunity institution. As the legal scholars June Carbone and Naomi Kahn document in Red Families v. Blue Families, the marriage gap between rich and poor family regimes has been widening dangerously in recent decades. Marriage rates are higher and divorce rates lower in liberal Massachusetts than in conservative Mississippi. "...

"As the United States gradually makes the membership rules to marriage gender-inclusive, it risks deepening our sharp class and race disparities in marriage and family life. If we wish to avoid this fate, we should not be celebrating the benefits of marriage. Instead we need to develop family policies that give greater recognition and resources to the growing array of families formed, as Nancy Polikoff titled her book, “Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage.”

W. Bradford Wilcox: "In the nation’s affluent and educated precincts — from the Upper East Side to Bethesda, Md., to Southlake, Texas — the future of marriage is bright. After succumbing temporarily to the marital tumult of the 1970s, college-educated Americans have been getting their marital act together in recent years. For this demographic, divorce is down, infidelity is down, nonmarital childbearing still remains an exotic activity (only 2 percent of children born to white, college-educated women today are born outside of marriage) and the vast majority of children are fortunate to grow up with both their mother and their father.

"But in poor and working-class communities — from the South Bronx to Blytheville, Ark., to Youngstown, Ohio — the future of marriage is bleak. If anything, the aftershocks of the 1970s are growing, with all too many Middle American communities coming to resemble the inner city when it comes to family life. For the majority of Americans who do not hold college degrees, divorce rates remain high, infidelity is up, nonmarital childbearing is way up (more than one-third of births to white, high-school-educated women are now outside of marriage) and about half of their children will see their parents split before they reach adulthood."
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Speaking of polygamy, Malaysia to Reward Polygamous Husbands (ht Stephanie Hurder)

Polygamy in Kenya

Polygamy is an ancient practice in Kenya, but proposed new legislation that codifies that existing wives need not be consulted about new wives is causing some controversy. Here are two headlines that give the picture even before you start reading the stories...

Kenya’s new marriage law legalises polygamy
Kenyan Christian leaders oppose polygamy bill

From the first story:
"Kenya’s male-dominated parliament passed a new controversial marriage law not only legalises polygamy, but allows men to marry without consulting their other spouses. A majority of lawmakers - all men - even agreed to drop a proposal to ban bride price payments (usually in the form of cows). 

According to local news reports, half of Kenya’s 69 female MPs refused to take part in the debate held in the 349-member parliament last week. The women who did attend parliament stormed out in protest. 

Traditionally, first wives are supposed to give prior approval for their husband’s second marriage. According to Samuel Chepkong’a, the MP who proposed the amendment to this custom, however, no consultation is necessary because a woman who gets married under customary law already knows the marriage is open to polygamy. 

“When you marry an African woman, she must know the second one is on the way and a third wife… this is Africa,” Chepkong’a was quoted as saying by Kenya’s Capital News website. "

And from the second story:
"NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) Christian leaders are appealing to President Uhuru Kenyatta not to sign into law a proposed new marriage bill that legalizes polygamy.
...
"But the National Council of Churches of Kenya, the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya, have rejected it, saying the law will undermine Christian principles of marriage and family.

The Rev. Peter Karanja, general secretary the Kenyan church council, said the bill demeans women and fails to respect the principle of spouses’ equality in marriage."

Polygamy in Malaysia

Malaysian Polygamy Club Draws Criticism
"“Men are by nature polygamous,” said Dr. Rohaya, Mr. Ikram’s third wife, flanked by the other three women and Mr. Ikram for an interview on a recent morning. The women were dressed in ankle-length skirts, their hair covered by tudungs, the Malaysian term for headscarf. “We hear of many men having the ‘other woman,’ affairs and prostitution because for men, one woman is not enough. Polygamy is a way to overcome social ills such as this.”
The Ikhwan Polygamy Club is managed by Global Ikhwan, a company whose businesses include bread and noodle factories, a chicken-processing plant, pharmacies, cafes and supermarkets. Mr. Ikram is a director of the company.
While polygamy is legal in predominantly Muslim Malaysia, the club has come under fire from the government and religious leaders, who suspect it may be an attempt to revive Al-Arqam, a defunct Islamic movement headed by Mrs. Hatijah’s husband, Mr. Ashaari Mohamad, who is the founder and owner of Global Ikhwan. Al-Arqam was banned in 1994 for “deviant” religious teachings." (emphasis added)

That explains the criticism, I guess.

Laws against polygamy to be tested in Canada

Canadian laws against polygamy will be tested in a suit brought against some of the inhabitants of the rural enclave of Bountiful, British Columbia, who are polygamous adherents of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). The Canadian magazine The Walrus covers the story: To the Exclusion of All Others: In a liberal society, is polygamy still intolerable?

At least part of the issue is how traditional divorce law, set up for dividing property between two people, would be adopted.
"American legal scholar Adrienne Davis, who believes that conventional family law rooted in monogamous marriage may not be up to attempts at cobbling polygamous marriage onto it, points out an alternative: commercial partnership law. Typically used when two or more parties go into business, according to Davis it would certainly address “polygamy’s central conundrum: ensuring fairness and establishing baseline behaviour in contexts characterized by multiple partners, on-going entrances and exits, and life-defining economic and personal stakes.” Of course, there would be a huge administrative cost to both adapting the model to marriage, and to ensuring that over the course of a union all partners consented to any new additions to it and renegotiated their respective rights as the landscape changed. More to the point, however, this is not what polygamists want, and it’s not what we want. Remember, liberal marriage was built on the concept of love; it’s hard to imagine a way of squaring this with the filing of an annual marriage report."

Polygamy in the Negev

Haaretz highlights some ads that have been appearing in the Negev:
Over 30 and single? Try polygamy
"Local Bedouin newspaper sparks calls on single Bedouin women who are over 30 to consider polygamous marriages, saying 'it's the Sharia solution'"

A related story concerns underage marriages ("Barely sixteen and married"), and includes this  observation
"The girls themselves, explains ElKranawi, are willingly marrying at such a young age: "Girls only 15 years old dream of getting married, because they understand it to be the way to independence. After all, if you are 20 or older, you may be married as a second wife. Even if a woman has obtained an education, she will not be independent. Her parents will continue to make decisions for her."

Misc. repugnant transactions

A challenge to Canada's laws against assisted suicide:
  Group pushing B.C., Ottawa for the right to have planned suicides

"In Canada, the Criminal Code makes it an offence to help with suicide, punishable by a term of up to 14 years.

"But the Farewell Foundation is trying to have the law declared unconstitutional, with lawyer Jason Gratl arguing that it violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

"The criminal prohibition on assisted suicide in Canada causes immeasurable physical and psychological suffering to persons of sound mind who are capable of making informed decisions and who wish to end their own lives in order to avoid that suffering,” states an affidavit filed by Mr. Ogden. “This suffering is certain and it is as extreme as any suffering humanity must endure. This case tests whether Parliament is entitled to cause such suffering to the people of Canada.”
*****

Ynet reports on a call by religious Israeli women for renewed polygamy.

"The ads distributed in the synagogues appeared in the "Shabbat B'Shabbato" weekly bulletin. They encourage Jewish Sephardic men to return to the ancient custom, and include a quote from a halachic paper written by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef several years ago, which does not rule out the polygamy phenomenon: "Courts imposing aggravated punishments on Sephardim over this matter are wrong."
...
"The Srugim website revealed that the ads were funded by a group of single religious women who have given up on finding a match.

"One of the women, 39, said: "I am a single religious woman who is afraid of losing the ability to become a mother." She added that there were 27 other women like her who would be happy to marry a married man."

*****

The WSJ reports "Buying and selling dogs is illegal in Iran, unless they are guard dogs or used by police. Dogs are considered "haram," or unclean, in Islam. "

And a black market has sprung up to fill the growing demand...
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Polyandry

Polyandry is much less common in the world than the other form of polygamy, polygyny, in which a man has two or more wives. In polyandrous households, one wife has two or more husbands. It was a form of plural marriage in resource poor regions.

Now, the NY Times reports, One Bride for 2 Brothers: A Custom Fades in India

In the remote villages of this Himalayan valley, polyandry, the practice of multiple men marrying one wife, was for centuries a practical solution to a set of geographic, economic and meteorological problems.
"People here survived off small farms hewed from the mountainsides at an altitude of 11,000 feet, and dividing property among several sons would leave each with too little land to feed a family. A harsh mountain winter ends the short planting season abruptly. The margin between starvation and survival is slender."...

"Polyandry has been practiced here for centuries, but in a single generation it has all but vanished. "...

"Polyandry has never been common in India, but pockets have persisted, especially among the Hindu and Buddhist communities of the Himalayas, where India abuts Tibet."

The Financial Times on looking into the future "In 100 Years"

Simon Kuper at the FT reviews the recent book of essays ‘In 100 Years: Leading Economists Predict the Future’, by Ignacio Palacios-Huerta (ed), MIT Press

The economist’s guide to the future

Prediction is hard, but so is summary. About my essay, he writes

Roth foresees parents manipulating their children’s genes. Some such methods, he writes, “may come to be seen as part of careful child rearing”. He also thinks people will become more efficient thanks to performance-enhancing drugs that improve “concentration, memory, or intelligence”.
Once humans have more years in good health, they will probably reorder their lives. Roth says that if child rearing takes up less of the lifespan, people may want different spouses for different phases of life. “New forms of polygamy-over-lifetime relationships” could arise, he writes.

You can see a longer summary and a link to the full essay here.

And here's the book on Amazon:‘In 100 Years: Leading Economists Predict the Future’

Opposite of repugnance: Protected transactions

I've been thinking lately about transactions that are the opposite of repugnant, i.e. transactions that, as a society, we often seek to promote, for reasons other than efficiency or pure political expediency.

In yesterday's post I mentioned monogamous marriage between a man and a woman, which in many countries and U.S. states is promoted over other forms of marriage (such as polygamy or same sex marriage).

Home ownership in the US is an obvious one, in this post-housing-bubble financial crisis, in which there have been Federal bailouts of the various Government Sponsored Entities like Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, set up to promote home ownership.

Food production by small farmers, not only in the US, but also in Europe and Japan: we protect this by subsidies, price supports, government supported crop insurance programs, etc.

Fishing by small fishing boats: if we were only interested in protecting fish to keep fisheries sustainable, we might regulate fisheries by imposing seasonal limits on how much could be caught. But in many cases we also set daily limits (e.g. some fishermen on Cape Cod are limited to catch no more than 400lbs of scallops a day). This makes large, factory fishing uneconomical, and protects small local fishermen.

The right to purchase guns probably falls into this category in the U.S.

Of course, as with repugnant transactions, protected transactions may involve a lot of complications, like providing public goods and protecting rights. But it may be that to better understand which kinds of transactions may come to be regarded as repugnant, it will help to understand which kinds of transactions are sometimes protected.

Update: looking at the comments, commuting alone in a car seems worth including on the list of protected transactions in the U.S. (And thank you to Dubner at Freakonomics for his generous plug of this blog...)

South Africa's president on monogamy, polygamy, infidelity, and AIDS

Zuma’s Frank Talk Starts AIDS Dialogue in South Africa
"During a 45-minute interview on Thursday, Mr. Zuma, who has three wives and a fiancée, talked about his personal relationships with startling directness and laid out his belief that a polygamous marriage in which H.I.V. is openly discussed is safer than a monogamous union in which a man has hidden mistresses. "

Cousin marriage

The NY Times writes about marriage between first cousins, which is illegal in exactly half of the 50 States of the U.S.: Shaking Off the Shame.

"But even in the United States — one of the few countries in the world where such unions are illegal — marriage between first cousins may be slowly emerging from the shadows.

Although it is still a long way from being widely accepted, in recent years cousin marriage has been drawing increased attention, as researchers study the potential health risks to children of cousins. And the couples themselves have begun to connect online, largely through a Web site called Cousincouples.com, which bills itself as “the world’s primary resource for romantic relationships among cousins,” and is trying to build support for overturning laws prohibiting cousin marriage.
For the most part, scientists studying the phenomenon worldwide are finding evidence that the risk of birth defects and mortality is less significant than previously thought. A widely disseminated study published in The Journal of Genetic Counseling in 2002 said that the risk of serious genetic defects like spina bifida and cystic fibrosis in the children of first cousins indeed exists but that it is rather small, 1.7 to 2.8 percentage points higher than for children of unrelated parents, who face a 3 to 4 percent risk — or about the equivalent of that in children of women giving birth in their early 40s. The study also said the risk of mortality for children of first cousins was 4.4 percentage points higher."
...
"“It’s never as simple as people make it out to be,” said Dr. Bittles, noting that very early studies did not account for factors like access to prenatal health care, and did not distinguish between couples like Ms. Spring-Winters and her husband, the first cousins in a family to marry, and those who are part of groups in which the practice is common over generations and has led to high rates of genetic disorders. "
...
"Dr. Bittles, who is working on an update of the 2002 study, and other researchers argue that laws against marriage between cousins were rooted in myth and moral objections, and that they amounted to genetic discrimination akin to eugenics or forced sterilization. People with severe disorders like Huntington’s disease, who have a 50 percent chance of passing it on to their offspring, are not barred from marrying because of the risk of genetic defects, he said, so cousins should not be, either.
Historically, marriage between cousins has been seen as desirable in many parts of the world, and even today, slightly more than 10 percent of marriages worldwide are between people who are second cousins or closer, Dr. Bittles said. In the United States, the percentage is thought to be much smaller, although it is difficult to estimate, since such marriages have long been an underground phenomenon, because of laws forbidding them and because of the lingering incest-related stigma. "
...
"Martin Ottenheimer, who wrote “Forbidden Relatives: The American Myth of Cousin Marriage,” a 1996 book that was the first detailed examination of the issue in the United States, compared marriage between cousins to same-sex marriage. “People say, ‘If we permit this, what are we permitting? We’re down the slippery slope toward chaos. Then we’ll permit people to marry dogs,...’ ”
...
"Despite the efforts of some in Minnesota and New Hampshire to overturn state laws against cousin marriage after the 2002 study was published, it remains illegal there. And as of 2005, it is against the law in Texas as well.
The Texas ban was part of a law targeting polygamy, and the state representative who proposed it, Harvey Hilderbran, a Republican, said he would not have introduced a bill simply to prohibit marriage between cousins. Still, he said in an interview: “Cousins don’t get married just like siblings don’t get married. And when it happens you have a bad result. It’s just not the accepted normal thing.” "

A matching market for polygamy: SecondWife.com

Here is a (combinatorial?) site for plural marriage for Muslims: SecondWife.com

“then marry women of your choice, two or three, or four but if you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly, then only one”
- Quran 4:3

Headlines that could have appeared on April 1

 Grim news largely crowded out funny news this past 12 months, but not completely (and some grim news is also funny).

National Park Service Asks Visitors to Please Stop Licking Toads (NYT, Nov, 2022)

Wyoming lawmakers propose ban on electric vehicle sales (The Hill, 01/16/23) "A group of GOP Wyoming state lawmakers want to end electric vehicle sales there by 2035, saying the move will help safeguard the oil and gas industries."

Sex on the beach: pressures of extreme polygamy may be driving southern elephant seals to early death (Guardian, March 2023)

Idaho governor signs firing squad execution bill into law, AP, March 25, 2023. "... making Idaho the latest state to turn to older methods of capital punishment amid a nationwide shortage of lethal-injection drugs. ...firing squads will be used only if the state cannot obtain the drugs needed for lethal injections.