Today's Philly Inquirer carries an opinion piece by Martha Nussbaum, a professor in an endowed chair at the University of Chicago, arguing that polygamy is just fine.
We think that her quasi-libertarian, John Stuart Mill-inspired analysis is problematic on two major counts.
First, she suggests that polygamy is positively enshrined in Western Civilization because it is found in the Bible. Such a reading of the Bible is utterly flawed, however. The biblical narrative begins with monogamy at the center of the ideal creation (Adam and Eve, not Adam and Eve and Gwendolyn and Sadie and Margaret). Deviations from monogamy are universally treated negatively in biblical narrative. To say it bluntly, every polygamous arrangement in the Bible has a very sad ending. Polygamy in the Bible is treated honestly as a fact of the culture, and the Mosaic Law seeks to regulate it without endorsing it, like slavery. But it is never something that is OK because Abraham or Jacob or David did it. Those dudes had nothing but problems because of it.
In sum the Bible portrays polygamy as a deviation from the divinely established norm, a consequence of unfaith and a sign of accommodation to the surrounding pagan culture, and ultimately as poison to harmonious familial relationships. Nussbaum's reading of the Hebrew Bible is miserably one-sided, reflecting a level of hermeneutical skill far below what one would expect of a tenured professor in a prestigious law school (the other kind of school besides a seminary that values interpretation as a professional skill).
Second, she doesn't do the math, and the math is enormously easy. Polygamy is problematic socially because it dooms poor men to being wifeless. Because men and women exist in nearly equal numbers, and because multiple wives cost extra money, polygamy inevitably leads to the accumulation of wives by the rich and the deprivation of marriage to poor men. Nussbaum cites with apparent approval the Mormons' 19th-century propaganda that plural marriage reduces married men's proclivity to visit prostitutes. Ignored in that equation are the men who remain unmarried because the available women have been taken into polygamous arrangements, who on the argument's assumption of unrestrained male sexual desire would be driven to the very thing that polygamy was supposed to prevent.
Note this well: SWNID hates economic arguments based on the assumption that wealth is a zero-sum game. But the marriage market is most definitely a zero-sum game. We can't increase production of women to meet the demand for plural marriage.* In the case of marriage, non-centrally controlled socialism is the social necessity. One wife per gentleman only, please! And the government has a mandate to say that, so that the liberty of all, in this case to have a chance at marriage, can be protected.
SWNID also hates slippery slope arguments, but Nussbaum does give one pause on this point. Advocates of such inventions of same-sex marriage have protested mightily when opponents have said that the innovations open the door to other arrangements, like polygamy. Well, what will the gay marriage advocates say to a prominent law professor arguing for the very thing, on related social and historical grounds?
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*China is reaping a social whirlwind as its one-child policy yields a generation in which gender-selected men far outnumber women.
5 comments:
This does not address the issue of men who have wives that cannot perform the sexual act because of illness or other tragedy, leaving such men in the unenviable position of either divorcing their wives to accommodate the monogamy only restriction, or try to live without the blessing of marriage and be shackled with all the curses. Polygamy is the only humane solution in these cases.
Where does the OT specifically address the dudes problems as a result of having multiple wives? It seems your argument assumes that the later problems encountered by these dudes was the result of polygamy, when, if I'm not mistaken, this is found in the text.
I've been reading this blog for 2 or 3 years now, and those are easily the funniest comments ever posted. Too bad they're not intentionally funny.
"Elkanah," so how "humane" is polygamy for the sick wife? "Good evening, Sick Wife," says the polygamous husband. "I'm now going to 'visit' Sex Wife. Have a pleasant evening convalescing."
And what's your humane solution for single men? Hiring a "temp"? Do you recommend the same for the husband whose wife isn't in the mood?
Thanks for proving that polygamy is really based on the notion that men can't live without constant sex.
And "Anonymous" (who should be congratulated for not even identifying himself with a pseduonym, thereby sparing himself the embarrassment of possible identification), how obvious do these texts have to make the implications of polygamy? Do you not get it that jealousy between the children of different wives leads to tragedy for Abraham, Jacob and David? Too bad no one read you stories when you were little, or you'd understand that narratives don't have to tell you their point in black and white to make their point.
I hope that everyone had as much fun laughing at these comments as I did.
If it looks like a Mormon, sounds like a Mormon, smells like a Mormon, it might be a Mormon.
elkanah,
What if wife number one recovers? Does she now get to take another husband since the first is too busy with second wife? What if a husband becomes ill? Do the wives get to add more husbands to the mix? When does is stop?
I'm not big on slippery slope arguments either, but sometimes they are right.
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