Texas: Exes and Sexes
When Texas Child Protective Services (what a grisly name, by the way) seized the children of mothers belonging the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, I wondered if the state of Texas was turning Yankee. By any legal or moral standard I could think of, the seizure was an abuse of power against the fundamental institution of all human societies, the family. Yesterday's ruling by the state's Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which condemned the action as illegal, restores my faith in the sanity of Texans.
Naturally, the feminist child-savers at the TCPS are appalled by the ruling, but what did they expect? Their case rested on the allegation that on the FCLDS ranch there was a pervasive atmosphere of abuse of children and minors, which entitled them to seize all the children without proving in any one case either that a particular child had been abused or was in imminent danger of abuse. This approach had failed in the past, and, we can only hope, it will fail in the future. The smoking gun in the case was a telephone call from a girl who claimed to have been abuse. When she turned out to have been, apparently, a middle-aged ex-member with a grudge, the case should have fallen apart, but like our Texas President, who kept on changing his excuse for invading Iraq, the prosecutors moved on to other allegations,
The Fundamentalist Mormons are, admittedly, a weird bunch, and I personally find their cult disgusting. Like other Mormon splinter groups, they seem to live off the welfare provided to the mothers of what are in law regarded as illegitimate children. Tom Green (out on parole after a conviction for having sex with his 13-year old "wife") used to make a good living this way, and, according to people in Utah (Mormon as well as gentile) with whom I have spoken, some monogamous Mormons are all too prone to make use of welfare money to support their large families.
I do not know why such a strange religion as Mormonism was ever tolerated outside of Utah, but I do not make the laws. Mormonism is legal and so is Fundamentalist Mormonism. However repulsive we may find polygamy or marriage with young teenage women, let us remember that the Fundamentalist Mormons are hardly much different from polygamous Mormons down to 1890, when under very serious pressure from the Federal Government, the LDS renounced--for the time being--polygamy. I have read remarks from so-called Christian conservatives, who compare polygamy with homosexuality? Where did such people go to school? King David, then, was on the moral plane with homosexuals? When, by the way, did Jews renounce polygamy? It was banned in Europe, under threat of persecution, in the 12 century, though the ban apparently expired in the 13th. Today, European Jews continue to practice monogamy, which is the law in Israel, but some Middle Eastern Jews, even in Israel, continue to be polygenous. I do not think polygamy, whether practiced by Mormons, Muslims, or Jews, is an especially wholesome custom, and I much prefer the Greco-Roman marriage custom adopted by Christianity from the beginning, but it is foolish to be shocked or disgusted by an institution that is so common.
In America today, I do not see that there is any basis for outlawing polygamy. It certainly cannot be Christian moral law: Christianity can scarcely be mentioned in a public school or government building, and there is hardly any aspect of Christian morality that is enforced by law, even if there are still statutes on the books that retain the impress of the Christians who passed the law. When is the last time that adultery or fornication were punished as such? Prostitution is illegal in most places--with what justification I cannnot imagine--but two consenting adults can do pretty much anything in the privacy of one of their homes. Military officers are occasionally punished for adultery, usually with someone under their command or at least in the same service,but that is a question of military discipline . A Michigan court has ruled that the penalty for adultery could be a life sentence, but I know of no one in Michigan serving time for seducing his neighbor's wife. After the decision in Lawrence v. Texas, upholding a right to privacy, adultery became a dead letter. Then, if adultery is not a crime, how can polygamy be punished? A bigamist who lies to his wives is one thing; he may well be regarded as having tricked his second wife into a contractual relationship. But a man who lives openly with two women has, in the eyes of American law today, committed no crime. With the support of a few more Muslim immigrants, the LDS itself might well end its temporary prohibition on polygamy.
Critics of the Fundamentalist Mormons also claim to be shocked by the marriage of underage girls with men in their 20's and 30's, but if they knew anything about the marriage customs of other ages, they would hardly be surprised. In colonial Virginia, parental consent was necessary for a minor to get married, but with consent a girl of twelve could become a bride. Even in America today, while marriage laws vary from state to state, it is simply not true to say that it is illegal for a girl of 16 to get married. In Pennsylvania, girls and boys under 18 need parental consent and have to pay a fee, while minors under the age of 16 need the consent both of the parents and of a Judge of the Orphans Court. In Utah, parental consent and permission from the Juvenile Court is required. In Texas, where the alleged abuse took place, parental consent on an official form or an order from the district court is sufficient. In other words, all this yelling and screaming about the marriage of 16-year old girls is a complete canard.
Here is what the real issue is. State governments routinely promote teenage promiscuous sex in the sex education programs in government schools and in government-funded counseling centers. In many states, condoms are routinely provided to children on the pretext of preventing the spread of STD's, when everyone knows or ought to know that the purpose, as much as the result, is to encourage teenage sex. And yet, here we have a state agency seizing a large group of children on the grounds that teenage girls are having sex with a man they regard as their husband and to whom they have promised fidelity.
If you want to talk about weird, what is weirder than the counselors, child-savers, and feminist prosecutors who want to rescue young women from polygamy only to turn them into unpaid strumpets. Today's Chicago Tribune features an article titled "To many girls, sex with adults just part of life," in which Mary Schmich interviews many young Chicago girls who openly talk about their sexual relations with older men. The young women she interviewed were mostly from the lower strata of society, but our entire culture, from top to bottom, is saturated with images of sexuality and promiscuity. From a little girl's first Barby to the social pressure to engage in sex games in Middle School to TV shows, like Desperate Housewives, designed to justify and promote adultery, American women are given a consistent message: Do it!
Let us cut the hypocrisy. America, as a society, is dedicated to the sexual exploitation of women. The only "crime " committed by the Fundamentalist Mormons is their commitment to marriage.
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"In other words, all this yelling and screaming about the marriage of 16-year old girls is a complete canard."
It should also be born in mind that the onset of puberty came a bit later in life in centuries past, and that post-adolescence college frat idealism did not exist: thus marrying shortly after attaining a certain milestone of physical maturity was conceivable. I will yell and scream about a 20-year-old American of either sex marrying today, because in my experience nearly one hundred percent of them are still children.
"May I add that we are in the throes of a moral panic about “child abuse” that has given rise to an industry that, once created, has taken on a life of its own."
"Janet Reno, America’s most infamous feminazi totalitarian chose to use Federal troops to burn resisters, and their families alive. The polygamists were chosen so ALL american slaves could get the image “burned” in their minds."
The example of Janet Reno is particularly salient. When I lived in Miami, Florida my landlady educated me in Janet Reno's history as a county prosecutor and one of the pioneers in the Day Care Sex Abuse Hysteria that saw numerous babysitters falsely accused of and locked up for years for child molestation. There is an excellent article in the Miami New Times archives detailing the sordid story of the agonization of Bobby Finje, a thirteen-year-old who lost two years of his life because her subordinates determined to try him as an adult on the most dubious of cases. The children in question were harangued for hours by psychotherapists who queried them in what, in the words of a criminal defense lawyer describing a related case involving Reno, would have passed for a brainwashing session.
Suddenly the ghastly spectacles of the Branch Davidian massacre and the armed seizure of Elian Gonzales (however justified in principle, completely wanting in form) make sense. Her appointment as Attorney General was a reward for her draconian fist, and since power tends to augment both one's best and worst features, it should not surprise that she should have taken to bloodlusting.
Folks, these are the sorts of people running our country. It is a tyranny of sex and bloodshed. See Donatien de Sade's "Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome ou l'École du libertinage" (but only if your mind is already warped beyond repair) for a slight exxaggeration of contemporary American institutions.
"It is a tyranny of sex and bloodshed. See Donatien de Sade’s “Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome ou l’École du libertinage”"
I would add "kidnapping" to the list, although kidnapping is usually related to rape and bloodshed.
cipher's post # 52 above can be a good example of utilization of the humanitarian 'cover' story behind which to accomplish the dirtiest of deeds.
Quote of #52: "What we have is a society (law, government, education systems, mass media, marketing) dedicated to maximizing - in both number and intensity - the choices available to women while at the same time mitigating any and all negative consequences that would otherwise accrue to a woman pursuing one or more said choices." (end quote of ciper's.)
That is also an example of propositional truth, meaning in this case the proposition is put forward that a.) government actually 'can' accomplish the good and what is best for either gender. And not merely be allegedly 'dedicated' to it. & b.) Even if it can favor effectively a special group then that is what is best for the essence of society meaning the totality or whole of society.
Thus the proposition is set up and believed-in 'as if' it were the truth itself. Then the a priori assumption is equated with truth and takes on the aspect of the unassailable. This sort of shabby or lose way of doing business as it pertains to our personal daily comportments and worse elevated up to government and so enforced at the level of the collective is not merely American but European as well; because it is at the heart of the Greek foundation of our civilization and so remains one of our invisible 'givens.'
Let's be clear there are far many more positives or those inheritances close to being whole involved with our Greek heritage upon which Western Civilization is founded. Although, the Greeks themselves left the issue of truth undeveloped and profoundly - (because they didn't realize it either, for the most part, with the exception of Aristotle and some of the earlier Greeks) - imbalanced toward propositional truth as if truth. And so to this day without our realizing it and in that regard understandably, we remain too sloppy about it at our own peril *ourselves. I won't go into Iraq and the propositional truths we subscribed to automatically in assuming truth in our entering into that debacle.
Somtimes the propositional is salutary and comforting and why the Greeks for the most part settled into that zone as it were, more than less as a synonym for truth.
However it is not at all 'safe' as the real human beings at Waco found out-remebered by NGPM in his post #53 above-unless and until it is elevated up to consciousness as primarily propositional, and great pains and efforts are made both personally and collectively to get as close to the actual truth in tandem with the proposition as humanly possible. ... That is only possible once we first and foremost become aware of what all of our predispositional inclinations are as a result of the *culture we inherited and subsequent civilization which both nurtures us, as well as in some instances deceives without our even being aware of that fact.
We are conceptual creatures and when we pause at the conceptual level prior to making decisions, we are inevitably and profoundly informed by our culture for which in our case we should be mostly grateful while at the same time wary.
Two small points. 1) The subjugation of women is almost always carried out by tyrannical rulers who wish to eliminate the authority of rivals by elevating the weak and pretending to protect them (a point made in the ancient world by Herodotus and Aristotle) and advocated by males who wish to prey upon them, e.h. J.S. Mill and Hugh Hefner. Anyone who thinks women are liberated in our society has never read George Orwell. If service of /slavery to God is, in the Prayerbook's language echoing centuries of Christian thought, "perfect freedom," then the liberation of the individual from his family, society, and religion is perfect slavery.
2) I have no idea of what goes on in a Muslim or FCLS polygamous household today, apart from what I have read. It is morally perilous to pronounce judgments on other peoples sinful manners of living without having a word or two to say about one's own. For example, there was a time when Christians condemned divorce except under very restricted circumstances and even then remarriage was a problem. Today, American Catholics run around seeking annulments as if they were building permits--or rather, demolition permits--and some Evangelical Churches treat divorce as a casual matter. I have no interest in defending Fundamentalist Mormons and, God knows, the Muslims, but I wonder why American Christians spend so much time pointing out the mote in the polygamist's eye and have so little time to condemn the beam in our own. Of all the institutions that might be trusted to protect women and children or safeguard marriage, the governments of these United States should be put somewhere between the National Organization of Women and the ACLU.
Dr. Fleming,
Thank you for your two small points. Especially the first.
So then our society (law, government, education systems, mass media, marketing) is not dedicated to women's exploitation nor the maintenance/expansion of their "liberation" per se, but to the eventual destruction of us all by first destroying our families and traditions via tempting our women while distracting/confusing our men.
We're losing the Garden. Again.
Tom, the motes in our own eyes should nonetheless not stop us from saying what moral outrage it is to subject thirteen year-olds to the sexual pleasure of dirty old men. And if we can hold also that homosexual men can be "married," then what is to prevent us from recognizing marriage between men and their daughters,or...fill in the blank? I know that you agree with me about this, and I agree that the Texas authorities had no constitutional jurisdiction in the Mormon case. I just don't want anybody to think that either you or I in any measure sympathizes with the weird Mormons who, however protected they are by our Constitution, practice such disgusting things.
I entirely agree with John Wilson on the principle, and I am the last person on earth who could claim to be non-judgmental. I hold no brief for any sort of polygamy--quite the contrary. My point, as I am sure you understand, John, is a general one. As much as we prefer our own institutions and customs, we should beware of measuring all other societies by the perfect vision we have of our own. I have only met a few polygamists, all Muslim, and I do not know enough of their lives to pass judgment. I do not think polygamy or marriage with teenage girls is always a case of dirty old men exploiting young women, though that seems often to be the case with renegade Mormons.
I no longer care too much about marriage law in this country, because the ruling class and its ideology hates the whole idea of marriage. A man cannot marry a man, he cannot even truly have sex with a man, because intercourse is something that happens between not within the sexes. Nor can a man marry his daughter or sister or mother and Christians, whatever a law might say. Note can, not may. These extreme cases are outside the norms of human experience as known to historians and anthropologists. Polygyny, however, is a well-known phenomenon and is not confined to savages. I am completely and utterly opposed to the practice, but it should not be put on the same level with child molestation and homosexuality.
As a matter of fact, I don't know the average age of marriage for these FCLDS women and their husbands. The cases I have read of usually involve a 16 year old girl and a man from 25-35, not the sort of arrangement I should like for my daughter, but not inherently evil.
Yes, good points, all of them. A friend recently suggested to me that perhaps marriage ought not to be a matter of legal sanction at all, but (what it was for much of the history of the west) for families and the Church to control. Another friend's daughter was recently married, by her brother-in-law who was "ordained" by the state of Florida for $25.
Dr. Fleming,
You hit a home run with this article. Excellent!
Yes indeed an excellent article Dr. Fleming. One may very well be opposed to polygamy but one also cannot helped to be heartbroken and outraged at young children being ripped away from their families by the total state as exists in Texas, bewildered mothers being imprisoned inside a local county arena having no clue as to what's going on with their families. Truly a Kafkaeque nightmare to people who just wished to be left alone. If there are crimes being committed then punish the guilty, not the innocent with them at the same time. It seems as though some in Texas prefer hunting with buckshot rather than a rifle bullet.
I'm a little suprised many Mormons haven't been screaming religious persecution and bigotry at some of the Texas state officials (especially the state's crooked governor) and the powers that be in Austin. Certainly the whole raid itself smells of a set-up and the the whole FLDS compound seemed to be out in the middle of nowhere, hardly a problem unless one wished to be a do-gooder.
Yet polygamy is the next to last frontier society is crossing into (the legalization of cosnentual child-sex is still a ways away when Mary Ruwart was beaten by Bob Barr for the Libertarian Party nomination) when it comes to sexual law. This is not just because of the odd fundementalist Mormon colony here and there or HBO docudramas, but because some of the immigrants coming into the U.S. come from cultures that sanction polygamy (along with child marriage and pre-arranged marriages). If we are a multicultural society, do we not then allow such practices to take place? After all, some communties allow ritualistc animal slaughter in controlled circumtances? Do we tell the polygamous immigrant when he arrives to the U.S. he has to pick and choose which one he wants? Perhaps controlling immigration maybe a better solution and a Supreme Court ruling that legalizes polygamy for every state, every county and every township in the U.S.
If the State of Texas cannot enforce its reasonable, humane marriage laws against these wackos, then it might as well throw them all out and we can go back to the jungle we left thousands of years ago.
The trouble with comments like #64 is that it is content-free. Which marriage laws, precisely, are being enforced when children are taken away from their mothers without a hearing on the mere allegation, bogus it turns out, from an unnamed informant? While I would not wish to overemphasize the arbitrary distinction between fact and value, one can distinguish, I should think, between such statements as a) the temperature is 78 degrees today, and b) it's too hot, or a) Texas permits the marriage of 16 year old girls who have their mothers' permission and b) any older man who marries a teenage girl is a depraved wacko who belongs in the jungle.
That people keep writing as though "Texas" is somehow particularly at fault here, is an indication of the depth of unconscious South-blaming that perrvades discourse, even among the good people here. What happened in Texas could have happened anywhere, indeed would have happened anywhere where the same people were gathered. The bureaucracies complained of exist in all the States, essentially as demanded and regulated by the federal government at the behest of Northern politicians and pressure groups. Such bureaucracies in my state and I suspect throughout the South are essentially staffed and run by carpetbaggers. What has happened does not reflect traditional Texas, but what its government has become under generations of carpetbaggers.
In my state we have carpetbaggers from the south and from Canada, both groups of which have driven most of our jobs out--the former by being the bulwark of unions and the latter by importing Canadian socialism to the governor's office. Actually, of course, Dr. Wilson's point is correct. The state is so pervasive everywhere that the family is without much ability to defend itself. Unless it tries to fool with mine--and listen to me, a Yankee sounding like an up-country South Carolinian!
It was far from my intention to single out Southerners and Texans in my crtiticism of the actions of Texas state officials. Yes, Dr. Wilson is right this could have happened anywhere in the country and outrage would have appiled if there were officials from Oregon or New Hampshire. No doubt there are a lot of ordinary Texanss who are probably upset at their state's action as I am.
We may discuss whether even thirty year old 'men' today are really adults psychologically, but that's a sign of social and cultural decay in a society which doesn't raise boys to be real men or girls to be real women.
The next thing we need to set aside for a moment is the immorality of fornication, etc., and just look at what can be called the 'natural' aspect of the issue.
Many times over the years, I have heard people talk about fourteen year old girls as being 'just about grown'. Sometimes it was their own parents saying this to them.
Where do these media idiots on TV get the idea that sixteen year old girls or boys are 'children'? They are not.
Back when I used 'run around', I had more fourteen and sixteen year old girls chasing me around when I was in my early twenties than I ever did when I was in my teens. I didn't 'mess around' with them, but that's not the point. They go for older guys and always have. I was not surprised to be pursued like that because I had known a girl my age who had dated boys in their early twenties when she was fourteen, and she wasn't unique in this.
When I was twenty-one, I got shanghaied into a blind date with a sixteen year old girl. I'll never forget having to go pick her up with her extended family there at her house having a family reunion of sorts. They still let me take her out on a date after seeing hold old I was. Nothing happened because her mother laid the law down to her, and I was too terrified after meeting her extended family.
It's nature for younger girls to go after older guys, and all the CPS propaganda and government intervention, all the stigmatising of nineteen year old boys for having sex with sixteen year old girls wont change a thing. Dating between boys in their early twenties and teenage girls goes on all the time. I goes on all across the country, every night, and especially on weekends. As I said, we can discuss the immorailty of fornication, but there is nothing abusive about all this, nor is there anything inherently unnatural to it, and what was going on in that Mormon community was in some ways less immoral.
These TV media idiots need a big dose of reality.
"That people keep writing as though “Texas” is somehow particularly at fault here, is an indication of the depth of unconscious South-blaming that perrvades discourse, even among the good people here."
Dr. Wilson, while I think that's reading a bit too much into things, you've got to admit that since the South fell under the delusion of having a "Texan" in the White House many Southerners have become most enthusiastic supporters of the bloodthirsty libertine tyranny now represented by a presumptive "conservative." This is not an indictment of traditional Southern culture, just an indicator of how the South, like the North, has been conquered and colonised by an inhuman and unchristian ideology. This seems especially true of Texas; I've known Southerners from elsewhere who consider that state "unrecognisable" compared to its historic self.
Dr. Fleming,
I agree with your revulsion at Mormonism (polygamous or not) and also that the Texas circus is a farcical example of anarcho-tyranny. (Texas would have been better served were all those buses used to round illegal aliens and ship them out of the country.)
Your characterization of polygamism and Christianity, however, is inadequately stated. While it is true that Jacob, David, Solomon, etc., had multiple wives (Abraham, too, I suppose, depending on how you wish to view Hagar), polygamy is always disfavored in both the OT and NT. In Deut. 17, God proclaimed that the future kings in Israel should not "multiply wives." Moreover, in each instance, men who were polygamous has disaster and conflict in their families. By contrast, men who were monogamous (Moses, Joseph, Josiah) were, in most instances, happy domestically. (Admittedly, Adam was monogamous, but had his son kill his brother.) And, of course, our Lord proclaimed in Matthew 19 that "from the beginning" that man was to join to "his wife" and "they two would become one flesh." That necessarily excluded polygamy.
So, it's true that the Lord tolerated polygamy by David and others, such practice brought only ruin and sorrow to their lives.
But, as you trenchantly observe, as the Faith has been run out of our laws, the instruction of scripture hardly seems a relevant basis for the courts to outlaw polygamy. (And if those same courts can impose the oxymoronic homosexual "marriage", then polygamy would certainly seem within bounds.)
Let us be careful not to extrapolate and not to read into Scriptures our own interpretations. A great many men come to a bad end in the OT, and since it was, like its neighbors, a polygamous society, the bulk of the men coming to a bad end are polygamists. There is nothing explicit in the OT or the Jewish tradition condemning polygamy. As for Deuteronomy 17, the preceding verse tells future rulers not to multiply horses, but I scarcely think that would prevent a man from driving a two-horse chariot. The point to these passages is not to monopolize resources--horses, women, precious metals--at the expense of other men.
I fear you have more seriously misread Matthew 19. Firstly, the topic is divorce, as you know, and not polygamy or even adultery. The word order in Greek makes it quite clear that "in the beginning" refers to the creation of the male and female sexes. The passage is mostly borrowed from Genesis. "Because of this (the division into sexes) a man shall leave his father and mother and be annealed to his wife., and they two shall be one flesh" and cannot be unyoked. Now, it is certainly possible that our Lord intended this passage to be a sly reference to monogamy, but it is certain that the Jews who had been reading Genesis for a thousand years did not at all take it in that sense. Indeed, a man might be yoked to one woman but also to another. What is to prevent him from being one flesh with several women in the same way that he might have an ownership relationship with several horses.
Christians are certainly entitled to read into this passage an approbation of monogamy and disapproval of polygamy, and it is certain that the early Church borrowed Greco-Roman monogamy, but we are not permitted to declare definitively that any of these passages, including Matthew 19 means more than it appears to say and then impose that interpretation. Perhaps this strict kind of reading may be too fundamentalist for some sects, but I do not believe in putting my own words or ideas into the text. I do believe that the Church, whether because Christ taught this to the Apostles or because they were informed by the Holy Ghost, condemned polygamy from almost the beginning--though an outright condemnation at the very beginning might have done harm to second and third wives. I think this is obviously implied as one of the reasons that church leaders were permitted only one wife (and not simply a prohibition on divorced men.)
Dr. Fleming,
I don't really disagree with your points on expositiony. Certainly the text must be left to speak for itself. And it is true that various OT characters came a proper irrespective of marriage practices (Samson, for example, although not, it would appear polygamous.) Still, it is interesting that the various types of our Lord identified in scripture--Isaac, Joseph, Moses, even Boaz as the redeemer of Ruth--were all monogamous. But, of course, David is also a type and the man after God's heart, so my argument can be carried too far. It is also true that Deut. 17 is referencing the aggrandizing of power at the expense of dependence on God. I was inartful in presenting those citations as containing absolute prohibitions on polygamy. My point, rather, was that there is not an example given of polygamy in a favorable context of which I'm aware (contra the rationalizations made by the polygamist Mormons in the 19th cent. before their convenient new revelation) and that would seem to imply a negative connotation from the Lord.
As for Mt 19, while the question asked of our Lord is on divorce, I think his answer is more directed to marriage and proper duties within it. But, again, that is not a necessary conclusion. (It is more a conclusion drawn from how frequently the Lord turned self-serving or ensnaring questions into statements that exposed the hypocrisy of his inquisitors.) And I understand your point in terms of what the statement on its face implies viz what we might infer from it. But I do believe a necessary inference from his statement would be to exclude polygamy. I don't think the "one flesh" statement could reasonably apply to polygamy--for example, Jacob "loving" Rachel and "hating" (loving less) Leah--but I may be wrong. I recognize one could disagree with this inference as it's just that. And the apparent practice in Jewish culture would seem to approve of polygamy--indicating that my inference isn't a necessary one. (As opposed to one that would be inarguable from the statement, such as that it necessarily excluded homosexuality.)
Your reference to Greco-Roman culture is helpful as it would be easy for one unlearned to think the Greeks and Romans practice polygamy (which I understood, and you confirmed, they did not.) But I think NT revelation (for example, Eph 5) also necessarily taught monogamy as God's ordained practice--Paul's allusion to marriage as an illustration to Christ's relationship to the Church could not work if polygamy were are an accepted Christian practice. The Lord has only one bride. (But I think you may well be right about what "husband of one wife" referred to in regards elders.)
I recognize a disquisition on the theological basis (or lack of same) for polygamy wasn't the point. And it is rather the abysmal irony of our gov't on the one hand mandating through the courts the absurdity of homosexual marriage while on the other hand condemning a practice (while long out of favor in Christian cultures) at least has historical precedent. But then, are we really surprised to see such contradictions. Only post-Christian ideology (about which you and others here write so well) could produce them.
All the best
"as it would be easy for one unlearned to think the Greeks and Romans practice polygamy"
That was poorly stated. I meant only that one who did not know Greco-Roman culture might assume paganism involved polygamy (given the carnality often attributed to paganism--Corinth, for example).
Bill Wilder, I think we are somewhat talking at cross purposes. I completely agree with you that the Christian view of marriage has always been monogamous. This was taught explicitly in the early Church and, I strongly believe, is implied by Christ's teachings on marriage, despite the curious fact that in the texts we have he nowhere mentions polygamy. I also agree with you that it is a logical conclusion to be drawn from Genesis. Unfortunately, the Jews did not so interpret it at all, and for that reason we cannot be certain of what Our Lord is telling us on this subject in Matthew.
As for the ill fate of OT polygamists, consider this: men who desire women, in a simple society, are often men with large amounts of testosterone thus also eager for power and likely to run amuck. Even OT men who of whom no second wife is recorded may have and in some cases certainly did take concubines. I agree, also, with you on this question of forerunners or "types," especially those types that are acknowledged in the early Church. In this connection the most interesting forerunner and the most virtuous man in the OT is the gentile Job, who is tortured by the one wife he has and is grief-stricken over the loss of his children. Some day look up Gregory the Great's wonderful moral and spiritual commentary on Job, the Magna Moralia, of which there is an unedited but pretty accurate translation on the internet.
I'll be getting into the topic of marriage and divorce in the early church on the booklog and welcome your participation. Early Greek and Roman wedding and marital customs were pretty good. I don't know when the Greeks began getting divorced but even in the 5th Century, it was pretty infrequent. Naturally, they did not have our sense of chastity or purity, and it was not regarded as wrong for a man to seek companionship outside of marriage, though it was quite wrong to become a figure of fun or to squander family resources. Aristophanes is quite a bawdy writer who incessantly makes sex jokes of every kind, and yet he expects his audience to believe, in the Lysistrata, that the women of Athens and Sparta could end the war simply by withholding their favors from their husbands. If they were all buggers and adulterers, where is the humor. The customs associated with Christian weddings and marriages have many sources, but a primary source is the Roman wedding, which includes a bride dress in a festal color (for the Romans it was red), exchange of rings and vows, carrying the bride over threshold, etc. Most interesting is the statement of the wife, "Where you are Gaius, I am Gaia"--Gaius being among the most common first names. It is hard to render in English because we don't have many such pairs in common names. But where you are John, I am Jane comes close, meaning we are now two sides of the same person.
Christians believe that the second person of the Trinity, the Logos, took part in the creation of the world and His truth was therefore accessible not just to the Jews but to everyone--as Paul suggests, for example, in his address to the Athenians on the Areopagus. There are many aspects of life and civilization in which the Greeks exceeded the Jews. Greek logic and philosophy became an indispensable tool for refuting heretics (though it also gave weapons to the heretics themselves), and Greek ideals of respecting all human beings as human (despite their own ethnic pride) are far loftier than the parochial Jewish teachings that distinguished between how to treat a Jew and how to treat a gentile. In their marriage customs as well, Greeks and Romans come closer to a Christian understanding, though as their civilization developed, they were all too prone to fornication and adultery. Nonetheless, Greek and Roman literature give us wonderful examples of marital love: Hector and Andromache, Odysseus and Penelope, and both Homer and Aeschylus treat Clytaemnestra's adultery and murder of her husband as a primal crime.
Dr. Fleming,
Quite interesting. Thank you very much.
Thank you also for the reference to Gregory. I am slated to teach a bible class on Job this Summer and will doubtless find that an interesting and helpful reference.
To the extent I deviated the discussion from the central purpose of your writing, my apologies. The spectacle in Texas borders on the absurd with likely welfare cheats lusting after teenagers on one side and Marxists parading as the saviors of children (while confiscating them based on lies) on the other.
I suppose it fits their slogan, perhaps, "It's a whole other country."
If Dr. Fleming is still reading this thread, I wonder if he would be so kind as to answer the question: What were the common Jewish marriage practices of Jesus's day? Was polygamy still routine among the wealthy?
I can't offhand think of any New Testament character who is explicitly said to be polygamous. I would be particularly curious, for example, about two characters at the top of the social heap who clearly could have had multiple wives if they had wanted to and whose marital status is mentioned: Herod Antipas (who displayed sexual immorality by stealing his brother's wife, but is never mentioned as having any other wives) and the high priest Caiaphas (who is said to have a close relationship with his father-in-law Annas. I confess I don't know the underlying Greek word; does this imply a sole father-in-law, or could Caiaphas have had other fathers-in-law for other wives?). If polygamy had become rarer, why would that have been? Was it Greco-Roman influence? Or was polygamy still routine but, for whatever reason, no clear record of this appears in the Gospel text?
At the other end of the chronological spectrum, when did polygamy become routine among the Jews? Mr. Wilder is right that most of the figures in Genesis and Exodus seem monogamous - Adam, Noah, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, Aaron. One could also include Job, who seems to date from remote antiquity. The two major exceptions, Abraham and Jacob, were naturally monogamous and forced into polygamy by adverse circumstances. Any thoughts?
"The two major exceptions, Abraham and Jacob."
Of course, in addition to them there are some shadier polygamists, notably Lamech (apparently the first polygamist) and Esau. (Cain, however, seems to have been monogamous.)
It''s certainly true that, particularly the OT, while an account of God's dealings with mankind, relates that through His dealing with particular men. It is not intended as a history of the various societies generally except to the extent it relates history of the national of Israel in Canaan. It's also true that none of the prophets condemn polygamy, although they do condemn the taking of foreign wives (particularly after the return from exile.) But it was the foreignness of the wives that was condemned. The text is simply silent on the matter of polygamy other than to relate that some men engaged in it. (An exception may be Exodus 21:10 which references a man taking another woman without diminishing a maidservant betrothed to him, but it's not clear to me if the first wife was kept as a wife.)
On balance, I suppose the most we can answer is that monogamy is the Lord's intended ideal (and obviously the law in the Christian West for many centuries), but He has, for whatever reason, refrained from expressly condemning the practice (although as I've related I think one could draw inferences critical of the practice.)
Still we are left with the spectacle of secularists who in one breath would likely uphold the right of homosexuals to "marry", inveighing against polygamy as an affront to monogamy. Funny.
Also for reference, here's the link to the section on marriage (beginning with polygamy/monogamy) of Roland de Vaux's Ancient Israel: its life and institutions.
http://books.google.com/books?id=A42yVk8kj8kC&pg=PA24&lpg=PA24&dq=ancient+israel+polygamy&source=web&ots=Fl9B71mnrV&sig=yguQf56fztkG3eTsOtGNPTClszk&hl=en#PPA25,M1
He contends that "It is clear that the most common form of marriage in Ancient Israel was monogamy"; although he notes both examples of polygamy in Israel and the Talmudic rule permitting four wives to a common man and up to eighteen to the king.
(I cannot speak to de Vaux's credentials. Perhaps Dr. Fleming or another knows.)
(Courtesy of Google Books)
I'd like to transfer and slightly postpone the discussion of marriage to next week, when we'll be discussing this question in connection with the Apostolic Church, especially in connection with the Shepherd of Hermas. Roland de Vaux was a competent Middle Eastern scholar who wrote popular books, rather useful on ancient Iraq, though not exactly up to date. I am no expert here, despite some attempts to study the ancient Middle East. The statement that monogamy was the most common form of marriage is undoubtedly true, because it is true of virtually all polygynous societies. What would happen if every man tried to have four wives and six concubines? A revolution of womanless young men. In Muslim countries, only comparatively well-off men can afford to take a second or third wife. Thus, while what he says is true, it is also trivial, if it is intended to distinguish Jewish polygamy from other forms. Complicating the issue is the nature of the evidence. The historical texts of the OT are not primarily concerned with domestic life, and often the allusions to marriage are only significant when the wives represent a foreign alliance or practice an alien religion or are otherwise mixed up in politics.
"The historical texts of the OT are not primarily concerned with domestic life, and often the allusions to marriage are only significant when the wives represent a foreign alliance or practice an alien religion or are otherwise mixed up in politics."
The comparatively greater focus on Queen Jezebel is likely an illustration of Dr. Fleming's point as the point of the extended discussion of her was to show the corruption of Israel by the foreign Baals. As well as reflecting her seemingly greater influence over her husband than that held by other wives of kings.
Dr. Fleming,
This is likely not to be read, but I was wondering if this site is the one you were referring to for Gregory's Moralia:
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/gregory.html
The author indicates it is an unrevised translation. I found another site that does not have a complete translation (only up to v. 21 of Chapter 28.) Thanks for any assistance.
Regards
Excerpts below are taken verbatim from Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
by Jon Krakauer
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If the expansion of the LDS faith continues at its current pace, within sixty years governing the United States will become “impossible without Mormon cooperation,” according to the eminent scholar Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University – and an unabashed admirer of Joseph Smith and the Mormons. In 1992, in his influential book The American Religion, Bloom wrote:
Two aspects of the Saints’ vision seem starkly central to me; no other American religious movement is so ambitious and no rival even remotely approaches the spiritual audacity that drives endlessly toward accomplishing a titanic design.
The Mormons fully intend to convert the nation and the world, to go from some ten million souls to six billion.
Later in the same book, Bloom made a bold prediction about what the LDS leadership will do when it gains sufficient political leverage:
And who can believe that the Mormons ever would have turned away from the practice of Celestial Marriage, if it were not for federal pressure? . . . I cheerfully do prophesy that some day, not too far on in the twenty-first century, the Mormons will have enough political and financial power to sanction polygamy again. Without it, in some form or other, the complete vision of Joseph Smith never can be fulfilled.
– – Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, Jon Krakauer, pages 321-322.