7 ms·

I Do Not Marry a Married Man

61 points by Thevet 7y ago

JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
Having only one wife wasn’t a commandment and the biblical patriarchs had multiple wives. This is more about Jesuits and the Catholic church trying to enforce their own belief systems on someone.
- B_Throwaway 7y ago
  Even if it were a commandment and the biblical patriarchs hadn't had multiple wives, it would still be the christians trying to enforce their own belief system on someone.
- LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
  Yes, those societys still having polygamy are doing fine, down at the bottom of the UN-Report barrels.
- bobthechef 7y ago
  Taught, yes, but imposed? In any case, you're ignoring important facts, many of them addressed in a broad view of the Old Testament and the Gospel of Matthew. First, in Genesis, the ideal, created union is given as monogamous. Second, none of the prophets were polygamous. Third, polygamy is usually spoken of disparagingly and as something having disastrous consequences. Fourth, Mosaic law also permitted divorce, but that was a divine dispensation that Jesus lifted and that one existed in the first place because "your hearts were hard". He goes on to say that "it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, unless the marriage is unlawful, and marries another woman commits adultery" (Matt 19:8-9). Thus, polygamy may have been tolerated for similar reasons, that is, as a concession to the times, as it were. Furthermore, Maimonides argues that while the Torah may permit certain behaviors, a synoptic reading would show that it establishes rules that show these behaviors are wrong.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    I’m not arguing from a religious standpoint or whether the Bible should decide what other people do. I’m just making factual statements.... The biblical great grandfather of the Jews - Abraham - had multiple wives. As did King David who was put forth as a great, but flawed king.
- tomohawk 7y ago
  The Bible does record the fact that historical figures had multiple wives, but it also records the fact that this was an endless source of trouble. The law recorded in the Bible prohibits kings from multiple wives, and also records that they put themselves above this law and the problems this caused. It's more that this practice was tolerated than endorsed. It was certainly not lauded. In Proverbs, the assumption is monogamy. By the time you get to New Testament times, elders in the church could only have one wife, and the admonition of Galatians 3:28 (and others) eventually led to the phase out of these practices - not based on law, but based on love for one another and looking out for one another. What the Bible shows is God meeting people where they were at and guiding them to a better way over time. These priests should have paid attention to that.
mynameishere 7y ago
Well, yeah. If you are going to be a stickler about the monogamy requirement, then you have to spread the religion to the low-status men who don't have wives because of the chiefs having multiple. Christianity was always a "slave religion" and it wasn't the Roman aristocrats who took it up in the first place. Jesuits didn't follow history I guess.
- xamuel 7y ago
  The article specifies that the tribe in question had more women than men. I don't understand why the Jesuits made monogamy a requirement for baptism. The idea of having any sort of "litmus test" at all for baptism is a blatant contradiction, it's as if they never read their own Bible, or they would know the example of the apostle Philip, who, in Acts 8:26-38, encounters an Ethiopian court official travelling back to Ethiopia, briefly joins him in his chariot, tells him about Jesus, and then: 'As they traveled along the road and came to some water, the eunuch said, "Look, here is water! What is there to prevent me from being baptized?" And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and Philip baptized him.' The Jesuits seem to have things completely backwards. A man cannot turn away from sinning just by his own sheer willpower. We are all corrupted since Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, and it is utterly hopeless to try to be "good people" without the intervention of the Holy Spirit. >Christianity was always a "slave religion" Quite appropriately so since we are all slaves to sin, not to mention all sorts of other insidious dystopian 21st century slavemasters. If you're some kind of Marvel Superhero with absolute unchecked personal sovereignty then I guess you should go worship Zeus or something, but I know for absolute certain I'm not such a superhero.
  - newvoiceoldphne 7y ago
    Polygamy leaves a very angry pool of low status males. Not very good for those in power
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - 7y ago
k0t0n0 7y ago
Why I am seeing this on HN?
- ema 7y ago
  Because hackers have a wide variety of interests and often love learning about things they never heard of before.
  - Austin_Conlon 7y ago
    The parent comment reminds me of how often commenters on articles posted by The Economist wonder why the article wasn't about economics. https://www.economist.com/unknown/1843/08/05/prospectus https://www.economist.com/unknown/1843/08/05/prospectus
- delinka 7y ago
  Because someone submitted it, and interested hackers upvoted it.
- Deinos 7y ago
  If you don't believe this should be on HN, flagging the post would be a better use of your time and a more clear adherence to the guidelines that you appear to think are not being followed by this submission.
leftyted 7y ago
This is an interesting interpretation of polygamy. The usual interpretation is along the lines of "to the rich go the spoils". But sex imbalances would have occurred throughout history and, questions of morality aside, polygamy seems like a reasonable solution, at least if women outnumber men. I wonder if anyone has tried to investigate a possible correlation between polygamy and imbalanced sex ratios throughout history.
- eternauta3k 7y ago
  I haven't found a good online source for this, but it's common knowledge that Paraguay allowed polygamy after a war killed a large proportion of men. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poligamia#El_caso_del_Paraguay https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poligamia#El_caso_del_Paraguay
  - jokowueu 7y ago
    Heck a few years back a bill was almost passed that would make merrying a second wife mandatory in Iraq . The government would give financial incentives and ignore the first wife's wish of not allowing her husband a second wife . It was revoked after extreme criticism.
gbacon 7y ago
Fry: Everything was going great! Then all out of a sudden, she’s talking about hanging out. Hanging out?! She's getting way too serious. I’m not a one-woman man, Leela. Leela: You’ll be back to zero soon enough.
bobthechef 7y ago
Polygamy encourages the objectification of women. Marriage ceases to be a union of equals in which there is a total self-giving of spouses to one another. While we has become dull to and ignorant of an understanding of the essence and purpose of marriage (years before the last two decades, I might add), it is a union which is unitive and procreative in principle. The unitive and the procreative are not separable. The unitive is ordered toward the good of the family (and, of course, by extension society). While monogamous marriages can be defective in practice, they are not so in principle. Polygamous marriages, on the other hand, impose these defects in principle. There may be a similarity here with hookup culture, that is, a polygamous culture seems to likewise, though perhaps to a lesser degree, encourage men to view women as mere instruments of sexual gratification. Harvey Weinstein is in essence not some exception, but the poster child for our age. Far from denigrating women as has been falsely claimed by some, the Christian (specifically Catholic) defense of insoluble, monogamous marriages was one of many ways in which woman was saved from the disordered predations common in human societies throughout history. (P.S. A relatively recent philosophical tract worth reading is the late Karol Wojtyla's "Love and Responsibility".)
- cheez 7y ago
  There are many women who would take the trade off of being loved by a man who loves multiple women over never being loved. The reverse is not so true though.
- dominotw 7y ago
  Would you be ok with form of polygamy where a woman has multiple husbands ?
  - bobthechef 7y ago
    That's polyandry, but terminology aside, the same problem vis-a-vis what I've written still exists. There may be sex-specific problems that result from polyandry vs. polygamy, but the same problems mentioned above remain.
    - 7y ago
DoreenMichele 7y ago
So this is primarily about polygamy in Indigenous people's of North America. It is secondarily commentary on women's rights in those peoples, where women apparently had more agency, choice and personhood than was typical for women in Europe at the time. The Jesuits, so keen to spread their faith, often didn't so much as bother to record the names of the wives because they so did nit view women as actual people. Even in developed countries, women continue to struggle towards equal treatment as full human beings while their complaints often fall on deaf ears and become some new excuse to heap abuse upon them. Perhaps I'm saying that wrong. Perhaps my statement merely reflects my own prejudice at the presumed superiority of developed nations. Maybe we would have a better world if some of these other peoples had more influence, people with apparently a better track record of treating women like human beings and giving them a say in their own lives.

61 points by Thevet 7y ago

Having only one wife wasn’t a commandment and the biblical patriarchs had multiple wives. This is more about Jesuits and the Catholic church trying to enforce their own belief systems on someone.

B_Throwaway 7y ago
Even if it were a commandment and the biblical patriarchs hadn't had multiple wives, it would still be the christians trying to enforce their own belief system on someone.
LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
Yes, those societys still having polygamy are doing fine, down at the bottom of the UN-Report barrels.
bobthechef 7y ago
Taught, yes, but imposed? In any case, you're ignoring important facts, many of them addressed in a broad view of the Old Testament and the Gospel of Matthew. First, in Genesis, the ideal, created union is given as monogamous. Second, none of the prophets were polygamous. Third, polygamy is usually spoken of disparagingly and as something having disastrous consequences. Fourth, Mosaic law also permitted divorce, but that was a divine dispensation that Jesus lifted and that one existed in the first place because "your hearts were hard". He goes on to say that "it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, unless the marriage is unlawful, and marries another woman commits adultery" (Matt 19:8-9). Thus, polygamy may have been tolerated for similar reasons, that is, as a concession to the times, as it were. Furthermore, Maimonides argues that while the Torah may permit certain behaviors, a synoptic reading would show that it establishes rules that show these behaviors are wrong.
- scarface74 7y ago
  I’m not arguing from a religious standpoint or whether the Bible should decide what other people do. I’m just making factual statements.... The biblical great grandfather of the Jews - Abraham - had multiple wives. As did King David who was put forth as a great, but flawed king.
tomohawk 7y ago
The Bible does record the fact that historical figures had multiple wives, but it also records the fact that this was an endless source of trouble. The law recorded in the Bible prohibits kings from multiple wives, and also records that they put themselves above this law and the problems this caused. It's more that this practice was tolerated than endorsed. It was certainly not lauded. In Proverbs, the assumption is monogamy. By the time you get to New Testament times, elders in the church could only have one wife, and the admonition of Galatians 3:28 (and others) eventually led to the phase out of these practices - not based on law, but based on love for one another and looking out for one another. What the Bible shows is God meeting people where they were at and guiding them to a better way over time. These priests should have paid attention to that.

mynameishere 7y ago

Well, yeah. If you are going to be a stickler about the monogamy requirement, then you have to spread the religion to the low-status men who don't have wives because of the chiefs having multiple. Christianity was always a "slave religion" and it wasn't the Roman aristocrats who took it up in the first place. Jesuits didn't follow history I guess.

xamuel 7y ago
The article specifies that the tribe in question had more women than men. I don't understand why the Jesuits made monogamy a requirement for baptism. The idea of having any sort of "litmus test" at all for baptism is a blatant contradiction, it's as if they never read their own Bible, or they would know the example of the apostle Philip, who, in Acts 8:26-38, encounters an Ethiopian court official travelling back to Ethiopia, briefly joins him in his chariot, tells him about Jesus, and then: 'As they traveled along the road and came to some water, the eunuch said, "Look, here is water! What is there to prevent me from being baptized?" And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and Philip baptized him.' The Jesuits seem to have things completely backwards. A man cannot turn away from sinning just by his own sheer willpower. We are all corrupted since Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, and it is utterly hopeless to try to be "good people" without the intervention of the Holy Spirit. >Christianity was always a "slave religion" Quite appropriately so since we are all slaves to sin, not to mention all sorts of other insidious dystopian 21st century slavemasters. If you're some kind of Marvel Superhero with absolute unchecked personal sovereignty then I guess you should go worship Zeus or something, but I know for absolute certain I'm not such a superhero.
- newvoiceoldphne 7y ago
  Polygamy leaves a very angry pool of low status males. Not very good for those in power
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - 7y ago

k0t0n0 7y ago

Why I am seeing this on HN?

ema 7y ago
Because hackers have a wide variety of interests and often love learning about things they never heard of before.
- Austin_Conlon 7y ago
  The parent comment reminds me of how often commenters on articles posted by The Economist wonder why the article wasn't about economics. https://www.economist.com/unknown/1843/08/05/prospectus https://www.economist.com/unknown/1843/08/05/prospectus
delinka 7y ago
Because someone submitted it, and interested hackers upvoted it.
Deinos 7y ago
If you don't believe this should be on HN, flagging the post would be a better use of your time and a more clear adherence to the guidelines that you appear to think are not being followed by this submission.

leftyted 7y ago

This is an interesting interpretation of polygamy. The usual interpretation is along the lines of "to the rich go the spoils". But sex imbalances would have occurred throughout history and, questions of morality aside, polygamy seems like a reasonable solution, at least if women outnumber men. I wonder if anyone has tried to investigate a possible correlation between polygamy and imbalanced sex ratios throughout history.

eternauta3k 7y ago
I haven't found a good online source for this, but it's common knowledge that Paraguay allowed polygamy after a war killed a large proportion of men. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poligamia#El_caso_del_Paraguay https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poligamia#El_caso_del_Paraguay
- jokowueu 7y ago
  Heck a few years back a bill was almost passed that would make merrying a second wife mandatory in Iraq . The government would give financial incentives and ignore the first wife's wish of not allowing her husband a second wife . It was revoked after extreme criticism.

gbacon 7y ago

Fry: Everything was going great! Then all out of a sudden, she’s talking about hanging out. Hanging out?! She's getting way too serious. I’m not a one-woman man, Leela. Leela: You’ll be back to zero soon enough.

bobthechef 7y ago

Polygamy encourages the objectification of women. Marriage ceases to be a union of equals in which there is a total self-giving of spouses to one another. While we has become dull to and ignorant of an understanding of the essence and purpose of marriage (years before the last two decades, I might add), it is a union which is unitive and procreative in principle. The unitive and the procreative are not separable. The unitive is ordered toward the good of the family (and, of course, by extension society). While monogamous marriages can be defective in practice, they are not so in principle. Polygamous marriages, on the other hand, impose these defects in principle. There may be a similarity here with hookup culture, that is, a polygamous culture seems to likewise, though perhaps to a lesser degree, encourage men to view women as mere instruments of sexual gratification. Harvey Weinstein is in essence not some exception, but the poster child for our age. Far from denigrating women as has been falsely claimed by some, the Christian (specifically Catholic) defense of insoluble, monogamous marriages was one of many ways in which woman was saved from the disordered predations common in human societies throughout history. (P.S. A relatively recent philosophical tract worth reading is the late Karol Wojtyla's "Love and Responsibility".)

cheez 7y ago
There are many women who would take the trade off of being loved by a man who loves multiple women over never being loved. The reverse is not so true though.
dominotw 7y ago
Would you be ok with form of polygamy where a woman has multiple husbands ?
- bobthechef 7y ago
  That's polyandry, but terminology aside, the same problem vis-a-vis what I've written still exists. There may be sex-specific problems that result from polyandry vs. polygamy, but the same problems mentioned above remain.
  - 7y ago

DoreenMichele 7y ago

So this is primarily about polygamy in Indigenous people's of North America. It is secondarily commentary on women's rights in those peoples, where women apparently had more agency, choice and personhood than was typical for women in Europe at the time. The Jesuits, so keen to spread their faith, often didn't so much as bother to record the names of the wives because they so did nit view women as actual people. Even in developed countries, women continue to struggle towards equal treatment as full human beings while their complaints often fall on deaf ears and become some new excuse to heap abuse upon them. Perhaps I'm saying that wrong. Perhaps my statement merely reflects my own prejudice at the presumed superiority of developed nations. Maybe we would have a better world if some of these other peoples had more influence, people with apparently a better track record of treating women like human beings and giving them a say in their own lives.