Monthly Archives: July 2022

Polygamy around the world

The legal status of polygamy varies widely around the world. Polygyny is legal in 58 out of nearly 200 sovereign states, the vast majority of them being Muslim-majority countries. Polyandry is illegal in virtually every country and strictly prohibited in Islam.[citation needed] In several non-Muslim countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, including India, Philippines and Singapore, polygyny is only permitted among the Muslim population. Some countries that permit polygamy have restrictions, such as requiring the first wife to give her consent.

In countries that ban polygamy, the offence is commonly called bigamy, though the penalty varies between jurisdictions. In some countries where polygamy is illegal, the prohibition is not enforced.

Note: These countries are included separately because they have specific legislation aimed only at Muslims.

Polygamy is more widespread in Africa than in any other continent, being most common in a region known as the "polygamy belt" in West Africa and Central Africa, with the countries estimated to have the highest polygamy prevalence in the world being Burkina Faso, Mali, Gambia, Niger and Nigeria.[68] In the region of sub-Saharan Africa, polygyny is common and deeply rooted in the culture, with 11% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa living in such marriages (25% of the Muslim population and 3% of the Christian population, as of 2019).[69] Polygmous marriages occur, regardless of legality, as the practice is deeply rooted in culture and often supported by Islam in Africa.

Misdemeanor

Felony

As in Africa, polygamy continues to be practiced in parts of Asia, regardless of laws.

In most countries, a person who marries a person while still being lawfully married to another commits bigamy, a criminal offence, though penalties vary between jurisdictions. Besides, the second and subsequent marriages are considered legally null and void.

The United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand permit some benefits for spouses of polygamous marriages performed abroad. In the past, Sweden used to recognize polygamous marriages performed abroad; butsince 2021, Sweden no longer recognizes such marriages, save in exceptional circumstances.[136] In Switzerland polygamous marriages conducted abroad may be accepted or rejected on a case-by-case basis;[142] see Europe. In the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, which allows simultaneous, additional marital rights and obligations for already married persons, prior to married persons becoming divorced from their existing spouse.[143]

The vast majority of Muslim majority sovereign states recognize polygamous marriages: these states span from the West Africa to Southeast Asia, with the exceptions of Turkey, Tunisia, Albania, Kosovo and Central Asian countries.[144][145][146][147]

Predominantly Christian nations usually do not allow polygamy, with a handful of exceptions such as the Republic of the Congo, Uganda, and Zambia.

Almost a dozen countries that do not permit polygamous civil marriages recognize polygamous marriages under customary law. All the northern states in Nigeria governed by Islamic Sharia law recognize polygamous marriages. The autonomous regions of Somaliland and Puntland in northern Somalia also recognize polygamy, as does the country's Transitional Federal Government itself, since the country is governed by Sharia law. The recently independent country of Southern Sudan also recognizes polygamy.

Polyandry is de facto the norm in rural areas of Tibet, although it is illegal under Chinese family law. Polygamy continues in Bhutan[35] in various forms as it has since ancient times. It is also found in parts of Nepal,[148] despite its formal illegality in the country.[149]

Debates of legalizing polygamous marriages continue in Central Asian countries.[citation needed]

In 2000, the United Nations Human Rights Committee reported that polygamy violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), citing concerns that the lack of "equality of treatment with regard to the right to marry" meant that polygamy, restricted to polygyny in practice, violates the dignity of women and should be outlawed.[150] Specifically, the reports to UN Committees have noted violations of the ICCPR due to these inequalities[151] and reports to the General Assembly of the UN have recommended it be outlawed.[152][153]

Some countries where polygamy is legal are not signatories of ICCPR, including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Malaysia, Brunei and South Sudan; so that ICCPR does not apply to these countries.[154] It has been argued by the Department of Justice of Canada that polygyny is a violation of international human rights law.[155]

The tables below cover recent pieces of legislation that have been either debated, proposed or voted on; all of which concerns a form of polygamous union.

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Legality of polygamy - Wikipedia

The legality of polygamy in the United States has been controversial during the country's history.

Couples have married in the United States for centuries. For most of US history, marriages were solemnized in an ecclesiastical setting. Government-issued marriage licenses are a modern innovation. Even before the advent of licensing, many states enacted laws to prohibit plural marriage style relationships. Early Mormons were persecuted for their practice of polygamy. No state permits its citizens to enter into more than one concurrent, legally-licensed marriage. People who attempt to, or are able to, secure a second marriage license are generally prosecuted for bigamy. The terms "bigamy" and "polygamy" are sometimes confused or used interchangeably. Some states' statutes refer to polygamy while others use the bigamy term. Criminal sentences differ widely. Prosecutions for either violation are extremely rare. Polygamy is a practice difficult to define since it virtually never occurs in the context of legal licensing. Given that Mormon polygamists migrated to the Rocky Mountains in 1847, partly to escape prosecution for polygamy in the eastern states, efforts to curb the practice focused intensely on Utah and the surrounding territories in the 1800s. Utah and four other western territories were constrained to incorporate a prohibition against plural marriages in their state constitutions.

Given that almost no polygamists bother to seek a second marriage license, the practice of forming a family with more than one spousal-styled relationship is very difficult to criminalize. In the majority of cases, the additional partner is considered a wife in the context of religious beliefs. Legally speaking, the practice is more akin to adultery. Criminal prosecutions of adultery are unheard of in the U.S.[original research?][citation needed]

Utah made the practice of polygamy a felony in 1935, after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints publicly repudiated it in 1890, 1904 and 1910. Many convictions followed. Since the 1960s, polygamy prosecutions have been rare. Prosecutions included Robert D. Foster, Steve Bronson, Mark Easterday, Thomas Green, and Rodney Holm. The latter two prompted state supreme court challenges. Both failed. Nevertheless, Utah has remained reluctant to pursue prosecutions, citing a lack of resources, difficulties obtaining convincing evidence, and an understanding that any prosecution would trigger an inevitable appeal to the higher courts. The Supreme Court's 2003 Lawrence v. Texas ruling found that all adult, consensual, non-commercial sexual activity is protected, thus weakening any attempts to prosecute families for private residential or sexual arrangements that did not seek the imprimatur of the state.

On December 13, 2013, a federal judge, spurred by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups,[1] struck down the parts of Utah's bigamy law that criminalized cohabitation, while also acknowledging that the state may still enforce bans on having multiple marriage licenses.[2] The state of Utah appealed the decision, arguing that polygamist Kody Brown lacked standing to bring his civil suit, since his county prosecutor, Jeff Buhman, had not followed through on any plan to prosecute the Brown family. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals (Denver) agreed with Utah and overturned the previous decision, thus effectively recriminalizing polygamy as a felony.[3]

In 2020, State Senator Deidre Henderson introduced a bill reducing the penalty for polygamy from a five-year prison sentence (as a felony) to an infraction. The bill passed with overwhelming support in Utah's House and Senate. As such, polygamy was downgraded from a felony to an infraction, but it remains a felony if force, threats or other abuses are involved.[4]

Federal legislation to outlaw the practice in federal territories was endorsed as constitutional in 1878, despite the religious objections of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), by the Supreme Court, in Reynolds v. United States.

Individualist feminism and advocates such as Wendy McElroy and journalist Jillian Keenan[who?] support the freedom for adults to voluntarily enter polygamous marriages.[5][6]

Authors such as Alyssa Rower and Samantha Slark argue that there is a case for legalizing polygamy on the basis of regulation and monitoring of the practice, legally protecting the polygamous partners and allowing them to join mainstream society instead of forcing them to hide from it when any public situation arises.[7][8]

In an October 2004 op-ed for USA Today, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley argued that, as a simple matter of equal treatment under law, polygamy ought to be legal. Acknowledging that underage girls are sometimes coerced into polygamous marriages, Turley replied that "banning polygamy is no more a solution to child abuse than banning marriage would be a solution to spousal abuse".[9]

Stanley Kurtz, an American conservative fellow at the Hudson Institute, rejects the decriminalization and legalization of polygamy. He stated:

Marriage, as its ultramodern critics would like to say, is indeed about choosing one's partner, and about freedom in a society that values freedom. But that's not the only thing it is about. As the Supreme Court justices who unanimously decided Reynolds in 1878 understood, marriage is also about sustaining the conditions in which freedom can thrive. Polygamy in all its forms is a recipe for social structures that inhibit and ultimately undermine social freedom and democracy. A hard-won lesson of Western history is that genuine democratic self-rule begins at the hearth of the monogamous family.[10]

In January 2015, Pastor Neil Patrick Carrick of Detroit, Michigan, brought a case (Carrick v. Snyder) against the State of Michigan that the state's ban of polygamy violates the Free Exercise and Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.[11][12]

As of 2008[update] some conservative Muslims in the U.S. engaged in polygamous relationships in which each had one wife with a legal marriage and others with only religious marriages.[13] Around that time a phenomenon of polygamy occurred among Muslims in Philadelphia who were black.[14]

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Legality of polygamy in the United States - Wikipedia

I was shocked to hear U.S. Rep. Lauren Boeberts comments about separation of church and state. Having heard them secondhand, I had to Google her remarks, thinking she was misquoted. Nope.

She really doesnt understand the need for separation of church and state. From my history lessons, I remember that many of the people who came to this country early on came to avoid religious persecution. Without this important separation, we would all be subject to the whims of whatever group is currently in power.

Should a Roman Catholic Congress predominate, perhaps in vitro fertilization and artificial insemination would become illegal. I remember the unfounded fears that the Pope would rule the U.S. if John Kennedy was elected.

Perhaps if a polygamous cult were in favor, polygamy would be legal, and those not practicing such would be considered inferior. Absurd perhaps, but our Founding Fathers wanted all of us protected including Lauren Boebert.

It appears that she would like to push her faith beliefs on all of us thereby ignoring the Constitution which protects us all. I hope the people of Colorado are far too intelligent to reelect this threat to our democracy.

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Letter to the Editor: Rep. Lauren Boebert's comments about church and state are wrong - Summit Daily

Elon Musk joked when he revealed that he had two twins with one of Tesla's executives.

According to reports, Musk and Shivon Zilis welcomed twins last November.

Musk previously tweeted about the falling birthrate in the US.

"USA birth rate has been below min sustainable levels for ~50 years. (The) past two years have been a demographic disaster," Musk tweeted on May 24.

Previously, the billionaire also used his social media account to say "have kids."

Musk now has nine children, five with Justine Wilson, two with Shivon Zilis, and two with Grimes, the artist.

Elon Musk kept in secret the identity of the twins.

However, when the news broke, Musk tweeted: "Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far."

Then he followed with: "I hope you have big families and congrats to those who already do!"

However, people commented on Musk's underpopulation post by blasting the billionaire for having sex with one of her employees and saying he wants to help the world.

"Imagine just knocking up co-workers and telling people you're just trying to help."

Another user attacked Musk's polygamy by replying: "Congratulations to those who have a large family with one woman, not like you, a large family with different women."

Shivon Zilis, 36, became a top executive at Neuralink.

Shivon Zilis met Elon Musk when she was working at Tesla as a Project Director, they have been close to each other ever since.

The twins were born just a few weeks before Musk and Grimes had their second child.

According to Business Insider, Elon Musk and Shivon Zilis petitioned to change the name of the twins.

The report says that the children will "have their father's last name and contain their mother's last name as part of their middle name."

Read more:

Elon Musk jokes after twin reveal: I'm 'doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis' - Marca English

There is no shortage of badly written B-movies poking fun at the LDS church, but lately Hollywood has taken a more serious interest in telling stories about Mormon fundamentalists. Recent releases include a Netflix docuseries titled Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey and Under The Banner Of Heaven, a drama series about a Mormon detective who begins to question his own faith after investigating a gruesome murder committed by a locally respected Mormon family that fell into extreme fundamentalism.

The Mormon faith last became a pop culture phenomenon during the 2010s, when The Book Of Mormon was new to Broadway. What is the reason for this resurgence in interest, and why now? More importantly, what even is Mormonism? Mormonism, or the Church of Latter-day Saints/LDS church, is often joked about, but few might be able to accurately describe what makes their beliefs differ from other denominations of Christianity.

Attempting to write a concise, informative summary of the history of the LDS church is like trying to wrangle an octopus into a burlap sack, but the octopus has 24 arms and the burlap sack is on fire. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is more popularly referred to as the Mormon church or the LDS church. The church was founded by Joseph Smith after, at the age of 14, he received a revelation from God that told him not to join any existing Christian churches. Three years later, an angel named Moroni told Smith that he had been selected to translate the Book of Mormon, which was allegedly inscribed on golden plates somewhere in New York Smith did not allow anyone else to see these plates, because the angel Moroni forbade it.

Mormons believe that the holy trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) are three separate gods and that there are three levels of heaven (the highest being celestial, where they will live in Gods presence). Mormons famously do not consume coffee, alcohol, tea or tobacco; many turn to soda instead, to the extent that soda shops have become wildly popular in an area of the U.S. described as the Mormon Corridor. Contrary to popular belief, the church only bans hot caffeinated drinks; Coke is still safe, until God declares otherwise.

The sins of the LDS church are heavy and numerous this is not unique to this particular denomination but is still obviously worth mentioning. Until the 1970s, Black men were restricted from partaking in certain activities in the LDS church and could not join the priesthood. Women are still barred from becoming priests. From the 1950s to the mid-1990s, the LDS church operated an Indian Placement Program, where Native American children (often impoverished) were invited to live with white Mormon families during the school year, where they were often baptized as Mormon.

In an article for The Atlantic, Emma Green wrote, The LDS Church teaches that Native Americans are descendants of the Lamanites In the Book of Mormon, the Lamanites are predominately a wicked people, cursed by God with a skin of blackness as punishment for turning against him. An LDS church document from 1976 confirms that Lamanite was the Mormon definition of Native American. This is just an introduction to the numerous offenses committed by the LDS church; this brief list barely dips a toe into the shallow end. One begins to wonder why Hollywood hasnt taken greater advantage of the skeletons in the LDS churchs closet.

Hollywood has always been fascinated with cults, and cults derived from Christian fundamentalism are an even more enticing target because they are often steeped in reality. A recent example is The Eyes Of Tammy Faye, a biopic about Tammy Bakker, who, with her husband Jim Bakker, developed a cult-like following around the largest religious broadcasting network in the United States; Jim Bakker fell into infamy after being convicted and imprisoned for fraud.

There are too many movies about cults to name, like Children Of The Corn or, to name a more recent example, Midsommar. Whereas satanic cults and stories about satanic ritual abuse were popular in film from the 70s to the late 90s/early 2000s, Christian cults have become a more captivating subject in contemporary film and TV, proving that truth is often stranger (or more engrossing) than fiction. One recent series about the horrors of Christian fundamentalism is Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey.

Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey is a Netflix docuseries that details the rise of Warren Jeffs, the leader of the FLDS (Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints) church, an apocalyptic sect of the LDS church. The rise and fall of Warren Jeffs is detailed through personal interviews with ex-members of the FLDS church, many of them women who were victims of polygamous marriages ordained by FLDS leaders.

Although the LDS church has since excommunicated the FLDS church due to its continued practice of polygamous marriage that has created an overwhelmingly negative reputation for the LDS church as a whole, the FLDS churchs beliefs do not and cannot exist in a vacuum. The LDS church is the root of the FLDS churchs evil. The FLDS church simply amplified and warped the core message of the LDS church. What better way to ensure religious devotion than to convince people that the end is near, that their only salvation when the world goes up in flames is to become the best FLDS member they can be, and that the only way to be the best is to unquestioningly believe everything the FLDS leaders tell you to do?

Although the LDS church has firmly stated that they have denounced polygamy and any person who practices polygamy is not affiliated with the LDS church, their website says the Bible and the Book of Mormon teach that the marriage of one man to one woman is Gods standard, except at specific periods when He has declared otherwise. So, plural marriage is not allowed, unless God decides it is during specific instances. Although in all fairness, plural marriages are expressly forbidden in modern times and were only encouraged between 1840-1890.

In Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey some ex-members of the FLDS church describe how men were assigned multiple wives as rewards, and that men who were not given more than a few wives felt as if they were being punished in some way. Marriages were rarely created out of love. The purpose of marriage and sex was not for pleasure but to create as many new FLDS members as possible. Rulon Jeffs, who served as president of the FLDS church and was the father of Warren Jeffs, had around 65 wives by the time of his death and at least 65 children. One ex-member interviewed in Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey talks about being married off to Rulon Jeffs at the age of 19; at the time, Rulon Jeffs was already an elderly man. Another woman who was forcibly married to Rulon Jeffs describes how she used to trick him into falling asleep to avoid intercourse with him.

In contrast, Under The Banner Of Heaven is a fictionalized story of a murder and infanticide that occurs in a primarily Mormon town. After watching Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, I found it difficult to be shocked and appalled as the show described an esteemed Mormon familys collapse into fundamentalist insanity. I had already seen the reality, and the reality was much more horrific than any TV show could ever hope to replicate.

The show makes temporal jumps between brief glimpses of the life of Joseph Smith, to the present-day detective (played by Andrew Garfield) unraveling the murder mystery, to the events leading up to the murder as told by the husband of the victim. Viewers who watch Under The Banner Of Heaven prior to Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey may find it easier to become engrossed in the drama series, unfettered by the echoes of the chilling accounts from former FLDS victims. The two shows make a good pairing, like wine and cheese, but the order they are viewed in is important.

Why has the LDS church become a renewed public spectacle, and why now? As QAnon conspiracies run rampant, satanic panic-era fears have become increasingly prevalent. The satanic panic never truly died but went stagnant until QAnon resurrected it. Hollywood is tired of the same old stories about secret satanic ritual abuse Christian fundamentalist abuse is horrifically real, and as more people open up about the trauma they endured in the name of God, the more audiences are interested in watching stories about real and fictionalized Christian cults. Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey and Under The Banner Of Heaven are only the beginning.

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The Resurging Spectacle of the LDS Church in Film and TV - Study Breaks