Off-campus access
Using PhilPapers from home?
Click here to configure this browser for off-campus access.
- Thom Brooks, The Problem with Polygamy.Polygamy is a hotly contested practice and open to widespread misunderstandings. This practice is defined as a relationship between either one husband and multiple wives or one wife and multiple husbands. Today, 'polygamy' almost exclusively takes the form of one husband with multiple wives. In this article, my focus will centre on limited defences of polygamy offered recently by Chesire Calhoun and Martha Nussbaum. I will argue that these defences are unconvincing. The problem with polygamy is primarily that it is a structurally inegalitarian practice in both theory and fact. Polygamy should be opposed for this reason.No categories
Discussion of Thom Brooks, The problem with polygamy
Nothing in this forum yet.
Similar books and articles
When can ever be justified in banning a religious practice? This paper focusses on Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach. Certain religious practices create a clash between capabilities where the capability to religious belief and expression is in conflict with the capability of equal status and nondiscrimination. One example of such a clash is the case of polygamy. Nussbaum argues that there may be circumstances where polygamy may be acceptable. On the contrary, I argue that the capabilities approach cannot justify polygamy in (...)
No categories
This essay argues that the four most plausible arguments compatible with public reason for an outright legal ban on all forms of polygamy are unvictorious. My purpose is not to survey exhaustively the empirical literature on contemporary forms of polygamy, but to tease out the types of arguments political liberals would have to insist on, and precisely how strongly, in order for a general prohibition against polygamy to be justified. The most common objection to polygamy is on grounds of gender (...)
The Romer v. Evans colloquy between Justices Kennedy and Scalia over the applicability of the nineteenth century polygamy cases to the more current debate over gay rights and same-sex marriages was of more than academic interest to the estimated 25,000 to 50,000 Fundamentalist Mormon practitioners of polygamy, as well as the nearly 1,000 Christian polygamists, and Islamic and African practitioners of polygamy. The degree to which divergent religious practices will be accommodated is of increasing importance in a nation where the (...)
No categories
Legal doctrines banning polygamy grew out of nineteenth century Americans' view that Mormons betrayed the nation by engaging in conduct associated with people of color. This article reveals the racial underpinnings of polygamy law by examining cartoons and other antipolygamy rhetoric of the time to demonstrate Sir Henry Maine's famous observation that the move in progressive societies is "from status to contract." It frames antipolygamists' contentions as a visceral defense of racial and sexual status in the face of encroaching contractual (...)
No categories
In this article I consider whether there a right to incestuous marriage. I begin by suggesting that the liberal state get out of the "marriage" business by leveling down to a universal civil union or "registered domestic partnership" status. Removing the symbolism of the term "marriage" from political conflict, privatizing it in the same way as religion, would have the advantage of both consistency and political reconciliation. The question is then whether incestuous unions should be both legal and eligible for (...)


