Don’t Disavow Polygamy
I’ve seen people express a wish for the church to disavow polygamy. I’m still working out how I feel about that. To be clear: there were certainly outrageous abuses that happened because of polygamy. I don’t want to minimize that. But I wonder if we sometimes apply our modern conceptions of monogamy as the foil to polygamy, when it would be more appropriate to look at what historical monogamous marriages were like. For all the heartache and mistreatment Doctrine and Covenants 132 has caused, the history of monogamous marriage is certainly not innocent. Polygamy was not the big mistake. Patriarchy was.
Years ago I attended a presentation by Marianne Monson. She taught about Martha Hughes Cannon who was a doctor, suffragist, and champion of public health. Cannon became America’s first female state senator by running a political race against her polygamous husband…and winning! Monson’s book, Her Quiet Revolution, is a fictionalized biography of this incredible woman. (I’d totally recommend the book. The novelization makes Cannon’s herstory engaging to learn about.) Monson’s presentation covered Cannon’s illegal plural marriage and how Cannon went into exile for a few years to avoid testifying against her husband and others. Monson told about how plural wives had no protections from the law. Someone in attendance made a comment: “Why would Cannon enter a plural marriage? She’s clearly a very smart woman. Why would she put herself in such a vulnerable position?” That question has haunted me.
Monson’s response to that question was something along the lines of “This is what made sense to Cannon in the context of her faith and her surrounding culture.” Cannon’s actions were deeply influenced by what church leaders taught were ‘right’ about marriage. People today are also deeply influenced by what current church leaders teach about marriage. A dramatic example of this influence happened when Proposition 8 was on the ballot in California. The church mobilized members to donate time and money to ensure that same-sex marriage would be illegal. Members who ended up voting against their conscience due to the church’s influence have been haunted by that choice.
I was newly-wed and in grad school when the church chose sides on California’s Proposition 8. One of my classmates knew I was Mormon and asked what I thought. I said I was confused about why a church with a history of being persecuted for promoting non-traditional marriage wouldn’t be supporting the rights of others to have legal, non-traditional marriages, even if the church didn’t believe those marriages to be right. That whole ‘do unto others’ thing, you know? I wonder if a good deal of the violence and trauma early saints experienced would have been avoided if the neighbors had been able to say “We don’t think polygamy is right, but we will defend your right to believe as you wish. We have concerns about making sure all parties in the marriage are safe and fairly treated, but if we can come to an agreement about what that looks like, you do you.” That totally couldn’t have happened because monogamous marriage at the time also did not treat women fairly. These injustices are succinctly summarized in the lyrics to “If We Were Married” from the musical Suffs:
If we were married, I promised to cherish you just as a gentleman should.
If we were married, I promised to forfeit my legal autonomy for good.
If we were married, we’d buy our own acre of land for our own little house.
If we were married, our possessions and property would solely belong to the masculine spouse.
If we were married, if we were married.
If we were married, we’d fill out our family and life would be simply sublime.
If we were married, I’d churn out your children ’cause contraception’s a federal crime.
If we were married, we’d save up a nest egg to cushion us later in life.
If we were married, my earnings would be in your name and I couldn’t control my own spending or open a bank account or sign a contract or hire a lawyer because economically speaking I’d die by becoming your wife.
If we were married, if we were married.
You’ve got to admire the ease with which men can squeeze us into such a rigid role.
You do.
Daughters are taught to aspire to a system expressly designed to keep them under control.
For instance, if we were married and you physically beat me, that wouldn’t be illegal to do.
What?
Can you believe it is 1916 and all of these things are still actually true?
I suppose I never stopped to think about how it would be for you.
If we were married, if we were married.
My emotional response to that song was very much the same as the woman who asked about why Martha Hughes Cannon participated in a polygamous marriage: “Why would any intelligent woman choose to participate in such a system?” Monogamy has a long history of enforcing a hierarchy between men and women. Polygamy in the early church could be seen an experiment giving women less oversight and more control over resources and fertility…although it’s certainly not easy to read the history that way when men told women God was threatening them with theological destruction if they don’t comply.
Modern monogamous marriages are certainly different than those a mere century ago, and yet…the institution of marriage is still deeply intertwined with patriarchy. At church, we still have men telling women under what circumstances they should have sex in order to get into the highest heaven. I’ve sat through countless church talks (mostly given by men) and lessons (curriculum approved by men) that taught women to get married and have babies. I wonder how many women have been blindsided by the “husband presides” language in the current sealing ceremony. Modern marriage as the church teaches it continues to be a patriarchal institution, even if many couples have (or aspire to have) much more egalitarian marriages. The patriarchy of modern church marriages fits in easily with our surrounding culture.
In early Utah during the era of polygamy, divorce was relatively easy and common. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich said that in the 1800s polygamy and easy divorce helped to enlarge the principle of consent in marriage.* The idea of sexual consent is now mainstream, but current church practices diminish consent for women. If a wife dies and the husband remarries, any monogamous temple marriage can become a polygynous one in the eternities without the consent of the first wife. (Living women cannot be sealed to more than one man.) This idea of eternal, non-consensual polygamy is hard for many women to accept. Culturally, polygamy has gone from expanding the idea of consent, to reducing it.
One of the parenting tricks I picked up pretty early on with toddlers was to offer two choices when I needed something done. It gave them a sense of control over their life (which reduced tantrums) and I spent less time arguing about things like the necessity of them getting buckled into their carseat. One of my children was really good at understanding that there were actually more than two ways to do such things. If I offered her choice ‘A’ or choice ‘B’, she would often counter-offer with choice ‘17’ (which I never would have thought of, but I often found acceptable). She was really good at seeing through the false dichotomy I offered her.
I’ve seen conversations about polygamy fall into a similar false dichotomy. If choice ‘A’ is monogamous patriarchal marriage and choice ‘B’ is polygamous patriarchal marriage, most people in our current culture easily select ‘A’ as the better choice. But what if you would actually prefer choice ‘17’?
The problem with choices ‘A’ and ‘B’ (monogamous or polygamous marriage) is that both are rooted in patriarchy. Any marriage structure that does not have women on equal footing with men is not righteous. Any societal structure that does not account for the unequal amount of caretaking and reproductive labor many women take on is not fair. Any system created without equally valued contributions from a fully diverse range of people who participate in the system is going to be exploitative. Marriage as it’s currently manifested in the church still puts men above women. Disavowing polygamy won’t fix the root of the problem. We need to disavow patriarchy.
*Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. “Mormon Gender in the Age of Polygamy.” The Routledge Handbook of Mormonism and Gender, 97. New York: Routledge, 2020.
