Bigamy Quotes

Luther’s logic was that polygamy was sanctioned in the Old Testament and never specifically forbidden in the New Testament. This fact totally puzzled the American Mormons when the Protestants railed against the immorality of their plural marriages.

Jackson's Secretary of War, John Henry Eaton, 1790-1856, had been having an affair with a married woman with a proclivity toward promiscuity. Her husband committed suicide and Eaton married her causing one of the great scandals of American history. It split Andrew Jackson's cabinet and ended with Jackson, who supported Eaton, replacing the entire cabinet except the Postmaster General. Vice President John C. Calhoun's chances for the Presidency died as he and Jackson broke over this scandal.

Mittleberger wrote a treatise warning his countrymen of the problems in Pennsylvania where many German youth were coming as indentured servants and apprentices.

The Mormon Church at that time allowed plural marriage. Men could have many wives. The Mormons—especially those who had moved to Utah—had organized many civic functions and performed much of the role that local and State governments did elsewhere in the country. The discrimination that Mormons faced in much of the nation was extreme including lynching and other physical attacks. So Mormons banded together in communities and their church became their local government. This together with the plural marriage offended many other Americans. The wall of separation of church and state was collapsing on many fronts with the Mormon Church assuming many governmental functions in Mormon areas and the Federal, State and local governments interfering with the personal and religious activities of the Mormons. This is one of the few occasions in American history where a President publicly criticized a religion in an official function. It took time and patience, but the issues were finally resolved, and discrimination against Mormons is rare, unusual and condemned by all levels of government and most Americans.

The church advised this to its members

This is a classic example of taking a principle and extrapolating it to an absurd degree. The Supreme Court did rule that there was a right to privacy and did rule that the state could not interfere with most consensual sex in the home including adultery. However the court did not permit bigamy or polygamy, sex with minors, and a host of other areas where the common weal is benefitted. Santorum and others with his view believe that the state should have the right to criminalize adultery and homosexual contact in a private home. And they indeed had this prerogative at earlier times. People were jailed for adultery in Virginia, for having intercourse in different positions in Alabama, for using condoms in Connecticut and others. However, most of the support for these sexual control laws came from religious fundamentalists who wanted the state to enforce their religious beliefs on all. That together with the privacy right, no longer allowed these state abuses if individual freedom. Ironically, most of the advocates for the state’s having the right to restrict sexual freedom. Think of themselves as advocates of individuality and the government not telling folks what to do or how to behave.

Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev was a great scientist who had created the famous Periodic Table of the Elements. He was also the major science advisor to the Czar and his government. He had been divorced but had not waited the required 7 years before remarrying. Therefore according to Russian religious law at the time, he was legally a bigamist, and could not hold a position in the government and should be prosecuted. A complaint was made to the Czar and this was his reply. There are a few scholars who do not feel this quotation was documented well enough to be accepted.

This type of religious sexism is not unique to Islam. Fundamentalist Christians place women in a secondary role as do fundamentalist orthodox Jews although both allow a man to take only one wife. The Islamic scripture tells us that the Prophet allowed multiple wives only if the man had the resources to care for the wives and all the children. 4 is the maximum.