Polygamy

Is sexual arrangement, plural marriage (Polygamy), a revelation from God as claimed by some Mormon and Muslim fundamentalists?
I don’t think so.
I agree with John Llewellne, a retired Salt Lake City policeman (who once practices polygamy but now campaigns against it) that the idea comes more from a Mormon’ leader, Joseph Smith’s Y (male) chromosome than from God’s revelation. This kind of sexual arrangement subjugates women by men for sexual, reproductive and housework purposes. John Stuart Mill wrote in 1861 in England that a marriage relationship, which the men have full authority and the women submit and obey, is “the subjugation of women”. He declared that such a relationship is against women’s right.
Now 146 years later, we are still having to argue on this issue in many parts of the world where the male attitude have not changed much, especially among the Muslim and Mormon polygamists who are raising again the issue of legal acceptance of this kind of marriage. Discrimination against women, denying or limiting as it does their equality of rights with men, is fundamentally unjust and constitutes an offence against human dignity. This is stated in the Article 1 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979 coming into force in 1981. 185 countries, more than 90 per cent of the UN members, have ratified this convention which set framework at national level to abolish existing laws, customs, regulations and practices which are discriminatory against women and to establish adequate legal protection for equal rights of men and women. Polygamists have a right to their beliefs but they don’t have the right to pursue a lifestyle based on the idea of the inferiority of women and against women’s human rights.

Filed under Gender Issues, United Nations |