JohnR

I believe polygamy started with Joeseph Smith's hunger for new blood. Old Emma was getting cranky and he needed new blood. So he had a revelation and polygamy was born. Trouble is he had secretly married new wives before the revelation and before he told his wife.
Brigham Young had over 27 wives. <a href="http://www.cc.utah.edu/~jay/Brigham_Young/Brigham_Young.html" target="_blank">http://www.cc.utah.edu/~jay/Brigham_Young/Brigham_Young.html</A> I believe it was he who said "I do not think anymore about taking a new wife than I do about buying another cow." He also called them by number (which they wore) cause he could not remember their names or his children's names. But then it was more about making more mormons than love anyway.
Young sent men back east to recruit women for wives then bitched that they were keeping all the young ones for themselves. Mark Twain remarked that he thought polygamy was wrong till he saw the women, this was as good as it gets for them he said.

livius drusus

I think the reason for this dissonance is the clash of the property/paternity confirming tradition of marriage and the Victorian love/committment tradition. The notion that marriage is the legal recognition of love and fidelity is a relatively recent one. Marriage as a property deal, including exclusive rights to the uterus and environs and all products thereof, seems far more applicable to the LDS practice of polygamy. JohnR's Brigham Young quote equating wife acquisition to the purchase of cattle is a fine example of this.

I don't think Pwn was referring to 19 year olds having consensual sex with 17 year olds. I suspect it was a reference to the illegal sex charges in the op case.

I find age of consent laws problematic on many levels. For one thing, my own history of rather voracious teen sexuality puts the lie to any generalizations equating youthful sex with victimhood. Also, <a href="http://www.avert.org/aofconsent.htm" target="_blank">consent laws</a> are inconsistent to a ludicrous degree. A consent law for traveling US citizens? What kind of delusional joke is that?

Anyway, having said that, I would rather this thread not devolve into yet another underage sex slapfest. The topic is vast enough to deserve its own thread and you can always wade into <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=52&t=000294" target="_blank">this badboy</a> in MF&P should you have a higher frustration tolerance than I.

Veil of Fire

That's ok. I don't understand the point of getting married to a man (or any number of men), myself. For much the same reasons. Taking a diamond ring from someone as payment for a lifetime of exclusive sexual favors sounds kinda silly to me.

Arrowman

In general, I go with "1". "2s"do exist of course, and therefore I suppose technically the answer should be "3", but, as a general rule, "1".

In my experience (ie based on people I have met, including the people on this board) the majority of humans are mono-amorous. Is that a function of human nature, or of societal pressure? IOW do we suppress a natural polymarous nature to meet societal expectations? And if the latter is the case, are the origins of those societal expectations
1) Religious;
2) "Evolved" - ie, as humans became social and cooperative beings, monamory "worked best"; or
3) Both of the above - with the invention of religious laws used to explain / reinforce societal expectations?

But whatever the origins of this aspect of human nature, I think it is fair to say that humans are predominantly mono-amorous. However I think that applies much less to platonic love; I suspect that people are generally capable of platonic ployamory much more than they are of physical polyamory. And this I suspect goes deep into our evolutionary / reproductive roots.

I would go one step further and suggest that humans are "serially mono-amorous" - that is, while capable of / wishing to engage romantically [physically] with only one person at a time, we do not necessarily naturally "mate for life" and may seek out different mates (with different characteristics) at different stages of our lives (particularly, pre, during, and post child rearing). I think this is supported by the increasing divorce rate as societal / religious pressures have less and less effect on our actions as individuals.