Speculation: If Polygamy were legal in the U. S., would the Mormon church re-embrace it post correlation?

My bachelor's degree is in Anthropology, and I did most of my Junior and Senior year papers on aspects of polygamy. In one course I compared Mormon polygamy prior to 1890 with practices in other cultures. I have thought a bit about what would happen in the US if polygamy ever became legal.

If the Mormon church was ever to reauthorize polygamy, I think several things would probably happen.

First, I think there would be very high barriers to taking additional wives. These barriers would effectively make plural marriage very rare. Polygamy seems to work with the fewest problems when it is rare. Groups like FLDS demonstrate what happens when it is common. A shortage of females develops quickly, and the community needs a way of getting rid of surplus males. FLDS resolves this by expelling young men, but the Mormon church obviously can't afford to do that. There also needs to be protections against any one man having too many wives. You are literally creating a patriarch who can have enormous political and religious power, and that becomes very disruptive in the community. You can also quickly get into inbreeding problems.

Second, I think they would have to address problems that can develop withing the family. A problem that early Mormons had with polygamy was lack of safeguards for women. Men often favored the newest wife which is pretty much a formula for disaster. Each wife needs to have her own physical household space. An old saying in some cultures is that it is easy for women to share a man, but hard for them to share a kitchen. I really think the expression really applies to more than a kitchen. Every person needs their own space that they can control, and they need to understand that they play an important role in the family.

Another safeguard for women is some way to make sure that they are completely on-board with taking a new wife. In many cultures it is actually the existing wife or wives who decide to take on additional wives, and they may actually be the ones who make the selection. At very least the church would need to have an extensive vetting process to make certain that the existing wife or wives were in favor of taking on additional spouses. Then there need to be mechanisms to make sure they are treated equally after the new member joins the family. In some cultures the women actually decide and schedule the man's sleeping rotation, and that can include him sleeping alone for extended periods if they are mad at him.

I don't think the Mormon church would have a big problem with limiting polygamy by setting high barriers. Financial barriers alone would probably be enough. What I think they would have problems with is setting up the social structures within the family. Current theology as I understand it gives the man too much control in the family. That might require some subtle shifts in theology to restore balance, and those changes might actually percolate out into even monogamous families.

/r/exmormon Thread