Polygamy

Polygamy

Polygamy is a one of those terms that aren’t used often. This word usually comes up rarely in a discussion and is mostly used to make of someone. Polygamy means having more than one wife or husband. Polygamy exists in female spouse more than male spouses. Polygamy of husbands can be found in remote areas of countries such as Russia and Greenland (Zeitzen, pg 6). Some religions do allow polygamy and it’s mostly followed in Asian and Middle East countries like India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and many more(Zeitzen, pg 6). It’s currently illegal in North America and in some parts of Europe (Bachman, Light Planet). But what role does culture play on a group of people who are considering becoming polygamists? When analyzed from a sociological perspective, one can see that the culture, society and surroundings play a major role in the act of polygamy. People who follow polygamy either do it because of their culture or they are following the footsteps of their ancestors. Committing crimes and using polygamy as a cover and using religion as an excuse to follow polygamy are some of the reasons responsible for polygamy’s bad reputation but there are people who support polygamy. They are trying to change the current reputation of polygamy. In the future one would think that polygamist would try to change the image of polygamy and the mistakes made by earlier polygamists would not be followed by future polygamist.

Violations and violence in polygamy has been occurring for a long time now. Polygamy started in North America in the early 19th Century. During the 19th Century, polygamy was only followed by Latter-day-Saints or LDS (Bachman, Light Planet). These LDS’s were the prophets or the spiritual leaders. They said that their actions are due to the commands of the GOD (Bachman, Light Planet). The idea of polygamy was new in those days so there were no particular laws against polygamy (Bachman, Light Planet). People in those days didn’t consider them normal...