Mormon Polygamy on Trial: Day 10 Summary and media links

We all have our biases - at least I have mine. Perhaps it is time to disclose some of them. I am a white male who was born and raised in Southern Alberta, Canada. I am monogamous and heterosexual - I have been happily married to the same woman for almost 30 years. I recently retired from a 30 year career in the oil and gas industry where I worked as a research geoscientist - primarily involved with geostatistics.

I have six generations of Mormon ancestry (all monogamous). However, I chose to leave the LDS church and become a member of the Community of Christ in 2006 (the CofChrist/RLDS church was formed in 1860 as the anti-polygamy branch of the original Mormon church in 1860). I could never bring myself to believe that polygamy - as it was practiced in the Mormon church- was a divinely ordained principle. I struggled for many years trying to understand the history of Mormon polygamy and the many inconsistencies that have arisen due to the varying interpretations of this history. Finally, these inconsistencies became one of the primary reasons that I left the LDS church.

Now my biases are out in the open. That feels better.

In light of these biases, it may seem surprising when I say that I am uncomfortable with the way the polygamy charter challenge is proceeding and I am even more uneasy about the was the media is reporting the events. Here is a recent example.

Thursday marked Day 10 of the BC Supreme Court charter question concerning the constitutionality of Canada’s 1890 anti-polygamy law. Professor Joe Henrich from UBC was the expert witness. Dr. Henrich has very impressive credentials in psychology, anthropology, economics, and even aerospace engineering. However, he did not begin looking seriously into polygamy prior to March of 2010 when he was asked by the BC attorney general’s office to contribute as an expert witness in this case.

Dr. Henrich presented a powerpoint presentation to the court that provided an overview of his position. Starting from a biological perspective, he showed that human evolutionary considerations would suggest that our species should naturally tend to polygyny (one man with many wives). He backed up this assertion by showing that the vast majority of human cultures have been (or presently are) at least partially polygynous.

Dr. Henrich then proceeded to trace the history of Western monogamy. Starting with the ancient Greeks, more than 2500 years ago, he argued that monogamy was adopted to insure that citizens could have more equal status in society. He then traced the history of monogamy through Roman times, where Caesar Augustus strongly enforced monogamous marriage as a way to strengthen the empire. Dr. Henrich further reported that Christianity adopted its’ monogamous tradition through the influence of Roman law. The European nobility were slow to abandon their polygamous traditions until the Roman Catholic church was finally able to bring them into submission through controlling inheritance laws. It has been suggested that once the kings and nobles were restricted to having the same number of wives as the peasants, that this was a step towards democracy.

Dr. Henrich showed studies from Asia and Africa that indicate that polygamy and the resulting increase in un-marriageable men cause a significant increase in crime - especially substance abuse, robbery and murder. This is likely caused by the fact that higher status men are able to easily attract additional wives. while lower status men must take on significantly higher levels of risk in order to find a mate. He also reported that studies show that women and children in polygamous societies are at higher risk of a abuse and neglect. Dr. Henrich pointed out that these studies are not from North America, and that other factors such as relative wealth, education, culture, etc. must be taken into account.

I agree with many of Dr. Henrich’s arguments. For example, I strongly agree with his premise that the greatest positive step towards equal rights for women came when they were able to take control over their reproductive choices. His conclusions also indicated that in polygamous societies, polygamous families are always higher in status that monogamous ones. A strong confirmation of this tendency was given during the Reed Smoot hearings in 1903, when LDS President Joseph F. Smith confirmed that while less than 20% of the men in Utah men were polygamous, this group comprised almost 100% of the wealthy and powerful men in the state.

So given this agreement, why am I uncomfortable? For one thing, there are several of his other arguments that I find very hard to believe. Most of his conclusions are based on studies from cultures that are very different from our own. He contends that differences in wealth, culture and education can somehow be “controlled for” in statistical analysis. Having spent a significant part of my life working with statistical studies, and I find this very difficult to accept -especially without seeing any of the data. He also suggested that the most likely result of a polygamy induced gender imbalance would be an increase in the murder rate and I have certainly not seen evidence of this in the Creston area.

More troubling to me is his assertion that our cultural choice to embrace monogamy has resulted in mating patterns that have ultimately shaped our genetic evolution over the past 2500 years and that this combined effect has helped to shape us into a WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) society that is significantly different from the rest of the human species. In his abstract for a recent paper, called “The weirdest people in the world”. Dr. Henrich states “WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species – frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans.”

We agree it’s WEIRD, but is it WEIRD enough? « Neuroanthropology

I believe we should be very careful with assertions like this. It reminds me of the track taken by Jared Diamond in his famous “Guns, Germs and Steel” where he self-depreciatingly cherry picks facts from science, history and even linguistics to explain how WE (Western Europeans) accidently - and fortuitously - evolved to become the pinnacle of human achievement. It is a slippery slope. One minute our culture is simply an outlier - a little better in terms of fairness, moral reasoning, cooperation, etc. Before you know it, we are not only different from other cultures, we are superior. We can prove it and we know why. Many of these same types of arguments have been historically used to justify slavery, colonization, imperialism and even Aryan supremacy. In short order, WEIRD could potentially come to stand for White European Imperialism’s Racial Discrimination.

Back to the subject of polygamy legislation. In a recent paper, Nathan Oman contends that the US Supreme Court decision on the 1879 Reynold’s Mormon Polygamy case was largely based upon racist and imperialistic views. He clearly documents how Mormons were portrayed as racially separate from the rest of America and how much of the anger against 19th Century Mormons was fueled by an accusation of racial treason.

SSRN-Natural Law and the Rhetoric of Empire: Reynolds v. United States, Polygamy, and Imperialism by Nathan Oman


Back to my biases - I am very sensitive to any claims that one group is superior to another on the basis of some arbitrary claim. For example, I get very nervous when our society is held up as monogamous with all of its’ associated benefits when in reality, our society is actually far from this ideal. This was pointed out by Dr. Henrich when he noted the similarities between serial monogamy and polygamy. It is also undeniable that the rich and powerful men in our society are not bound to a monogamous lifestyle - as can be easily observed on the covers of several popular magazines.

I am also very sensitive to media reporting that consistently reports stories that re-enforce preconceived biases and ignore important counter-evidence that comes out in the same proceedings. I strongly dislike legal tactics that attempt to win a case through excluding important evidence rather than sincerely seeking after the truth. For a good example of both of these points, just read the affidavits from Dr. Angela Campbell and Dr. Henrich. Then consider how lawyers defending section 293 spent an entire day attempting to block Dr. Campbell from testifying as an expert witness while happily accepting Dr. Henrich. In spite of the fact that Dr. Campbell has researched polygamy and the law for more than 5 years, and has actually made 2 personal research visits to Bountiful - while Dr. Henrich who has spent less than 200 hours studying the subject -beginning in March 2010. After you have read the affidavits, read the media reports on the two witnesses.

Does the reaction come from the quality of the witness or is it based upon how well the witness’s testimony agrees with the desired narrative?

Polygamy hurts women, hinders society: Expert

Legalized polygamy would be an attack on hard-won rights

Polygamy leaves women worse off, court told - The Globe and Mail

B.C. government too cowardly with polygamists

CTV Calgary- B.C. polygamy case underway with battle of experts - CTV News

The weirdest people in the world?
Joseph Henrich,Steven J. Heine and Ara Norenzayan (2010).
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Volume 33, Issue 2-3, June 2010 pp 61-83
http://journals.cambridge.org.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/action/displayAbstract?aid=7825833