Monogamy- A Christian point of view - (Cont..)
God bless President Mitterrand who openly confessed to having two women in his life, with the one in the other house with whom he fathered an 18-year-old daughter at the time he passed on.
I have schooled, worked and lived virtually in all the continents of the world and I make bold to say with all emphasis at my disposal that no culture on planet earth truly practices monogamy. My Greek, Italian,
Russian, British, American and other Caucasians routinely visit their other wives [called by other names] with whom they have children. But back in the homes shared with the one carrying the ring, they are monogamists!
If God had wanted humanity to be monogamous, He or She would not have made the pigeon the only monogamous creature. The cultures that practice polygamy had always known that at any given time, the number of available marriageable women far out number available men plus the fact that an 80-year-old man, if he has money, is still very much in the market whereas a 60- year-old woman may not be that lucky. The biological limitation to a woman’s productive age is also a factor. Why should a woman therefore remain on the shelf till age 45 when she could jolly well get married as second wife to a man who can afford to share life’s responsibilities with her? Why should a woman leave a man with whom she is No 1, simply because took a second wife and end up being numberless in the hands of several men with whom she naturally shares bed just because of some doctrine she hardly understands?
All the women who should go and marry but are saying they do not want to share their man with another woman in a polygamous setting, are sharing current boyfriends with several other women. Where is the logic?
The argument that children in a polygamous house are always at each other’s throat does not hold water. Many siblings of monogamous families are known to have had worse and irresolvable, irreconcilable squabble, with dirty bitterness over inheritance than children from different mothers.
The agony suffered by both men and women in the hand of unnatural laws and doctrines is too stifling for comfort. In 2002, 502 Reverend mothers were reported to have died while procuring abortion in Rome. Nigerian Tribune wrote an editorial on the unfortunate incident. And stories of Reverend fathers having children and sodomising young men in their care are legion! Why the hypocrisy?
Why should the world continue to live the life of Ostrich? A well known Nigerian journalist hid his other wives from his wife because his religion would not permit of it and his wife, living in monogamy should not hear of it. At his funeral service, other wives surfaced and the woman parading the ring collapsed. It was the grace of God that prevented double interment that day!
The Western world which had not learnt the art of living amicably with more than one partner under the same roof has indulged in multiple serial marriages, divorcing innocent wives under flimsy excuses so that another woman can move in should not be measure of standard for the world. Thank God Hillary Clinton in the US and Mrs. Cook in England were very much wiser. They refused to allow "some indiscretion" on the part of their husbands to ruin their marriages.
There was a well known American actor who passed on about a decade ago and all his 11 ex-wives with their numerous children attended his funeral. To ridicule the lie of their hypocritical existence, all the women were recognised and addressed as wives. As far as records show, the man had 11 wives!
Society, especially we Nigerians just like Kenyans and others have done, must start to rethink this issue of pretentious monogamy vis-à-vis polygamy so that in the not-too-distant future we do not end up with millions of unmarried women whose life style would be worse than prostitutes.