I'm not in the business of judging. I don't want children because the chance that I would be a poor or abusive father is far too great, as a battered child myself. It helps that I'm gay, so that's not causing me any pain. On the other hand, I've been in a committed, faithful relationship with my partner for over 30 years now, and have no desire to look for anything outside of that.
I'm not "wedded" to the notion of monogamy (I use the term loosely now) and marital fidelity, but it seems to suit me fine. A personal thing? Absolutely.
Sorry to hear that you were in an terrible & unfortunate situation during your childhood, but I'm glad to hear that you're in a much better situation that you're happy with, now.
Anyhow, that's another thing with religious liberties & in fact liberties, in general: gay marriage; it's something else that I think isn't any of the government's business here in the US. Religious reasons or not, government should stay out of the bedroom.
But look at what you wrote: "I shouldn't feel guilty in any way for having multiple children with multiple women - as long as I provide them with good homes and a good education so they turn out to be decent adults." What guarantees that if, say, you happened to die? Especially -- and this is key -- if you die intestate (without a will)? How will all those wives and children be provided for? How much of whatever estate you might have goes to each of them -- and based on what? Seniority (first wife, first child or whatever)? Age? Need? Who decides?
I would be referring to them as my baby mamas rather than as my wives, and I would set up accounts and college funding plans for each child with enough money for a good school. I'd also make legal/contractual/financial arrangements for funding and having the money for household, K-12, food, clothing, other personal needs, etc. for each child, so there's no dilemma if anything unfortunate were to ever happen to me. I could and probably would also have a will on top of all that. In general, people do have life insurance policies as a matter of contingency for this sort of purpose/situation. Somehow lower and middle class fathers with many partners, and children with them, manage to make it financially in that situation; if they can, why wouldn't someone who's wealthy?
The law seeks to cope with those questions, because it's not just you who is important -- it's all those other people, too.
Yes, and it can be done without prohibiting someone from practicing their religious beliefs or by forcing someone else's religion or religious policies on them; this is all I'm trying to say.
Out of curiousity, by the way, King Solomon was said (in the Bible) to have had 700 wives and 300 concubines -- and yet he managed only 3 children (possibly 4, if you include a fling with the Queen of Sheba). Do you suppose that's because he was mostly "shooting blanks," or perhaps a very low libido? And don't all those wives and concubines deserve a husband and lord who can provide for their "needs?" Or might it be, possibly, that "surplus" children just weren't considered worth counting or remembering?
Well, I'm not religious and I don't know any details about King Solomon. I'm aware of the name King Solomon, but that's the extent of what I know about him - his name & nothing else.
I'd say sure, everything you mention is a possibility; I can think of other possible explanation too. Maybe some of these women were his wives in the sense of being partners in an actual intimate type of relationship, and the rest might have been just an honorary thing for widows or whatever that he provided as a welfare service generosity to help them financially. Maybe some of them were just women who worked for him and would be what we call employees, today; what makes me think this is a possibility is because the word "maid" is used to refer to housekeepers, and there's the word "bridesmaid" which is associated with wedding ceremonies & nothing to do with housekeeping.
It could be part of that problem of taking religious texts, which were written a very long time ago, and in languages different from English, too literally.
The Bible refers to animals that live in water that aren't vertebrates with gills as fish, and the word "fish" has been commandeered and redefined by the scientific community, thus creating a situation where some say the Bible is wrong, because a fish is not a mammal. A similar situation is the Bible referring to the sky as a dome; when I go outside and look up at the sky, I see something as an observer that's in a geometric perspective of a contemporary dome made of concrete or other building materials; the word "dome" was probably meant to refer to the sky for the entire globe from the point of view of the ground rather than as a structure with a hemisphere shape, for all I know.
I don't use these types of semantics & quibbling matters as a reason to refute the Bible; only atheists do that, and I'm not an atheist - just a non-religious person. I'm not saying that you're trying to refute the Bible, only that how we interpret the Bible today isn't necessarily the correct way, including what a wife or even a concubine was or what that meant back then. I vaguely remember something about it being offensive and an insult to not take a dead brother's widow as a wife back during the "biblical" era; does that necessarily mean that they have to be a married couple in the same way that a contemporary married couple? I don't think so; I think what is really being said is that it's offensive and insulting behavior to a family member not to bring them into their home and care for them like a contemporary wife or family member.
We have the expressions "sister-in-law" and "brother-in-law" today & I imagine that there's some related traditional reason for that. Maybe the idea back then was that a brother's wife is like a sister and is expected to be treated as such, so rejecting or refusing to bring her in their home as a widow was considered to be the same as turning their back on a family member like a biological sister and leaving them out there to be homeless or on their own. I'm guessing that would also include helping her with caring for her children, the children of his deceased (biological) brother, etc.
Maybe back then a marriage was considered something that involved bringing someone into a family a little differently from contemporary norms of marriage, and maybe back then it was considered perfectly ok if he wanted to have an intimate relationship with a brother's widow and to have children with her, or to just leave the relationship with them as just a "platonic" family member (or whatever you want to label it). Maybe if she wanted to re-marry and it was with someone else other than a connection or relationship with her deceased husband's brother it was also perfectly fine.
The point is that more reliable information and details about how things were like back during King Solomon's time would be needed; I don't have any of that information or detail, and there are probably some things about it that have been lost or distorted as time has gone by.[/QUOTE]