Re-reading some of the old gay-marriage threads, I came across various arguments amounting to, “well, if we let gays marry, then soon they’ll be polygamy, too, and as many people can be married to each other as they want!” In some religions, polygamy is considered bad (while in some it’s the norm), but that shouldn’t matter when making marriage laws and such, b/c at least in the US there is supposed to be a separation of church and state.
Question: What is so wrong with polygamy? Why, if a group of consenting adults all want to be married, it is considered wrong? While I myself am monogomous, and could never see myself doing this, I really wouldn’t care if other people did. I’m sure there are economical / societal arguments I’m not considering, but what are they?
I’d really like to hear some reasoning and opinions on this. I’m leaving work in about 20 minutes, and won’t be back until tomorrow, so I probably won’t get back to this thread until then. I don’t want anyone to think I’m ignoring it!
Here are my objections, as you will find them in any of the old polyamorous union threads.
It’s a legal nightmare. No one has given me any reason to believe that this could be handled by our court system and still preserve the full rights of all members of the union (I assume that women would not be chattel under this system). In the event of divorce, custody disputes, etc. with multiple partners of equal standing, you end up with a real mess.
I don’t think that that multiple male arrangements will be as popular as multiple female arrangements. This leaves you with a surplus of men that are unable to find mates. I don’t think that this is very healthy.
Those are my arguments. I don’t think there’s any real moral opposition to it for me, just logistics and unintended bad consequences.
Just because the legal challenges haven’t been addressed doesn’t mean they could not be solved. Polygamous marriage would have to structured as a relationship between all the members, not just between the husband and each of his wives. Offhand, I should think it is no more difficult to divide property three ways as two.
Many men cannot find mates under monogamy. I don’t see how this changes with polygamy; it’s not like it is likely to become the dominant form of marriage.
Just in passing, I am descended from polygamists. My great-grandmother and her sister were married to my great-grandfather at the same time. According to family oral history, it was a very happy family, at least until great-grandmother’s sister was killed when she got run over by a streetcar. But that’s another story.
I find especialy odiuos the shortage of women arguments. Neither men nor women should be treated like dangrous radicals to be neutralized by a tie to a member of the opposite sex.
Most of the major religions in the United States consider polygamy bad, though. And while there is a seperation of church and state, laws that get passed are influenced by the values of the lawmakers and the voters, who were brought up to think polygamy was wrong.
It’s a law based on a particular religion(s). Basically, polygamy is illegal for the same reasons you can’t buy liquor in many states on Sunday mornings.
I think the root of opposition to polygamy is that historically extent models of polygamy have also been misogynist. Polygamy has been and still is closely tied to views of wives as property of husbands, of women having no say in deciding who they’re to wed, etc. These things are reprehensible, and hence extant models of polygamy are largey reprehensible as well.
Now, if you’re talking about consensual polyamorous relationships and the possible legal sanction thereof, I have no problems. But if you’re talking about letting conservative Mormons coerce 16-year old girls into being the seventh wife of some patriarch, nuh uh. No way. The issue isn’t polygamy per se, but I’m not quite sure I see how polygamy can be divorced from these issues, at least at the current time. I am open to suggestions on that point, though.
Bingo. While reducing women to chattel simplifies the legal issue, I don’t think that it is a model we need to return to.
As for the legal challenges…gay marriage is easy. you are simply extending the same rules to another group of people. You’d have to establish a whole new body of law governing multiple partners of equal legal standing, and I don’t see a compelling reason to do so. I DO think that we need to decriminalize co-habitation (as I understand it, this is still illegal in some areas), but I’d need to know more before I’d support the other.
Just for clarification purposes, I have heard of one man/multiple women defined as polygyny, one woman/multiple men as polyandry, and multiples of both genders as polygamy. Or rather, polygyny and polyandry are a subset of polygamy, characterized by the fact that there is only one of a particular gender.
I’ve gotten confused trying to follow these threads before, when people use polygamy to mean polygyny.
Yes, what I really man is polygyny and/or polyandry, sorry for the confusion, I’m not up with all the different terms for these kinds of relationships.
(I’ll be back tomorrow to address other posts, I just wanted to clarify this point).
Polyamory is kinda a new-age version of polygamy that tends to equalize the gender controls. It works about as well as monogamy, Of course there are those who for religious reasons will label anything other than “one-man, one-woman monogamy” as “bad.” I think that’s a bad attitude, and is based on intangibles.
Polygamy permits freedom of choice when not abused, and is really a good thing. Actually, there was a surplus of females in the U.S. last time I looked, so I don’t understand this sympathy for unmarried males…
I’m all for people chioosing their lifestyle so long as it harms no one else.
The legal challenges can’t be dismissed so easily.
Property division at the end of marriage is already pretty darn complicated for many (if not most) marriages with two persons. Premarital, marital, and postmarital assets are all handled differently under the law. Then there are certain kinds of premarital, marital, and postmarital assets that are treated as exceptions to the usual rules. Antenuptial agreements further cloud the issue.
A third person complicates the issue significantly. What if the third person came into the marriage later? What portion of which assets is s/he entitled to? What if only one person wishes to disengage from the marriage? Again, what portion of which assets is this person entitled to?
Child custody issues become extremely complex. Suppose two of the spouses are the biological parents of a child of the marriage. What is the legal status of the third (or fourth or fifth) parent? Should they have the full legal parent rights to the child? What if the non-biological “parent” is the primary caregiver of the child? Which parent(s) should have the legal right to make important decisions concerning the child’s religion, education, health care, etc.? If the non-biological parent divorces from the marriage, how is custody divided? What if they all divorce? Should custody be split three, four, five, etc. ways? Who gets to make the decisions about the child’s upbringing then? Do all three, four, five parents have to come to an agreement about every issue? What is in the best interest of the child in this situation?
Courts are already having a heck of a time with these issues where just two legal parents/spouses are involved. And I’m just talking about the tip of the iceberg re: family law and divorce issues.
Also, I wonder: what will happen to employer-provided health care plans if one worker (Spouse 1) legally tacks on 3 extra spouses and 15 kids to his coverage. I’m not sure it’s an insurmountable issue, but I think a lot of monogamous families wouldn’t like the hike in their insurance premiums when they found they had to help carry the premium burden for polygamous families. (This is already a big argument at work places between “2 spouse, no kids” families that pay the same (high) premium as “2 spouse, plus kids” families. I know it got quite heated at my last workplace.)
Polygamy CAN mean polyandry, but polyandry cannot mean polygyny.
Lemme 'splain.
more than two partners, genders unspecified (this could be only three people, but we don’t know what their genders are) = polygamy
more than one woman and only one man = polygyny (literally “many women”)
more than one man and only one woman = polyandry (literally, “many andys”…or…uh…something Greek sharing a root with “androgen”, like the hormones)
The best argument I’ve heard against legalized polygamy (though I still think the argument is bullocks) is that it makes health care insurance rates unfair. That is, if a Bob’s family policy covers not only Bob and Sue and their kids, but Bob and Mary and Sue and Paul and all their collective children, then an undue burden is being paid by other members of their insurance group. And just as soon as insurance companies start limiting the number of kids a monogomous couple covers on their family policy, I may start to buy it.
There’s no reason that a mutli-person divorce needs to be more complicated than a two person divorce. There is no longer a “default” decision on divorces anyway - every couple is looked at individually in terms of who gets what and why. Sure, it might cost the poly marrieds more to hire more lawyers, but that’s a burden they bear.
“Polyamory” is a newer term, invented to cover those in relationships that look like polygamous ones, but do not involve legal marriage between more than two of the partners (if even that many.) Meaning, literally, “many loves.”
On preview, there’s the insurance argument. Oh, well. Still not buying it.
Part of the conflation is because polyandry is pretty rare. Except for some tribes in Tibet, and maybe the early Mormons, I can’t think of any societies that practiced it.
I also agee with Gorsnak. I think the solutions to the problem are to guarantee everyone has equal rights in the relationship and raise the legal age one can enter such a relationship so that they are fully aware of these rights.
Dang, I didn’t see this thread before I started the “More On Marriage.” Anyhoo, I can see why being married to more than one person could create some sticky issues. I don’t, however, see why two people can’t come together as a married couple-- partners for life when it comes to the big stuff, like, raising a family, owning a home, taking care of each other in old age, etc.–but still be able to have the freedom to love whomever they wish, to pursue emotional connections with others, to (responsibly) yeild to sexual desires with others. Y’know…“free love” and all that. Maybe prostitution would go away; who knows?
There are families with more than two adults in a loving relationship. If people can maintain the relationships as well as a two party marriage, and it represents a stable family, the laws should uphold it and not criminalize it.
This is partly at least to avoid abuses. People who are in these families have to avoid scrutiny and cannot avail themselves of public services as they might like to and would otherwise be permissible because someone might completely destroy their family and not just address the issues that need to be addressed.
Shall we also forbid companies with multiple partners? The legal issues are too complicated? Corporations too?
Assuming you are talking about divorce, I didn’t realize there was a simple formula for two people. I thought it was already a process that took the specific situation into account. A process settled by negotiation, mediation, perhaps arbitration, and ultimately approved in a civil court.
None as a parent.
Obviously not.
The non-biological partner should adopt the child, if they want legal rights as a parent, and could only do so if the legal (biological or not) parents (all) consent.
Any legally recognized parent.
Same way as it is today, negotiated by the parties, or settled in a civil court, weighed on the best interest of the child(ren).
Same as above.
I suppose it could, though I would expect such a circumstance to be very rare.
The parents.
No, same as today.
the standard used by the courts to decide any unresolvable (critical) issue.
You whine about the inequity of such a situation while pointing out the inequity of the current system. Is that ironic?
How about allowing employees to purchase supplemental insurance for additional partners, inside the same insurance plan? Why not pay supplemental rates for the first spouse and each additonal spouse or child?
I think the estate/property divisions are the biggest challenges…what do you do about the elective share? What if one wife goes for the elective share at death and the other wife opts for the will? How do you split the estate at dissolution of one of the partners in a community property state? How do you split the estate in a common law state? These questions are mind-benders and could happily keep an extensive group of lawyers and the ALI employed for years upon years. After that the litigating would be also be great so…as a lawyer I am all for it, my personal distate for the institution be damned.
Maybe prostitution would go away; who knows?