Geez, have you never seen Big Love??? 
As long as polygamy is a punishable offense, you’ll never see those examples.
Hmm… wait. It’s only an offense when there’s a marriage, right? And the marriages aren’t legal… so how do they ever get anyone for polygamy? (I’m not talking about a bigamy situation where one partner gets legally married to more than one.)
If you can find any women who think polygamy would be great for them personally, who aren’t saying that out of powerlessness and poverty, then you have a case. Otherwise, it’s just the same old thing men have always wanted, that women have had to accept.
You’re thinking of polygyny, which is a specific subset of polygamy. OK, so historically polygamy has mostly been synonymous with it for various reasons (property rights & heirlooms mostly).
But I don’t see any particular reason why, if we’re considering polygamy today as modern enlightened apes, we couldn’t consider polyandry just as valid (or any combination of x husbands, y wives e.g. the family units described inCourtship Rite)
It’s not really underground, though. The crime of polygamy is trying to get more than one legally-recognized marriage, whereas the polygamist groups are married to their wives past #1 in the eyes of God only. It’s not the illegality that leads to these groups being secretive and insular, but their need to control their members.
I guess you’ve never seen Sister Wives. They claim they appreciate a part time husband over a full time husband. That sort of destroys your powerlessness and poverty argument.
My guess is, if power and wealth was completely equally distributed between the sexes, and there were no strictures upon polygamy, it would be an occasionally advantageous combo for a small subset of people, only. Much more common would be serial monogamy. You know, like now.
The reason is basically jealousy. Unless one or more persons in the group is unusually non-possessive or low-needs, there would be constant friction. The way polyGYNY worked is that women were little different than slaves.
Put it this way: can you easily imagine happily sharing your wife with three or four other men who live in the same house? If not, there’s your answer.
I suspect that Christianity was doing nothing more than enforcing the cultural mores of the time without any consideration for wealth distribution and, certainly, no interest in a broader gene pool.
Christianity developed and flourished under Roman law which did not permit polygamy and the Greek states had a tradition of not practicing polygamy even before Roman conquest. Judaism, from which Christianity had originally sprung, held an ideal of monogamy, but permitted polygyny, so while several Patriarchs and kings in the bible were polygynous, the moral statements regarding marriage throughout scripture always spoke of a monogamous union.
With that background, expanding into a society in which monogamy was already the norm, both in culture and law, Christianity simply carried on the tradition in which it had come to be.
(Rome tended to not interfere with local laws, so polygamy was permitted under those statutes in conquered lands, but anyone living under direct Roman law was going to be monogamous. In Roman society, even concubines were expected to live separately from the husband, more like mistresses than secondary wives.)
Hmm… Interesting take. I’ll have to look into that. I did just read that polygamy is not defined only as 2 or more legal marriages, but that it can just be “cohabiting as one family, with multiple partners.” Wow, that threw me. I think I might have done that once!
I don’t think anyone does get arrested for polygamy anymore. Usually polygamists for welfare fraud or statutory rape or the like.
So far as I know, there isn’t really anything stopping you from getting a few (consensual) sister-wives and setting up yourselves as a polygamous family. You won’t get the legal benefits of marriage, but the FBI won’t come bursting in your door either.
Yeah, I don’t think anyone has actually been prosecuted for polygamy in the US since the early days of Utah statehood. People like Warren Jeffs get prosecuted for rape and kidnapping and other crimes they commit in the process of running their groups, but not for the polygamy itself.
If they’re girls, marry them off when they’re 15.
If they’re boys, find some excuse to get rid of them when they’re 15.
Agreed. Which I always find interesting, as even living as a family with more than one spouse is against state law in Utah, though it never seems to be prosecuted or acted upon. Go figure.
The problem with modern Polygamy in the public eye is that it is associated with young girls (14,15, 13, whever puberty kicks in really) being forced to marry older men with no say in the situation. This is wrong.
However, if my wife and I wanted to move a woman in with us and act as if we were all 3 married, with equality and love, there is no problem. And there are a lot of folks living like this (though often not, in my experience, without a lot of drama and weirdness… the fault of the people, not the circumstances).
The model is there, and lawyers are paid exactly to figure out the social issues that a 3 way (or more) divorce would create. Let them figure it out.
<raises hand> In the past I had lived with 2 men at a time, and once with another couple. I could do with a second husband or second wife. I know mrAru would have no issues with it either, we have discussed it at a number of times, but when he was military it would have seriously fucked his career, and now it would screw with his ability to keep a job even without the need to keep a security clearance.
My wife and I have been married for 11 years. I’ve been with my girlfriend for 3 and she’s been with her boyfriend for a year and a half. We’ve also had some more casual dates and short term relationships in that time frame as well.
We don’t live together, but my girlfriend is at our house a little under half the time, and she is like a second mom (or maybe more like a beloved aunt) to my 5 year old son.
It’s not actually a marriage, but it is polyamory and it works for us. I personally don’t have any desire to “make it official”, but if someone else does, why should we stop them? However, the “bureaucratic nightmare” argument is pretty powerful.
I’ll add in another data point.
Nashiitashii and I are married, and maintain a semi-open marriage. We occasionally have a third partner, and we could see making a person permanent, should the fit be good enough.
If it’s not too late to reply, I mean polygamy per se. That includes polygyny, polyandry and everything in-between:).
What does your wife think of that setup?
I’ve always been curious how these relationships stay together. People tend to not like sharing with others.
Er, meet my wife, who is quite happy with her boyfriend.
I find that’s much less universal than is typically assumed.
I’ve never been in one, but I have friends who are in a long-term poly (trio) marriage, and they seem to be fine with it.
I think a key part is that people DO like sharing with others, when those others are people they personally know and care about. As a trivial analogy, you’d be pretty pissed off if somebody told you you had to give half your sandwich to a random stranger, but you would quite happily give half your sandwich to a beloved family member.
Not that a spouse is a sandwich, but you know what I mean.
The poly people I’ve known aren’t thinking of their sex-partner-spouse(s) as “mine” and their non-sex-partner-spouse(s) as “rivals”, which is the mindset you seem to be assuming. They’re not just a bunch of individuals competing with each other for the chance to be part of a couple.
Rather, they see themselves as in a close relationship with all their spouses, so the happiness of all the various couple arrangements in the marriage is important and gratifying to them.