Here’s a question that doesn’t come up too often, I think because the answer seems obvious. An article in the Globe and Mail to day (Canada’s largest national newspaper) talks about polygamous marriages, and how they will be perceived in the future in light of our recent gay marriage rulings. Here’s the link.
The article essentially says that there may come a time when our courts will be faced with the question of whether polygamous marriages should be considered legal, at least if all parties are willing, since we are already amending the traditional definition of marriage to allow for same-sex couples to wed. Although I have been born and raised in the West, where it has generally been accepted that polygamy is immoral for whatever reason (outside of an extremely small Mormon minority many years ago), I can’t really think of a logical reason why it is considered wrong, at least from a scientific perspective.
So the question is: Polygamy, good or bad, immoral or moral, and what will the courts be forced to do when the question comes up one day? Any thoughts?
My thoughts on this have been, as of late, sure, why not? I have no problem with it if you can support a large family. Even if you can’t, it’s none of my business.
I don’t think of polygamy as immoral or moral, either.
As I said, in another thread, I think monogomy is against our biological nature. However, from a SOCIAL perspective, monogomy is good for the stability of society. I can forsee a lot more problems with allowing polygamous marriages than with allowing same sex marriages. I think that it would be much more unstable for society.
I think that shorter term, re-newable monogomous marriage, with no stigma attached to divorce or maybe no stigma attached to extra-marital affairs, and more emphasis on the care and welfare of any children produced during the match are much more promising and in line with our species from both a biological and social perspective. For those that want and can do a long term monogomous bond (at a WAG, maybe 20-30% of the population…probably over stating the percentage here, but trying to be generous) they have that option. For the rest, they have other options that won’t stigmatize them, won’t traumatize the children, and will allow society to remain stable.
Polygamy is definitely the way to go if you have the kind of culture where one sex (usually male) is either extremely warlike, or exposed to continual danger from the hazards of everyday life. In this way all women of childbearing age can be bearing children to support the population.
If you turned it around it seems it would also make sense in the case of overpopulation, only this time it would be multiple husbands rather than multiple wives. Now I like this idea but I could foresee a lot of men raising objections to this. (My husband, for instance. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t think much of the idea. But I kind of like it.)
It’s not really so different from serial monogamy–it could make for an even more stable society. Or it could get really complicated.
(Wait, what am I thinking, these are humans I’m talking about. Of course it would get complicated.)
I’ve said this in other threads and gotten lots of ire directed at me, but I’ll say it again. If one states that gov’t should not regulate gay marriage, it’s hard to argue that it shouldn’t regulate plural marriages. Granted, the latter is a lot more complicated in terms of other laws, but the fundamental principal (personal liberty) is the same.
Personally, I’d just as soon see the gov’t get out of the marriage business altogether and leave it to the churches. No special privalidges or tax breaks, etc for married couples. No penalties either. But that is utterly unrealistic. So we have to ask ourselves how much should the gov’t regulate marriage? Those who advocate gay marriage but not plural marriage are, in my mind, at least somewhat hypocritical.
There are already people who establish multi-adult households, just like there are already people who establish same-sex partnerships. This will continue whether or not it is possible to form legal bonds giving protection to those families.
In response to the OP: I have something like a habit of questioning why the answer “seems” obvious to people when they start saying things about how bad polygamy often is. This was somewhat gelled by the time I was at a hearing about a gay-marriage related law, and someone got up and said, “Permitting gay marriage will lead inevitably to . . . . polygamy.” Where the latter thing was presented as some sort of great horror, something so awful that it didn’t need to be explained.
Polygamy is morally neutral. It is good for some people, and lousy for other people. Given that I have two stable long-term partnerships and a four-adult family, I’m one of the people for whom it would be good. I know plenty of people for whom it would be bad, and many, many, many for whom it would be completely neutral, since it’s irrelevant to their lives.
(I will not permit my cat to type this post, no matter how much he wants to get onto the keyboard. )
I agree completely…I think the government SHOULD stay out of the marriage (and morals) business. I was thinking more in terms of society than ‘the government’. I would think that those that oppose gay marriage are the most likely to oppose anything that is outside of traditional life term monogomous marriage too. Many of THOSE people ARE hypocritical, as many of them also engage in extra-marital affairs just like the rest of the population…
The reason governments impose legal defintions on marriage is because of the separation of church and state. It is to the benefit of a nation to have stable, co-dependant families where spouses are joined by a legally defined and binding contract, because this creates stability, limits intransients, and guarantees a productive, tax-contributing populace, more so that single people would, who have little or nothing binding them in place. With a legal marriage defintion, spouses are bound to each other and thus must legally commit to raising and providing for children, supporting one another if one works and the other doesn’t, and seeing to the administration of each other’s affairs if one becomes incapacitated or dies. Almost every society in history has been defined by family, and has marriage rules, so it’s not going to change now.
My only worry with polygamy is that it may create a situation of haves and have nots. Our populations, at least in the West, are balanced 50-50 male-female until you get to about age 50, where men decline in numbers because we die of more diseases and violence. I fear that polygamous marriages may leave some people with no options because one person will have multiple spouses and the overall pool will shrink for one side.
Like xtisme said, it may work for warlike societies where many men die in battle, but for peaceful societies like we live in in the West, there isn’t a shortage of men (in fact, there are usually just slightly more boys born than girls, and the population stats reflect that up to about the age 20s or so, but men tend to be the one’s that most often die of non-natural causes). I know I’m not sharing my girlfriend, and she feels the same way ;).
The idea that polygamy will warp the sex distribution of available partners seems to me to have some hidden assumptions that I believe are false.
First of all: the presumption that more of one sex than another will take up additional partners. Most often this is expressed as men having multiple wives and thus harming the “less desirable men”, and ignoring the number of women who seek out and desire multiple relationships. (I suspect this is the case here, as the “it may work for warlike societies where many men die in battle” line, which only makes sense if one presumes that the only case of polygamy is polygyny.)
Corrolary point: in a society with legalised polygamy, just because someone is married does not mean they’re “off the market”. (This feels like a, “Well, duh” thing to me, but it seems to need pointing out.) Which means that the pool of legitimately and ethically available partners could be construed to have increased.
Second of all: that everyone will want a polygamous setup. (Not everyone who wants multiple relationships wants a polygamous setup, even.) Consider a society in which polygamy is common, or even the norm; there will exist people who want monogamous relationships nonetheless. Those people who are willing to offer exclusivity will get points as mates over those people who are not.
That one fundamental principle is the same, but others differ.
One major problem with marriages involving more than two people, IMHO, is diffusion of responsibility for children. Things get tricky enough when a married couple divorces. I’m not sure we want to open up the rat’s nest of how the courts should adjudicate the logistics of a breakup of a 5-way marriage which has produced 3 or 4 kids from different combinations of partners.
Not only unrealistic, but just a bad choice generally, IMHO. It’s pretty obvious that the rules of a society can make that society more supportive of child-rearing, or more hostile to it. The free market can increase the total resources of a society, but it will not see to it that that translates into more time and resources directed to raising children.
Lilairen, I understand your point. My point stems from polygamous marriage being legalized. At present, in any Western country, extra-marital affairs are not illegal even if they are frowned upon, but the purpose here is to discuss the idea of polygamy in terms of marriage as moral/immoral and as potential legal hurdle. Being married, even polygamously, will still mean relations with other than a spouse are considered unethical.
As for the limited partners thing, yes I feel (no cites, just opinion) that it is more likely that you will see more man/plural wives scenarios than woman/plural husbands, just based on male nature. I could never share a spouse, nor do I know any guy who could (and to be fair, none of the women I know are keen on the idea either). I just doubt many men would enter into a polygamous relationship as one of many husbands, and there are few if any historical examples of such, at least in comparison with men with multiple wives.
Also, I scincerely doubt that even if it were legalized that you would see that many polygamous marriages. Again, just opinion, but I have to say, one girlfriend is hard enough to handle, imagine more than one wife…I’d go nuts.
Lilairen is quite right. Legalized polygamy (multiple spouses) could not be restricted to polygyny (multiple wives). It would have to allow plural marriages of almost any configuration.
Some conservative religious groups would certainly then be able to openly indulge in polygyny, which, IMHO, is good. Right now, polygyny has been driven underground, and, hidden from the public eye, numerous abuses such as the taking of underage brides and domestic abuse is rampant. I would argue that statutory rape, sexual inequality, and wife-beating are not caused by polygyny (for certainly they are found in monogamous culture, as well) but they are allowed to flourish in the current culture of secrecy.
On the other side of society, I know plenty of people who are living happily in multiple-partner domestic arrangements, often even bound by religious or symbolic secular ceremonies, but not legally married. What’s the big diff?
Well, there are several problems with polygamy that don’t attach to monogamy, and which counsel against legally treating polygamous and monogamous relationships equally. One example would be in the area of health benefits. It’s no more costly for an employer to provide health insurance to an employee and their opposite sex partner or their same sex partner, so the disparate treatment of the two makes no real sense. But it is more costly to provide medical benefits to an employee and his/her multiple spouses.
Medical decisions could also be more complicated. Suppose husband is in a coma on life support, and wife 1 wants to pull the plug and wife 2 wants to keep the machines running. Whose vote prevails? This issue doesn’t arise in monogamous relationships.
So I don’t think advocacy of legal recognition of gay marriage requires agreeing that legal recognition should be given to polygamous relationships. There are real world differences between monogamous and polygamous relationships that make legal recognition of polygamy impractical.
Why? Are you equating “marriage” with “license to fuck”? I equate “marriage” with “long-term or lifetime commitment”, myself. Nothing about it strikes me as inherently claiming that one can only have a relationship outside a long-term commitment. I’ve got several; I know many, many other people who have both sorts of relationships.
And I know many, many people of all sexes who are either happy “sharing a spouse” or who think that the concept of ownership encapsulated in that sort of phrasing is bunk. I’m polyandrous; I’m far from the only one. (Both my husband and my mate are polygynous; our family has four members, two men, two women. My husband also has a girlfriend, who has a live-in primary partner, who has a girlfriend.)
There are a large number of people who have some form of multiple relationship status in their lives; a fair number of those would have a use for polygamy. I have seen no evidence of sex bias among those people who are interested in multiple relationships, and a fair amount of evidence that those people who are interested in such tend to get very :rolleyes: about presumptions that “male nature” and “female nature” are so far different.
I think you are equating your experiences and world-view with the general population’s, and a look at general population statistics on sexuality will show you something different. Just because you know people you like to have multiple partners, doesn’t mean that that equates to the general population. We still, by and large, regard extra-marital affairs as unethical/immoral, and that’s why there are legal recourses for a married person who has been cheated on (even if the act is not illegal itself).
Government is in the marriage business because it believes that promoting marriage promotes social goods. This is the key point missed by advocates of gay marriage and, it seems, by advocates of polygamy.
People are perfectly free to effectively practice gay marriage and polygamy now, if they want to. It’s just that the government won’t award you all the perks incident to traditional marriage if you do. If you want a tax break from the government, then, ultimately, you ought to convince people that gay marriage or polygamy, or whatever, also promotes social goods. The idea that the government ought to give you a tax break because you should be free to express your true inner nature is just bogus.
So fine, gay marriage makes you happy. Polygamy makes you happy. Good for you. But you ain’t dipping into my pocket just 'cause it makes you happy. I want to see the social cost-benefit analysis first.
If you want to convince people that gay marriage is a good thing, drop the “it’s our right” stuff. You’re either preaching to the choir or to people who aren’t hearing a single word you say. Instead, the argument ought to be, "The government ought to encourage gay marriage because . . . "
This is exactly the argument that has started to turn corporate American on to “spousal” benefits for gays. They do it because it makes economic sense in that it helps them retain valuable employees. Let’s start seeing the same sort of analysis for “alternative” marriage. My bet is that it pencils out for gay marriage but not for polygamy.
I’m not equating my experiences with the general populations, I’m trying to inform you about the general trends in at least one community that would actually be interested in multiple marriage, which runs counter to your presumptions about sex bias.
If you’re going to argue that something will be considered unethical, you have to make an argument that isn’t immediately counterable by “I don’t consider that unethical”; it’s a generalisation, and a single counterexample disproves. Personally, I think cheating is unethical; I think the breaking of agreements is unethical. I just apply the term to the agreements that people actually have, not the ones other people assume they have.
The first page of the second thread contains excerpts from the relevant U.S. Supreme Court opinions. They all date to the mid- to late-19th century, and the reasoning is often pretty dumb, but they’re still good law on the subject of polygamy in the U.S.
I also argued in both threads that while isolated instances of polygamy are no big deal, there are some pretty substantial problems when you’re talking about polygamous communities/societies. On that basis, I support the continued criminalization of plural marriages (not just plural relationships) and the discretionary enforcement of bigamy laws where appropriate.
In a nutshell, I have no interest in regulating who consenting adults choose to spend their lives with, in however many numbers. But you only get one legal spouse at a time.
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