Why is polygamy bad?

In this thread covering the opposition to gay marriage, someone offered up the slippery slope argument. If we allow gay marriages, next week we’ll have people marrying chickens, cars, & trees. And polygamy.

My immediate thought regarding polygamy, and this is bad why?

Is there any rationale behind restricting any form of polygamy? One man, multiple wives. One woman, multiple husbands? Multiple husbands and wives?

My biblical knowledge is quite rusty, but I’m fairly sure I recall that during the flood there was reference to Noah and his wives and their sons and their wives so there’s some precedent there.

Same argument as for gay marriages, so long as everyone is a consenting adult, why does it really matter?

Several reasons I can think of off the top of my head, most of them legal. It complicates property distribution, especially if you also allow divorce. It complicates things like next of kin decisions (life support or no? Spouse A says yes, but spouse B says no…who has the final say so?). Then there is the matter of coercion.

Legally, polygamy is…messy. It doesn’t fit well with our legal and property system. It…complicates things to unnecessary (most feel) degrees.

Morally? Well, depends on your morals. But, while some folks think gay marriage is icky or whatever, it would be fairly straight forward to implement if folks could just get back their own silly attitudes. Polygamy though would require some fairly fundamental changes in legal and property laws and would not be so easy to implement.

So…considering the small number of folks who advocate such a system my guess is…not gonna happen.

-XT

My rationale behind supporting anti-polygamy laws is that it is very often part of an abusive relationship. While it is undoubtedly true that there would be truly voluntary polygamous marriages, just as there would be truly voluntary incestuous marriages, the prevalence of abuse and/or deception in the situation justifies a banning.

It’s not a very libertarian viewpoint, but its a recognition that possibly the law against abuse cannot work if it is masked by marriage.

I don’t mind so much, as long as all the participants are equal partners. I suspect, however, that polygamists generally follow the concept of a central figure with many spouses. The difference between One Marriage/Many People and One Person/Many Marriages.

It’s also an inherently complex legal relationship, I don’t know that a single method of dealing with it legally will work, or just introduce more problems / opportunities for gaming the system.

If we’re talking about truly voluntary plural marriages, I don’t see that they’re bad at all. Legally complicated, but surely that can be worked out - it’s little different from multiple partners owning a firm.

If we’re talking about traditional polygamous marriages like those backwoods Mormons do where young girls are more or less forced into arranged marriages, well then we have some very obvious badness. One might argue that the coercion & etc which makes these marriages bad is independent of them being polygamous, and that we should more narrowly forbid the coercion and not the polygamy per se. I could be persuaded of such a position, but even with the current more stringent laws these girls aren’t being protected. How much less protection would they have if the polygamy itself weren’t illegal?

That’s a pragmatic concern, however, and not a reason why polygamy itself is bad. Note however that throughout history polygamy has been virtually universally structured in misogynistic fashion.

Polygamy could also be seen as bad for society. If births are one to one male to female (approximate) but mutiple wives are had by certain individuals, this creates a class of brideless males (and in today’s polygamous societies aren’t there stories of boys being abandoned and exiled from the society?). Which doesn’t seem to promote stability within society, and, historically would I imagine have promoted warfare, either as a way of using up the excess men, or procuring women from other societies. It also objectifies the female, I’d imagine, when practiced large scale in a society.

Obviously these are less applicable today, but seem to be a solid basis for historically why polygamy became frowned upon.

Because no man can serve two masters. (Mark Twain’s answer to a Mormon.)

Until the last 50 years, it could be argued that monogomous marriages were overwhelmly structured in a misogynistic fashion. We really don’t have a test case for a modern, secular society where women have acheived some sembelence of equality that practices polygamy.

The legal complications - yeah. Partnership accounting is not easy and partnerships are a very risky form of business ownership. Two people in love who fall in love with a third person and decide to share their lives are going to be even less aware of the legal issues than three people starting a dreamed of business. I have no issues with polygamy if people want to practice it, but Neil Sedaka makes an understatment.

Throwing gay marriage on top of the existing marriage legal structures involves having flexible pronouns - and very little else. Polygamy involves developing whole new structures.

On the subject of abusiveness and “traditional” poly marriages, I’d have to point out that we’re not discussing situations in mainstream America. As you said, these are insular, backwoods communities and religions that don’t have a lot of exposure to the outside world. And certainly not representative of the poulation as a whole.

That would be like using a community living next to a toxic waste site as an exemplar and arguing that because they have much higher than average incidence of cancer that everyone in the country is at risk.

It being illegal means that it has to be hidden and that’s much easier to do in the woods of Montanna. Make it legal and the unions in Dallas are going to be much more public and functional.

Legal complications? Sure. But this country thrives on complicated legal matters. Sometimes it appears we create them so we’ll have something to play with.

Male/females disparity. I won’t dismiss this out of hand, but the numbers are going to be too small to be significant. How many people would actually be engaging in group marriages? Not enough to reduce the available population enough to notice.

ETA: I’d really like to hear input from users in polyamorous relationships at this point. Are the ‘extras’ de-facto spouses? Or just partners passing through?

From a secular perspective marriage is just a standardized contract. When two people enter in to it they assume certain legal responsibilities and are accorded certain rights.

Because it always involves two people, the rules of marriage can be “one size fits all”. My marriage is governed by the same laws as the marriage of the couple downstairs and the couple down the street.

This is why gay marriage is no big deal. It plugs nicely into the existing legal framework with a minimum of fuss.

Once you start talking polygamy, however, the whole “standardized contract” falls apart. What are the rights and obligations in a three-way marriage? Who gets power of attorney if one of the partners is incapacitated? What are the rules for inheritance? What about child custody and support in divorce? The list goes on and on.

Since there’s no way to create a “one size fits all” standardized contract for polygamy, there’s no point in having the state do it. If people want to live together in multiple groups … there’s nothing stopping them. If they want to draw up unique contracts signed by all parties that spell out who owns what and who is responsible for what … they’re free to do so. If they want to have a religious leader bless their particular arrangement … they should go right ahead. But it’s pointless to try to shoehorn polygamist practices into the legal framework of two-person marriage.

Note - I have nothing against polyamory, though I don’t see it as working for me. Where I think the issue comes in is through the legal recognition of unions. I think the disparity does become an issue, because of the ties between group marriage and certain religous groups leading to communities of polygamists. I certainly agree that on a national scale, I don’t see it as being an issue.

If those who were to chose polygamy were equally distributed across the nation, and polyandry (? did I just make that up?) was equally prevalent, most of my issues would go away with legalization. The abuse situation would not be as problematic, because there wouldn’t be communities where daughters were raised from childhood to expect this.

There would still be the problems others have mentioned, but I would get round that my derecognizing all marriages…

Very old practical objection: If a man has two wives, either they will get along with each other or they won’t. If they don’t, the husband will find himself cast in the thankless role of referee in their quarrels. If they do, then whenever either of them wants something from the husband, they will join forces and work on him in shifts to wear down his resistance.

Because it gives you two or more sets of in-laws. (But seriously folks…)

If you’re wealthy enough to support everybody in comfort and all are in the relationship consentually and you have the time to devote to two or more partners and the children born of such a relationship I don’t see anything intrinsically bad about it, but few people qualify for that particular IF. Plus, jealousy is human nature- it could be well argued that it’s a vital part of a healthy relationship (I’m not talking irrational “WHO WERE YOU TALKING TO?” jealousy but “you and I have a unique bond that I don’t particularly want to have with others” jealousy) and most people are probably not up to sharing their significant other with his or her significant others.

I’m fairly libertarian on the matter: if you want to live in a group marriage with 2 husbands and 4 wives and a robot maid then all power to you; I think you should have that right and I don’t think you should be prosecuted unless there’s reason to suspect there’s harm coming to the participants or the children (and then prosecute for the harm done [abuse, neglect, etc.] rather than the lifestyle itself). But for the vast majority of people I just don’t think it’s a viable lifestyle and there’s a reason why even in cultures where it’s legal (usually polygny of course) and acceptable it’s only practiced by a tiny minority of the people. (The only exceptions I can think of are some Amerindian tribes where so many men were killed in war and disease that they were widely outnumbered by women and it was either polygny or lots of spinsters.)

If it were legalized in America starting today I seriously doubt you’d see any more people living in polyamorous relationships a year from now than are living in them now. It just has a lot of financial and social problems monogamy doesn’t.

We don’t keep two people from marrying because he doesn’t like her mother.

You are responsible for your own happiness. If you pick two wives who don’t get along - you get what you deserve. If they get along too well - you get what you deserve.

Not a good idea. Outside of Saudi Arabia, I can’t think of many societies where it is widespread, even in societies where it is allowed.

It isn’t bad. I see no reason the state can’t make it legal, we already deal with most of the complications of more than two people in a contract in other types of contracts and in inheritance cases with multiple heirs.

It should be legal for much of the same reasons that any marriage should be legal. It codifies certain rights and responsibilities. People will get into these relationships as they have in the past.

Making it specifically illegal is harmful to those who have polygamous relationships because it puts them in a situation where revealing their status can put them in legal trouble. This means they can’t avail themselves of many benefits of society without risking harm to those they love.

It is harmful especially to wives of those emigrating to America. America only recognizes the first wife. Say a man comes to America asking for asylum and brings more than one wife, they will not be allowed to enter, he must ditch all but one, no matter what overwhelming danger they might all face where they are from. The enormity of it overwhelms me. If this extra wife manages to get in, and continues as his wife, she has no legal standing. If she has to return, what awaits her?

We have separate laws against all the things people tend to bring up as the harm in polygamy, marriages which are incestuous, or to the very young. It is illegal now because people did not like Mormons and it was a convenient balancing sin to match with slavery; Lincoln touted them as the twin evils.

The same could be said about gay marriage, but even more so.

The only reason against poligamy is the same reason there is against the decimal metric system: it’s new, we’ve never done it and we’re not about to start now. The reason against polygamy is people don’t want it.

To say it complicates thing legally is just plain silly. Pretty much anything you do with the government is more complicated. Any kind of partnership or shared ownership is more complicated. Marriages are not one size fits all and that is why people get prenupts.

Depends on the people involved. In my marriage, it’s just my husband and I, all others are essentially boyfriends or girlfriends. Not because we’re opposed to taking another spouse, but because we haven’t had that sort of connection with someone else. We’re not looking, but we’re not ruling it out, either. Other couples I know are actively seeking a “third”. I know one quad - four spouses, each considers his or her partnership an equal quarter of the dynamic. I know two married couples where he freely seeks other lovers and she chooses not to, and one dyad where two women take other (male) lovers, but only always together, and their lovers are exclusive to the dyad. There are as many possibilities as there are polyamorists, I think.

I agree. And this is where the “destroying marriage” charge actually has some merit. I’d like to have the option, should I meet another man or woman I feel the same bond to that I currently feel for my husband, to call that person “married” to me as well (with their consent, of course.) This is where we get into the “separate can never be equal” discussion. How can my relationships be equal if I can call one of them “husband” and not the other? If it’s not good enough for two gay men to be “civil unioned” (and I don’t think it is) why is it okay for one of my relationships, which is equal in every other way to another one of my relationships, to be limited to “boyfriend” or “lover”?

For that reason, I think we’ve got two options: make “marriage” a religious rite and “civil unions” a secular one, which just gives you the same problems re: the atheists, or simply allow any group of people who wants to be married to enter into some contract called marriage, although default laws may be impossible for more than two people. Frankly, I don’t think default laws are good for any number of people; I’d rather see everyone meet with a lawyer and get a clear understanding of what they’re actually agreeing to when they get married, whether they’re marrying 1 person or 3.

We’re well past the point in society where the husband is expected to be the sole income for the household, and personally I think that it’s a sad development. Not to hijack my own thread, but it’s pretty much impossible for a single income household to be financially stable these days. It’s accepted, and even expected, that all adults in a household be employed and contributing to the finances.

Which brings me to one of the benefits of a group marriage. In a two person marriage, if one partner is unable to work for whatever reason, the whole financial framework stands on the other person. In a group of four that burden falls to the remaining three. A much better situation until the fourth can return to work. Or take over the household management if that is preferable.

Jealousy. Very powerful. But how much is nature and how much is nurture? Would our perception be different if we were raised in a society where non-exclusive relationships were normal? Consider current cultural differences between countries in this day and age. No immediate cites, but I’m sure some of our foreign resident Dopers could provide examples demonstrating that we Americans are quaintly, or even perplexingly, puritanical.

ETA: Most contributors here are taking the one man, many wives viewpoint. Please note that this is for all combinations.

I think you are underestimating (rather severely) the amount of legal complications possible. Just as a for instance…who gets custody of any kids in a divorce? What if it’s a 2/1 split (i.e. two of the spouses stay together and one leaves)? How about property? If each goes their own way…who pays child support? How much? What about alimony? Does the man have to pay for both wives? How about if it’s several men and one wife?

I’m not saying you couldn’t do it…but it would be very messy and complex, and there would be a ton of problems, especially initially. It would be a fairly radical change from our current system…and that has taken years or even decades to work out just the few issues I mentioned…let alone the countless ones I didn’t. Gay marriage on the other hand would fit right in with our current system quite easily…if the religious types and those are all hinky about it could get over their prejudices.

In the end there just aren’t enough folks who what these kinds of marriages to make the pain and problems worth it.

-XT