The CUSP
Why is Polygamy Illegal?
June 18th, 2010 | 
I probably have to start out by stating that I do not endorse (or disapprove of) any sort of -gamy.
My political views are N/A - I'm not a liberace or a conservacrat. I don't know whether I'm left or right (or off in some other non-euclidian dimension altogether)
I was reading a book this morning (this book) and the author was talking about the rights of Americans to practise whatever religion they feel like - as long as they don’t violate the laws of the land. Specifically mentioned were “human sacrifice, animal cruelty and polygamy”.
Now this isn’t the first time that I’ve considered this question, but the surprising juxtaposition of polygamy with violent and unambiguously despicable crimes made me want to write a blog post about it.
So it turns out that there are a lot of emotional rants about polygamy on the internet, which seems to suggest that I need to define what I'm talking about.
Hopefully it should be obvious to my regular readers that I'm not talking about supporting Islamic laws (or any similar society) - where polygamy means women (and young girls) are brought and sold into what is effectively a harem.
Obviously this sort of treatment of anyone (not just women and children) is not acceptable and probably needs to be explicitly prohibited by law.
But is a blanket prohibition on 'polygamy' the correct response?
Let's consider a hypothetical situation:
Two men and 3 women live in a house together. They all have sex with each other (in various configurations and on a regular basis). They're all there by choice and they're all blissfully happy (as much as anyone can be).
Is this illegal?
Should it be?
I can't for the life of me find any reason to prohibit these people from pursuing a lifestyle that makes them happy and fulfils all of their various needs.
Other than Victorian-era, religious prudishness of course.
But, suppose that they want to formalise the relationship and get married - now it’s a different story. Let’s say that each of them gets married 4 times - now what they’re doing is illegal.
Why can’t they all get married (or civil unioned)?
Now there may be some legitimate concerns - for example: IRD and various other government (and other) databases would need some redesigning.
That’s a bit of a cop out though isn’t it? And not really a good enough reason to deny people the right to live in the way that makes them the happiest.
I don’t want to over-simplify what may be a very complicated topic, but it seems to me that there must be a solution that allows for basic human rights all round…
I think the point applies about consenting adults and all of that, but there could be some real issues that need to be sorted out. There's bigamy, when one person marries other people, but that often involves deception where the other partners are not aware that there was a previous marriage. There would be legal issues there same as marriage regarding issues like relationship property and children. From what I've seen if someone wants out, it can be extremely difficult even with two partners to sort everything out. Not everyone can be bothered with marriage or civil unions either, I've met lots that just think it's just a piece of paper (with complications attached) and why bother.
Then there is polygamy (multiple mating to use the technical term) Polygyny (man with more than one woman), polyandry (woman with more than one man) and group marriage (more like what you are talking about). Polyandry is pretty darned rare, and I'd say one social issue is that in societies that practice polygamy, it's more to the benefit of men and is a means of control over women as you say. The difficulty would be ensuring that all have the same rights regardless of gender, there would have to be safeguards in place to protect the rights of women as it's not in every case that a woman would have a free and full choice depending on the society.
There is also the issue of gender imbalance, more often seen in societies where boys are preferred but with sex ratios pretty much 50:50 someone's got to miss out on getting in with group marriages. I believe Mormons that practice polygamy, what they do is ship out excess boys when they reach puberty, but that's not really going to cut it if it was a widespread system in common practice.
I suppose what I'm getting at is that it's quite simple having a system of serial monogamy, but once you add in the messiness of human relationships and legal systems it just seems very hard when people can do this as they wish without being fettered by all the issues.
What about the third man? For every happy quintuplet bouncing all over each other, there must be a spare man somewhere eating ramen noodles and watching TV alone. He's probably more than a little pissed off about the situation, and a society where 17% of the population is alienated and angry is going to be in trouble. Polygamy can't really work unless there is some way of getting rid of the spares.
You're assuming the third will be male.
You're assuming that this sort of relationship is about sex.
You're assuming "he's" probably pissed off when someone that couldn't live in a relationship like this would not be likely to enter into one to start with.
You're assuming a lot on something you obviously have no experience of.
Relationships like this can, and do, work quite well.
I’m referring to the example as set out in the blog post. With a population ration of approx 50:50, a group of two men and three women leaves one man spare.
I’m assuming he’s pissed off because a polygamous society (one where polygamy is the norm, not just an exception for those who choose it) would leave him alienated. And that’s not about sex, that’s about being part of a family, and a community. I’m thinking primarily of the situation in Colorado City, where the polygamous fundamentalist Mormon community ex-communicates the majority of teenage boys and expels them from the city. This is their solution to the problem of spares, and I don’t think a polygamous society could survive without something similar.
The example gives the five-some as a happy grouping and I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t be. I describe them as happy in my comment. I suppose if you had read that you might have missed the opportunity to coyly infer that you speak with the authority of a man who has known multi-partnered satisfaction that a ‘straights’ like me can’t begin to imagine. I’m terribly impressed. Obviously.
The 'third man' need not be a problem. I guess it would be a problem in the Mormon community because there are multiple women to one man. But I don't think vIQleS was suggesting that all couples should be two men and three women. As long as the average relationship ratio is like a 50:50 split how it actually divides up is less important thus avoiding your 'spares' problem. I also don't see why bigamy would necessarily mean alienation in a polygamous society.
It would be really nice to think that everybody would end up in a relationship that suits them. But I think there are people whose current relationship is surviving because their partner doesn't have the support to walk away from it. Bullies, emotionally manipulative people, people who are physically abusive, controlling and jealous people. I think in an equitable polygamous society of the sort that's being discussed here people would be a lot less willing to put up with that sort of behaviour. It would be a lot harder to abuse someone in a relationship if there were other people there supporting them. I think some people would be out in the cold and their alienation would need to be addressed.
You're going to use the argument that those who are
would end up
as an argument against a polygamous society? really? Just... wow.
I'm not using it as an argument against polygamous society. I'm raising it as an issue that needs to be addressed. These people are already inflicting a lot of pain on the community and having them alienated isn't going to make that any better.
You are saying 'situation A' would lead to 'problematic situation B'. That to me constitutes an argument against. I also don't think it needs to be addressed. The choice between their possible alienation, should they chose to not change their behaviour as you seem to assume, vs the pain they are inflicting on the people they are close to is not a hard one to make.
Right. See, I wasn’t aware you weren’t capable of understanding a nuanced argument. Pointing out that an idea might have a downside isn’t always an argument against it. It’s quite common for proponents of an idea to explore all of its negative ramifications and possible mitigations and to then weigh them up against the positives when they make their arguments. Pretending that there aren’t any negative side effects to a situation is naïve. That way opponents of the idea can't accuse you of holding hands and dancing around the rainbow and not being prepared when the negative effects rear their ugly heads.
My concern is not that the current perpetrators of domestic abuse won’t be getting enough hugs in a polygamous society. I am not concerned about the effect their alienation would have on those outside the polygamous groups, I am concerned about the effect it would have on everybody else. I consider a group of angry violent people who are isolated from social norms (even if it’s completely their own fault) to be dangerous. I think that in a situation where a person can have multiple partners rejection would be a lot harder to bear (it’s not a matter of an object or desire simply prefer somebody else, they are now specifically rejecting unsuccessful suitors on their own lack of merits), and I think that would lead to an increase in stalker-type obsessive crime we have now, expect that instead of just targeting one person it would be targeted against the relationship group. I don’t think that means people shouldn’t pursue polygamous relationships any more than the current rate of domestic abuse means people should avoid relationships now, just that the discussion around a polygamous society needs to consider more than just the people in polygamous relationships.
Right... so there are arguments for it and arguments against it, what's your point? You seem to be accusing me of a cognitive bias I can't remember the name of which involves 'A leads to B, B is bad, and thus A is bad', however, I'm not making any claims as to B being the only outcome of A or that it is the sole argument for or against A. Saying 'situation A->probelematic situation B constitutes an argument against A' doesn't mean it's the only argument for or against A---hence the use of the indefinite article 'an'---just that it's one of possibly many. Is this really that hard to understand?
Hence these things called 'laws' and 'police' exist.
Firstly, you seem to be assuming that in a society that allowed polygamous relationships polygamy would necessarily become the social norm. Secondly I still don't see the problem. In the case of a bigamous relationship you have one person who ends up putting up with the douche bag and in general has no support, in the other you have someone who is cut out of this particular relationship and should they turn to stalking, or whatever else you want to claim, the original group has support, and there are laws against stalking, etc. that can be levied.
Yet presently, officially, people aren't able to do the former, which was the question of the OP if you look back.