I have seen several posts about how "gay marriage will lead to polygamy" - my answer is "of course, and why not?" - any pairing for legal purposes any consenting adults which to choose is fine by me.

I have never seen a sane argument against it- except where it is done in an illegal manner (usually in a religious context with underage girls) -

But why shouldn't any pairings, or multiples of pairings, take place to raise children, set inheritance etc, same as any other marriage?

The only argument I could see against polygamy is the surreptitious-family-on-the-side scenario. If one family was under the impression that they are the sole beneficiaries, but the head of the household is maintaining another family on the side and syphoning off one family's funds to give to the other without knowledge of that party, it would be a significant betrayal of trust and hardship for those deceived.

I believe polygamy should be legal, but only with the full approval of all parties within the marriages. I think polygamy could work rather well under that type of a scenario...child-rearing could be distributed more evenly, and each spouse would have more time to pursue a career or higher education, and likely more sources to provide income while having fewer childcare expenses.

I agree with Mrs. P -- it needs to have the full consent of all involved.

I also think that it has to be consenting adults, and preferably an older age limit to marry like possibly 21, since a young girl raised in a polygamous cult who is married on her 18th birthday may not be as consenting as she would seem if she's unaware that she has other options. Possibly an older age limit might decrease the chance that she was coerced into the relationship.

Another concern I have is that many polygamous cultures teach young women that they are inferior to males and their purpose is to breed children and serve the patriarch, and I wouldn't want to support a system that takes women backwards. It would be difficult to come up with safeguards for this without getting bureaucratic, which I can't see anyone doing, but I can't support a system which oppresses a group of people, which can be done even with adult women who are of consenting age.

I'm also a little concerned, because there is a huge abuse of social services in many polygamous communities, where all the mothers apply for welfare and the patriarch doesn't support the many children he creates.

Despite all this, I can see some benefit to polygamy provided it is allowed both ways (more than one husband for a woman, not just more than one wife for a man). I think there can be many potential benefits to society if it were allowed, but unfortunately I can't see that we'd install the safeguards needed to keep it from being an oppresive societal structure.

First, i think that if polygamy is allowed...it will be abused. For instance, if a man or woman has a great job with good benefits...he/she could share those benefits with many people if they chooses to marry a few.

Furthermore, it would take away the sole purpose of marriage...the institution would lose all meaning. Why would anyone want to get married if you have multiple partners?

What happens if there is a man with 5 wives. But each of those wives have a husband or two and those husbands have a few wives and....see where i am getting at?

But why shouldn't any pairings, or multiples of pairings, take place to raise children, set inheritance etc, same as any other marriage?

The only argument I can offer against polygamy is that the culture, keeping with religious interpretations, blurs the line between woman, child, and free will.






I thought the purpose of marriage was to procreate and rear children. How does polygamy run counter to that biological requirement?

When altar boy Rick Santorum talks about traditional marriage being between a man and a woman he's glossing over the Old Testament. Traditional marriage has been polygamist until recent history, one husband, one wife coming in second, and polyandry a distant third.

In a post-industrial society with little need for a family structure consisting of one man and four wives to survive polygamy is closely associated with religious text, however, which is why I oppose it the way I oppose the Religious "Freedom" Amendment. Much as we like to think we're better off tempting fate in a free society we're no more cultivated than the Romans. Allowing polygamy invites a quandary of other religious practices like female circumcision and, oh, I don't know... refusing to prescribe BCP.

In the Old Testament days, only the wealthy could afford multiple wives. Most of the poor couldn't afford one wife. Hardly fair.
Today, if some of the wives worked to help support the family, it could be more likely to exist outside of the very rich families.
But I don't see it happening any time soon. Even when I was young and thought I was wired for 2 20's, I could see the downside. It is difficult enough keeping just one happy....
So even if it became legal, the smart ones among us will avoid it.

But why shouldn't any pairings, or multiples of pairings, take place to raise children, set inheritance etc, same as any other marriage?

Ew.

Polygamy is a holdover from the old patriarchal society, and men’s control over women. You never hear of a woman having multiple husbands, have you (yikes, who’d want ‘em!! )? And let’s face it, if it was about sex, then one man and a bunch of women is only beneficial to the male. Polygamy degrades women by making them subservient to and dominated by the man. In my opinion, this can no way be considered a “marriage”; rather it is a man keeping a harem to satisfy his sexual needs and abundant ego by procreating exclusively for him. Not only that, the links Lesly provided show many cases of child abuse. I think Green is the creep who actually practiced incest, by arranging couplings of cousins and half-siblings. There was an excellent article in the LA Times magazine a few weeks ago about how some of these young girls are virtual prisoners in these "groups". Polygamy has nothing to do with marriage; rather it is a power play, and a misogynistic one at that. Men are not animals, and women are not breeding stock.

Polygamy--yeah, that is the way to effective birth control. I'm sure it's every woman's dream to marry a man who is already "taken." Keeping the intimacy appointment book for John Q. Manywives would be a real trip, wouldn't it? But that is not giving a reason for the illegality of it, just the stupidity of it.

There are polygamist families right now, especially in Utah. There are, as well, young men kicked out of their families because they pose a threat to the old stud, I mean, their father. These young men have been in the national news; one was interviewed on Larry King Live. They couldn't even go to their local police for help, because the police were in collusion with the polygamists. What to do with the young males is always a problem in a herd.

Inheritance disputes can make an already-overburdened legal system even more unmanageable.

If insurance companies go to pay off the widows of the man, who gets the lioness' share? What if Wife #2 happens to know that Sid Studley loved her more and had virtually little to do with Old Bat--er--Wife #1 who didn't share his bed much after the second wedding (understandably). Should the children of the clearly-favored wife be given the best things and the children of the other wife or wives get short shrift in comparison? As a matter of fact, isn't a scenario such as that one the reason for a lot of bad blood between the Jews and the Arabs?

What if a murder takes place, and there are three or four "grieving" widows, each with means, motive and opportunity for the police to investigate?

Would a woman who was unhappy with this arrangement (i.e., didn't know her husband planned to be a polygamist) have rights to sue for divorce for unfaithfulness if polygamy were declared legal?

And what if old Sid Studley or John Q. Manywives hurts his back or sustains an injury that disables him enough to keep him out of work? Who is responsible for taking care of the family he said he was responsible for? These folks in Utah do not hesitate to benefit from being on the public dole; it's part of their lifestyle.

It seems to me that polyandry would be preferable as an alternative marriage style. Once the woman is pregnant with Whomever's child, at least she won't have another pregnancy for nine months, while the polygamist's family still actively works on repopulating the county in which they reside. And in polyandry, if one man wanted to leave, he might only be compelled to support the child or children whose DNA matches his own.

It seems this debate is assuming that the relationship would be one Man with several wives. Polygamy and polandry as legal

Could it not be one Women and several men.

Here is a way that these kind of relationships may indeed have some positive effect.

The cost of childcare is through the roof, as is the cost of housing, education and so on. It would seem to me, that one of the "partners" could stay at home, raising the children, while the others would be out making income for the group. A shared housing arrangement cuts costs so that more of the income can go to the future educational needs of the child.

But what do you do when you have "bring Mommy to class day"?

Technically- isn't western society made up of mostly serial polygamy- more than one wife/husband- just not at the same time? I have been married before and divorced- so, I have already had two wives, correct?

I see the current practise of RELIGIOUS polygamy for the most part as using the system as it now stands to actually benefit them- if it were legal there could be restraints placed on welfare etc as part of the -um- contract.

I actually got the idea for this thread reading Robert Hienlien and his ideas on the subject- it was not one man many woman- but rather several men, several women- all pooling thier resources for the benefit of thier children- and the adult's various career/ one or two parents could be gone for several months and have no impact on the raising of the children while making more money for the family.

I have been in countries and visited friends who were actual legal polygamists- I have a friend in Indonesia with four wives- I met him in the Army while training with him- and that family certainly seemed as functional as any I have ever seen in the US- the interesting part about his culture on it was that he had never dated or actually had any say in any wife he had- his mother picked his first wife, and each subsequent wife was added on the demands from the other wife/wives, and he had no say in the deal, ever, but even though he genuinly loved his first wife, he never had even met her until thirty minutes after marrying her, he had to learn to love her - to wierd for an american to contemplate even LOL

Yes, in fact, I have heard of a woman having multiple husbands.
In certain rural areas of India, Nepal, and Tibet, fraternal polyandry is culturally accepted. This is the practice of one woman marrying all of the brothers within a family, and the reasoning behind it involves land distribution. The land is passed down within the family to the men, but rather than dividing it among each child, they all continue to live and work upon the same plot of land. With one woman bearing the children, it creates a form of population control allowing the family to sustainably continue this practice, and in a region where arable land is scarce and the poverty level is high, fraternal polyandry makes sense.

On the other hand, societies in which the infant mortality rate is high and the birthrate is low can benefit from polygamous relationships. It maximizes the number of children that one man can produce, allowing the society to sustain its population.

These systems aren't without problem, though. I briefly corresponded with a gentleman from Nigeria who lived in a polygamous family with five wives, and as the only son, his position allowed him to inherit all property belonging to his father. They had five seperate houses on one plot of land, and his mother, being the only wife to bear a male child, claimed a higher status within the family. She lived in the nicest house, and she was subjected to the jealousy of the other wives who frequently visited a type of witchdoctor with the intent of putting a curse on her. This man was very critical of the polygamous lifestyle within Nigeria, because he felt that it created a large amount of strife within the family, and in its present form, it was unfair to Nigerian women.

The reason that I'm sharing this information is that the concept of polygamy, in and of itself, can be beneficial, but it really depends upon the structure of the society that a person lives in. I think that Lederuvdapac asks a reasonable question, when he says:



If polygamy was legalized within America, we would have to completely overhaul the laws regarding marriage, because they don't work effectively when you start adding more than two people to the mix. Conceptually, I have no problem with people living a polygamous lifestyle, and I can see a potential benefit if all parties are consensual, but I'm not sure that this is something that the government should be involved in. It's seems like it would be extremely complicated to devise one specific contract that would work in all scenarios.

To me- this entire debate, along with the gay marriage debate- highlights the need for an entire re-write and reform of the concept of marriage and the goverment administration of marriage. Does anyone know when the goverment started issueing marriage licenses? Polygamy was not even illegal as a law itself until Mormonism- and they were persecuted for it.

I think we need to do away with the current system completely- and make all marriages a contract, with some default settings.

I think there is a real issue of companies or the goverment being forced to provide health insurance to all the spouses in a poly relationship- however, this, of course, as an issue, would be moot with UHC

I have met polygamists of different flavors in my job as a relationship counseler throughout the years- and I am here to tell you, there are quite a number of folks practising this "in the closet"- and I have seen almost as many MMF as MFF triads- which seem to be the most common. The advantage has been the financial aspect- one spouse is the housewife/husband and the other two work- whatever the combination. The stable ones to me seem to be two bi-sexual partners, one straight partner- and the most stable I have seen personaly in the US is a MMF triad. They raised 3 children, are now very well off, and seem to be a very stable relationship. I only met them because I was helping to do marriage counselling for one of thier grandchildren, and found out about this relationship- and they started this relationship in the 50s- and came to Alaska to basically get away from possible negative ramifications if found out.

But, as they aged, they started to deal with the same issues that come up in the gay marriage debate- access to the one of them not "legally" married to the others in the hospital etc.

I will be willing to bet that "closet" polygamists are almost as numerous as closeted gays if there were anyway to find out!