More On Polygamy
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in General Politics, ReligionWill Slaten breaks down the issue in a great article on polygamy, its pitfalls and why it isn’t like gay marriage….
Uh oh. Conservatives are starting to hyperventilate again. You know the symptoms: In a haystack of right-wing dominance, they find a needle of radicalism, declare it a mortal danger to civilization, and use it to rally their voters in the next election. First it was flag-burning. Then it was the “war on Christmas.” Now it’s polygamy. Having crushed gay marriage nationwide in 2004, they need to gin up a new threat to the family. They’ve found it in Big Love, the HBO series about a guy with three wives. Open the door to gay marriage, they warn, and group marriage will be next.My friend Charles Krauthammer makes the argument succinctly in the Washington Post. “Traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender,” he observes. “If, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one’s autonomous choices,” then “on what grounds do they insist upon the traditional, arbitrary and exclusionary number of two?”
Here’s the answer. The number isn’t two. It’s one. You commit to one person, and that person commits wholly to you. Second, the number isn’t arbitrary. It’s based on human nature. Specifically, on jealousy.
Me, I think people should create the unions they want. With such high divorce rates, I tend to agree with Krauthammer’s assertion that, “The minting of these new forms of marriage is a symptom of our culture’s contemporary radical individualism — as is the decline of traditional marriage — and not its cause.” And let’s be honest here, individualism isn’t going away. In fact, it’s only going to become more acute.
So yes, this is prediction, but I think at some point in the next 20 years, we’re going to be having discussions about polygamy and if these unions should be sanctioned by the state. And my guess is by that point we’ll have moved more towards an Untied States type of reality where things like marriage and abortion rights are determined on a state by state basis, so polygamists would have to move to a certain locale in order to practice what they preach.
Yeah, I know this makes gay rights advocates blanche, but I think it’s intellectually dishonest to not acknowledge that this is going to be on the horizon at some point. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but quite possibly a lot sooner than any of us may expect.
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 23rd, 2006 and is filed under General Politics, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 23rd, 2006 at 9:01 pm
One observation on your point about jealousy: I know of a fair number of homosexual couples who have been together for decades. Even without the opportunity to get married. But every case I know of of people getting to gether in groups has ended in tears. In fact, with one exception, they have broken down in under three years.
I am willing to believe that it might be possible to have a menage a trois which could last. After all, not everybody is massively afflicted with jealousy, so you might manage to form a stable threesome. But for every additional member of the group, the odds of success drop enormously. Anyone wishing to argue otherwise needs to start coming up with some hard data which shows their case. (And no, an example based on one individual totally subjugating several others will not be accepted.)
March 24th, 2006 at 12:22 pm
wj,
I agree. I can’t imagine having to have “relationship” discussions with extra people. Relationships are difficult enough with 2 people, and it seems like any realtionship is only successful if both people are putting in a lot of hard work. For each additional member, I think the work needing to be put in would grow exponentially.
I’ll bet there are people who could do it, but just like regular marriage with 2 people, I’m sure a majority of people would f’ up a polygamous relationship just as fast, if not faster.
Plus, I would like to see an example of a real polygamous relationship where there is truly equality and happiness between everyone (in western culture). All of the documentaries I’ve seen on this depict polygamous relationships as one huge asshole of a guy with weird, quiet, submissive women, who unconvincingly proclaim that everything is fine.
Finally, show me an example of one wife with multiple husbands (in western culture). I, as a woman, can think of a thousand reasons why no woman in her right mind would do this, unless she is a huge B who is manipulating a bunch of dumb, submissive guys - a reverse of the typical one man, many wives concept. (hmmmmm . . . OK, still no, but maybe . . . . . OK, NO).
March 24th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
If you want an example, go to http://www.polyfamilies.com, which is run by a four-adult family (two men, two women) with two children. While there are plenty of other resources for people with multiple relationships, theirs is one of the best for people in situations that polygamy would be relevant to.
March 24th, 2006 at 3:38 pm
Thanks for the info Kiya. The cite doesn’t really provide the example I was looking for, but it at least gave some info about it and had some other good links. The way that these particular family members call each other things like “The Beast” and “The Prince” just gives me the impression that they are weird. It’s not a very open-minded thing to say, but it still left me feeling like the whole idea is just weird.
I would love to see a documentary made about several polyfamilies so that I would actually see the people and watch their interactions. I’m just so skeptical about this.
March 24th, 2006 at 4:32 pm
It’s fairly common for people to use anonymising handles for their partners in public places like that, just to cut down on the odds of harassment and abuse from strangers. I certainly do; I don’t want my second partner losing his job or something because I identified him by name somewhere googleable. I believe the women give their legal names on the site (they do most of the writing), but I can’t recall if they name their husbands.
There are occasional news stories and documentary things done — I’ve given interview for several, myself — but there’s also a reasonable level of paranoia in the community about sensationalisation. There has to be a reasonable level of trust in the reporter doing the work, that they’re not interested in spinning it for sensationalisation or interested in portraying patriarchal harems, hippy communes, or sex maniacs regardless of facts. (This is a current topic on one of my local discussion lists; some local television station is trying to get interviewees, but they have a ‘bleeds-leads’ reputation, so people are trying to figure out whether it’s worth it.)
There have been people who have had serious social consequences from being willing to talk about their family structures in public. I know personally one family who had child protective services called on them as a form of active harassment. (None of the anonymous caller’s claims were ever backed up by the investigation, but the file had to be kept open for a long time because he kept calling with new ones.) The risks of talking to reporters are large and genuine, especially for stable families with kids — which would be the sorts of families you’d want to see.