This thread was suggested by a prop8 thread. If the definition of being only between a man and woman violates the equal protection clause, wouldn't limiting marriage to only two people violate the same clause? Another point to discuss is who polygamy benefits - men or women. The book "Freakonomics" points out that it actually benefits women more than men. To illustrate: About half of the population are women, half are men. With 1 to 1 marriage, the top 10% of men marry the top 10% of women and so on. If marriage is expanded to 3 to 1 however, the top 10% of men will marry the top 30% of women. The women who normally would have only had an opportunity to marry someone in the 20-30% range now gets to marry someone in the top 10%. Meanwhile the bottom 20% of men now have no one left to marry - and that is assuming only the top 10% of men marry multiple wives. If every man that can marries 3 women, 66% of men will have no one left to marry. Anyway, I figured it would be nice to have a good polygamy discussion thread. What is your opinion of polygamy?
I applaud you for taking marriage back to its traditional roots. None of this namby-pamby crap about love and other nonsense. Marriage should be about what it has always been about, economics.
Romantic motivation is a relatively new creation - one that has done immense damage to marriage overall. If emotions are the basis of your marriage, when those emotions fade (and they always do) the reason for the marriage is eliminated and there is no reason to stay married. If marriage is based on something more permanent, such as mutual commitment, it will often last much longer.
No problem with it. My support for legalization of same-sex marriage begins with the fundamental principle that a free society should default to allowing all contractual relationships between consenting adults so long as non-parties are not directly harmed.
I don't have a problem with two conditions... a) the participants have to be adults and choose the situation for themselves and b) no government support.
It would have to be polyamory in order to be consistent with equal protection. That means one could be married to multiple partners who may be married to multiple other partners. Other than the issues of sorting out community property and custody, I don't have a problem with it.
That makes sense. It turns into a "any adult can make any kind of contract they choose with any other adult or adults". There is something to be said for the kids who would be raised in a four or five adult family. There would always be someone there to take care of the kids. There would be a variety of education levels and types of talents for the children to learn from. It would be a very stable and secure environment.
Trust me, considering how much money would be involved for the legal profession... we'd figure it out
I'm not sure the details of a legal document only applicable in one country should be a factor in a general discussion of the rights or wrongs of a social struture. That makes a number of assumptions. First, that there is a definitive measurement of the quality of a marriage partner. I'm not convinced my top 10% of potential partners would be the same as yours. It also assumes a raw benefit to marrying and to marrying multiple people. Is it really better for a woman in the 30% to share a top 10% man with two other women rather than marrying a top 30% man alone? Are the 66% of unmarried men necessarily worse off? It also ignores the option of polyandry. If the multiple marriage option is available in both directions (which it would surely have to be if this is on an freedom/equality basis) you don't necessarily have the imbalance issue. Of course, that then depends on what people want to do. In practice, I doubt very many people would choose to marry multiple partners so I'm not sure these large impact questions are relevant anyway.
Marriage is a personal affair! The governments and religions shall not dictate it! why not a man can marry 3, 4, 9, 11, 30 women? or a women marrying 4, 7 , 10, 40 men or a marriage between 3 men! or 4 women! or 2 men, 3 women together married ?! from evolution point of view i can understand why men married more women and not the reverese! Men can easily with less cost disperse his sperm over many women to get more chance to spread his genes. A women can't afford that as she had one ovum per month during a limited period! she can't disperse it randomely, so she needed to be more selective! A baby will keep her 9 month busy! with some long months after as she nurse. A man has millions of sperms that he does not stop producing all his life, and the baby will cost him the work of one night (or morning) and he can next day go to try to reproduce with other woman! virtually a man can have more offspring than a woman now, modern society changed the data, and a baby will be costy to a man, but still it is more costy to a woman, but the difference of cost is much less than what it was 4000 years ago
Firstly, thanks for a polygamy thread which doesn't conflate the issue with same-sex marriage. From the answers given so far, it's clear the two issues aren't even vaguely related. I've never had a "moral' objection to polygamy but I'm not sure that legal inclusion would constitute "equal" protection. That said we live in free societies so, if that's what the people want and it's not causing harm to others, why shouldn't we be looking for ways to accommodate their needs? You could probably write a book on all the needed changes to the legal code from notions of "kinship" to practical applications such as pension and immigration benefits etc. Ultimately I guess the question hinges on whether or not there is sufficient demand to warrant the "sea-change" in policy; particularly as demand for marriage overall seems to be on the wane. This would be a very costly and time consuming exercise but it worked before so I guess it's possible.
Polygamy is a great option in today's society. 3 or more in a marriage makes a lot of sense. Several working, one staying home managing the household and kids, makes sense to me. I vote YES to polygamy.
Although that sounds great, polygamy is very destructive to a modern society. Polygamy was critical to tribal societies. Men would die off far more quickly than women - due to war, hunting accidents, etc - so the ratio of men to women strongly leaned toward women. In order to ensure women all had the opportunity to marry - and reap the benefits of marriage - many men had to take more than one wife. In a modern society, polygamy has the opposite effect. For every man that marries more than one woman, one man has no opportunity to marry. If a quarter of men each marry three wives, half of men in society will never get married.
And? How would that be bad? You really think all men should be passing on their genes? Certainly not. Look around... At least half of men are completely unworthy of mating.
Men who have no mating prospects get into trouble. One example from modern society is the fact that most suicide bombers come from polygamous societies. Here is a snip from a great Psychology Today article:
In the first place, many men and women never get married, so there goes your one on one situation. In the second place, polygamy encompasses: 1 man, 2 women 1 woman, 4 men 12 women, 2 men 12 men 9 women and on and on and on. In such a situation is is far likely for MORE people to find a marriage that suits them, than a one on one marriage only situation.
Who came up with the idiotic concept that polygamy has anything to do with one man having more than one wife? What is wrong with one woman having ten husbands? Why does even polygamy have to abide by stupid macho, misogynistic values.
Because historically that is the way it has always been. You'll be hard-pressed to find any society where a multi-male family was common.
LOL, we are talking about today, and in several states there are numerous polygamous "societies". Several have been on various TV specials, one in particular I recall, was 12 men and 4 women. Today, not historical, and OUR society, a society where marriage is not based on male domination, but on love, caring, cooperation and concern for one anther, NOT on collecting female love slaves.
Polyamory is a growing movement in the US. The only good reason I can think of to not incorporate it into current marriage law is the sheer complexity of sorting out the property and custody issues in the case of divorce. Aside from that, the benefits of marriage should not be limited to just two people who choose to partner.
When it comes to law, I couldn't care less. I don't care whether polygamous marriage is legal or whether it is a crime. It will only actually affect a minuscule part of the population anyway, I strongly doubt that very many people in today's society would actually participate. Regardless, as a common practice in society, I don't see a lot of benefit today. It made sense in a more primitive society, but it has little place in a modern society.
I rather like Mexico's idea of short duration marriages. You get a marriage for two years and if either of the couple is not happy, they can end it after two years and walk away. After that, both are on for a normal marriage. Other than the issue of children, and property acquired during the marriage, there'd be little for the courts to do in many divorces.
All those theoretically occur, but in practice, men won't share a wife. The only cultures that do that are cultures in which low status brothers sometimes share a wife.
