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Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:
If you believe that there is good reason to fear than the liberalisation of restrictions on polygamy will tend to lower the status of women in society, you don't need to be a Christian to oppose it. Good old-fashioned ethical humanism will suffice.

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Originally posted by Callan:
Originally posted by the Raptor:

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Which completely ignores that fundamentalist's are not the only advocates. Should we ban home schooling as well, because it is overwhelmingly practised by those same fundamentalist's?

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The OP referred to the FLDS who are the major advocates of polygamy in the US. I think the onus is on you to show us these huddled polygamist masses, yearning to breathe free.

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Concerning my proposed 'trust law' group marriage system:I think this is plausible. I'm not wholly convinced by it, not least because you appear to have abolished the Married Women's Property Act, but if I were inclined to defend the legalisation of polygamous unions this is the line I would probably take.

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Originally posted by the_raptor:
Polygamy isn't the same as polygyny. Educate yourself.

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Originally posted by Callan:
In the Wilson administration there were no openly gay Cabinet ministers and the merest breath of such things would have resulted in political ruin. In the Blair administration there were two openly gay cabinet ministers (Chris Smith and Peter Mandelson). I hardly think the continued existence of 'gay' as a playground insult means the vast social shift that has taken place in the UK since 1967 did not happen.

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Originally posted by Callan:
So the laws against murder should be repealed? After all 'thou shalt not kill' is a traditional Christian value. There are lots of values which Christians and secularists share. Opposition to polygamy may well be one of them. In the one instance where I expressed a religious reason to disapprove of polygamy I explictly stated that I did not think this was a good reason to criminalise it.

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Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:

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Originally posted by the_raptor:
Polygamy isn't the same as polygyny. Educate yourself.

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You know what I mean. Do you have a counter-argument, or is it just that being a pedant turns you on?

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A social shift doesn't equal homosexuality being socially acceptable (tolerable is a different matter). Homosexuality is still very much regarded as almost scandalous amongst public figures (who aren't arts types). People may not care that the bloke down the road is gay, but they still wouldn't normally vote him into office (being a white family man with an inoffensive religion is still the sure ticket into office).

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Originally posted by Callan:
That may be the case in Australia. It emphatically isn't in the UK and it was the UK example I was discussing.

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Uh huh. I never hear anything about harassment or discrimination of gays in the UK. No sir. A few gays in parliament does not mean homosexuality is completely socially acceptable. But this is OT so ends here.

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Originally posted by Callan:
Originally posted by the Raptor:

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Uh huh. I never hear anything about harassment or discrimination of gays in the UK. No sir. A few gays in parliament does not mean homosexuality is completely socially acceptable. But this is OT so ends here.

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You really are a complete twonk aren't you? But this is Off Topic so you cannot reply.

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Originally posted by the_raptor:
But this is OT so ends here.

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Originally posted by Callan:
Advocates of polygamy on this thread have largely concentrated on an ethical position 'the government should not interfere in arrangements made by consenting adults' (which, as it happens is not a position that I share) and not really addressed the empirical arguments

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I think the experience of the decriminalisation of abortion and homosexuality in the UK demonstrates that legislation with quite limited aims can, in time, take on quite wider significance. The 1967 Act did not aim to make abortion comparatively widely practiced and the intention of the decriminalisers of homosexuality did not intend for homosexuality to become socially acceptable. Both, however, happened.

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It being the case that legislation can have unintended consequences it seems elementary prudence to examine whether this would be the case with polygamy.

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Originally posted by the_raptor:
How does polyandry or polyamory lower the social status of women? Polygyny is the only one that you can even being to claim does that (and we only have the data from a loud mouth fundie group). Never mind the fact that fundie monogamous marriages tend to do the same (that whole headship thing)

And if you would bother reading my previous posts you would notice I covered the issue you raised (we could do more for these women if they came into the open).

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In fact, I also questioned the causative link between polygamous marriage and the social status of women, in response to Callan's post on the subject. And his reply, which I think is pertinent, was that given the strong correlation down the ages, we ought to be cautious, even in the absence of an established causative mechanism, about assuming they are independent.

That seems right to me. It's possible that polygamous marriage, and polygyny in general, arise from the same social factors as lead to the chattelisation ( new word ) of women; one may not be the cause of the other. I'm just not sure we ought to take the risk of finding out.

I concede that we don't have sufficient unbiased data to make a firm conclusion.

I concede also that there is a risk involved in allowing society (via government) to interfere in relationships between consenting adults. We've been there already, and it wasn't very nice.

But are there no limits to non-interference? For example, it is an offence in the UK to assist a woman to carry out genital mutilation on herself. It seems right to me that this should be the case, although I confess a difficulty in articulating why it should be.

I suppose the reason why I think it should be an offense to abet female genital mutilation is the same as the reason it should be an offence to abet polygamous marriage -- it is not safe to assume free and informed consent from the women concerned, in the presence of strong religious and cultural pressures.

Even as I write this, I am aware that it makes me sound like an interfering old nanny, and a male chauvinist nanny at that. And state interference in private arrangements isn't something I am comfortable about recommending, you may be sure.

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I deny being an ‘advocate’ of polygamy. I disapprove of it. I just don’t extend my disapproval so far as to want to send people to jail for practising it, or to denying them the legal protections most of the rest of us can choose to have when it goes wrong. My belief in making legal marriage available to polygamists is based on my judgment that legal marriage is a good thing. That’s the ethical reason.

The empirical reason is based on the ‘polygamous’ household that I know. If plural marriage were allowed, my friends might choose to get married. Why shouldn’t they? Much as I consider their choices unethical (by Christian standards, though none of the parties involved are Christian), and much as I worry about the likely consequences of their choices, they are a loving a functional family unit, and I cannot see any reason at all to deny them the option of marriage. Your answer seems to be that my friends shouldn’t marry, but should (as long as they stay together) continue in illicit cohabitation, because OTHER PEOPLE are bad spouses, bad parents, and follow wacky religions. I don’t get that at all.

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I’d question whether the law reforms CAUSED the social change. Maybe in the case of abortion a case could be made (since the state has a great deal of control over access to safe medical services) but I think it more likely that the legalisation of homosexuality was a result of a change of social attitude (which has advanced since).

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Whatever the consequence of legalised polygamy, they would have the great advantage of being the outcome of decisions that people have actually chosen to make.

The law isn’t meant to protect people from their own poor choices. Even adultery isn’t against the law in the UK. It is far more clearly a sin than polygamy. It involves harm to an unconsenting party. It destroys people’s lives, estranges children from their parents, causes deep despair and can lead to murder and suicide. It is responsible for much more human misery than polygamy.

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Originally posted by Callan:
That out of the way, your citing of one case doesn't really constitute an empirical reason. It's anecdotal evidence. If I say my aunt's rheumatism cleared up after she started to wear a copper bracelet that doesn't really count.

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If legalised polygamy would have good results in, say, one out of three cases and bad results in two out of three cases then there is a strong case for keeping it illegal.

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The same argument can be made against the minimum wage. Who is the government to interfere in the decision of a worker to find a job that pays 50p a day? The answer is that power imbalance between worker and employer is such that it is legitimate for the government to rectify said imbalance. I think a similar imbalance exists between men and women in communities where polygamy prevails.

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Originally posted by Callan:
You really are a complete twonk aren't you?

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Originally posted by WatersOfBabylon:
From a completely anthropological perspective, polygamy would make sense for a society with a high woman to man ratio (for example, a society recently stricken by war). It makes sure all the women are cared for.

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Polygamy for a time continued, serving a sound colonizing purpose - for women were in the majority among the converts, and the frontier had little place for unmarried and childless women.

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Originally posted by Alogon:
What does anthropology indicate about the ratio of men to women in societies that practiced polygyny? I suspect that women outnumbered men considerably, as can happen when the general level of health and nutrition is relatively low.

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Originally posted by Laura:
Lamb Chopped:

I am not a proponent of legal polygamy, but your story actually supports it, from a cerain point of view. Proponents of polygamy would point out that your husband was absolutely free to dump you and get a new woman, only the law requires that he divorce you first. In a polygamous situation, the husband cannot divorce you (generally, under Mormon or shari'a law) because he fancies a new woman -- he must be able to support you both. Instead of what we have in monogomous western societies, which is hypocritical serial polygamy. You can have lots of wives, and you get to dump the earlier ones and trade up. New alimony laws mean that you can be free of obligations to former wives much more quickly than before, assuming that they are theoretically able to work. So, the polygamists say, they are actually the ones who ensure that old wives don't get cast aside like a squeezed lemon just because Papa wants some new arm candy.

I don't agree with it, but they have a point there, I think.

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Oooh what a lovely idea. When my ex wandered off, if he still had a legal obligation to support me *and* number 2 that would have been fab

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Originally posted by ananke:
I think the interestingthing is that so many people are looking at "bloke + wives" rather than "bloke + husband + wife" or "woman + husband + husband" which, in my limited experience of poly communities, is the norm. Relationships are not heirarchalised, but common. That said there are still jerkwads who use it as an excuse to be abusive. Much like marriage really.

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I suppose it's because the structured belief systems that people are worried about are of that form, and highly patriarchal. But yes, my very limited observation of unusual relationships has tended more towards the woman + man + man style of thing. And on the programme I saw on telly (so it must be true ) of the various relationships featured only one was man + wives, the rest seemed to feature a central female plus satellites. I wonder if there is an observable pattern to unconventional Western relationships that is quite different to the established patriarchal model.

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It's a matter of food and available blood. If motherhood is sacred, put your money where your mouth is. Only then can you expect the coming down to the wrecked & shimmering earth of that miracle you sing about. [Margaret Atwood]

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Originally posted by ananke:
I think the interestingthing is that so many people are looking at "bloke + wives" rather than "bloke + husband + wife" or "woman + husband + husband" which, in my limited experience of poly communities, is the norm.

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Originally posted by Emma.:
Oooh what a lovely idea. When my ex wandered off, if he still had a legal obligation to support me *and* number 2 that would have been fab

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Originally posted by Scot:
That is no more representative of polygamy than spousal rape is representative of monogamy.

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
... But then I got pregnant. I never felt so vulnerable in my life.
Physically, I was hampered and even endangered (for various health reasons); economically I was suddenly on thin ice, because employers can and do discriminate against pregnant and newly delivered women, whatever the law may say. Essentially, for that period of my life, my husband held the bulk of the power in the marriage, and I was not in a place where I could realistically tell him to "stuff it" and walk out. Where does an eight months pregnant woman go without an income?

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May I say, your story made me think and see things more...that I need to bear this in mind if I ever were to look at a man to consider for marriage. Even if say I did not have my own kidlets...if I somehow ended up economically making less or losing my job, I would still feel a vunerability. Great post, girly. And I should try to bear that in mind and think about that.

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♬♭ We're setting sail to the place on the map from which nobody has ever returned ♫♪♮
Ship of Fools-World Party

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Originally posted by Alogon:
One hopes it isn't, but unless all a man's existing wives must assent before he adds one to his harem, how is it avoided?

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Originally posted by Scot:

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Originally posted by Alogon:
One hopes it isn't, but unless all a man's existing wives must assent before he adds one to his harem, how is it avoided?

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You are obviously envisioning something very, very different than what I have in mind. I would think that adding another member to an existing marriage would generally require the consent of all parties involved. This isn't any different than adding parties to most other sorts of contracts.

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Originally posted by Alogon:
unless all a man's existing wives must assent before he adds one to his harem, how is it avoided?

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It was a long time ago I studied it, but I seem to remember a fair amount of evidence that the rulers of the Ottoman Empire had to put quite a lot of effort into curbing the political power of their harem - given a bit of political nous and the chance to gang up with the eunuchs the wives ruled the roost and thus the empire, through sheer force of numbers. The same dynamic could easily translate to domestic life, if the wives made common cause against their husband.

I've also read modern accounts of warm and supportive relationships between 'sister-wives', so much so that it's the husband who finds himself feeling isolated and unhappy. It's worth remembering that in cultures where people don't marry for love, but for social or political reasons, sexual jealousy may simply not be an issue.

I'm not particularly advocating polygamy, like Eliab I suspect the unofficial arrangements that are currently legal and a few people go in for mostly end in tears. And I realise that the idealised scenarios above are no more valid than the nightmare ones. But I do think that the issue is more complicated than a simple 'polyamy == oppression'.

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Originally posted by Callan:
One wouldn't, I think, conclude that slavery isn't oppressive because one can point to instances where slaves did quite well out of it. The same applies mutatis mutandis to polygamy.

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Originally posted by Iole Nui:
I don't think that poly-whatever comes into the same category - a marriage containing more than two people doesn't in itself imply a power differential. If it did, surely the same power differential would be implicit in monogomous marriage.

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Originally posted by Scot:
No, we're just assuming that, statistically speaking, they'll be offset by another group with a reversed gender balance.

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Originally posted by Scot:
I do not see what that bearing that has on how plural marriage could be done in a liberal western democracy.

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Originally posted by ken:

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Originally posted by Scot:
I do not see what that bearing that has on how plural marriage could be done in a liberal western democracy.

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Because people are the same even when laws change.
Human mating systems are many and various, but not infinitely flexible. There are real biological constraints.

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Originally posted by Rossweisse:
I can't add much to their arguments except to say that adding another individual to an intimate relatioship always seems to seriously skew the balance of power, and what had been a partnership becomes a hierarchy.

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