Will non-monogamy be the next civil-rights movement?
Same-sex marriage has been legalized in a number of countries worldwide, in a few more, same-sex partners have special legal protection granting them some marital rights.
For that to have been possible, marriage had to be redefined — from a union between a man and a woman to a union between two consenting adults. But if it is consent, responsibility and the decision, to be in a committed long-term relationship, in which you share rights and well as duties, that define the core of a marriage, why define it as a union between two people? Why is mutual emotional and sexual exclusivity in the definition of marriage, if both partners agree, that for them this exclusivity is not important or a defining factor for their marriage?
Personally, I don’t think that neither a relationship nor a marriage has to be defined within a dyad. It can, of course, but it shouldn’t just be exclusively so. I have discovered polyamory for myself, and I know that there are many more out there living non-monogamously, in groups of three or more, with children as well as without, well over 30 or more years. To me it seems to be so that non-monogamy is a choice more and more people are consciously committing to. To me it seems to be so that a new social-rights movement is bound to happen — the legalization of polygamy.
The big messy talk — Polygamy
The discussion about plural marriages was happening at the same time as the same-sex marriage debate — ‘polygamy’ was mostly used by the anti-same-sex marriage advocates as part of the fallacious “slippery slope argument”, in which same-sex marriage would dilute the meaning of marriage and lead way to all kinds of perverse debauchery: polygamy, bestiality, pedophilia and marrying your toaster. Putting polygamy on the same boat with bestiality, pedophilia and objectophilia raised counter arguments and discussions, and from early on, the entire thing became a messy topic.
This discussion is huge and not easy at all to navigate in. There are several levels of argumentation, and one major point which needs clarification — the term polygamy itself.
What is polygamy?
Reading articles, I felt confused and dismayed, since I had the feeling that everybody was screaming at each other while completely not noticing that they were potentially not talking about the same thing at all.
As far as I could see, there were two uses and two meanings of the word polygamy.
In one use and meaning, polygamy is simply “a relationship involving more than two people regardless of sex and gender, all consenting adults”, which can happen in a number of ways and in a number of possible emotional and sexual relations to each other: two men + one woman, three women + one man, two men + two women, three men, three women etc.
The other meaning of polygamy in the discussion was as a synonym to polygyny (one man, multiple wives), since polyandry (one woman, multiple husbands) occurs very rarely in cultures of the world.
In a number of articles I couldn’t really deduce with full certainty what kind of polygamy they were talking about — and in one case I found something that looks very much like a misunderstanding.
Johnathan Rauch answered to an article by Fredrik DeBoer.
DeBoer is pro-legalization of polygamy and he writes about issue of how advocates of same-sex marriage are opposing the legalization of polygamy. He concludes in several places what marriage is “an institution that exists to enshrine in law a special kind of long-term commitment” and how there is no reason why it shouldn’t extend to relationships in which several people are long-term committed to each other. In one he point states how,
Polyamory is a fact. People are living in group relationships today. The question is not whether they will continue on in those relationships. The questions is whether we will grant to them the same basic recognition we grant to other adults.
Throughout the text and especially after reading that passage (keyword “polyamory”), I was fairly sure he meant with polygamy the first, “marriage involving more than two consenting adults, regardless of sex and gender” meaning.
Rauch’s answer comprises mostly of a list all the reasons why polygamy would allow “high-status men to hoard wives at the expense of lower status men” and how that would cause society to slide into barbarism, as most polygynous societies show strong intersocial violence and crime (more detail on that in his other article). So either Rauch didn’t bother to explain that precisely polygyny as one of the many possible structures of plural relationships/marriages will destroy society, or he understood DeBoer’s use of the word polygamy as polygyny, excluding all other structural possibilities.
Assuming that there is only one kind of polygamy and assuming that everybody knows what kind of polygamy they are writing or talking about is harmful, confusing and it is keeping everybody back (I’ll be honest, I was all shades of purple from desperation). It should be imperative to define what kind of structure they are advocating for, against or discussing in general, as I am now.
In this and future articles, when speaking about polygamy, I speak of marriage structures in which there are more than two people, regardless of sex and gender, as long as all participants are consenting adults.
What are the reasons against legalizing polygamy — ideologically and practically?
Reading through this topic, I noticed two levels in which the discussion about polygamy (in both senses of the word) takes place: the ideological/theoretical level and the level regarding practical issues of legislating plural marriages.
The morality of polygamy
The ideological level of argumentation mainly finds it support in the Bible and in Western tradition. Below I have compiled some of the arguments I found in discussions online and in person.
Polygamy is completely wrong, because marriage should be between one man and one woman only — the only evidence one needs to give on this matter is what it says in the Bible.
The state should be a secular entity, not connected to any form of church or any religion in particular, so that people of all or no religion are treated equally. The state is obligated to let its people practice their religions freely and to make their choices freely, as long as the practices and choices harm nobody. As such a secular entity, the state should not draw the basis for legislation from the Bible, Quran, The Book of Mormon, the Vedas or any other religious book. The law should protect core values that establish order and freedom which will in turn enable people to live their beliefs, be the beliefs religious or not, as long as the beliefs harm nobody.
The state should be concerned with the well being of all people, of those belonging to a dominant culture or religion and of those belonging to a minority culture or religion.
If the state concludes that polygamy (more than two people) is harmful to nobody, there is no reason to not legalize it — regardless what one or several religious books say.
Polygamy denies the sanctity of marriage, it goes against God; it is not a Christian way of life.
Does civil marriage deny the sanctity of marriage? Does it go against God? What about Mormon plural marriages, Christian polygamy — are they any less Christian than your Christian denomination? Why?
Saying “it goes against God, it is not a Christian way of life” is in essence saying “your definition of marriage does not comply with the set of beliefs I and the group I belong to believe in, so please don’t use that definition, it is wrong”.
The meaning of certain symbols is not inherent to the symbols themselves — there has to be an entity (a person or a group) that interprets the symbol and so gives the symbol meaning.
Groups belonging to certain religions or denominations believe in sets of practices (e.g. emotional and sexual fidelity within a monogamous couple) and rituals (marriage sanctified by God through a church official) that belong to a certain symbol (marriage) and they believe in a certain meaning, which is described and framed by the practices, rituals and rules. Other groups believe in other values, practices and rituals concerning the same symbol and they abide by different rules they feel or think are right.
You cannot impose your meaning of a symbol on another person. The same way nobody can impose the meaning they see in a symbol on you. Marrying polygamously is not coercing anybody to live in a plural marriage. Marrying monogamously should not coerce anybody else to live a monogamous marriage.
Marriage is a private affair between people who want to enter a marriage union — how they want to enter the union (as a holy sacrament or not, in an Evangelic, Protestant, Hindu or completely non-religiously) is of no concern to anybody, except the people involved, as long as everybody is of legal age, able to make decisions for themselves and as long as everybody gives their conscious and informed consent.
Other people’s marriages do not insult or influence your marriage. Your marriage is your own private affair, which you lead according to principles and beliefs you share with your spouse, and nobody can demean it, because the value of your marriage is internal to your marriage and sanctioned by parties you deem important and relevant (the Church, God).
The state should remain neutral in this matter and enable people to live out their beliefs equally, as long as the beliefs they live out harm nobody.
Polygamous marriages are abusive to women and children.
This argument is based on the misconception due to fundamental religious groups such as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) formerly led by Warren Jeffs, who was convicted of child abuse and sentences to a lifetime plus 20 years. The FLDS is an extremely closed and shut off community. Their religious practice is harmful to the practitioners — the surplus of boys is abandoned to starve or survive so that more girls and women remain to the remaining men, underage girls are wed to men 50 years their senior, women are dominated in all aspects of life (from how they dress to the choices they make to the salvation of their soul through a polygamous marriage), children are abused and mistreated.
Not all polygamous marriages are part of the FLDS, not all polygamous structures are Mormon (e.g. Christian polygamy, some forms of Islam, some religious groups of Judaism, etc.) and not all polygamous structures based on religion (e.g. polyamory). There exist countless combinations of non-monogamous relationships — a triad, a quad, a V-relationship, a network of several people in star-sign formation, all of which can be religious or non-religious, straight or gay or both, and in which the participants can be involved with everybody else or with just one or two in the group, and in which all of the participants or only parts of the structure want to marry.
This is not to say that abuse doesn’t exist in polygamous relationships outside the FLDS. Just as in monogamous marriages, abuse can occur, and the state is obligated to protect victims of abuse. By legalizing polygamous marriages, men, women and children could seek out protection in law.
The best environment for children is a family with two parents — only so can children learn what love is.
I can’t imagine how a household of several adults would be less stable and less secure an environment than a two-parent household — there are several adults who can take care of children. The parents and partners can divide the chores so that there is less stress on the singular person (there are not just two people to divide the household chores, but three, four, five), children have many people they can connect and talk to, confide in, there is always somebody there to take care of them.
Children learn what love is in a loving family, regardless of marriage structure. I can’t imagine that children won’t learn what love is in a marriage structure where loving freely is allowed, talked about and consensual.
Polygamous societies are violent and barbaric. If we allow polygamy, it will be a downfall of our modern society.
I sincerely don’t think polygamy will be the downfall of our society. I can assume that some of the rich people will hoard spouses to boast their riches, but I doubt that it will happen in such a number to create social unrest.
I think for many, polygamy is a headache. Try it at home — I talked with friends and acquaintances about polyamory (having multiple sexual and/or emotional relationships at once), and many of my very (radically) liberal friends said that that would be a headache for them, that they could not imagine, less truly invest time and effort into such a relationship or marriage.
I doubt that once polygamy is legalized that so many people will convert to polygamy — those who already are in polygamous unions will tie the knot in the face of the law, those who were inclined to non-monogamy will have the ability to recognize their unions in the face of the law. Inclination is not defined by the law.
Fact is that plural relationships exist already today. For example, in America alone, the estimated number of Mormon or Christian polygamists is as high as 50,000 — if you count in Muslim and well as non-religious families, the real number is likely many times greater. I believe that the amount is comparable in Europe. Studies, show that non-monogamous relationships possibly make up to 4% of the general population — the same percentage assumed for gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals. Our Western culture is not as monogamous as we might think.
It is a considerable minority not recognized by the law. It is a considerable minority not protected by the law.
If we legalize polygamy, we will soon legalize pedophilia, bestiality and people will be able to marry their toasters!
Legalizing same-sex marriage did not bring the downfall of society. Neither will legalizing polygamy. Polygamy is not comparable to pedophilia, bestiality and objectophilia.
In the cases of same-sex marriage and polygamy, we have two or more consenting adults, in the case of pedophilia, bestiality and objectophilia, we have one of the participants (a child, an animal, an object) who cannot give consent. Marriage must be consensual, otherwise the marriage is coercion and harmful for one or more of the participants.
There are more arguments along this line of religion and tradition, and I will discuss them in more detail in my e-book on this topic (coming soon-ish).
Practical issues around legislating polygamy
The question then arises — how should we legislate non-monogamous relationships?
Only few legal scholars have considered polygamy on its own and engaged in detail the regulatory challenges it might pose to the current family law system.
That is not very surprising, because legally speaking, legalizing polygamous relationships just might be very complicated to do — and before the same-sex marriage debate, there was hardly anything about polygamy in mainstream media. Polygamy advocates will have to face a number of specific legal situations which are inherent to the complexity of non-monogamous relationships.
But in the movement for legalization of polygamy has two sides — one part of the community wants to be left alone and deal with their legal protection and rights themselves with their lawyers, while the other part (perhaps the majority) wants full recognition and regulation by the law.
Polygamous marriages as regulated by the law
When looking at non-monogamous relationships, the first most people notice is how complex and how big they can be. One might assume that the task of writing a set of default rules of polygamy would be daunting (to phrase it mildly).
When a law is being considered for passing, a law has to first pass the so-called rational basis test. Laws must be rationally related to a legitimate government interest. In the same-sex marriage debate, the opponents could not explain how preventing same-sex couples from marrying served any of the state’s claimed goals, nor could they explain in which way same-sex marriages would be harmful.
In the case of polygamy, as seen above, there are assumptions that polygamy is harmful to women and children. But as I said, not all polygamous marriages are FLDS, not all polygamous marriages are Mormon, not all polygamous structures are based on religion. As in the case of monogamy, abuse and violence can occur, but that is not due to the marriage structure itself — it is due to the people in the marriage. Nobody is banning monogamous marriages because they can be severely abusive to the adults or the children involved.
After the rational basis test, several questions arise:
If the relationships is a triad, is it two marriages per person, or is everybody married together in a group marriage that dissolves when only one of the participants decides to divorce, or are the two remaining people automatically married to each other?
If there are more than two marriages, are they on equal footing, or is one primary and the other secondary, tertiary, etc.?
If a child is born to, e.g. the husband and his wife, is there a legal relationship formed between that child and the other married partners?
These are some of the questions that come off the top of the head. Polygamy advocates will have to think about those and many others too — in the case of same-sex marriage, what applied to hetero marriages was just transferred to same-sex marriages. Polygamy will need its own set of rules.
And this is where default rules come in handy. In law, default rules are those that govern a transaction in the absence of parties’ specifying their own rules. Unlike immutable rules, which are mandatory, default rules can be avoided by negotiating, bargaining or drafting around them. Default rules are based on outcomes that law determines most people would prefer.
Basically, if you don’t like the outcome of a draft rule, you can negotiate around it until you find an acceptable outcome. Same goes with penalties — penalty defaults are designed to shape and direct behavior, punish and deter strategic and opportunistic behavior.
Draft rules already exist in family law, e.g. if there is no prenuptial agreement, marital default rules govern intimate relationships. In the marital context, good default rules are very important, as there is a stigma surrounding drafting prenuptials and similar agreements.
Default rules is where polygamy advocates will have to put the bulk of their effort into. However the advocates are not without existing conceptual models in law which could be useful for setting down default rules.
The Commercial partnership law (USA) just may be a good existing conceptual model which answers many of the questions posed above. Commercial partnership law is different from marriage, as it is written in legal literature as “arms-length” relations (while marriages are “intimate relations”) and the primary motive of commercial partnerships is profit-seeking.
However, the similarities between commercial partnerships and plural marriage may give way for a good analogy for writing plural marriage default rules.
Commercial partnerships and plural marriages generate wealth and assets through their members’ combined efforts, which can be problematic in the points of ownership and tilting when one of the partners/spouses wants to leave/divorce the association/marriage or when one of the spouses passes away. To address these concerns, partnership law has generated a robust set of default rules that govern formation, entrance, expulsion, exit, dissolution and property rights.
Both commercial partnerships and plural marriages have an important distinguishing feature: ongoing entrances and exits that continually alter the association, as well as the individual property and other rights of its members. When another person enters the marriage, the whole marriage structure changes with regard to inheritance rights, access to a joint account, etc.
With adding more members, their rights and influence diminish from a presumptive 50% (when a dyad), while their liability and vulnerability increases. This gives rise for possibilities of economic (and in the case of plural marriage — emotional and sexual) vulnerability, and opportunism. As seen in the discussion about the morality of polygamy, there is concern for the safety and rights of women and children in polygamous marriages.
Commercial partnership law has a set of default rules which may serve as a good concept model to create default laws for polygamous marriages to ameliorate this vulnerability and opportunism: disabling singular partners to expel another partner from the association as well as disabling singular partners to accept another partner, as decisions regarding expulsion and entrance must be unanimous; the ability of a partner to unilaterally leave the association (go away and divorce from the plural marriage), and more.
More thought will have to be put in this direction. There is a lot of literature to this topic, but I decided that I would devote an entire article to that specifically and that it would be a major part in my coming e-book.
Legal protection goes DIY — Leave the Law out of the Private
A part of the community sees the solution to the whole legalizing problem for the state to stay out of intimate affairs and that the legal securities and rights should be arranged privately, since intimate affairs are private in nature. If the state stays out of my bedroom, it might as well stay outside of my marriage.
The people involved in a marriage arrange legal documents they need with their lawyers themselves. Due to the many, many possibilities how group relationships can be formed, a DIY approach to it might give the flexibility the singular marriages and families need. Securing one’s own legal safety gives the opportunity of making a system specifically fit for the structure your group relationship is in. It also forces you to reflect on your relationships, to consciously think about your wishes, desires and needs, and what it is you want to be done for you and your loved ones.
But honestly, I am very skeptical of the DIY approach.
The obvious drawback to it is precisely the DIY aspect — it requires time, money and a good and attentive (non-discriminating) lawyer. The marital law is written down in volumes, I don’t really see how a private endeavor of securing your rights and privileges could be successful. Another very big drawback is the question of how well legally non-recognized intimates fare in the legal system.
There are ample examples of same-sex couples who secured their rights privately, but were legally not taken into account: the case of Harold Scull and Clay Greene in the USA is deeply concerning and disturbing. Scull and Greene were a couple for 25 years. In 2008, Scull (then 88) fell and Green called for medical assistance. The two had filed documents giving each other the right to make medical decisions for the other, and making each other the beneficiary of their respective estates. After Scull’s hospitalization, the County filed for guardianship of Scull and his estate, treating him as a single man without family. Greene was identified as Scull’s roommate and the County sold the couple’s entire possessions — their cats, their mementos, artwork, furniture, their car, family heirlooms. The County removed Greene from their shared home and into a nursing home against his will. Greene was not permitted to see Scull in the finals months of his life, and Scull died without Greene present.
Stories like this one are the reason why I think that advocating for complete recognition by the law is the far better solution — the law has to abide what it writes, and as far as I can see, it’s not an impossible endeavor to write law for polygamous marriages.
Final thoughts
I think the road to legalizing a marriage union of more than two consenting adults is inevitable. However, I fear it will be much tougher than for same-sex marriage. Plural marriage advocates will have to face a number of distinct legal issues that same-sex marriage advocates did not. I do firmly believe that change is inevitable and that plural marriages will be legalized, but that that will take time — same-sex marriages took decades, so will this.
The movement for the recognition of plural marriages hasn’t really begun yet. The discussion about plural marriages is mostly in academic circles and vastly theoretical, the public is mostly uninformed, and those who are informed are mostly misinformed. There is no public face nor a strong activist movement which is comparably organized as the LGBT+ community is. There are media portrayals, a fictional series and a few documentaries, like Sister Wives, Big Love, I love you, and you, and you, My Five Wives, Polyamory — Hidden Lives: Three in a Bed and many more, but none managed to start a general discussion in the public at a comparable level to same-sex marriages and LGBT+ rights. Many of the non-monogamous families are still living in secret, fearing the reaction of their relatives, friends, employers and neighbors — I myself write under a pseudonym.
A first step would therefore be to start hands-on actual activism, people grouped together to send out a message and to educate what forms of non-monogamy exist and how these forms want to find legal affirmation within a polygamous marriage. We need to organize and start campaigns.
That takes courage. It takes courage to come out of the closet, into the streets, into media, into education, into a public discourse, knowing that there will be discrimination and violence. But it also takes a different kind of courage, the courage to completely reveal yourself and your vulnerability, because the message sent out into the mainstream is
“This is us. This is how we live. This is our choice. Please understand and accept us. Please help us create structures to protect us as you are protected in your own private monogamous relationships. Protect our children the same way your children are protected.”
Essentially, the message is a very personal one.
Change is inevitable, but we have to bring it forth.
Disclaimer
I do not agree with all articles I linked neither do I agree with all parts of the articles I agree with that I linked. I provide you the links to read and broaden your horizons. It is not necessary to read the articles I linked in order to understand my text.
