Yesterday, Ames’ post on passage of California’s Prop. 8 generated discussion of polygamy as an equivalent to gay marriage when considering alternative unions. It isn’t. In the secular sense, marriage is a contractual agreement, recognized by the state, between two (consenting) adults wherein the parties agree to satisfy specific legal obligations to one another that are implicit until divorce or death makes them explicit. Those legal obligations are based on ideals of equity and, in many instances, equality. Arguably, there is no clear way (and maybe no way at all) to adjudicate equitable or equal distribution of property or obligation in any polygamous union.
Speaking to equality, in a case of polygyny (one husband, multiple wives), the husband has a 50% stake in the arrangement he makes with each wife, but each wife cannot have the same stake in her husband. As the number of wives increases, each woman’s stake diminishes proportionally. A wife’s interests in a polygynous union simply cannot be equal to that of her husband. This is true, too, if we consider next-of-kin responsibilities: There has to be a pecking order among wives as only one can be named the agent in living wills or advanced-health-care directives. Necessarily, one wife’s power outweighs that of the others.
Similar difficulties in assigning equity also exist. How is the state to insure each wife’s standard of living in the event of divorce? Islam allows a man to take four wives, but the message is clear: If that man cannot afford four wives, he does not need four wives. If one wife were to leave a polygynous union, how — under a system of equitable distribution — is she to adequately protect her interest? How is the state supposed to assign value to her contribution to the union, and how is the husband’s contribution to the entire arrangement supposed to support both the exiting wife and those who remain? (I’m not even going to touch the issue of child custody and support.)
These issues do not arise in the instance of gay marriage. The only difficulty in gay marriage remains American society’s distaste for homosexuality.
I won’t deny that polygamous unions have been very important to the development of civilization and continue to be in remaining agrarian societies. Polygamous (again, usually polygynous) unions through time promoted cohesion among extended families (i.e., when brothers absorbed widowed sisters-in-law and their children). Polygyny was an instrument to measure power and wealth, thereby acting to maintain social hierarchies among men. Economic development, though, necessarily reduces the benefits and affordability of polygynous unions. Further, in industrialized and, certainly, post-industrial societies, the acknowledgment of the individual and property rights of women makes polygyny impossible to adjudicate in the same way as monogamous unions.
Finally, while I am sure in the U.S. there are plenty of instances — that fly under the radar — where men and women live peacefully and lovingly in polygamous (both polyandrous and polygynous) arrangements, there are very dramatic and disturbing modern examples of polygyny in the U.S. wherein incest, statutory rape, coercion, forced marriage, and other abuses run rampant. The propensity for criminal behavior and abuse should give pause to any effort to equate polygamy with gay marriage as just another alternative union.
The legal form of marriage is nothing more than a contract between individuals. Hundreds of companies in the United States operate under successful arrangements that are far, far more complicated than the relatively simple scenarios you discuss above.
And the last paragraph is a throw away.
Posted by Mike (PC) | November 7, 2008, 3:27 pmThis is about the rights of individuals to live together without harassement from social protective services or over zealous Prosecutors. It is highy hypocritical for gays to be given protections and not other consenting adult lifestyles such as consenting adult plural marriage. The tradiutional marriage adherents are talking about one type of marriage “tradition,” that of serial monogamy, something left over from the Roman and Greek mores and adopted by the Papal authority and carried on by her protestant daughters in christiandom. Look at 80 percent of the rest of the world that has other “traditions” in place and the argument becomes the crux of one huge ethnocentric debate on whose tradion is “better.” This is America, the land of the mulsticultural, and if they are giving gays this much lattitude, at least they should show some decency and give the consenting adult plural marriage practicers the same lattitude, since orguably, at least the latter is “more” moral than the former from a religious standpoint.
Posted by HMI | November 7, 2008, 4:09 pmDM will best defend her arguments, but I’ll add my own: I don’t care what churches do to their own members – within the bounds of laws of general application – and I’m not bothered by how they structure the relationships between their adherents. What does concern me is (1) placing the state’s imprimatur on a relationship system that, in practice, almost always amounts to abuse in some for; (2) giving federal benefits to all spouses results improperly rewarding additional wives to the disadvantage of “singly” married couples, and; (3) DM’s points….
Posted by Ames | November 8, 2008, 1:02 amAnyone that thinks gay marriage will become a common reality in the United States and then turn around and supress the plural marriage movement is both extremely naive AND more than a bit hypocritical in my opinion.
Posted by Mike (PC) | November 8, 2008, 7:15 pmlet me try this one more time … here is the comment i made regarding polygamy on the previous thread i mentioned:
if consenting adults want to enter into a polygamous arrangement, and the contractual arrangement that exists between one man and one woman now extends equally to all parties involved, then i don’t have a problem with polygamy … in theory.
i am not against polygamy. in fact, i am not against any union between consenting adults. what i am against, and this is what i argue in the post above, is an instance where the protections of equal and equitable treatment are not available to all spouses.
while polygamous unions are very capable of coming up with complex contractual arrangements, i am arguing that these would not afford the same benefits to the multiple spouses (usually wives) that are available to their monogamous counterparts.
we can take current family law — which is painstakingly focused on equal and equitable treatment of all parties — and superimpose it on any monogamous, married union: homo or heterosexual.
we cannot make the same superimposition on polygamous unions. for instance, in a community-property state, a polygynous union is one where the single husband has a 50% stake in the property accrued with each wife. if he has three wives, though, these women do NOT have the reciprocal 50% interest in the community property; they have only one-third interest. this reality does not jibe with the fundamental tenets driving family law in these states.
the only way i can see getting around this is to require informed consent from each wife, but that, in essence, is requiring each wife to confirm that she is not equal to her husband in the eyes of the law. and now we are going beyond inconsistencies with family law, we are now in the realm of contradicting basic human rights.
and i cannot imagine a time when u.s. law makes room for such arrangements.
Posted by didionsmommy | November 10, 2008, 3:12 pmwhile polygamous unions are very capable of coming up with complex contractual arrangements, i am arguing that these would not afford the same benefits to the multiple spouses (usually wives) that are available to their monogamous counterparts.
Isn’t that the choice of the wives?
If we’re going to redefine marriage, I don’t think it’s a stretch to redefine the notion of ‘equal partnership’.
Posted by Mike (PC) | November 10, 2008, 7:50 pm