No one in American punditry is more consistently wrong than Charles Krauthammer:
And now, polygamy.
With the sweetly titled HBO series “Big Love,” polygamy comes out of the closet. Under the headline “Polygamists, Unite!” Newsweek informs us of “polygamy activists emerging in the wake of the gay-marriage movement.” Says one evangelical Christian big lover: “Polygamy rights is the next civil-rights battle.”
Polygamy used to be stereotyped as the province of secretive Mormons, primitive Africans and profligate Arabs. With “Big Love” it moves to suburbia as a mere alternative lifestyle.
As Newsweek notes, these stirrings for the mainstreaming of polygamy (or, more accurately, polyamory) have their roots in the increasing legitimization of gay marriage. In an essay 10 years ago, I pointed out that it is utterly logical for polygamy rights to follow gay rights. After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender, and if, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one’s autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement — the number restriction (two and only two) — is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice.
Millions of Americans think we should call off the Drug War. That doesn’t mean it is about to happen. Just because Newsweek can find one evangelical Christian that wants two or more wives doesn’t mean that there is about to be some big social movement on behalf of polyamory rights.
I don’t understand why the Washington Post allows Krauthammer to write columns that call Mormons secretive, Africans primitive, and Arabs profligate. But more than that, I don’t know why they continue to employ someone who is so consistently dishonest and wrong.
Polygamy has no future in America. Much more likely is that people will stop getting married at all.
As two of my great grandfathers were both polygamists there is actually an interesting history to the practice.
Polygamy was authorized because so many men had been killed during the ‘religious cleansing’ of the Mormons in Illinois by the established churches. Women were without a means of income or support. In order for a Mormon man to have more than one wife he had to prove to the church elders that he had the income / wealth to support each family in a separate household.
So which of these apply to the current premise?
Aaaackkk….I know what the editorial said but do they realize what historical crap they are reliving?
besides that it would be much more sensical for polygamy to be one woman many men….let the woman stay home and take care of a few less kids than a harem of wives would create and make the men go out and work at their jobs they will make more money at than women anyway, as opposed to having all your wives on welfare.
plus in my experience there is no one man that can sexually satisfy a healthy woman.
Or do like the bees, and have one woman, one to a few men, and put all the children to work, LOL!
Polyandry. Interesting. Like the concept; suspect the application(s) would be wayyyyyy too complicated for my taste.
I had never heard that reason for polygamy among the early Mormons. It is less far out than the idea that a rather strict religious group in other matters sexual, social, and familial decided to allow polygamy for the hell of it (pardon the pun). Haven’t other groups (some Middle Eastern tribes, for instance) adopted polygamy for the same reason?
It has a crude Darwinian logic to it – if you’re a small group setting yourself apart from the world, struggling to survive, and you have a dearth of men, and you believe you’re destined to be the New Jerusalem or in some other way god’s favorite children, then you do what you must in biological terms to keep the sect going…
Shades of “The Handmaiden’s Tale.”
And I’m not saying that I approve, just that it seems less bizarre in that light.
It worked well for one of them for a while – he had one wife in Winter Quarters Missouri and the other in Utah. When the final move was to Utah the two wives hated each other…and the rivalry among the children was worse. There were 8 sons by each wife – and the land squabbles lasted two more generation to my Dad’s generation.
The second one married his wife’s sister after she was widowed. They didn’t get along from the time they were children. The two families didn’t speak from the time he died and to the best of my knowledge still don’t.
The polygamy law was repealed as a condition of statehood in 1896. Both gr. grandfathers were prepared to go to jail rather than change their lives. They ‘grandfathered’ existing marriages as legal rather than create havoc in the state.
It made economic sense at the time (1846-1880’s) but was never anywhere the ideal that tv or movies make it out to be.
Related Woody Allen dialogue: “I don’t want to get married. I just want to get divorced.”
is probably more widespread than you think — but it’s usually called “open marriage” or something similar. I do know a bit about this, as when the spouse and I were having some troubles in our marriage, I flirted on the fringes of the philandering movement. A friend of mine who was polyamorous with a non-poly spouse put it this way, “It’s a don’t ask, don’t tell, just play safe and come home situation.” (It took even greater troubles to get me to recommit myself to repair my relationship with the spouse, but that’s a loooong story…)
And again, when it comes to polyamory it’s a matter of privacy. What consenting adults (of any quantity or gender) do in their own homes or hotel rooms is their business…or is the next step going to be banning adultery? (If that was the case, there are probably several members of Congress who’d be nervously watching their backs…)
I’ve started to think that in this economy, some sort of “corporate marriage” would be feasible — but it wouldn’t be a man with a passel of wives, but rather couples and singles coming together to share assets and responsibilities. Those without outside jobs would stay home and care for the children, take care of household duties, etc., while those with outside jobs would provide the income. Who has sex with whom is secondary. Maybe they could even apply for group plan health insurance.
I do agree with you though that any movement in this direction will be a long time in the future, if ever — too many negative attitudes toward sex and the nature of relationships would have to change. (I’m sure Anna in Philly would have a few things to say about that subject…)
I’m veering off the main subject though, which I agree with you on: Krauthammer is an idiot…
just a few things to say 😉
i believe polyamory to be an orientation for some people…in other words im not monogamous not by choice but by biological design…..just like im bisexual by biological design….i believe some people can choose to be monogamous even though they are biologically poly (and vice versa) just like some people can choose to have homosexual sexual encounters even though they are biologically heterosexual (and vice versa)….sometimes its what you do and sometimes its what you are.
to me the difference is polygamists want legal contracts applied to their relationships just like homosexuals what legal rights applied to their relationships….the answer is to take the state out of relationships (and sex) in every way as long as its between consenting adults.
of course there is no political will to do so just like there is no political will to change the prostitution laws….we are lucky we are making headway with gay rights at all.
& it’s discouraging to feel like one is now battling a backslide in gay rights as the right wing feels increasingly emboldened
that State needs to butt out of people’s personal lives & allow them to form whatever partnerships work for them. don’t expect to see that happen in my lifetime though
Quite more widespread than you think. And where modern polyamory is concerned, quite different than the sexist harem schemes maintained by Mormons and Muslims.
As far as I’m concerned, like everything else, as long as everyone involved is an adult and acting of their own free will, the rest of the world needs to mind its own business.
Actual polygamy, as opposed to polyamory, poses a number of legal questions, mostly related to divorce, as the existing rules governing child custody and division of property assume monogamy. I’m too old now for this to be an issue for me, but it’s something the next generation will have to grapple with.
I rather expect that, barring the continued success of the Christofascists, we will see all kinds of novel family arrangements over the coming decades and centuries as the last remnants of mandatory religious tradition are brushed into the dustbin of history.
Okay, word usage varies, especially in sub-communities, but just FYI this is what I understand to be general usage:
Polyamory: a general term incorporating a broad range of honest, non-monogamous relationships. (That “honest” is in there to distinguish it from people who aren’t monogamous but lie to one or more of their partners about it.)
Open relationship: A relationship in which the participants agree — generally with some guidelines — that they can be sexual with people outside of the relationship.
Philandering movement: I’ve never heard of that.
Don’t ask, don’t tell (aka DADT): When there’s an agreement between the participants that one or more of them can be sexual outside of the relationship, but they don’t want to hear anything about it. (I acknowledge that this sort of thing no doubt happens works just fine for the people involved. But there’s also some folks who claim that their spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend/whatever is okay with it but just doesn’t want to hear about it when they know damn well that they would not be okay with it.)
Swinging: The distinction between this and polyamory is a matter of some contention in some circles, but this is my take on it, FWIW. In swinging, the emphasis is generally on sex. In polyamory, the emphasis is generally on relationships.
And just for the record:
Polygamy: multiple spouses
Polygyny: multiple wives
Polyandry: multiple husbands
Oh, and just because it’s ssuch a common misunderstanding about Mormons: The Church of Latter-Day Saints has a pretty firm stance against polygamy. Participating in it will get you thrown out of the Church. The Mormons who practice it are splinter groups, and some of them involve bad practices (coercive involvement of girls (aka what I’d call rape) and domestic abuse) and some don’t.
Polygamy may have no future in the USA, but there are many men & women today who are exploring alternative sexualities involving more than one partner (aka polyamory). A friend of ours, Janet Hardy, has written the definitive book on the subject:
The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities (Greenery Press,
The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom is an advocacy & media watchdog group monitoring issues & helping people in trouble, like someone who’s lost their job because of their lifestyle. They are the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit challenging the DoJ’s new 18USC 2257 regulations.
So even though Krauthammer is an idiot interested in stirring up phony social issues, keep in mind that there are a large number of people who find themselves to be out of step with ‘normal’ sexuality & who feel that their rights & respect from society are on a par with gay rights in, say, the 50’s.
Umm. (1) It ain’t just a few mormons or “one evangelical Christian” who would like two wives, and believe or not it’s not just about men having multiple wives. (2) I haven’t seen “Big Love”, but I don’t imagine that I’m going out on a limb to guess that it has little relationship to reality. (3) Polyamory in America probably has at least as much reality in America’s future as it’s had in the past and has in the present, even if it’s a part of the past and the present that most folks are unaware of. (4) If you’re going to comment on something, it’s probably worth finding out more about it than what one Washington Post columnist has to say.
Here’s a link to some resources. I recommend reading the “alt.polyamory FAQ” first. And yeah, there’s the usual subset of wackos associated with polyamory … about what you’d expect from any random group of people group by some random bit of common interest. Say, like Democrats. But some of the nicest, smartest, sanest, and most honest people I know are in serious and committed relationships that just happen to include more than two people.
Should they be able to get married? Well, like a lot of same-sex couple, they are essentially married, in their own eyes and in the eyes of people who whose opinions they care about. True, their relationship isn’t legally recognized as a marriage. Should it be? Well, why the hell not? I haven’t heard any reasons that don’t same damned familiar from the deparate but-but-buts of people objecting to same-sex marriage.
Is that likely to happen in the near future? Hell no. So what? I don’t base my opinion on the validity of a relationship on whether the state — especially the USA ,these days — happens to officially recognize it or not.
my point is that polygamy has a small advocacy group and there is no more chance of it becoming legal than it is that heroin will become legal. In fact, there is less chance.
Polygamy has a small advocacy group, but the number of people who don’t fit into the traditional Christian model — and it is a specifically Christian model — of marriage is quite large and growing. Gays are the most visible subculture of whom this is true, but there are plenty of others, even larger, including that vast nameless mass that prefers not to marry at all.
What’s happening, really, is that traditional marriage is fast becoming irrelevant.
My hope is that one day, we will live in a genuinely free society in which it is the restriction that needs justification and an advocacy group, where we aren’t talking about decriminalizing what isn’t any of the business of the state (or one’s neighbors) because no such legal intrusions into private life exist.
right. The wingnuts should concern themselves with the fact that less and less people see any need for a marriage certificate, not with the prospect that people will start clamoring for several marriage certificates.
Your point was garbled by this bit of … I’m tempted to call it ignorance, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and call it clumsy wording:
Given that you’re castigating Krauthammer about his idocy on his subject, it’d help if you sounded like knew more than he did about the subject. Granted, he’s getting paid a lot more than you …
I don’t see what is clumsy about it. Polygamy is not going to be legalized in this country, period. If that prospect worries someone, they should put their mind at rest.
I recently read an in-depth profile on Saudi Arabia that was in the Economist about a month ago, and the Saudi royal family has the same kind of problems on a much bigger scale – hundreds of half-brother princelings in the up-and-coming generation vying for power, influence, and wealth.
Ooops! This was supposed to be attached to SallyCat’s comment upthread about her family history. Sorry.
ago are a military family with two boys. They both have psych degrees and they are very very involved in their church, but they keep that their business and I don’t even know what church they go to. We like and respect each other though it seems because we all four place people ahead of organizations. That seems to be the glue that solidified our friendship. They are the only couple that we know that can really give us a lickin playing Cranium too and sadly I must admit that they don’t own a television so we have a leg up on them there. They have more computers though. We were all talking about polygamy though and her husband asked me how I felt about it. Honestly, I think if all the adults involved have chosen it for themselves who am I to say? His wife said that he could have another wife as long as she promised to do the dishes every single day and she never had to touch another dish for the rest of her life and I think she meant it. Both of the husbands looked at each other and discussed getting another wife and came to the same conclusion quickly. During some of the high crisis times that life hands us all….just making it through it all with one wife is a miracle and any number of wives greater than that sounded like suicide.
I agree. If someone doesn’t want to do the dishes, hire someone to do them for you. If you can’t afford it, then just suck it up.
The reason the state has an interest in promoting marraige is limited to its interest in encouraging a healthy environment for children. That can justify granting certain property rights, family rights or even tax advantages, but it shouldn’t extend beyond that.
The laws against polygamy are really laws that protect women. They may seem less important now that women have the same opportunities to get an educations and make a decent living.
Nothing prevents people from entering into consensual relationships of any type, but the state doesn’t have any compelling reasons to recognize or reward them.
We still see the basic parenting unit to be two people. If they are two men or two women, they can raise a family too, and deserve to be considered a family under the law. But it does not follow from that that we need to extend the definition of family to groups of 3 or more.
The whole structure and rationale for legal sanction of marriage is besed on the idea of a unique relationship between two people.
The “two” part in turn, is based on biology, two parents.
Whether the two people or the two parents are different genders or the same is irrelevant.
But extending this to more than two people creates a lot of complications from a legal standpoint, for instance that unique relationship between two people.
Suppose a lady has eight husbands. With which one does she have this unique relationship?
If she is in a terrible accident, and her eight spouses disagree over whether to pull the plug or keep her on life support, whose decision do the doctors listen to?
You can all imagine your own scenarios, and some of you can call me old fashioned, but to me a marriage means two human beings.
The irony that the two of you would finally agree on what amounts to a bigoted cultural and religious stance is the really amazing part. Nothing unites enemies like having a third party to despise.
Suppose [insert hypothetical scenario here] is really not a valid social question unless you can demonstrate that it affects bystanders and that it does so more severely than the status quo. When the marriage-means-two-whatever crowd solves the problems of divorce, domestic violence, and child neglect, abuse, and abandonment, then it will have room to take a superior attitude. Or, alternatively, it could demonstrate that these problems are somehow exacerbated by secular polyamory. Neither is likely to happen, however.
The point on which you and Booman ultimately base your argument, that two people form a basic parenting unit, is simply false, even in the west, and would have seemed like a genuinely alien idea until the rise of the urban nuclear family in the mid-20th century. Prior to that, the role of the extended family in parenting was at least as important, and in some cases more important than the biological parents. This was true in the pre-industrial west, and it remains true in many non-western cultures. As far as the welfare of children goes, the nuclear family is an unmitigated disaster. If anyone should have to justify their recognition by the state, it is the isolated pair of parents who carelessly raise children outside of the protective support structure of the extended family, relying only on the largesse of the government and whatever insurance they can purchase from corporations.
Booman’s argument about protecting women is especially egregious because, aside from its blatant paternalism, it is a straw man, referring only to the practices of certain Mormon heretics and wealthy Muslims who practice a form of polygyny which is backed by archaic religious beliefs and is inherently abusive, and using it to smear the much larger secular polyamorous community which does not, in my experience, consist of very many one-guy-with-many-submissive-women arrangements.
“You can all imagine your own scenarios, and some of you can call me old fashioned, but to me a marriage means two human beings.”
With all due respect, that doesn’t mean shit to anyone but you, then, does it? What it really comes down to is whether you respect personal freedom and privacy, and whether you think the state ought to be in the position of giving the force of law to Jewish and Christian customs.
well I can’t please everybody. But I am not slamming polyamorists at all. I’m only talking about the law. Strictly speaking the only two people responsible for a child are the parents of that child. The extended family can take responsibility, but no law exists or should exist to compel them to take responsibility.
The state has no interest (or should have no interest) in who sleeps with whom. But they do have an interst in promoting two-parent households. Some might argure they don’t even have that interest, but I think it is a legitimate protection of the public interest, similar to the public interest in mandating and providing education.
It is under this principle of public interest that the state has the right to regulate marraige, both by granting certain incentives to be married, and providing certain disincentives to getting divorced. It is about the children.
When we bring gay couples into this, they are capable of being parents too, and they should have the same incentives and perquisites to marry and provide a parenting function as straight couples.
And since marraige rights are not contingent on actually having children, the right to marraige should not have any such test. Therefore, any two people should be able to enter into a marraige contract and receive the benefits, regardless of whether they actually intend to have children.
All of this is just speaking on the law.
Outside the law, people should be able to enter into any kind of arrangement they want without government inteference.
I don’t see this as paternalistic or bigoted in any way. I suppose you disagree.
I also am referring only to legal issues, the reason for the two parent thing again is ultimate responsibility.
Same scenario, child in accident, two parents. They disagree. They sue.
If you have three or more parents, you have the same thing, they disagree, they sue. But here is where it will get complicated. If one or two of the parents are the biological parents of the child, their lawyers are almost certainly going to argue that that will give their opinions more weight. So it will end up as if there were two parents anyway.
Now let’s go back to our lady with the 8 husbands, who disagree on the question of keeping the lady on life support. She has no living will.
Unless ONE of those husbands is considered legally to have that unique relationship with her, how shall this dispute be resolved? Sure they can all go to court, but what arguments can the attorneys for any of the spouses make? Everybody knows I’m her favorite?
In such a case, this lady essentially has nobody who has the authority to act on her behalf. In theory, she has 8 people to do it, but they disagree. So she is in danger of becoming in the legal sense, like a Jane Doe, brought in off the street with no known kin, since there is no one of the 8 that the law can point to and say, OK, it’s your call.
I don’t think that beyond these basic legal issues that the state has an interest in a two parent family, and I agree with BooMan that outside the legal realm, consenting adults have the right to do as they please.
The lady has the right to be married to 8 men, but I am saying that she also has the responsibility to designate one of them as the individual with whom she has a unique relationship that she wishes the law to recognize.
I do not think that her employer should be able to discriminate against any of her spouses, she should be able to put them all on the insurance, if she wants to, and in the event she dies without a will, the state should divide her assets equally between the eight.
But one of the eight does need to be on record as having this unique relationship for legal purposes.
I am also not opposed to having the law get out of the marriage business altogether, and having people draw up legal contracts to cover questions of property, child parentage, etc etc as needed by the individual, and let marriage be entirely a religious instrument, sacrament, whatever, and have a contract drawn up according to the tenets of whatever religion it is, and witnessed and notarized, and thus as enforceable via the courts as any other agreement drawn up between (or among) individuals for any purpose.
I think this is the first time anyone has accused me of favoring Jewish and Christian customs. 😉
You may not be aware that of all the Abrahamic faiths, only Islam seeks to limit the number of wives, and if you read the verses on which the four is based, you will remember that the Prophet says essentially yes, get married, marry one, or two or three or four, as long as you can care for them and support them all equally.
Can you not see the twinkle in his eye when he says these words? Of course no man, no matter how great his wealth can love multiple women equally!
I know that the older custom is practiced still in many places, and I can assure you that I am quite aware of differing cultural contexts, and I do not wish to discuss my disagreement with the way this or other snippets of various sacred texts are interpreted, but if you will read them, and seek the basic message, and use your brain, you will see that twinkle in the Prophet’s eye. 😉
Adultery is mentioned in the Ten Commandments, all four Gospels, and ten other books of the Bible. They really are not that keen on it.
However, King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines, so it is all relative.
Mainly, the Bible doesn’t care how many wives you have, but you better not sleep with someone else’s.
And of course back in those days, and to many people today both still are considered that way.
Women as property, and frequently, the only way to save a woman’s life was to marry her. She had to belong to somebody.
that is why you are required to marry your brother’s widow. It’s the least you can do under the circumstances.
whole two parents/children thing. Nice idea from a legal standpoint, but doesn’t seem to float well in real life. I’m a fricken child of the village! No mother at seven, father survived a pretty bad head injury construction contractor who worked all day, and that day started at 5:00 am. The village raised me and didn’t even get a tax deduction for it.
And note that I am not arguing in favor of the two parent basis in the legal system, I am saying that is the way it is, not the way it should be.
In one of my replies above, I suggest that the state could get out of the marriage business entirely, and let individuals make contracts according to their own needs.
Even for a child raised by the village, there needs to be some mechanism in place to provide that child with someone who will have the authority to represent their interests. In your case, that would have been your father. Would that have been the best choice? Maybe in your case, yes, but not necessarily for all.
And you raise another very good point: “villages” that raise children are not recognized. There are many families who regularly care for children who are not their own, but because they are not the child’s legal guardian, they do not, as you point out, receive even a tax deduction. Only one person can claim the child, and for anyone in the village to get that deduction, the custodial parent would have to waive his or her deduction, and hurl himself into a vortex of viscous and putrefying legal stew.
There is no reason that percentage of financial support cannot be divided up among those who provide the child with food, clothing and whatnot.
The biggest hurdle to this, however, would not be a legal one, but social.
I am not saying that this would have been the case with your father, obviously, I don’t know. But many parents who are legally the guardian of their children would be unwilling to forfeit part of their tax deduction for the care of that child, even though a significant part of that child’s care, including things that cost money, like food, clothing, school supplies, medical treatment, may actually be paid for by other people. And those other people should be able to share in the deduction for that child.
But you can see the complications of attempting to implement such a thing. Again, I am not talking about your situation with your father, who from what you say, did the best he could.
But you know that all parents do not do the best they can, and those would likely be the very parents who would not react positively, to say the least, to the suggestion that they cede part of their tax deduction to the family next door, even if they know that the child eats more meals next door than at home.
And even in cases where the parents are doing the best they can, but simply have insufficient income to provide for the child, taking away part of their tax deduction, even though the child eats next door, will not help either parent or child.
So the obvious solution, at least in part, would be to allow both custodial parent AND generous neighbor to claim the tax deduction.
But again, that would require the cooperation of the custodial parent, and aside from the fact that the politicians would raise holy hell at the notion of leaving more money in the pockets of needy families, there would also be the dilemma of whether to require both custodial parent and feeding neighbors to drown themselves in supporting paperwork, or open the floodgates of charges of “susceptible to abuse,” if no paperwork were required,and every family on the block could claim to be helping to support every child, which in some cases, is quite true. And personally, if the families have a low income, if it were up to me, I would say let them abuse it. Let them all claim every child on the street, they are paying too much in taxes anyway, consider the community child deduction a tax cut, maybe those children will get better food. 🙂
Back in the sixties, when I first figured out both that there were couples living together without first having gotten married, and that there were still polygamous communities in this country, it took me all of about five seconds to realize that there was no logical difference between one guy living with one woman out of wedlock, and one guy living with several women out of wedlock, except that he couldn’t legally do the second in any case because of the anti-polygamy laws.
So this issue is a non-starter.
So, here’s a Mormon joke:
Q: Do you know why Mormons gave up polygamy?
A: They had to because of the draconian penalty for having two wives — namely, two mothers-in-law.
Thank you, I’ll be here all weekend.
In honor of being formerly Mormon, of polygamist ancestors…I’ll drink to that! tee hee hee – it’s bottled in Salt Lake County!
hahahaha . . . I like that.
I get a kick out of the scene from the 1950 movie about Brigham Young, where Kit Carson (I think) is talking to Young:
Carson: So . . . how many —
Young (obviously peeved and anticipating the question): Twenty-eight.
Carson: (whistles)
The movie is so full of historical inaccuracies it’s funny, but that’s actually true of many of the biopics of the period. They hated to let the truth get in the way of a good story (still do, actually).