Polygamy goes mainstream in the U.S.

by philg

TIME magazine recently ran “Polygamy Is Natural For Some People,” an essay advocating that polygamous marriages be recognized in the U.S.:

As far as my second wife and I are concerned, we’re married. But changing the law would afford her legal recognition and protection.

Legalizing polygamy actually empowers women. … If such relationships were legally binding, all spouses would be protected and have an equitable stake in the common property.

… Currently, some polygamists abuse the system by putting their additional wives on welfare. States only recognize one spouse in marriage, therefore making “single mothers” out of subsequent wives. Legalizing polygamy would also help neutralize some of the social stigma. People tend to confuse legality with morality. Same-sex marriage was illegal in many states until this summer. Interracial marriage used to be illegal. The laws only changed because people stepped forward.

Monogamy is natural to many. Polygamy is just more natural to us, and I’m fighting for our rights as a family.

Readers: Have you seen other examples of mainstream publications running advocacy pieces for polygamy?

11 thoughts on “Polygamy goes mainstream in the U.S.”

  1. I am just wondering what the end-game will be. Incest? Bestiality? Marrying robots? People with split personalities having differing marriages applying to different personalities?

  2. Don’t neglect the influence moslem Middle-East oil potentates exercise on American policy through their paid surrogates and people who would dearly like to be their paid surrogates, plus birds of a feather who flock together– writers for prestigious East-coast publications, PR flacks, think-tankers, political staffers, “non-profit” staffers… There are lots of people helping push the Overton window on marriage away from European norms inch-by-inch.

  3. I’m really surprised to see this come out in Time.

    Monogamy gets defended as kind of a socialism for men in terms of sex and marriage. The argument is that otherwise a few high-status men would scoop up all the attractive women. I think this makes some sense, though it may be over-stated.

    I wonder if its feasible to get the government out of marriage. That state’s interest seems to be in enforcing some sort of fair division of household assets in the event of a separation (though the government currently doesn’t do this very well with couples, and doesn’t get involved when children leave their parents’ households), and in how children are raised and treated. There is a bunch of rights connected with being married such as hospital visiting rights, but alot of that is either not needed or can be handled by someone registering certain people of their choice to handle this or that portion of their affairs.

    Among other things, an income guarantee could replace child support. We will make sure your household always has x income related to the median, so since you are taking this from the taxpayer, you aren’t allowed to take it from a former spouse. Because I’m concerned about overpopulation, I would prefer that the income guarantee be for adults only but I could see how people would want to increase it for households with children.

    Child support could also be replaced by a scheme of mandatory child support insurance (even allowing voluntary child support insurance would be a big improvement), adults get small amounts removed from their paycheck, but the insurance kicks in to bring their income up to a certain level if they have to raise children, or just automatically covers certain child-related expenses. Obviously I’m envisaging tying child support to the actual cost of raising children or the poverty line, which I know from reading this blog is itself a big change in the system.

  4. Cultures with legal polygamy are invariably places you don’t want to live, regardless of the actual popularity of the practice. We can speculate on the nature of the relationship ’till the cows come home, but it’s a stark correlation.

  5. What man in their right mind would want more than one wife? One is enough work as it is, and expensive at that. Throw in some kids and it gets even more expensive. And the nagging… can you imagine? Multiply it by two, three, or even five. Then the arguments between wives you have to settle. The political games. The drama. Remembering birthdays/weddings anniversaries/making everyone feel special.

    What kind of women sign up for this? Mostly the ugly ones, or widowed sister-in-laws, neighbors, etc. The slim pickings… As Mark Twain said: “Then I was touched. My heart was wiser than my head. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly and pathetically “homely” creatures, and as I turned to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, I said, ‘No—the man that marries one of them has done an act of Christian charity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not their harsh censure—and the man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand uncovered in his presence and worship in silence.’”

    Even another journalist passing through confirmed his observations: “There is not a handsome woman in the country; they are the worst looking … I ever saw.”

    I wonder what Mormon polygamist divorces are like. Can you imagine the child support?

  6. It should be noted that those who practice polygamy already (e.g., 33 children with 18 women to take an actual example from Memphis) already mostly rely on the tax payer to fund their lifestyle. In essence, the guaranteed minimum income is already in play in this context.

    It would also seem that rather than building up a lot of assets for a single woman, the rational choice for a man would be to take more wives until each wife has a minimum set of assets. For example, a cabin and some fields to till in a traditional society, or somewhat above a small apartment and an HR position with maternity leave in our modern society.

  7. Oddly enough no one advocates for polyandry, the practice of a woman having several husbands. It used to be commonplace in Nepal, where a single man could not financially support a wife by himself.

  10. I haven’t seen anything in the NYT or the New Yorker, nor do I expect to: the implicit and not-incorrect association of polygamy with more conservative cultures (some Mormon sects, the Muslim world) would probably prevent the issue from ever getting any kind of traction. Plus the notion of one man having multiple wives seems incongruous with feminism, although probably neither I nor anybody else could articulate exactly why that is.

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