According to the Sydney Star Observer, the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) is getting its holy/frilly knickers in a twist over continued and growing support for equal marriage rights for same sex couples. The latest nuttiness, covered in “Christian Lobby ‘getting desperate’“, runs along these lines:
ACL claims if marriage is redefined, as it has been in Canada, “the next push will be for marriage to include polygamous relationships, as is currently being tested in a court in Canada”.
The SSO quotes Alex Greenwich, the convener of Australian Marriage Equality:
“In Australia the definition of marriage is quite clear — it is a loving committed union freely entered into by two people, something which can easily encompass same-sex partners but which is fundamentally different from polygamy which is usually one man marrying and lording it over several women,” he said.
“By using a desperate scare-tactic like the threat of polygamy, the Australian Christian Lobby is showing it has no real case against allowing same-sex couples to marry.”
This leads me to the fundamental question: what is actually wrong with polygamy? Sure, forced polygamy, or polygamy without all parties mutually respecting or loving each other would be wrong: but why do so many groups get themselves wound up into a mess over the notion of polygamous or polyamorous relationships?
Franklin Veaux drew a “map of non-monogamous relationships” – it may be based partly in humour, but it does serve to emphasise a very important point: the conservatives of the world, obsessed with what others do in private, and terrified of sexual expression, would have us believe that there are no shades of grey – there is “normal sexual behaviour” and “depraved sexual behaviour”.
That map looks like this:
There’s a lot of non-monogamous relationships on that map, with even polygamous and polyamorous relationships just forming a small subset. About the only one I struggle with is the “cheating” one: simply because in my personal opinion, relationships should be founded on honesty. (Or to put it another way: there’s no such thing as an open relationship where only one partner knows the relationship is open…)
The most simple question in this entire debate is this: so long as (a) everyone in the relationship is happy with it, (b) all enter into the relationship of their own free will, (c) all in the relationship are legal adults, and (d) all are free to leave the relationship … what right does society have to prevent the relationship from happening?
So I’ll throw the ACL’s fear right back at them: who cares if, as a result of allowing same-sex marriage, society then starts to evaluate whether 3-way (or indeed, n-way) relationships should be legally recognised?
The people in those relationships will care – will care a lot.
And we should support them.
Related posts:
“So long as (a) everyone in the relationship is happy with it, (b) all enter into the relationship of their own free will, (c) all in the relationship are legal adults, and (d) all are free to leave the relationship … what right does society have to prevent the relationship from happening?”
The trouble comes in ensuring that those criteria are met in every case. History and the study of other cultures show that this is or has been difficult. Polygamy often gives rise to misogyny — or perhaps misogyny gives rise to polygamy. If the latter is true, then injecting polygamy into a tolerant, rational, equal society may work quite well. If the former is accurate, then we have an obligation to avoid promoting it (which does not necessarily mean ‘promote avoiding it’).
Are we a tolerant, rational, equal society? I believe we’re getting close. But maybe I just don’t get out often enough.
This is a bit of a slippery slope, but I can see unhappily married men using polygamy laws to vindicate their perhaps long-unrequited lust, or to avoid dealing with their current situation.
I’m told it would be a legal nightmare as well, when it comes to property ownership, but that’s another issue entirely.
While I appreciate your concerns, none of those concerns are any less valid against 2-person relationships than they are against 3-person relationships – i.e., if we worry about those, then we should equally deny regular marriages. Regular marriages can lead to nightmares in relation to property ownership, can lead to some people conducting spousal abuse, etc.
In short: if we worry about all the negative reasons why society might struggle with an evolved sense of morality, we never get anywhere.
[...] is the only natural state we can live in, given our evolutionary background. In my post, “What’s so scary about polygamy?“, I linked to someone’s very clever “map of non-monogamous relationships“. [...]