Yeah. I don’t have much of a romantic outlook on the issue. Not that I don’t think there can be anything romantic about relationships – I’m not a cynic in that sense.

I certainly don’t think human partnerships are always reducible to a business partnership. But when the state gets involved in those relationships, there’s not much magic or mystery or romance or whatever you want to call it involved in that aspect. I see it as more about contract law.

Would you really want the government involved in certifying or registering these affairs? I just don't see a need to bring the state in at all. People can have all the polymorphous sex they like, and if children result, there's legal custody and support procedures for that already.

Steven, it sounds like you want to reject real-world evidence that that conflicts with whatever point it is you're trying to make. You have an agenda, and you are looking for facts to fit it.

I knew you didn't want to talk about polygamy in the real world, you want to bring up hypothetical situations and work out some fantasy-land ethics from that.

It's okay to use hypothetical situations to work out your philosophy, as long as those hypotheticals are informed by how things really work in the real world. You don't want to talk about the kinds of polygamy we find in the real world, you want to talk about some hypothetical "good kind."

If you point to an example in this country of what you're talking about, you're talking about people living in an illegal situation, which would lead to behaviors not found in a society where that behavior is sanctioned.

Regardless, there are no examples I'm aware of, in looking at any real world example close to the situation you're talking about where anything beyond two partners led to a stable relationship capable of lasting beyond a few years, without also ending in some sort of tragedy.

Often, these relationships are practiced within "cultish" environments. Often, the proponents of these cults make all sorts of outlandish claims contrary to human nature-- children are sexual beings, pedophilia is an arbitrary construct, polygamy is possible-- that just aren't borne out in independent, objective analysis. There are never, ever any happy endings to these stories.

And if a society sanctions such behavior, then that is, by definition, a polygamous society, even if monogamy remains the majority behavior.

There simply aren't any examples in human history of any culture anywhere in the world where polygamy takes place that does not also involve sexual and individual oppression on a massive scale.

There are examples in history of cultures where women could have more than one male mate. The only ones I'm aware of take place at a time in human history and in cultures that had not or were in the process of, making a transition from paleolithic hunter-gatherer to neolithic agricultural societies where animals have been domesticated.

In fact, there's an interesting cultural remnant in the Codes of Hammurabi, in which a woman with more than one husband can be sanctioned by having her teeth bashed out with a brick. These codes were written in a time and place when paleolithic behaviors were not only disappearing, they were being shunned by the emerging bronze age culture.

So, could you, in our culture, find an example of three women living together harmoniously, in a mutually beneficial relationship. Yes. Temporarily, and only if it is an extremely small number of isolated cases, so small as to not have an impact on the community (much less society), and I'm not talking about offended little old ladies.

There are no long-term, large scale examples in the real world. They don't work and they lead to tragedy of one sort or another, because, eventually, someone ALWAYS gets hurt. Without referring to some supernatural god or religion, that's how it is you call it "immoral."

PS: Let me right now predict your response is "yeah, but..." followed by objections of the sort I have previously and repeatedly discredited. Ah, well.

Stephen, I think Carlton's real-world objections are probably the most damning evidence against polygamy.

But even in the fantasy thought experiment that you proposed, the objections that I brought up still apply. Marriage is an exclusive contract. When you try to apply that huge bundle of rights and privileges to more than two people, you run into all kinds of difficulties very quickly. Think of whatever marriage benefit you like: inheritance, insurance coverage, survivor benefits, child support, power of attorney in health care decisions, and so on. Maybe you could write a contract that would approximate marriage for a larger number than two, but however you slice the pie, the multiple spouses are going to end up with less than if they had stuck with a two-person marriage.

On to that basic problem, add the extra real-world fact that it would disproportionately be women who would be getting suckered into these not-as-good-as-paired-marriage contracts, and I think that's plenty of justification for society to step in and ban the whole practice.

Good point, which reminds me of one more problem, the fact that many of those rights can't be simply assigned by contract, they also have to be recognized and paid for by employers and government. Which I think is a lot easier to justify in the case of gay marriage than polygamy.

My point was (from the previous page): "I have no objection to, say, three adults entering into a consensual relationship, be it two men one woman, two women one man, three men, or three women. If they want some of the protections that marriage gives (whether it actually gets officially called 'marriage' or not) then they should be able to arrange that."

That was a bit convoluted, I guess. Sorry if that was a bit challenging for you.



I sure do. I’ve long since noticed that Comicon is the prime mover in changing United States social policy. You’re on to me, you cunning so-and-so.



Well, I’m not as vexed about the issue as you are. However, I do know of people that actually want – yes, in the real world – to have some kind of legal recognition of multiple relationships (they don’t like the term ‘polygamy’, but they accept that it is definitionally correct). Plural marriage doesn’t preclude bigamy restrictions, by the way. I can’t see any reasonable objection to a three party marriage where each spouse is a spouse of the other, but could see perhaps reasons for not allowing a man to have two wives who are not themselves connected by the arrangement. This would alleviate some of your objections, it seems to me.

I agree that most of these arrangements have previously been practiced within a cultish environment. (Although most organised religion seems cultish to me.) I think that’s where most of the objectionable aspects come from: the closeted, cult community with patriarchal standards.



So it’s a “polygamous society” if there is any sanctioned polygamy of any sort. Then it would also be a “monogamous society” by your own definition. Yet you said: “In a polygamous society, there are powerless women raped and abused in ways that simply do not take place to the same degree in a monogamous society.”

So your point is nonsense. I think you’re being disingenuous here.

What a peculiar way of putting it. I know of actual people who want that actual arrangement.



This is the best objection to multiple partner marriage that has been suggested. But even if we grant it, it is more practical than moral, yes?



Well, yeah, in that sense, but that isn’t a reason to say consenting adults can’t enter into such a relationship.



These can be mostly appointed ad hoc (virtually anyone can be appointed power of attorney, for example). One of the people I referred to before explained it like this: there’s a melange of financial contracts, powers of attorney and the like that people currently cobble together. They have to do this because the state won’t recognise their relationship as a kind of marriage. Then there's this not unrealistic hypothetical: “My partner is in hospital but I can't visit her because her first (and only legal) partner is the only one who counts”. A reasonable complaint, I think.

I don't understand the hospital visitation thing. I've visited many people in the hospital who were in no way related to me.

Just in terms of the components involved, I don't see how polygamy would ever be an equal relationship among the participants. One partner has the thing, and the others have to share it. I suppose it's possible that there will be a group where only the thing-possessor will be the one who wants more sex, and the others are happy to only have it occasionally, but I'm betting that's a real rare case. Thus, there logically seems to be a domination intrinsic to polygamy, if the relation is closed. However, if we live in a society that views women and men equally (at least, in terms of agency and moral rights), why shouldn't a woman or a man be able to choose to enter into a dominating relationship? That's pretty much the conservative Christian view of women, and many women accept that view. Sure, you could say it's because of their immoral upbringing. I wouldn't disagree, but I'm also not into forcing people into raising their kids according to my moral system, even if I happen to believe I'm right. If I were to limit marriages according to my own view, very few people would be allowed to marry, monogamously or otherwise. Typically, I'd suggest that government has no place in marriage to begin with, but I can also see that by bringing the law into such arrangements, it does moderate what's allowable, shapes people's opinion of marriage. That is, over the long haul, the law has helped bring better treatment to women in particular -- can't deny that. Of course, the law has also had detrimental effects on the views of women, so it works both ways. Anyway, if the law is going to be involved, it needs to rid any religious bias out of the equation. I'm sure that we could set up rules that protects the thing-desiring partners in a polygamous relation just as we do with monogamy.

But what if Polygamy is all a big scam by the lesbian industrial complex? Like bees. A bunch of women get to live and work together as sisters and share in the work of their commune, they allow one sperm donor to be a sort of Queen to give them children?