Polygamy — is big love a many splendored thing?

  • I’m unclear:

    1. Are we sup­posed to be afraid that Amer­ica is going to legal­ize polygamy?
    2. Am I sup­posed to be really bent out of shape about that?

    I’m late check­ing out this cover arti­cle from a Weekly Stan­dard from June 6, but they seem to think the answers are: (1) yes; (2) should be.

    I sup­pose my rea­son for doubt­ing the case that the author — Stan­ley Kurtz — makes for polygamy being the next tidal wave to hit is that he seems to base so much of it on two TV shows: an Egypt­ian one about an old guy court­ing his sec­ond wife and HBO’s “Big Love” about a polyg­a­mous fam­ily. Um … yeahhh? That hardly strikes me as proof of a com­ing earthquake.

    On the other hand, I feel a lit­tle less com­pla­cent about (2) than I did. Should I get bent out of shape? I was happy to stay on the side­lines and con­sider that hav­ing major objec­tions to the very idea of polygamy was one of those “Protes­tant things.” What I hadn’t con­sid­ered was that the peo­ple who are very inter­ested in see­ing mar­riage rede­fined in order to legit­imize gay unions are will­ing to try an end run. Eat away at some other vari­a­tions on the theme of one man and one woman, and you’ve got an open­ing to exploit.

    Of course, lib­eral law pro­fes­sors aren’t defend­ing polygamy out of affec­tion for patri­archy. Their goal is to estab­lish the prin­ci­ple that indi­vid­u­als have the right to cre­ate and define their fam­i­lies as they see fit. Ulti­mately, that would put same-sex mar­riage, polyamory, non­sex­ual group part­ner­ships, and even sin­gle­hood on a par with tra­di­tional mar­riage, result­ing in the effec­tive abo­li­tion of mar­riage itself as a legal status.

    I try not to be a con­spir­acy nut unless it’s really, really nec­es­sary. Is there a Vast Left-wing Con­spir­acy out at the Berke­ley School of Advanced Lib­eral Law and Social Engi­neer­ing com­ing up with game­plans for undo­ing every­thing sacred? No. But the events of the last fifty years or so have started forces in motion that seem to take many, many peo­ple along in their cur­rent. Peo­ple who are tak­ing any mea­sures nec­es­sary to under­mine the insti­tu­tion of mar­riage may not con­sider that they are doing it out of any bad inten­tion; they may just wor­ship a god whose name is Pro­gres­sive­ness or Free­dom or (heaven for­bid) Fair­ness in All Things, and that god may demand more and more by way of sacrifice.

    It’s hard to feel like we’re all that close to hav­ing the legal prece­dence to launch an attack on monog­a­mous mar­riage, but then I didn’t think we were any­where close to legally sanc­tioned gay mar­riage until the state of Mass­a­chu­setts went for it.

    So, apart from the effect on one-woman, one-man mar­riage, is polygamy in and of itself a bad thing? It does, after all, have bib­li­cal pre­cen­dent. There are sto­ries of ter­ri­ble abuses, but the pro-polygamists has­ten to say that one could say the same of monogamy if one only looked at “bad” monogamy.

    But here’s where Kurtz brings in some inter­est­ing analy­sis. The prob­lem is that in order to get “good” polygamy, you have to have a soci­etal sit­u­a­tion that rarely exists in this country:

    Yet [pro-polygamous law pro­fes­sor Angela] Camp­bell never stops to ask what it takes to make polygamy work. The answer: a set of rules and atti­tudes that could never be imported to North Amer­ica, except in the few closed, author­i­tar­ian com­mu­ni­ties where “patri­ar­chal” polygamy actu­ally flour­ishes today. The Bamanan deflect jeal­ousy by deem­pha­siz­ing love. Bamanan mar­riages are arranged by fam­i­lies, and a sleep-rotation sched­ule damps down indi­vid­ual attach­ments. Eco­nomic suc­cess depends on hav­ing a large fam­ily labor force, and jeal­ousy over new­com­ers is coun­tered by appren­tic­ing junior wives to senior wives, who closely super­vise their daily work.

    This same empha­sis on rules and hier­ar­chy within a tightly bound group explains why the Bedouin chil­dren stud­ied by Al-Krenawi turn out all right. Things get bet­ter when Bedouin kids grow up and receive sur­ro­gate par­ent­ing from their extended kin. But that depends on giv­ing up what Al-Krenawi calls “the West­ern lib­eral con­cep­tion of indi­vid­ual auton­omy.” To get all that sur­ro­gate par­ent­ing, the Bedouin adopt an “author­i­tar­ian and group-oriented” iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with an extended fam­ily and tribe. And con­sider “soro­ral polygamy,” eas­ily the most emo­tion­ally suc­cess­ful vari­ant of polygamy world-wide. In soro­ral polygamy, a man mar­ries a set of sis­ters, min­i­miz­ing jeal­ousy. It’s a clever strat­egy, but just try adapt­ing such kin-based pref­er­ences and arranged mar­riages to the United States.

    The author goes so far as to say that you can’t have both democ­racy and polygamy.

    Exclu­sive affec­tion for a unique indi­vid­ual is the struc­tural foun­da­tion on which West­ern fam­i­lies are built. In polyg­a­mous soci­eties, where mar­riages are arranged and wives and chil­dren live col­lec­tively, too much indi­vid­u­al­ized love (for spouses or chil­dren) endan­gers group sol­i­dar­ity. Yet in a demo­c­ra­tic soci­ety, indi­vid­u­al­ized love is praised and cul­ti­vated as the foun­da­tion of fam­ily sta­bil­ity. So take your pick. You can have a love-based demo­c­ra­tic cul­ture of monogamy, or an authority-based hier­ar­chi­cal cul­ture of polygamy. But … you can’t have both.

    I’m not that wor­ried that our form of gov­ern­ment will dis­ap­pear with­out a whim­per, but Kurtz’ obser­va­tions on the end goal of “polyamory” did get my attention.

    It is inher­ently dif­fi­cult to keep mul­ti­part­ner unions together. The tra­di­tional solu­tion is to rely on rules, clear lines of author­ity, the sup­pres­sion of emo­tion, and a sense of oblig­a­tion to kin. Col­lec­tive sol­i­dar­ity is the mate­r­ial and spir­i­tual pay­off for all the sac­ri­fice. Yet the polyamor­ists cul­ti­vate love, resist author­ity, dis­pense with orga­ni­za­tional rules, and try to wish jeal­ousy away. Once all the stability-inducing sac­ri­fices have been dis­pensed with, imper­ma­nence is the inevitable result.

    Polyamory is a cover-all term for a bewil­der­ing vari­ety of rela­tion­ship forms — every­thing from open mar­riage, to bisex­ual tri­ads, to a man with mul­ti­ple women, to a woman with mul­ti­ple men, to large sex­ual groups, and many more. The “rules” gov­ern­ing these arrange­ments are entirely flex­i­ble. There might be three “pri­mary” part­ners who actu­ally live together, and sev­eral addi­tional “sec­ondary” part­ners (col­lec­tively shared or not) to whom the three “pri­maries” are less com­mit­ted. The lev­els of com­mit­ment, and the range of part­ner­ship and mutual involve­ment, are sub­ject to con­tin­ual change and rene­go­ti­a­tion. Open and hon­est com­mu­ni­ca­tion is the only rule. Polyamor­ists empha­size that mul­ti­part­ner unions take intense and con­stant work. Yet this need for a higher level of mon­i­tor­ing and nego­ti­a­tion only high­lights the forces push­ing against stability.

    So, bot­tom line: we may begin hav­ing soci­etal pro­gres­sives press­ing for some­thing that appeals to them merely for its nov­elty, its abil­ity to shock con­ven­tional peo­ple and its pos­si­ble use­ful­ness as a plat­form to usher in gay mar­riage. In order for it to suc­ceed, monog­a­mous mar­riage has to fail, the tremen­dous ben­e­fits of democ­racy have to be com­pro­mised and every­one has to close their eyes to the sys­temic problems.

    Yep, sounds groovy. I can’t wait. Maybe Greg’s sec­ond wife will help pick him up at the airport.


    Related posts:

    1. C. S. Lewis on the love of God
    2. Two wolves
    3. Government-regulated Chris­tian­ity
    4. Yes, Vir­ginia, there is a St. Nicholas
    5. Muskrat love, sort of

    June 23rd, 2006 | Grace | 1 Comment |

One Response and Counting...

  • Erica 06.23.2006

    I’ll be bent out of shape with you. Frightening!

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