# General Discussion > Opinions >  How do you feel about polygamous marriage?

## Invictus_88

The gay thing seems sorted, with ~120/~20 for and against it, so how do you feel about polygamous marriage?

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## Maciamo

I don't see why polygamous marriages should be banned by law. People do what they want with their private life and the government shouldn't forbid any consensual relationship between adults. What's more, it is extremely hypocritical to allow gay marriages (like many Western European countries nowadays) and still ban polygamous marriages. After all polygamy is much more natural, has been widely practised around the world since the dawn of civilisations, and is still accepted even in very conservative societies like the Muslim countries. 

Furthermore, ménage à trois do exist, and are perfectly legal as long as not more than two of the three parties involved are married. If a three-way cohabitation is legal, and a homosexual marriage is legal, why not a polygamous one ? Is it better to keep a concubine beside the official wife, as was the normal practice among the well-off in Imperial China ? The prohibition of polygamy historically comes from the Christian Church. But again if gay marriages are legal, why on earth should polygamy be a crime punishable by jail time as it is now ?

The main problem in Western societies is the legal question of divorce (well the financial part), if one of the wives wants to leave her husband. But this could very easily be sorted out by a prenuptial agreement. I don't understand how anybody gets married without one anyway. That's pure naïveté.

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## ^ lynx ^

Opposed. It degrades the social value of women.

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## Cambrius (The Red)

Opposed. It is detrimental to social order in a variety of ways.

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## LeBrok

Roughly by birth there is one man per one woman. This nature of things shows, and probably history of our species that we are meant to be monogamous. 
Polygamy feels unjust in social settings. How come one woman can have few husbands and some will have none. Did I said it right, lol?
For these two reasons polygamy is not accepted in large by peoples. Even in societies were it is accepted it's not too popular, like in Islam.
It comes handy though, more in past than now, when after long wars there was shortage of men and surplus of women. Good healthy woman shouldn't be wasted. :)

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## Maciamo

> Roughly by birth there is one man per one woman. This nature of things shows, and probably history of our species that we are meant to be monogamous.


Yet, the exponential spread of a few paternal lineages proves that our ancestors were polygamous for a long period of (pre)history.




> Polygamy feels unjust in social settings. How come one woman can have few husbands and some will have none.


Naturally, if polygamy is allowed, then polyandry also should be, in the sake of fairness. However it is part of human nature that rich and/or powerful men have more than one sexual partner at the same time. 

It is common knowledge in France that every president since 1945, except dull and puritan De Gaulle, had at least one not-so-secret lover in addition to their wife. Mitterand even had a daughter with his lover, whom he later recognised. Sarkozy broke with the "tradition" by divorcing his wife and marrying again while in office. French culture is tolerant and understanding of men having a mistress. It some milieux it is even encouraged.

Most Japanese men (or at least white-collar workers over 40 years old) either have a mistress or frequent hostess bars, soap lands, massage parlours and other ubiquitous institution of the sex industry. In Japanese culture a wife is not seen as a woman (sexual object) once she has children. She is just a mother. This enables the husband to go see somewhere else. It is also generally accepted (and sometimes actively encouraged) by women. The same is true in Korea and it is becoming like this (again) in big Chinese cities.

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## LeBrok

Yes, obviously in past there was mixture of mono and poly. Certainly it was much easier for rich man to have few wives or many women on side. 
For the rest of ordinary man it was a huge task to support even one female with many kids. 
It pretty much boils down to economy. Mind that in past there was no birth control (at least sure and popular ones). You had sex and most likely made a child. One woman, lets say on average, can have around 10 kids through life time. Also keep in mind that food was a very limited resource back then, and still is in poor countries today. Mostly hunger was responsible for only 2-3 kids surviving till adulthood. Why would a man from past (90% of population) want to have more wives than one? In reality it was a grueling every day work of two adults to feed 3 growing kids, and they were always hungry.
Just for this economic reason most of today's population, regardless of the law and religion, go monogamist.
Social justice of “one for one” comes strong too in second place.


If we go even farther back to small hunter's group. The sharing aspect becomes one of the most important. So either they all could have sex with anyone, or one man pairs with one woman. Any bigger inequality in small groups destroys them, so both ways are just and right, makes them survive and live peacefully, unless I’m missing something.

Interesting thing develops now in China and India. Thanks to traditions and modern technology, fetuses of unwanted girls are killed, in favor on proffered boys. I think the ratio of mail to female is 100 to 90, respectively. 10% of men won't find a woman to live with. In case of India that's 50 million strong population of lonely man! If someone could organize these young horny man into an army, ...wow, scary to think...they'll will come and take your woman away,...or even start a regime of Lonely Horny Men Party, lol.
The only escape for Indian government against new revolution is to buy 50 million of Japanese pump dolls, or even robotic wives, and give it to these men. And hurry up, before someone organizes them….
Cheers

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## Maciamo

The Mormons in Utah are polygamists and seem to live happily with it. It is a proof that polygamy can work in a Western society.

My point is not that people should become polygamist. I am just saying that if at least three people wish to live this way in a country, the government has no right to prohibit or sanction it. In a free country people should be able to live the way they want, as long as personal/sexual relationships are concerned. Even if no a single person in a country approves of polygamy, there is no reason to make it illegal. What is this mania of wanting to prohibit behaviours that do not harm others, with no other basis than subjective ideology ? Is that the kind of society we want to live in ? If we start banning things based on ideology rather than reason and pragmaticism we might end up in the same kind of restrictive society as a Communist Police State or an Islamic State. Banning polygamy is at odd with the ideals of freedom of Western society.

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## LeBrok

Even though polygamy is forbidden in most western countries (maybe all), it already exists in form of Common Law unions/marriages. I think it can't be legally registered, but I guess a sharing of wealth if one quits the union is equal, like in registered marriage. All one has to do is to prove that lived with someone under one address for longer than 6 months in close relationship (in Canada). I wonder if there are some legal cases to prove me right. :)

My feelings are still torn on issue of polygamy.

Freedom wise; I'm all for it. It should be legal. I love freedoms!
Equality, sharing wise; I'm against it. If it gets popular, it might create more problems than it's worth. I think we have examples of it already. Years back, all Mormons were polygamists, now only small excommunicated groups remain poly. I'd swear they have their black secrets, more than half of young men, or just men, can't find Mormon wives. They have to look for one outside and bring to Mormon faith. Mathematically speaking, if 50% of man have 2 wives then other 50 have none. This can't go on for long. If we had wars every generation and were losing half the male population every time, then yes it would make good sense.

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## Marianne

I believe that if someone wants to be married with many women/men and they agree, he or she should be allowed to do so (of course not in church since religion has its own rules). However I voted no because of the rare cases of men (usually) that marry more than one women without them being aware of it. If these men can't be found easily now that it is forbidden to do so, I can't imagine how the situation will be if it is actually allowed. Unless there is a way to prevent such incidents, however rare they might be, I don't want to give people more opportunities to treat others like that. I consider cheating one of the worst ways to treat someone and being married with 2 people without them knowing is the wost form of it.

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## Maciamo

> Freedom wise; I'm all for it. It should be legal. I love freedoms!
> Equality, sharing wise; I'm against it. If it gets popular, it might create more problems than it's worth. I think we have examples of it already. Years back, all Mormons were polygamists, now only small excommunicated groups remain poly. I'd swear they have their black secrets, more than half of young men, or just men, can't find Mormon wives. They have to look for one outside and bring to Mormon faith. Mathematically speaking, if 50% of man have 2 wives then other 50 have none. This can't go on for long. If we had wars every generation and were losing half the male population every time, then yes it would make good sense.


It all depends how widespread polygamy is/becomes. If it's just 0.01% of men having two wives, there shouldn't be any serious unbalance problem. If it's 50% of men, then it will be problematic. But I cannot envision a modern society where half of the men have enough wealth (and energy and patience) to support two or more wives. Only a few very rich (and attractive, I would suppose) men could do it. Even if more could, there should be enough wives who want to share their husband. I believe that this will never be more than a tiny percentage of the population. This is why I am not opposed to legalising polygamy. But I am not opposed to suppress completely all marriages and have only civil unions instead. That's the way modern Western society is going anyway.

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## Invictus_88

> Opposed. It is detrimental to social order in a variety of ways.


Did you also vote against gay marriage?

A lot of the reasons for opposing polygamous marriages seem to be analogously invalid to those which used to be levelled against homosexual marriage.

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## Neander

I think, the legalization of poligamy will rise more and more the number of muslims in Europe, and this is the reason why it is not legal.

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## Princess Zoe

As long as it is between consenting adults, that's OK with me. Live and let live. My sister is gay, and that is also OK by me. 

At this time I do not have a SO, I have not dated for about a year and half. I am single and like it that way. I have been married 3 times, divorced 3 times. So I think it is difficult to keep one relationship on good terms and contunied interest and contunied love. So I don't think having a third or fourth person in the relationship will work. I see a lot of fighting and misunderstandings. Just think about it, long term. Do you get along with the one person you have now? What if one has kids, the other not. How will they treat your kids. You hate Dogs? They have 2 large dogs, it goes on and on...

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## Princess Zoe

> Opposed. It degrades the social value of women.


You are assuming that only men would have more than one partner. Women could have 2 husbands as well.

But to be realistic, marriage seems to be more benifical to men and as they age, and they want to me married (steady sourse of sex?) Women on the other hand, seem to want to be single the more they age. Especially the educated woman. That leaves even less women available for group marriage, so I don't see it happening on a large scale. 

Also men my age are starting to have health problems. I already helped to take care of both my sick parents, and it was very very hard. I don't plan on taking care of a sick old man. Taking care of two sick old men? Get real.

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## Princess Zoe

> Interesting thing develops now in China and India. Thanks to traditions and modern technology, fetuses of unwanted girls are killed, in favor on proffered boys. I think the ratio of mail to female is 100 to 90, respectively. 10% of men won't find a woman to live with. In case of India that's 50 million strong population of lonely man! 
> Cheers


It very stupid to kill off women. And there are more problems to this than you mentioned. There are lots of gangs of young men in China who have nothing better to do than rape, rob, kill...the officials are having serious problems with this. (no kidding) And surrounding countries are complaining because of the influx of Chinese Men who are emigrating in order to find women... This has always grated on me...until I thought of the good side of this! Take Saudi Arabia, they also kill their own women, there is about a million more men than women. AND THAT IS THE GOOD PART! They have no one to BREED with! Eventually there will be less of them. That way they can kill off themselves and maybe not come over here to kill us. I haven't forgotten about 9/11.
You can counter this by saying all men are aggressive and kill each other. Look at European history, war after war, countries boundaries change with whoever is strongest. da, da, da...but I have not heard of Europeans, massively killing their own women. The pagans would sacrifice women to the gods, but not in massive amounts.
If I am wrong, someone educate me as to what other nationalities kill their women.
Sorry, I got off subject.

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## Princess Zoe

Can I turn on HTML? I seem to be loosing my formating. Or is there another way to format?

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## Princess Zoe

> The Mormons in Utah are polygamists and seem to live happily with it. It is a proof that polygamy can work in a Western society.


I think you are mistaken. There are polygamist relationships that can work. But there is the "secret" aspect of it. You have the strong men (church elders) who trade daughters. You give me your 12 year old daughter as a wife, I give you mine. This is slavery to women, and they are also so young they are brainwashed into believing they like it! Then they mass produce babies that the husband can not support. They go on welfare. 

The young men are driven out (by the old men) and have to go elsewhere to live (lucky for them).


I still think it is OK between consenting, educated adults, but that is not what is happening with the Mormons.

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## Princess Zoe

> Even though polygamy is forbidden in most western countries (maybe all), it already exists in form of Common Law unions/marriages. I think it can't be legally registered, but I guess a sharing of wealth if one quits the union is equal, like in registered marriage. All one has to do is to prove that lived with someone under one address for longer than 6 months in close relationship (in Canada). I wonder if there are some legal cases to prove me right. :)


I don't know of any legal cases to prove right or wrong, but I can see one hell of a mess. Being divorce three times, the financial mess, fighting over the kids, and many other aspects. Who gets the house, cars, bank accounts...Knowing the way the law works, and how the Judge will see it, he most likely will only recognize the legal union. Way too complicated to get involved with sorting out an illegal union.

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## ^ lynx ^

> You are assuming that only men would have more than one partner. *Women could have 2 husbands as well*.


That's called poliandria (the opposite, when a man take some wives, it's called poliginia). Poliandria (unlike poliginia) has been really infrequent through history so yes I'm convinced that being poligamia legalized it would establish the poliginia type of marriages.

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## Invictus_88

It seems a safe assumption that polygamy would legalise any combination.

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## ^ lynx ^

I know it... but i think the poliandria type of marriages would be almost inexistent.

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## Leandros

Degradation.

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