GIVE ME POLYGAMY RATHER THAN THE DEATH OF MARRIAGE

From Dan Cere:

Part of the difficulty with the current debate over polygamy is that it treats this ancient marital institution (i.e. polygamy or, to be more accurate, polygny – one man and many wives) as a greater threat to marriage than the proposed reduction of marriage to a bleak domestic regime (i.e. marriage as a union of two persons and nothing more). This argument needs some serious qualifications.

Polgamy (or polygny) preserves many of the complex and crucial credentials of marriage cultures. First, Polygamy preserves the bridging of the sex divide. Second, it preserves the procreative nature of the bond. Third, it preserves the birth right of children to identify and to be connected to their biological parents. This is particularly true of the near universal form of polygamy (polgyny)--not the rare and nearly non-existant form of polygamy (polyandry). Finally, classical polygamy affirms the essentially dyadic nature of the marital bond. Polygamy literally means many marriages. It is a series of distinct dyadic marriages that are contracted separately and co-exist simultaneously (as opposed to the serial polygamy of divorce culture).

Polygamous cultures may offend our monogamous sentiments nevertheless they are fairly robust marriage cultures. No anthropologist worth his or her salt would dare excommunicate polygamy from the conjugal family.

However, the proposal to reduce marriage to mere union of two persons bleaches out these rich layers of meaning that even polygamous cultures manage to sustain. Charles Taylor warns that a fundamental malaise of modern culture is the erosion of meaning from vital social institutions. Marriage is being emptied of meaning. It is becoming a toy--a plaything for subjective wants and preferences. This collapse of social meaning is far more deadly to marriage than any polygamous alternative.

posted by maggie at 11:07 AM VOTE

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home