A study found that in polygamous cultures, levels of rape, kidnap, murder and robbery increase as the dissatsified men left on the shelf go on the rampage.

Researchers from the University of British Columbia say that monogamous marriage has replaced polygamy because it has lower levels of inherent social problems.

Prof Joseph Henrich said: "Our goal was to understand why monogamous marriage has become standard in most developed nations in recent centuries, when most recorded cultures have practiced polygaymy.

"The emergence of monogamous marriage is also puzzling for some as the very people who most benefit from polygymy - wealthy, powerful men - were best positioned to reject it.

"Our findings suggest that that institutionalised monogamous marriage provides greater net benefits for society at large by reducing social problems that are inherent in polygymous societies."

Published in journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society the study represents the most comprehensive study of polygamy and the institution of marriage.

Labels: children, Marriage, men, monogamy, parenting, polygamy, women

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Earlier this year, I was part of a Constitution Day panel discussion on same-sex marriage at Rutgers University. With seven panelists in a 90-minute program (four in favor of same-sex marriage and three opposed), we were each given just a few minutes for opening statements. I decided to make ten short observations, each of which could prompt more discussion afterward. Below are eight of those observations. (I omit two of them that were narrowly focused on the title given to our forum.) ...

Following this repetition of my argument, [Hayley Gorenburg, a lawyer with Lambda Legal] responded as follows:

With regard to the slippery slope, that’s the burgeoning [sic] of the dam, or you know, whatever it might be, if we draw out our metaphors about what it would mean to let same-sex couples marry, should they choose to, these rankings of incest and polygamy and where does it stop?—well, where it stops is when you actually look at the governmental definition of marriage, you know, as it’s laid out.

It is a binary institution, okay, it’s a two-person institution, which means that our marriage laws are drawn up to talk about all kinds of substitute decision-making, custodial choice, that kind of thing, so that if, for instance, there’s a couple that are married, and one of them dies, who gets custody of the children? Generally, you know, it’s the other person in the marriage. If there is somebody who dies intestate, and they don’t have a will, what happens? You know, you look to the other person in the marriage. If somebody’s incapacitated and decision-making needs to happen in the hospital, you look to the spouse. If there were seventeen spouses, that would be entirely unclear. That’s not how our marriage laws are drawn up. They’re drawn up, it’s a binary institution. Something else like polygamy is something else. So when we’re talking about something like entrance into marriage on an equal footing, we’re talking about entry into a binary institution, and a whole raft of laws that feed into marriage recognize that that is the case.

The attentive reader will already have noticed Gorenberg’s self-contradiction. Alas, time ran out in our brief program at Rutgers before I could regain the floor and point it out to her.

She had begun, in her prepared remarks, by calling on a standard of “rights” that cannot be defeated by appeals to “tradition.” And she had mocked judges who, in the early decisions on the case for same-sex marriage, had simply turned to a dictionary definition of marriage.

Yet, in her response to my point about plural marriages, Gorenberg herself turned immediately to tradition and to received definitions. Marriage just is a “binary institution,” she asserted, and changing that fact would entail all sorts of inconveniences. (The historic existence of polygamy in many places is proof that these inconveniences are not insurmountable, but this did not slow her down.)

Why mere tradition was now owed such automatic allegiance, she did not pause to explain. Now the prospect of altering a “whole raft of laws” associated with marriage filled her with horror and incredulity. She seemed quite oblivious of the fact that she was making my argument for me. Where was her concern about changing all the details and complexities of a forest of family law planted thick with assumptions about husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, always of opposite sexes?

Labels: culture, gay marriage, law, polygamy

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Social conservatives - the people who want to protect the institution of marriage - should be enraged about last week's court decision on polygamy. They've been focusing on the fact that the B.C. Supreme Court judge said the law against polygamy is constitutional. They haven't noticed the judge also decided there's nothing special about state-sanctioned marriage. ...

Canada's Criminal Code makes it illegal for anyone to be in "any kind of conjugal union with more than one person at the same time, whether or not it is by law recognized as a binding form of marriage."

But Judge Robert Bauman found himself confronted with non-fundamentalist polygamists and polyamorists who didn't fit into his theory that all polygamy is harmful. He needed to reclassify those people as non-polygamists. He did that by classifying them as common-law, and interpreting the Criminal Code section to apply only to people who are married.

But for that law to then be applicable to anyone, he needed a new, broader definition of marriage. Clearly the everyday working definition most Canadians use - based on the licences and vows that so many Canadians, religious or not, hold sacred - wasn't going to work, because polygamists do not have access to the official versions. And if he made the law apply only to people who did X or Y - held a ceremony, drew up a contract, used the word "wife" - he'd be telling lawbreakers where to find the loophole.

So Bauman created a third category of relationship: not common-law, not officially married, but married if a court says you are, based on undefined "circumstances." He referred to a famous 19th-century definition: "the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others." ...

What Bauman did say unequivocally - and the irony is that he did this in an attempt to protect the "critical institution" of "monogamous marriage" - is that people can be married without licences, without banns, without solemnizers, without rites, without vows, without any recognition by the state. Not "as good as" married. Not "might as well be" married. Married.

Labels: Canada, common-law, Marriage, polygamy

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Polygamy and gay marriage are importantly different, the B.C. Supreme Court has said.

“The alarmist view expressed by some that the recognition of the legitimacy of same-sex marriage will lead to the legitimization of polygamy misses the whole point,” B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Bauman wrote in upholding the polygamy ban last week. Plural marriage is full of “harm,” he says, but gay marriage is not.

The judge is very right. Polygamy has many victims. It often imprisons people in marriages based on sexist rules. It reinforces religious fundamentalism in many cases. Same-sex marriage, by contrast, gives freedom to gays, and arguably to straights as well. It is fundamentalists’ worst nightmare.

But the judge’s ruling does not go far enough in countering the homophobic myth, still prevalent, that a road to tolerance for polygamy has been paved by good gay intentions. When Canada debated same-sex marriage, we heard regularly that gay unions would lead to legalized plural marriage. ...

From a moral and historical perspective, gay marriage is the opposite of polygamy. Straight marriage is somewhere in between. Whereas gay marriage has redefined love and family in a positive way, for gays and straights alike, polygamy buries its head in smothering sand. ...

But the judge also leaves something else a bit unclear: exactly why free choice is inviolable (and constitutionally protected) for gay and straight monogamists, but not for polygamists, too. This is where my own claim – as a gay man who thinks polygamy is retrograde – runs into trouble.

Labels: Canada, feminism, gay marriage, Marriage, polygamy, religion, religious liberty

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A judge in Canada has upheld the country’s ban on polygamous marriages, but the case is likely to be appealed.

Canada legalised same-sex marriage in 2005 and polygamist supporters say it is therefore unfair to ban polygamy.

Miriam Chatwin, a fundamentalist Mormon, said: “We’re in the 21st century, you know, we have marriages of every kind”.

Ruling

“To say that I can choose to be gay, I can choose to be a swinger, I can choose to be whatever I want to be but I can’t choose to be in a relationship with more women and one man, I think it’s unrealistic.”

A decision on whether the ruling will be appealed is expected to be made in December.

Labels: Canada, gay marriage, polygamy

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On an unseasonably cool August Sunday morning in Topanga Canyon, just north of Malibu, a family of four arrives at the Inn of the Seventh Ray, an all-cage-free, everything-local restaurant that's typical of the neighborhood. This brunch is a welcome respite from the errands and worries that increasingly fill their days. Jaiya Ma, the center of the clan, is a 34-year-old with dark, wavy hair and caramel skin. Her life is wide open; she falls in love easily, suffers willingly. Next to her is Ian Ferguson, a thin 44-year-old with a shaved head and a goatee, feeding bits of eggs Benedict to their energetic 2-year-old son, Eamon. Ian and Jaiya have been lovers for four years. Sitting across from Jaiya is Jon Hanauer, an extremely fit 48-year-old wearing wire-rimmed glasses, who serves as Eamon's primary caretaker. He and Jaiya have been in a committed relationship for almost a decade. ...

Matt Bullen is cautious about exposing his 9-year-old to the family's lifestyle. "It gives me nightmares that our family is from some awful seventies adult movie where my son comes down a swirling staircase and sees all kinds of shenanigans going on," he says. He and his wife, Vee, have sought to be "age-appropriately honest" with their son. When the boy saw his father kissing Terisa and asked about it, Matt explained to him, "There are ways of loving that you just can't understand yet." Some of the teachers at his school know about his parents' lifestyle, and he is reportedly happy, well adjusted, and obsessed with soccer. Having more adults in his life, Matt claims, has helped his son's development.

But Jon's demeanor sometimes seems to betray a current of bitterness. When Jaiya caught baby fever soon after turning 30, she begged Jon for a child. He refused, saying he wasn't ready for fatherhood, so she turned to Wyatt (not his real name), her brash young lover at the time. Jaiya miscarried; Wyatt walked out. Later, she and Jon discussed pregnancy again, and again he demurred. "I pushed her into having other relationships," he admits. But seeing Jaiya twice pregnant by other men has stung, and Jon's time with Eamon has made him realize that he desperately wants a child of his own. But after her miscarriage and her difficult pregnancy with Eamon, Jaiya doesn't want any more kids.

Labels: children, culture, gay marriage, gender differences, men, parenting, polyamory, polygamy

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They want people to know the positive side of polygamy so a Salt Lake County family wrote a book - "Love Times Three".

When you talk about the Darger family - you are talking about a husband, three wives and 24 children. They live here in Salt Lake County, and while they have kept a low profile, that is no longer the case. They have a new book and they appeared on national television on Tuesday.

The families youtube video - which you can see here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iybmklJFHjE - breaks it down. 5 kids in diapers, 10 loads of laundry each day, 10 family cars, 11 family computers, 2 gallons of milk, etc. They live just outside of Salt Lake City and call themselves a positive polygamous family - and the inspiration for the HBO show Big Love. ...

Joe Darger married Alina and Vicki 20 years ago. Together they have had 15 children. In 2000 they invited Vicki's twin sister Valerie to join their marriage.

Vicki says, "We had created something so beautiful and we had a deep love for her already and we felt like we could share that." Joe married Valerie and they had four children to go with the five she already had. All of them say the marriage is not just about sex - there is nothing kinky going on - its about commitment. Joe says, "It's not about that side of it, its about us creating a family."

Labels: culture, polygamy

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JONATHAN TURLEY, a law professor at George Washington University, is representing the family featured on the reality show "Sister Wives" in their legal challenge to Utah's law against polygamy. It's a big, unusual family. Kody Brown is "married" to four women and father to 16 children. "One of the marriages is legal", Mr Turley writes, "and the others are what the family calls 'spiritual.' They are not asking for the state to recognise their marriages. They are simply asking for the state to leave them alone." Mr Turley goes on to make what I find to be a persuasive case. ...

Imagine the family of a twice-divorced, thrice-married woman with one child from each union. Let's say she's a stay-at-home mom who has custody of all the kids, and gets child-support payments from her first two husbands. So, children with three different fathers live together in a single household, supported by a portion of three different mens' income. How is this not de facto polyandry? How significant is it, really, that her first two husbands don't happen to live with their kids and her third husband? Suppose they move in. What then? Is it okay as long as they pay rent? As long as they no longer love the mother of their children, or vice versa? I say it's okay as long as everyone involved says it's okay. ...

But isn't polygamy, as it actually exists, a backward practice hostile to the interests of women? What about fundamentalist Mormon compounds in which children are raised in isolation, indoctrinated/brainwashed, teenage girls are married off to their uncles and impregnated, while surplus boys are ejected without the tools to cope with the outside world. Mr Turley replies:

Of course, the government should prosecute abuse wherever it is found. But there is nothing uniquely abusive about consenting polygamous relationships. It is no more fair to prosecute the Browns because of abuse in other polygamous families than it would be to hold a conventional family liable for the hundreds of thousands of domestic violence cases each year in monogamous families.

I think this is the right way to think about it. I would add that conventional monogamous marriage was in fact an abusive, exploitative, patriarchal arrangement until very recently. In 1993, North Carolina was the last state to recognise spousal rape as a crime.

Labels: cohabitation, culture, divorce, family structure, Marriage, polygamy, remarriage

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I'm a gay marriage advocate and a polygamy opponent. And, yes, my positions make sense together. Polygamy is bad social policy for exactly the reason gay marriage is good social policy: everyone should have the opportunity to marry. Broad access to marriage important not only for individual wellbeing but for social stability. And, to oversimplify only a little, when one man gets two wives, some other man gets no wife. There's no better path to inequality, social unrest, and authoritarian social structures than polygamy. Read the fine print here.

So why do I agree with Steve Chapman—one of the country's best columnists, imho—that polygamy should be decriminalized? Because sometimes the best way to stop a fire is with a firebreak.

Right now, no state recognizes plural marriages. You can only have one marriage license at a time. But Utah goes further, deeming it a criminal offense to act or talk as if in a plural marriage. A man can live with two women and call them his girlfriends, and that's not a problem. He can marry one of them and call the other his girlfriend, and that's not a problem, either. But if he calls them both wives, he could go to jail.

Years ago, when states had an unquestioned right to ban contraception and racially mixed marriage and consensual oral sex, this was legally sustainable. But in today's world, where lifestyle choices have been broadly deregulated, throwing people in jail for speech and expressive behavior (wearing wedding rings without a license, for example) is too legally vulnerable on too many fronts to stand up for long. Worse, making criminal cases out of so-called polygamists brings them attention and martyrdom. Better to ignore them and relegate them to the fringe.

Labels: culture, Jonathan Rauch, Marriage, polygamy

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Kody Brown is a proud polygamist, and a relatively famous one. Now Mr. Brown, his four wives and 16 children and stepchildren are going to court to keep from being punished for it.

The family is the focus of a reality TV show, “Sister Wives,” that first appeared in 2010. Law enforcement officials in the Browns’ home state, Utah, announced soon after the show began that the family was under investigation for violating the state law prohibiting polygamy.

On Wednesday, the Browns are expected to file a lawsuit to challenge the polygamy law.

The lawsuit is not demanding that states recognize polygamous marriage. Instead, the lawsuit builds on a 2003 United States Supreme Court decision, Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down state sodomy laws as unconstitutional intrusions on the “intimate conduct” of consenting adults. It will ask the federal courts to tell states that they cannot punish polygamists for their own “intimate conduct” so long as they are not breaking other laws, like those regarding child abuse, incest or seeking multiple marriage licenses.

Labels: culture, Lawrence v. Texas, Marriage, polygamy

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Yesterday's "Room for Debate" in the New York Times is about "Marriage: The Next Chapter." I found it interesting that two of the six commentators used the opportunity to mention polygamy. Philosophy professor John Corvino notes that opponents of same-sex marriage "continue to predict a slippery slope to polygamy, polyamory and other “untested, experimental” family forms." He continues: "The grain of truth in their prediction is this: recent progress reminds us that marriage is an evolving institution and that not everyone fits in the neat boxes that existing tradition offers." (That's before remarking that polygamy is actually quite traditional). Law professor Rick Banks predicts that "over time, our moral assessments of [polygamy and incest] will shift, just as they have with interracial marriage and same sex marriage."

Advocates of marriage equality typically distance themselves as far as possible from polygamy. Those most averse to a discussion that includes both ideas in the same conversation may be troubled by the latest book from a third of the New York Times debaters, sociologist and long time gay rights ally Judith Stacey. Her comment in the Times debate does not mention polygamy at all; it's about the unfairness of privileging marriage and the importance of family policies that respond to the needs of all the ways people live (with a special shout-out to me that I deeply appreciate).

But Stacey's new book, Unhitched: Love, Marriage, and Family Values from West Hollywood to Western China, places the connection between gay couples and polygamous families front and center. Stacey's research on gay men in Los Angeles occupies the first part of the book, presenting pictures of the complex lives of 50 men born between 1958 and 1973 and those connected to them. She conducted the first interviews between 1999 and 2003 and then followed up in 2008 with the 29 men she could still locate. I am especially appreciative of Stacey's attention to the men raising children (about half of them) including those in what she calls poly-parent families.

Labels: beyond marriage, culture, Judith Stacey, Marriage, polyamory, polygamy

VOTE

HBO’s Big Love and TLC’s reality-TV offering Sister Wives have thrust polygamy into popular culture in the United States. Estimates are that somewhere between 50,000-100,000 families in this country are currently risking criminal prosecution by practicing plural marriage.

Proponents and detractors of polygamy use same-sex marriage to support their arguments, but that’s just a distraction, says Adrienne Davis, JD, an expert on gender relations and the William M. Van Cleve Professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. ...

In her recent article, “Regulating Polygamy: Intimacy, Default Rules, and Bargaining for Equality,” published in the Columbia Law Review, Davis approaches polygamy as a problem of bargaining, cooperation and strategic behavior.

She proposes some default rules that might accommodate polygamy, while ensuring against some of its historic and ongoing abuses. ...

She says that conventional family law, which limits its focus to “couples,” may not be up to the task of regulating polygamy, but a legal platform such as business law may address polygamy’s central conundrum: ensuring fairness and establishing baseline behavior in a relationship characterized by multiple partners, ongoing entrances and exits, and life-defining economic and personal stakes. ...

She notes that competition among families for emotional and economic resources is not unique to what we might think of traditional polygamy.

“With regard to children, family law already accommodates intimate multiplicity, or what might be thought of as ‘de facto’ and serial polygamy,” Davis says.

“Is it better to channel legal energy into continuing to root out, repress, and punish polygamy, or into admitting it into the marriage pantheon? The answer may hinge on whether polygamy could be effectively regulated.”

Labels: children, culture, family structure, law, Marriage, more than two parents, polygamy

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While often hostile to the Calvinist Christianity in which he was reared, David Hume’s essay “Of Polygamy and Divorces” offers a vigorous and well-argued defense of marriage arrangements as they existed in England and many other parts of Europe from the early Middle Ages through most of the 18th century. His arguments have great relevance for us today as we struggle to cope with unprecedented rates of divorce and unprecedented ease of both entering into and exiting marriages and other intimate procreative relationships. His arguments against polygamy are also important as that practice seems to be undergoing something of a resurgence in parts of the southwest, with renewed interest in the popular culture.

Hume begins the substantive part of his inquiry with a brief description of the great variety of marriage practices and customs that have existed throughout the world, noting that “as circumstances vary and the laws propose different advantages, we find that, in different times and places, they impose different conditions” on the marriage contract. Custom and law in different times and places have permitted polygamous marriages (one man with several wives); confined one man to one woman (sometimes allowing for divorce and remarriage and other times not); permitted one man to have two wives but no more than two; assigned multiple men to one wife; permitted group marriages between numerous men and numerous women; and even, as in the case of Tonkin (Vietnam), permitted foreign sailors “when the ships come into harbor” to engage in temporary marriages with local women that lasted only for a season.

But Hume is no cultural relativist and rejects the view that all marriage customs are equally good at producing desirable results. Much of his essay is devoted to showing the many harms and disadvantages of two of the most common types of marriage arrangements outside the Christian West: polygamy in which men have multiple wives, and monogamous marriages in which the spouses are permitted to dissolve their marriage and marry someone else. ...

Does the presence of an option for “voluntary divorce” within a marriage negatively affect the cultivation of friendship between the marital partners and hence their conjugal happiness? It does, says Hume, and it does so in a powerful way. If spouses know they can divorce at will and seek their marital bliss with another partner, the relationship dynamics within marriage, he believed, would be radically altered and in such a manner that diminishes marital stability and marital happiness. With no sense of obligation to stick together through thick and thin, they would be less inclined to work together to iron out their differences and keep their conjugal friendship alive.

Labels: culture, divorce, heterosexual couples, Marriage, men, polygamy, women

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I was 11 years old when I figured out why grandfather had two bedrooms. He alternated, sleeping one night with my grandmother and the other night with his second wife. ...

Even if Ouma had wanted to do something about her situation she was not seen as my grandfather's wife in any way that mattered -- their marriage was not recognised by South African law.

That was a long time ago. This year the Muslim Marriages Bill will be put before Parliament. If it is passed, men will need to seek court approval before being allowed to take subsequent wives and these marriages will be legal not only according to sharia law, but also in South African law.

Not all women who share their husband have had the difficult experience my grandmother had. ...

According to Shaikh, the Qur'an, in Surah 4 Verse 3 reads that a man may marry up to four wives if he can "deal justly" with them. But later, in Surah 4 Verse 129, the writings admit that while a man may desire to be fair and just between women, in practice it's not so easy.

This is where the Bill will assist women. "The Bill says yes, a man can take up to four wives, but it sets out a procedure," says Osman.

"The husband must make an application to court and must show that he has the resources to maintain another family in terms of time and money. The existing wives can also put information before the court."

The Bill will also allow second wives, if their marriages are approved, to have access to maintenance or inheritance, something that would have helped 52-year-old Amina*. "I was married to my husband for two years when he started speaking another woman's name in his sleep. He was having an affair with her and eventually he married her and I found out by word of mouth."

Labels: Islam, polygamy, religion, South Africa

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The B.C. Civil Liberties Association is calling for Canada's polygamy law that bans multiple marriages to be found unconstitutional and "relegated to the scrap heap of history."

In written submissions filed Thursday, the association urged B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Bauman to find that the law offends fundamental freedoms.

The parties in favour of upholding the law have argued that there are numerous social harms associated with polygamy.

The association says that while harms can occur in plural relationships, there is no evidence that there are harms specific to polygamy.

Suspected criminal activity involving child abuse and sexual interference should be investigated and prosecuted but only using the applicable criminal laws, it says.

"For more than 40 years, Canadians have recognized that the state does not belong in the bedrooms of the nation," said the association's submissions filed in court. "It is now also time to recognize that the state has no role overseeing how many adults sleep in the bed, nor how many beds are in the room."

Labels: Canada, law, polygamy

VOTE

Watching TLC's "Sister Wives," a show featuring a real-life polygamous family in Utah, I expected to be repulsed by and angry at Kody Brown. He's the man in the show openly boasting four "wives," a slew of kids who are semi-siblings and a hairstyle that trumps The Donald's.

But instead, the series left me with exactly the sort of questions and thoughts that the polygamous family is hoping it will: Is this lifestyle choice always as bad as I've thought it was? Are the women involved in some polygamous families actually choosing it, even enjoying it? How should government deal with polygamists? Should there be laws against bigamy or should consenting adults be able to arrange their families as they wish? Kody and his sister wives are currently under investigation. Even though Kody Brown is legally married to only one woman, he cohabits with his other wives, too, which is against Utah law.

Laws against bigamy are well intended. Men taking on several wives and having oodles of offspring has long been associated with abuse and neglect of one kind or another. Victims of fundamentalist Mormon-offshoot practices have often spoken out, revealing a distorted picture of love they were force-fed. And generations of misguided "holy" men have felt it their divine right to marry very young girls or have sex with their daughters.

But the Browns don't seem to fit that picture. ...

Do I think the polygamous lifestyle is healthy for kids? Absolutely not. Even though the Brown kids appear to be loved and well cared for, they're being taught to accept as normal what I believe to be a distortion of God's plan for marriage and family. But a lot of families do that. And though Kody says he believes love should be multiplied, it seems clear that dividing his love among 16 kids and four wives will bring consequences.

But even couples in traditional marriages can shortchange their children. And we all have varying spiritual beliefs guiding our relationship choices.

The case for an end to anti-bigamy laws is similar to the fight for gay marriage. The question is whether the government should be telling consenting adults whom they can love and how they should arrange their families. And the answer is that it shouldn't. Society can give its opinion. Churches should continue to emphasize the value of a man and a woman as the anchor relationship of family. But government needs to be neutral.

Labels: culture, gay marriage, polygamy

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Television channels have provided live coverage of Azhar Haidri's decision to marry both women over a 24-hour period.

At first he refused to marry the woman selected by his family since childhood because he loved someone else.

Pakistani law allows polygamy because it interprets Islam to allow a man to have up to four wives.

Islam is the main religion in the country.

Men who take multiple wives usually do so after a period of several years - and must get approval from their first wife prior to a second marriage.

Correspondents say that while it is not unusual for men in Pakistan to have several wives, it is rare for two weddings to take place almost simultaneously under the full glare of the media. ...

Both women appear to have given their consent to the compromise and say they plan to live as sisters and friends.

"I am happy that we both love the same man," Ms Aslam told AP.

Labels: Islam, Pakistan, polyamory, polygamy

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A peek inside a polygamist community and their isolated way of life is now just a bus ride away for sightseers from around the world.

"I was born into polygamy," said guide Richard Holm as a tour bus lumbered into Colorado City, Ariz.

Billed as the "Polygamy Experience," the four-hour, $70 tour takes visitors through the middle of the polygamist enclave on the Utah-Arizona border.

Against a backdrop of stunning mountains and pink rocks children play in yards, families picnic in parks and teenage boys gallop their horses away from the guests.

Women with old-fashioned braided hair and pioneer dresses usher the little ones out of eyesight. ...

Holm says the tours do not promote plural marriage but raise the curtain on the lifestyle.

"It's a look at the inside of the community and people there. We hope in the process it shows how religious extremism leads to entrapment and bondage," Holm said. ...

A new reality program called "Sister Wives" premiered last week on The Learning Channel. The program follows the everyday polygamist life of a Salt Lake City man, his four wives and 16 children.

Labels: polygamy

VOTE

While the United States is occupied with the federal challenge to California's Proposition 8, Canada has its own pending marriage case, which is likely headed for the Canadian Supreme Court. Canada, which redefined marriage nationwide to include same-sex couples in 2005, against the backdrop of successful provincial lawsuits against the country's marriage law, could be moving on to bigger things -- literally. Specifically, polygamy and polyamory, as this case invokes the question of whether the government can continue to criminalize multiple-partner marriages. The case itself, initiated by the British Columbia Attorney General under a special provision of that Province's law, arises in the wake of failed prosecutions of polygamous sect members in British Columbia. ...

Recently, the case has been uniquely complicated by an intervening interest group called the Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association. The Association is seeking an adjudication of sorts that the Canadian laws regarding polygamy (one man with more than one wife) do not apply to polyamory ("multiple conjugal relationships"). CPAA's "twist" on the law is that polyamory is just fine, and ought to be allowed, while polygamy can remain unsuitable for Canadian society. The rationale for their argument is the contention that, beyond the social science data that shows it is harmful, polygamy promotes gender inequality, and often involves coercion. ...

Even if the courts accept the egalitarianism, consent, and no data arguments as true, the proposed distinction between multiple-wife polygamy and polyamory in terms of social harms is spurious. In fact, it may be the case that acceptance of polyamory would, if possible, be more harmful.

For instance, the social science data we do have on children who experience a succession of relationships with parents' cohabiting partners (a kind of de facto serial polyamory, or as the sociologists call it, "multiple partner fertility") is not encouraging (here and here). They are at higher risk for abuse, behavioral problems, and household instability. The presence of two sets of unrelated children mentioned in some of the affidavits also does not sound promising for the well-being of younger children. We should not be sanguine, therefore, that children raised in polyamorous homes will be just fine.

Labels: Canada, parenting, polyamory, polygamy

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Forrest Glen Maridas is a polyamorist who believes that it is her constitutionally guaranteed right to freely express her sexuality in any form that that might take.

Maridas is 34, American and a full-time counsellor at a university, although she's currently on maternity leave. She's lived with Canadian Russell Osborne since May 2005 and he's sponsoring her for immigration as a common-law spouse under the family classification.

Maridas and Osborne and their two young children live in a home in Edmonton with Drew Thompson and Katy Furness. ...

Drew and Russell do not have a sexual relationship, which is described as a triad or a "polyamorous V." But all of the adults are free to date outside the family. "Being bisexual assisted in having a psychological framework for the ability of multiple relationships to make sense," says Maridas.

She also says that within their family, "there is not a ranking system that some polyamorists follow of primary, secondary, etc. relationships."

Maridas explained all of this in an affidavit filed Tuesday in B.C. Supreme Court. It was one of six filed by the Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association, which is intervening in the case to determine whether the anti-polygamy law is valid.

Labels: Canada, parenting, polyamory, polygamy

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