The More the Merrier?
by Ruth Institute board member William C. Duncan
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.
Advocates of polygamy and polyamory seem to have an ally in the Law Commission of Canada, a statutory body of government appointees who propose changes to modernize Canadian law and report to the Justice Ministry. In 2001, the Commission issued a report, Beyond Conjugality: Recognizing and Supporting Close Personal Adult Relationships, that questioned the continuing illegality of consensual polygamy in Canada.
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.
“Polyamory,” by contrast, is strictly egalitarian and consensual, according to CPAA, and thus does not involve or promote one gender over the other. Affidavits filed in court detail (1) a woman and her male partner who live and have relationships with two other adults in the household (they also have a child living in the home) and who have agreed that each can pursue relationships with others, (2) a woman who lives with two other men (two of her teenage sons also live in the home), (3) a husband and wife who live with another adult (and the married couples’ two young children and the third person’s teenage children), and (4) a man who lives with a woman and another man (with whom he is raising a two-year-old child). Polyamory advocates also tout a lack of social science evidence showing any harm from its practice. In other words, the CPAA is arguing that since you can’t prove that polyamory is bad for society, it must be good. By this rationale, we can all rest assured that Jimmy Hoffa is alive and well.
It may also be true that there is a dearth of published studies of harm caused by polyamory. This would not be surprising given the novelty of the practice and its small set of practitioners. There seems to be no shortage of breathless stories in newspapers and magazines about these kinds of arrangements but these do not equate to research. Any study of polyamorous “families” is likely to be plagued by methodological difficulties — large holes in data, voluntary samples, reliance on self-reporting, small sample sizes, poor comparisons, and misplaced focus.
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.
If we take seriously the idea that marriage laws have an educative function, polyamory raises red flags. On each of the core functions of marriage — promoting fidelity, providing a tie between children and parents, securing permanence for spouses and their children — polyamory seems particularly harmful. Both traditional polygamy and polyamory promote types of infidelity (though the former is of a more orderly variety), of course, but the chaos of polyamory blurs distinctions of parenthood more significantly than does a setting where a child has an established set of parents and lots of half-siblings. The ethic of “choice” at the root of polyamory does not bode well for permanence either.
As complicated as the day to day existence must be for children in homes with multiple adults acting as “parents,” the breakup of polyamorous relationships would be dramatically more complicated for children. There would be an exponential increase in the possible divisions of a child’s time, of decision-making authority and demands for the child’s loyalty, when the dispute involves three or more people than when only two disputants are involved.
Clearly, when it comes to marriage, the adage “the more the merrier” does not apply.
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I await the shrugs from SSMers.
While I agree with the sentiments of Mr. Duncan, the polyamory case is the ideal new liberal judicial marriage. In this new view (which I reject), any group can be a “family” and all “families” are equal; kids are irrelevant, and since some polyamorous families might be as good as and perhaps better than the most dysfunctional of traditional families for kids as well as adults, then all must be considered equal. I don’t know Canadian law, but if tradition and the public’s sense of morality as expressed by the voters are tossed out as irrational bigotry and if the lowest possible common denominator becomes the rule, it becomes difficult to think of legal objections that could be raised.
The new marriage will simply be “friends with government benefits.”
Does anyone else hear crickets??
Where are the defenders of SSM crying, “There is NO slippery slope–that’s just a homophobic scare tactic!”
Guess this is just a little too hard to defend….
Elsewhere on this site Sean has written: “I think your marriage is whatever you want it to be.” Polyamory would fit the bill. No slippery slope, we are already at the level of “whatever you want,” plus, of course, government benefits. This is secular antinomianism.
In all fairness, shrugs and silence is all we should expect when they have no effective response.
Speaking of which, before this thread goes off the first page, would it be too mercenary of me to resurrect another challenge that was made a while back:
http://www.ruthblog.org/2010/08/31/itaf-podcast-update/#comment-5616
That’s a question nobody has ever been able answer for me… so far.
“Elsewhere on this site Sean has written: “I think your marriage is whatever you want it to be.” Polyamory would fit the bill. No slippery slope, we are already at the level of “whatever you want,” plus, of course, government benefits. This is secular antinomianism.”
Are you saying your marriage isn’t what you want it to be? People marry for money, for love, for fear of loneliness, for raising children in a stable environment, any number of reasons. In the US, at least, it doesn’t not violate constitutional rights to limit marriage to couples. It does violate constitutional rights to limit marriage to opposite-sex couples.
@Sean
Are you saying your marriage isn’t what you want it to be? People marry for money, for love, for fear of loneliness, for raising children in a stable environment, any number of reasons.
Are you saying that marriage is whatever you want it to be? That reminds me of this:
——————————————-
“There’s glory for you!’
`I don’t know what you mean by “glory”,’ Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don’t — till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”‘
`But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument”,’ Alice objected.
`When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
`The question is,’ said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
`The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master — that’s all.’
———————————————
Besides, “money…love…fear of loneliness…raising children” are reasons to enter a marriage; they are not definitions of what marriage is.
Sean, why do you say that it is constitutional to limit marriage to twosomes? Why is the number two constitutional but not the number one or the number three and so forth?
* * *
Leland, I’ll go ahead and paste your question here:
Sean said: “We know now that homosexuality is completely normal.”
Leland asked: “Sean, could you tell us what connotation of ‘normal’ you are referring to here? Would you be talking about what is statistically normal or functionally normal?”
First, the court case in Canada isn’t about allowing for legal plural marriages, it’s about de-criminalizing unofficial plural marriages. Polygamy will continue as a practice wether the law is there or not. All of the things that the polygamy law is in effect for; child marriages, coersion, abuse etc. are illegal in their own right. The polygamy law means that women in these situations could be arrested or lose their children if they try to stand up for themselves and use the laws that protect her to free herself from a bad husband.
Second, polyamory is nothing more than the belief that romantic love isn’t limited to one person at a time. I know many polyamorous people who have been in long lasting group families and raise children in a healthy, stable, environment. My wife is currently dating a man who is married and he and his wife are in a poly family group with another married couple, her boyfriend’s wife has a daughter who sees all four as her moms and dads while knowing who her bio parents are. She also knows and accepts her parent’s (all five, including the bio-dad) extra relationships without any stress or confusion.
Polyamorous people are no less committed in their relationships than monogamous people are, we just don’t limit ourselves to one at a time. We are less likely to be dishonest and cheat on our partners because, why cheat when you can be honest about who you want to be with, and less likely to go the route of breaking up a perfectly good relationship when another potentially good one comes along, like in serial monogamy.
“In other words, the CPAA is arguing that since you can’t prove that polyamory is bad for society, it must be good.”
No. They’re arguing that since you can’t prove that polyamory is bad for society, you should not make it illegal.
I could perhaps argue that anything that causes people to introspect and to question their deeply-held but irrational beliefs is good for society. When did we become so unwilling to evaluate evidence and accept people who are different but who aren’t doing us any harm? But that’s a tangent.
“It may also be true that there is a dearth of published studies of harm caused by polyamory. This would not be surprising given the novelty of the practice and its small set of practitioners.”
Novelty? The practice is known to have existed for thousands of years, and has almost certainly existed since the beginning of humanity, however you want to define that. Many of the Bible’s great figures were polygamous (not polyamorous). However, you are right that good documentation is scarce and current studies are grossly inadequate.
“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”)”
Sure, you could call this a kind of serial polyamory (most people call it “dating”), but it’s one that is used by those who don’t believe in parallel polyamory. Polyamorists are exactly the sort of people who see the harm caused by lots of short little relationships, and reject that. So you are exactly wrong.
Consider the conclusions you draw from this leap in the context of a polyamorous family:
“They are at higher risk for abuse”
Doubtful. When a family consists of one physically strong but non-loving figure and one emotionally needy one, the potential for abuse is high. But under polyamory, two things change: (1) a family consists of people who have a deeply trusted and loved support network (close friendships even if not multiple lovers) and thus will reject abuse very quickly, and (2) abuse is not very common because MOST PEOPLE ABHOR IT, and every person you add to a loving relationship is one more person who will see abuse and say “That’s not ok.”
Furthermore, there are laws against abuse. You want to criminalise a kind of marriage just because you have a hunch (based, as you say, on insufficient data (and fuzzy thinking besides)) that it is correlated with something that’s already illegal? By this logic, everything should be banned, because someone somewhere has a hunch that anything you can name is correlated with an illegal behaviour.
“behavioral problems”
Not sure what you mean by that. Please expound. It sounds like a blanket accusation that is deliberately too vague to disprove.
“household instability”
Maybe, maybe not. The situation of having two loving parents and another who is “just passing through” for a few years (or forced to leave by the government) is not uncommon, but does losing one of three parents hurt as much as losing one of two? And counter that with the high probability that you have three or more permanent parents and many siblings: it’s more likely that one of three parents can stay home to raise the kids than that one of two can do so.
“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.”
Does not sound promising? Why is that, exactly? You want to ban polyamory because you have a hunch that something “does not sound promising”? Are you saying that adoption should also be banned?
“We should not be sanguine, therefore, that children raised in polyamorous homes will be just fine.”
No, we should not. But do we have any reason to believe that children raised in monogamous homes will be just fine? Or even better off at all? And if we do, is it due to monogamy, or to the societal approval and support that comes from conformity?
“If we take seriously the idea that marriage laws have an educative function, polyamory raises red flags.”
Here’s what I want education to provide: nurturing of creativity and gumption, a supportive environment for exploration of interesting ideas, an eagerness to question assumptions… You apparently want education to do just the opposite. And you wonder why the USA has fallen so far behind the first world in education?
“On each of the core functions of marriage — promoting fidelity, providing a tie between children and parents, securing permanence for spouses and their children — polyamory seems particularly harmful. Both traditional polygamy and polyamory promote types of infidelity”
(Fidelity) Quite the reverse: polyamory is exactly about fidelity! Polyamory is the idea that consenting adults could be allowed to define fidelity based on what they want, but the author seems completely oblivious to the fact that polyamorous spouses live by their rules. There are still misunderstandings and renegotiations and discussions–perhaps more so than in monogamy. But in monogamy, they have to ask William C. Duncan whether it’s cheating to cuddle with a friend whose mother just died. What does he have to do with my relationship?
(A tie) How does polyamory hurt the tie between children and parents? How about laws that tear loving families apart?
(Securing permanence) Actually, rejecting the idea that you can only love one person at a time makes permanence much easier. When they succumb to the nearly ubiquitous desire to have sex with someone new, monogamous couples lie and cheat and divorce. Polyamorous couples have the possibility of maintaining relationships with loved ones despite being hormonally and emotionally human. This isn’t just theory; it happens frequently.
“the chaos of polyamory blurs distinctions of parenthood more significantly than does a setting where a child has an established set of parents and lots of half-siblings”
Is blurring those distinctions so bad? Prove it. Is living with grandparents and aunts and godfathers and cousins also so terrible? Why is it harmful to grow up with a large loving supportive family? Again, you’re confusing “it’s harmful” with “it makes me squeamish”.
“The ethic of “choice” at the root of polyamory does not bode well for permanence either.”
First: nothing is permanent. Second: polyamorous people also marry officially (when their government permits it) and unofficially (in the USA). Do you think that a promise between adults is only binding under your particular version of marriage?
“the breakup of polyamorous relationships would be dramatically more complicated for children. There would be an exponential increase in the possible divisions of a child’s time”
You’re only correct because you’ve carefully phrased this in the language of combinatorical mathematics. Your conclusion is rubbish. Yes, there’s an exponential increase–if that’s such a bad thing, then children ought only to have one parent, or none at all. But exponents like 2^3 or 2^4 are easily enumerated and solved, especially when the correct answer is something like “spend time with all of them who aren’t abusive”. Once again, two parents who hate each other do enormous harm to children largely because binary thinking (I like daddy better than mommy) is easy; for educational purposes the more nuanced view (Daddy1 and Daddy2 are different people and Mommy also has a point) is much easier to achieve when the binary “my team/your team” thinking is removed.
I’ve nitpicked at particular holes in your argument, but that’s really missing the point. To wit: you want to ban something not because it causes harm because you have a hunch–based on little data and much misunderstanding–that it might. You might be right, but given the many very healthy and brilliant polyamorous people I know, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that polyamory vitiates many of the problems that surface in monogamous relationships. Any kind of relationship can potentially lead to problems and pain and heartbreak and overpopulation, but polyamorous ones more than monogamous ones? My hunch that you’re wrong is based on a small amount of experience living in both modalities. Yours is not.
It’s glaringly obvious that humans are not monogamous, but we feel jealousy and possessiveness. Thoughtful monogamy is a legitimate arrangement: “We agree to try to ignore other crushes, to not give each other too much reason to be jealous, to figure out our boundaries together assuming that they don’t involve sex (or cuddling or kissing or romantic walks on beaches or whatever) with other people. We will fight against the part of human nature that is full of love and affection for others, and indulge the part that is jealous and possessive.” Thoughtful polyamory is also legitimate: “We agree to try to accept each others’ crushes, to support each other and overcome our insecurities and jealousies, to figure out our boundaries together assuming only that they don’t involve lying to each other. We will fight against the part of human nature that is full of jealousy and possessiveness and insecurity, and for the part that is full of love and respect and honesty.” Thoughtless monogamy–the norm in our society–is never ok. Thoughtless polyamory, I believe, is probably at least as bad as thoughtless monogamy. But we’re all thoughtful people here, and nonconformists tend to be thoughtful. When you have solid evidence that polyamory is not suitable for consenting adults, _then_ ban it, by all means! Until then, let’s be honest about who we are and why we want to be who we want to be, and stop trying to tell others who they should be. Ok?
Polyamory sounds like the perfect recipe for the spread of STDs. Plus, how will women who get pregnant (even with contraception, they still can) know who the father is and receive support for HIS child? Polyamory is just another masculine scheme to bed as many women as possible with as little responsibility as possible. It’s an abasement, disempowerment, and objectification of women and children that every self-respecting woman (and man) should REJECT as dangerous on every level. Biologically, a child can only have one father and one mother. Nature made us this way, and polyamory is a perversion of nature. Jesus said that God made man to cleave to his wife to make one flesh (not multiple) and that even looking at another woman lustfully was adultery, and therefore sin (causing death). Something which is morally evil should not be legalized. Ever.