Plural marriage and its challenges [View all]

[TygrBright]

"Plural marriage" is a generic term for when more than two people decide they wish to form a family, create a lasting household together for mutual support and love, and obtain social recognition of their commitment to one another.

If you stop there, it's just possible to see the horizon where this is another Great Civil Rights fight, queuing up to change American consciousness and society.

And if you stop there, its easy to see why those who regard plural marriage as such get offended when various forms of plural marriage are equated to nonconsensual exploitation, cruelty, and/or criminal behavior. As in, the assumption that advocating the legalization of polygamy-- a form of plural marriage-- is being used to discredit same-sex marriage.

This is the same school of thought that wants to turn "You throw like a GIRL" from an insult into a badge of pride. (see: "Davis, Mo'ne&quot Fuck you people, you think assigning onus to a reference can MAKE it onerous? We'll show you.

I get this.

Partly because I think that sometime down the road, we'll achieve a redefinition of marriage big enough to include the triads, foursomes, even fivesomes-- who knows? More? Individuals who perceive the bond of love as the basis of creating a home and family, a unit of support and comfort, a growth medium for children and adults alike, independent of past assumptions about the "roles" inherent in one-to-one marriage.

I think we'll get there.

Maybe not soon, though.

Because for now, there are problems, inherent not in the present or the future, but in the ugly past of a particular variety of plural marriage.

Let's be clear: Polyandry has never been a problem. Partnerships that involve more than one member of more than one gender are such a vanishingly small percentage that they haven't even cracked the phenomenonological perception barrier.

Polygamy, however, has a very long, and very repulsive history as a tool of the patriarchy for the control of women. And in the case of some of our more fetid doctrinal interpretations of Guy God-dom, it remains exactly that tool.

How do we legitimate plural marriage, without enabling that vile practice?

I'm open to suggestion.

I think that discussion might be a more productive approach to the challenge than simply name-calling and/or demanding that we accept each others' points of view without acknowledging the problems inherent in both sides.

But... I recognize that here and now probably isn't the most likely place for such a discussion to emerge.

wistfully,
Bright