Polygamy and SSM: Quid Pro Quo?
April 2, 2006 · By Tom Cerber
Jonathan Rauch, who has written in the past on how SSM should stabilize society by domesticating gays, argues we’re better off avoiding polygamy whose consequences are destabilizing:
Other things being equal (and, to a good first approximation, they are), when one man marries two women, some other man marries no woman. When one man marries three women, two other men don’t marry. When one man marries four women, three other men don’t marry. Monogamy gives everyone a shot at marriage. Polygyny, by contrast, is a zero-sum game that skews the marriage market so that some men marry at the expense of others.
He chastizes those like Stanley Kurtz who see a logical connection between legalizing SSM and polygamy, though he doesn’t address the arguments like those of Queens University law prof Martha Bailey and her colleagues who want to use SSM to get Canadian law “beyond conjugality” by legalizing polygamy.
He also argues that polygamy is inherently antidemocratic because it’s always associated with tribal and inegalitarian societies:
Here is something else to consider: As far as I’ve been able to determine, no polygamous society has ever been a true liberal democracy, in anything like the modern sense. As societies move away from hierarchy and toward equal opportunity, they leave polygamy behind. They monogamize as they modernize. That may be a coincidence, but it seems more likely to be a logical outgrowth of the arithmetic of polygamy.
This historical disconnection may be the case but it’s never going to convince someone who wants to conduct a social experiment. Just because the connection’s never been made before, doesn’t mean it cannot be made.
But I think Rauch, who wants to promote SSM while rejecting polygamy, is on shaky ground if he wants to identify a certain form of marriage with liberal democracy. All the great liberal writers, from Locke to Mill at any rate, identified male/female marriage as essential for extending society from one generation to the next. For Locke, domestic society is for comfort and for procreation. Remove procreation, then it’s unclear what’s distinctive about marriage and why a liberal democracy should protect it. Locke’s argument actually fits more with Bailey and her ilk: IF you remove procreation - and by extension the primary means by which society perpetuates itself - then marriage is meaningless. All of which I’ve argued before.
Rauch’s argument is incomplete. If he’s so worried about the effects of polygamy, why not just ensure that the remaining males have SSM? It was Aristotle, after all, who observed Greek legislators to have promoted homosexuality to limit population growth. Why not promote SSM to counteract the effects of polygamy?
UPDATE: Peter Lawler suggests polygamy may have to be an option for educated women!
“It was Aristotle, after all, who observed Greek legislators to have promoted homosexuality to limit population growth.”
Could you provide a reference for us plebes?
Plato’s Denk-Sohn observes it of the Cretans in Politics II.10.
The flaw to all arguments about marriage being meaningless if procreation is removed falls appart by the mere fact that people will always have sex regardless of the definition of marriage, and that as the consequence of this sexual behavior that children will be born.
People make the assumption that birth rates are down because marriage is somehow in trouble. They overlook the obvious, that being, that we live in a more greedy society that requires more people to work longer hours to have the things that we “need” like an SUV and braces for our children.
Western families simply do not have the resources to provide for more children and maintain the standard of living they choose to pursue. There has also been a substantial shift from rural to urban living, again, a more expensive option for housing and feeding a family.
But lets get back to the quid pro quo. So, if I am getting this right, all of the men who are not verile enough, or handsome enough, or rich enough, to ensure that they can get a wife (or many) should, by default, find themselves another “loser” and shack up with because the true alpha males have taken up all of the women?
How is this for an equally rediculous argument? If perpetuating domestic society is really a concern (and for the most part I think that most of the arguements presented on the topic of polygamy and same-sex marriage have been purely speculative and based on flawed assumptions) then why not just relax the immigration act to allow the “loser” men access to women in third world countries as mail order brides. This would ensure that the loser men could have “normal” sex and pass on their inferior genes to another generation of losers. It would reduce the number of fertile women in third world countries and therefore reduce their population growth, and reduce third world hunger, and our responsibility to provide foreign aid, leaving more money to do other things, like build amusement parks. Our population would not decrease at the rate it is, because the selfish alpha males who are taking up all the local women are only having 1.7 children per household so they can afford the SUV and trip to Florida. And then there would be no need for same sex marriage, and society would not fall apart.
Lyndon Simmons writes: “They overlook the obvious, that being, that we live in a more greedy society that requires more people to work longer hours to have the things that we “needâ€? like an SUV and braces for our children.” - no kidding.
As for your other comment, if you agree that contemporary liberalism has forgotten about the duty of society to perpetuate itself but you retain a liberal rejection of “citizenism,” then your tongue-in-cheek suggestion would actually make sense.
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