Why is everyone on M&D so opposed to polygamy?
Monogamy is the best social policy regarding marriage. It’s hardly perfect, but it’s worth rewarding monogamous people. They tend to do best in taking care of each other and keeping the government from having to do so. We should get everyone possible into it. We modified it to allow mixed races 30 years ago, and it is past time to allow gays their rights. Polygamy is a terrible system. It has never succeeded in free democratic countries. Most participants are on welfare. No stable productive community has ever held together for long without marrying children and expelling their young boys. The math just doesn’t work. Polygamy was designed for tribal society where rich men ran everything, not for democracy. Look at the countries that allow it. It ruins their economies. There is more to life than every individual getting to what they want. We also have to protect the vulnerable and ourselves from other people’s greed and stupidity.
There is a difference between a sexual choice (swinging) and lifestyle one (polygamy). Polygamy is also traditionally viewed as one man with multiple wives, which very rarely means one wife with multiple men. There are also kinds of infidelity where one partner grins and bears it because they want to make their partner happy – it is not necessarily always based on manipulation and lies. (This is in the case of open relationships.) Infidelity is socially frowned on, it’s not the courts job to monitor people in that way. However, they can legally stop multiple contracts in which the benefits would be very costly for all. Polygamy also comes with the religious aspect and allowing such a thing would be in conflict with church/state. It too is also socially frowned on because it can still be viewed as infidelity. In a polygamy setting, there has to be full acknowledgment and consent with each wife that they won’t always see their partner, they have to share their partner, their marriage won
