Comment by nutate | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nutate | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

How could it be consensual between all adults? The marriage "license" in polygamy is between man and women, yet by secondary effects the women are fully entangled with one another. Yet if you watch any show on polygamy you'll see that a guy will keep adding new, younger wives while holding their current wives hostage (due to their lack of another option in terms of housing, money, etc). It's absurd to think that any thinking person would get in on the wife side of the polygamy pact when in the end they have their equality divided by X wives.

Smart folks have said that the reason homosexual marriage even became a thought was because of the transformation of marriage from a bond of ownership of man over woman to a shared partnership. A polygamous arrangement (as per the mormon church, not the polyamorous relationships of the hippies, etc) ends up with a hierarchy of power with one man controlling multiple wives, with the power to divorce, ruin, etc the others if they don't allow him to wed again.

I think an argument for polyamorous marriage could be made, but polygamy is essentially a raw deal for whoever isn't the hub of the marriage wheel (one man in the case of traditional mormonism, islam, etc.).

>How could it be consensual between all adults?

Quite literally, I imagine it would go something like:

Do you take this woman to be your wife? I do.

Do you take this woman to be your husband's second wife? I do.

Do you take this man and woman to be your husband and second wife? I do.

That's how three adults could all consent.

You can argue that someone is being forced to say yes, but you could argue that in any type of marriage or contract.

That's a polyamorous (group) marriage, not a polygamist one (at least as per my definition of those somewhat amorphous terms)

That said all of the legal agreements become far more complicated and likely null and void if one person drops out or is added. I think an argument could be made, but with the complication you're basically saying polymarriages would be like corporations, with their associated complexity.

Polygamy as practiced now is a "bring more childbearing women" into the flock type thing, which is by nature non-equitable. I doubt most folks in a polygamous marriage (by choice) would want to get involved in a polyamorous marriage and as such, I think you can't legally support a non-equal union of that sort.

>That's a polyamorous (group) marriage, not a polygamist one

Hmmm, please excuse my ignorance in such matters. I only married one woman and that is quite enough.

>you're basically saying polymarriages would be like corporations

Yes, exactly. Well put.

>with their associated complexity

I can't even begin to imagine the complexity, legal or relational. However, I can imagine situations where such an arrangement could be beneficial to the individuals involved.

>How could it be consensual between all adults?

Are you trying to say multiple adults can't all agree on something? Your argument is based on ignorance and you're no better than the people who oppose gay marriage. You've been fed Christian and feminist propaganda to make you believe that only two consenting adults can love each other and that if you happen to love more than one person you shouldn't have the same rights as other people who don't.

You basically don't think polygamists are equal. Now let's see you do a full 360 from being pro-equality to using the same arguments the bigots used against you.

You're perhaps confusing polyamory with polygamy/polyandry? To put it in hacker terms, polygamy / polyandry is forcing an edge reduction creating a hub and spoke architecture when the arrangement has to be a 1 to n-1 mesh. The equality of a mesh is an easy mathematical argument to make, but it isn't the argument polygamy/polyandry is making. Polygamy/polyandry is inherently unequal. [edit] to get the math right a polygamous/polyandrous relationship maxes out at n-1 contracts. Polyamory would be (n*(n-1))/2 contracts and I would argue for equality that if n changed all contracts would have to be retermed. Polygamy / polyandry is unequal. Period. It's a mathematical fact. Polyamory I could be convinced of the possibility of legal equality, but not for polygamy/polyandry.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com