Why Polygamy Isn’t Coming Back, Despite the Efforts of Same-Sex Marriage Advocates

In a time when equity is the chief moral value, polygamy is not going to fly.

Many years ago a friend and I were having a conversation about same-sex marriage. 

He was a proponent. I had some reservations. 

“People should be able to marry whomever they wish,” he said. 

It’s a common answer from people who support same-sex marriage (then and now), and I was prepared for it.

“So I assume you support polygamy,” I responded.

He did not. I asked why, and he couldn’t give an answer. 

Unlike gay marriage, I pointed out, there’s actually a lot of historical precedent for polygamy. He didn’t care. 

My friend is a very bright person, mind you. He went to a top tier college on the east coast. He’s an award-winning writer. (And not a small award.) But all he could say about polygamy was, “It’s different.” 

I bring up polygamy because another friend, Rev. Ben Johnson, recently wrote an article on the subject. (I’ve never met Ben, but have corresponded with him for many years and consider him a friend nevertheless.) 

For years, Ben notes, claims that same-sex marriage could lead to polygamy were treated as fallacious arguments from screwballs. Nevertheless, polygamy appears to be gaining traction, Ben writes. 

This April, Kimberly Rhoten of the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition announced that non-monogamy is “as large as the LGBTQ population in the United States.” The LGBTQIA2S+ movement has announced the latest addition to its ever-growing acronym: CNM, which stands for Consensual Non-Monogamy, or open relationships of the variety common in the LGBT community.

For those interested in reading more about polygamy, I’d encourage you to read Ben’s article. 

But I’m going to explain why I don’t think polygamy is in our future—at least not our near future—and it goes back to my friend’s answer (or non answer).

The first mistake people make is assuming that people are basing their political beliefs on reason, logic, or some coherent foundation of ethics. Some people do, of course, but most do not. Emotivism, a school of thought that suggests moral judgments are essentially expressions of feelings, might be trash philosophy, but it’s ascendent in practice today.

So don’t expect that there will need to be a good or logical reason (or even a coherent one) to keep polygamy illegal. Reason isn’t driving this train. 

Second, and perhaps more importantly, polygamy violates an important modern ethic: equity. It just so happens this ethic is the idol of adherents of another ascendent philosophy: Marxism.

Think about it. Marxism thrives, above all else, on envy. It’s the fuel of progressive politics. 

Some people have too much. You don’t have as much as you should. We’ll take what they have to make a more equitable society. That is just and fair.  

In a time when equity is the chief moral value, the idea of some people having more wives than others is not going to fly. (The fact you noticed I didn’t say “or husbands” just reinforces my point about equity, by the way.) 

People might not be able to explain why polygamy is “an affront to decency” and morality, but that won’t matter.  

It will not be rejected on religious grounds or high morals. It will be rejected because it violates progressive ideals of basic “fairness” and because people can just feel it’s wrong.

Why should privileged rich men get to load up on beautiful wives? How is this fair? How is this equitable?

I could be wrong, of course. But I don’t think I am.