The gay marriage decision has put us in uncharted waters with regard to polygamy

[Wella]

134. I'm not fond of losing a bet, but I think I will win this one

I've been thinking about how to gain public support, and here's what I have.

1. The gay marriage/marriage equality movement has already proved extremely useful and will continue to do so.

First, the legal path is already set. Marriage is a civil right residing in the person and the government cannot abridge that right unless it has a compelling interest. It will be our job to prove that there is no compelling interest for government to do so.

The main argument I have heard tonight against polygamy is "We'll have to change the laws, the forms, child custody." That argument might work right now, but eventually the message "We can't give you your rights because our lawyers have to work overtime" will get very old and will seem like stalling.

And quite frankly, anything that can be said about poly marriage has already been said about gay marriage and those assertions sound like prejudice, whether they actually are or not. SCOTUS will have a harder and harder time making arguments against poly marriage because the rhetoric will sound hollow and arbitrary. It will also sound discriminatory.

In the end, it will boil down to marriage as a civil right and the idea that some humans are hard-wired for polygamy/polyandry. There is actually much more hard core research on humans (and other animals) being naturally non-monogamous than there is for homosexuality being inborn. (There are some suggestive studies here and there, but no official gay gene and no definitive proof. It wasn't really needed in the end.)

And speaking of research, advocacy research will absolutely be funded as it was for gay marriage/parenting. Eventually, any researcher arguing against poly marriage will get the Mark Regnerus treatment, even if that researcher has the best and most objective stats out there. University professors have a herd mentality. They are not in any way the maverick thinkers they credit themselves with being. They will read the writing on the wall, see where the funding is and go there. There will be wealthy folk who want to fund studies like these. There is also money in the social sciences for people who want to end discrimination.

The research on polygamy/polyandry need not be air tight, just suggestive of certain results. What the poly movement will have to prove is NOT that polyandry and polygamy are good for society--we only have to prove (like gay marriage advocates) that poly practice is not bad for society. That children do "just as well", that they are not harmed in poly situations. That poly marriages are just as stable as monogamous ones--and considering the divorce rate, the bar is pretty low on that one. Also, remember that the number of non-married straight people raising children is increasing. It will seem more and more unfair to make polyrelationships prove they are just as good as married couples when far more of the nation's children will be being raised by the unmarried. That argument will work about 10 years from now, I think.


2. New laws involving gay families will also help the poly movement

Because gay couples always have to navigate around a third (and sometimes fourth) person to reproduce, law on parental rights and custody is changing. States like California now allow for 3 legal parents per child. These kinds of laws can help poly families gain some legal standing. Gay divorces--and there will be many--will provide the opportunity to build new kinds of post marital custody law. If a child has three legal parents, what happens in the case of a divorce? Cases like this will build the infrastructure for poly families.

The more new case law there is on non-traditional family structure, the more this helps the poly advocates fight the "lawyers working overtime" and "paperwork" arguments. The more laws that can be used by gay and poly marriage situations alike, the less resistance the court will have to allowing poly marriage.


3. Socially, the gay marriage experience can allay fears about polygamy

The poly movement needs to allay peoples' fears that poly marriage will require them to change the way they marry. Our argument (like the gay marriage argument) will be "My poly marriage will not affect your monogamous marriage."

The effectiveness of that argument will rely on how much gay marriage has or has not affected traditional straight marriage. As long as gays are perceived as following the rules of monogamy and not trying to push gay marriage on straight people (yes, that's a RW trope, but it's out there) then poly marriage advocates can point to the gay community as the exemplar of pluralistic living.

In addition, time will weed out the oldsters (like myself) and the young things raised with gay marriage as a normal part of life will be far more inclined to be accepting of poly marriages. I give it 20 years. The current batch of 20s and 30s have to get into power positions.


4. Gay activists like Dan Savage can actually help the poly cause by heavily promoting the idea of "monogamish", or open marriage. This will eventually lead to both gays and straights feeling more comfortable with other partners in the marriage, even on a temporary basis.

Lest you think I'm out of my mind, I actually heard Dan Savage on NPR a couple of years ago and he came across as quite convincing. He has a lot of personal charisma. Younger people, who have been brought up with more sexual fluidity and tolerance--and whose sexual exploits are beyond those of my peers when we were young--will take to these ideas. These younger folk are increasingly non-religious and their values tend towards sexual openness and experimentation. Dan Savage and others like him will have an effect.


5. Women are probably the biggest single obstacle to polygamy since, historically, it has been lousy for women. This will require a PR program and a change in thinking.

First, women will have to see themselves as having some skin in the game. It will start with "monogamish" and the idea of bringing home a "girlfriend" that you and your husband both share. There was an episode of "Wife Swap" not long ago that promoted such a situation. This is already happening, but there will be a push to have more of it and to eventually legitimize it. Women will be told it is "empowering" in the same way they are told that Beyonce and Kim Kardashian are feminists.

We will see someone--maybe Miley Cyrus--who has both a spouse and a side piece and who will argue that she wants to be married to both of them. Other celebrities may follow. This will change the image of polygamy from old geezers screwing teenage girls in cults to "empowered" women seeking intense sexual and emotional connection with two people at once. The guy doesn't run the situation with two women: one woman runs the situation with the guy and another woman.

In the case of gay women, the idea might be more egalitarian--the idea that plural female relationships of equals promises something higher than they already have. Also--and this is borne out by studies in Denmark and in US--lesbian relationships are less stable than gay male ones and they usually break up over affairs. (Gay men are more inclined to stay together and tolerate sexual affairs, mostly because of the way males view sex.) With children, you want these relationships to be more stable, and it might be sold to lesbian couples that plural marriages will give variety and stability. Here again, a major lesbian celebrity might come out with her wife and their girlfriend, and she will argue that she wants legal recognition for the three of them.

There will be 20/20 interviews, maybe a daring TV show (like Soap) bringing in a polyamorous household for high comedy, and later, for sensitive treatment. A show like Friends could have a character like Ross staying in a poly relationship with his wife and her girlfriend.

Media is powerful, the younger generation is more open and less inclined to question the morals of things, and once they are in their 30s and 40s, there will be no one to tell them no. They will be lobbyists in Washington, they will be making policy. They will be acting in or directing movies and TV.


I give it 20 years at most.

"Sister Wives" will be a thing of the past, but it will also have served its function. It brought an entire polygamous family into peoples' living rooms and it planted the idea in their heads. The fact that there is a religious angle may actually be helpful--it reminds people that, unlike gay marriage, polygamy has an old history, even a Biblical one. There's a comfort level in that even as the audience laughs at the show for its bizarreness. Giving people something controversial to laugh at lowers their resistance to the idea in general.