lavendersparkle (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lavendersparkle) wrote2009-02-20 01:05 pm
lavendersparkle) wrote2009-02-20 01:05 pm
Polygamy
Two things have got me thinking about polygamy. The first is enjoying the first season of Big Love from LoveFilm. The second was hearing Baroness Warsi calling for the government to combat polygamy.
I've seen Baroness Warsi speak before and most of the time I admire her down to Earth approach to living in a diverse society, but this time I think she's gone a bit wrong. I think this is because people face a problem when faced by how to legally approach polygamy. On the one hand you say "live and let live" and tolerate polygamy even if you don't necessarily grant polygamous marriages legal recognition, or you make adultery illegal, because there's no sense in making plural marriage illegal if plural sex isn't, especially when some religions view sex as a way of forming marriages. Baroness Warsi seems to favour a muddle in between in which all religious marriages have to be registered and you're only allowed one at a time. This is a ridiculous unworkable solution and an attack upon religious freedom and the right of people to have private family lives. There are lots of reasons why people choose to get religiously married but not legally married. Some Christian friends of my parents got religiously married without being legally married because they were moving to Alaska and bizarrely if they got legally married before rather than after they moved, they would have had to spend 6 months apart.* One of my regular readers has said that she would prefer not to get civilised to her wife both due to anarchist leanings and the tax advantages of being legally flat mates. It seems an integral to religious freedom that people should be allowed to engage in covenants and ceremonies without unnecessary state interference. Apart from anything else, religious institutions can sometimes not quite translate into English law. How should the law treat a Pagan or an Islamic fixed length marriage? How should a concubine be legally regarded? How on Earth could it cope with Mormon bindings, which whilst closely related to marriage can sometimes be conducted between two people who are both dead? Does Baroness Warsi really want to conduct raids on polyamourous hand fastings?
I think we have to accept that if we think that sexual practices between consenting adults should be left up to those consenting adults, that's going to have to include plural marriage. That's not because of 'cultural sensitivity' but out of respect for the right of adults to have relationships without government interference. If some polygamists have a habit of abusing their wives, we need to combat partner abuse directly, not practices which we think might be correlated with it.
*Ah, the wonders of the US immigration system.
I've seen Baroness Warsi speak before and most of the time I admire her down to Earth approach to living in a diverse society, but this time I think she's gone a bit wrong. I think this is because people face a problem when faced by how to legally approach polygamy. On the one hand you say "live and let live" and tolerate polygamy even if you don't necessarily grant polygamous marriages legal recognition, or you make adultery illegal, because there's no sense in making plural marriage illegal if plural sex isn't, especially when some religions view sex as a way of forming marriages. Baroness Warsi seems to favour a muddle in between in which all religious marriages have to be registered and you're only allowed one at a time. This is a ridiculous unworkable solution and an attack upon religious freedom and the right of people to have private family lives. There are lots of reasons why people choose to get religiously married but not legally married. Some Christian friends of my parents got religiously married without being legally married because they were moving to Alaska and bizarrely if they got legally married before rather than after they moved, they would have had to spend 6 months apart.* One of my regular readers has said that she would prefer not to get civilised to her wife both due to anarchist leanings and the tax advantages of being legally flat mates. It seems an integral to religious freedom that people should be allowed to engage in covenants and ceremonies without unnecessary state interference. Apart from anything else, religious institutions can sometimes not quite translate into English law. How should the law treat a Pagan or an Islamic fixed length marriage? How should a concubine be legally regarded? How on Earth could it cope with Mormon bindings, which whilst closely related to marriage can sometimes be conducted between two people who are both dead? Does Baroness Warsi really want to conduct raids on polyamourous hand fastings?
I think we have to accept that if we think that sexual practices between consenting adults should be left up to those consenting adults, that's going to have to include plural marriage. That's not because of 'cultural sensitivity' but out of respect for the right of adults to have relationships without government interference. If some polygamists have a habit of abusing their wives, we need to combat partner abuse directly, not practices which we think might be correlated with it.
*Ah, the wonders of the US immigration system.
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The legal nightmare of recognising all possible forms of non-monogamous relationship is something I don't expect the government to attempt to tackle at present; but at least we should be let alone to get on with our own lives!
If your spouse takes on another spouse or concubine or is sleeping around without your consent then this should be a reason for gaining a divorce (well, IMO, people ought to be able to get divorces for reason of "I want a divorce" but that's me; if the law wants people to divorce only if there is a 'reason' then non consensual polygamy should be a 'reason') but certainly not illegal.
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But _sheesh_ the _arrogance_ of 'this is all about muslim men wanting more than one wife'! And OK, they did have a 'look, my husband has two wives and it's all fine' speaker on radio 4, but the 'my husband insisted on marrying someone else and it was awful' position got so much more air time.
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and my brother's ex-wife fucked around and ran up huge credit card debts. The government can't actually stop people being fuckwits, the best it can do is put stuff in place to pick up the pieces as best it can when they are.