Big Love has to be one of the most radical shows on TV. In the course of the last 10 episodes, they have convinced me that there is nothing wrong with polygamy. Admittedly, I never gave much thought to the issue before, other than an “ew.” But now, I’ve put it in the same category as other “lifestyle options” that I wouldn’t choose for myself, but don’t give a crap if other people do it.
The show follows Bill and his three wives, who are forced to hide their relationship from the world. The mean, scheming, judgy Mormons and the bad polygamists continually threaten their happiness. And in the last episode, the wives bond together in some almost pagan, girl-power thing. No oppressed doormats are they. It’s a fun show.
In one episode, the leader of the bad polygamists said that “if the homosexuals can get married and have the right to privacy, then so should we”. He makes the connection between gay marriage and polygamy that was debated by Jane Galt and Ampersand last week.
In recent years, I have heard the term “valid lifestyle option” batted around. It’s a vile term for many reasons, but the judginess gets me the most. By inserting that word “valid,” it means that some lifestyle options aren’t valid. There are pronouncements of who’s in the cool club and who isn’t. Polygamy is out, but open marriage is in. Gay marriage good; traditional marriage bad. Unitarians good; fundamentalists bad. City folk good; suburbanites bad.
I couldn’t care less if a consenting adult wants to enter into a plural marriage anymore than I care if a married person has a friend on the side. As long as there is no negative impact on the kids. If you can show me that polygamy messes with the kids, then that’s a different story. (One of the reason that I love gay adoption so much is that the new parents are so in love with their kids and so grateful to have gotten them. Everybody should be so in love with their kids. )
Another issue is whether the government and business should extend benefits and supports to include everyone in the group. That’s another debate.
I think it is a losing and offensive battle to determine whose lifestyle is “valid” or not. The standards are arbitrary and the motives suspect. Big love. Big tent.
Apt. 11d 
I agree with you most of the way here, but “beating the kids” is a lifestyle option, and I’m not comfortable pronouncing that valid. So, when pushed, I have to admit that some lifestyle options *aren’t* valid. I’m not sure what to make of this… I can’t see a way to rationalize heavy corporal punishment out of the category of lifestyle choice, and yet you’re never gonna get me to agree it’s acceptable.
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Well, my big caveat for suddenly turning libertarian on lifestyle issues is that everything must be okay for the kids. They’re just innocent bystanders.
I’m not a social worker, but I think that there are some ways to determine the difference between a “ta-ta on the bum” and real abuse. Here in the thick of mommyland, I see a lot of “ta-ta on the bum” and nobody has gotten arrested yet.
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I agree with your big caveat, and only wonder whether it covers much of what child protective service agencies do. That is, they intervene when the state thinks that the family life is too damaging to the child. There are various groups who have organized around anti-CPS positions; some favor corporal punishment, others just want the state out of the family.
I guess I’m saying, protecting children will require a lot moee judginess that you seem to be allowing. The parent/s in many, possioly most, cases involving termination of parental rights would probably claim something about lifestyle choice. Or at least their legal defense lawyers would.
Love the tent, though.
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Well, my friend Mahmoud grew up in a big house in Shiraz with a wing for the older wife (his mother) and a wing for the younger wife, and his father spent more time with the younger wife and he didn’t feel things were very fair.
He didn’t like it, and shows no sign that he wants more than one wife. So, at least in this case, the kids were very much NOT alright.
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If plural marriages were *ever* one woman, multiple men, then I might have less of a problem with them. But given their almost exclusive history of association with patriarchal societies, they seem like an inherently patriarchal institution, one which always gives the women less power and makes them “compete.” And of course this sends a message to the kids: girls, you are less important, boys, you are more important.
I think the same is true for some extreme forms of traditional marriage, as well (e.g., the wife isn’t allowed to work outside the home, control her own social life, have money, etc.) The fact that you can’t outlaw such arrangements doesn’t mean they’re not bad for kids and society in general; so it’s not bad to make (carefully considered, well-informed) moral judgments about these things.
Now of course there are some societies where polygamy was (apparently) needed – in Muhammad’s time, for example, if men died in war, you couldn’t just have all these unmarried women out on their own. So polygamy was legitimized and regulated to make it more fair to the women, rather than simply abolishing it. But I hate the idea that we’ll never get rid of patriarchy so we might as well come up with institutions that make it more bearable without challenging it.
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re: what’s bad for kids. One person might argue that traditional marriages are bad for kids and another might argue that full time daycare is bad for kids, that divorce is bad for kids, that single parenthood is bad for kids. The courts have some methods for determining abuse, even if there is some grey area as RC points out. My caveat ends there.
I care very much about child welfare, but outside of abuse situations, it is too hard to use it as a basis to critique whole family arrangements. Too many intervening variables. And if one wants to use it to critique traditional marriages, then one has to be prepared for it to be used by others who would find child abuse in every lifestyle, but traditional marriages.
I don’t care if my neighbor’s husband doesn’t want her to work and that she’s rather proud of it. Whatever. Maybe I’m getting jaded. I just don’t care what other people choose to do.
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“Polygamy is out, but open marriage is in. Gay marriage good; traditional marriage bad. Unitarians good; fundamentalists bad.”
The difference to me between these brands of what’s good, or “cool”, and what’s not, gets down to free will. If someone is forced into a choice based on social or economic pressure, it’s not cool. If one partner in an open marriage complies with that approach only to keep his/her roof over her head, totally not cool. Sad but true, whether or not someone in a traditional marriage is truly there of their own free will is not clear, when they stand to lose such an incredible amount upon dissolution. I have yet to run into a gay couple where one partner endures bad conditions and stays to avoid abject poverty.
What I know about polygamy is that it is almost NEVER a free choice. It’s a very very young woman getting married to a much older man, with a lifetime’s worth of heavy pressure from her entire community and family. That is not cool. If you aren’t familiar with the Tapestry Against Polygamy stuff you should read up on it. http://www.polygamy.org/
There is a family at my church made up of three single men. They live together and have for years; they had their family picture taken together for the church directory. (I guess it’s the modern-day Lutheran update on that old “bachelor farmer” lifestyle Garrison Keillor always jokes about.) Maybe they’re sleeping together, maybe not, who cares. But they are all the same age, all have the same economic resources, and are all there of their own free will. Unless a setup passes that free will sniff test, I have trouble accepting it.
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“I have yet to run into a gay couple where one partner endures bad conditions and stays to avoid abject poverty. ” We have a good friend who has had problems with that. He’s actually in a very traditional relationship now (he does all the cleaning and his partner earns all the money), but it works for them. They’re both happy.
Absolutely, it’s all about free will. I don’t know anything about polygamy other than the happy HBO special, which presents strong, feminist-ish women who freely entered into the plural marriage. Maybe that never happens in real life, but I don’t know. I guess it is too hard to peer behind windows into other people’s home and determine who’s made a free choice and who is enslaved. I just assume that with options that people have today, very few people have been forced into anything.
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I know I’m really behind on things (blame grading), but I do want to qualify: When I said “heavy corporal punishment,” I meant beating the kids, not swatting them on occasion. And I feel comfortable saying that this *is* a Lifestyle Option because I lived with a guy who was a single parent of three little boys who believed, in an almost-philosophical way, that beating the tar out of them when they were bad was good parenting. Needless to say, I didn’t stick around for long — but it was an intellectual choice for him, not an anger-management issue.
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Of course the first priority should be to protect children from outright abuse. But I think it’s not just jaded but downright wimpy to say: “I won’t criticize your way of life, because then I give you the right to criticize mine.” First of all, it doesn’t work: people who are strong supporters of “the man is the boss” type marriages aren’t suddenly going to start respecting my sister and her partner’s right to raise their child just because we refrain from criticizing them.
There is a place for moral judgments regarding family arrangements, and it goes beyond what happens to individual kids in individual families. I’m not criticizing all traditional families – to me, there’s a big difference between not “wanting” your wife to work (or not wanting to work) and not “allowing” her (or believing your husband can forbid you). Such arrangements might not lead to child abuse, but they are bad for kids to live with, and appropriate targets of criticism.
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Ok, so not all traditional relationships are bad; just the ones where there is some cohersion involved. How often does that happen? i would argue that this is a very small, small subset of traditional marriages.
In the house on one side of me is a family with the traditional arranagement. She doesn’t work. It’s unclear to me if she’s not working because she doesn’t want to or because her husband is the jealous sort. Only a therapist would know.
And on the other side of me is a lesbian couple, who aren’t the blending sort. They are large and have shaved heads and walk around with t-shirts that say “I love pussy.” Does anybody care? No.
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My husband has been saying that (what about plural marriages like for hmong and mormons, etc.) as his answer to the gay marriage question for years, not because he is opposed to gay marriage per se , but because he feels we as a society have the right to define marriage and once you open up the definition to include one fring group, then you must open it up to explore all minority opinions/styles of marriage. Anyway, Big Love got me thinking more and more about his feelings and since I have watched it have to admit he has a good point.
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