![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsOh, good. Jonathan Rauch has finally written a response to Stanley Kurtz's argument that if we extend marriage rights to homosexuals, we have no social-policy grounds under which to deny them to polyamorists. Rauch's argument is compelling and echoes my own: indeed, he uses the same material I did last year, adding to it more recent examples from the current Chinese experience.
The argument is a simple one: if you grant legal recognition to polyamorous households, then the ones to take the most advantange of the system will not be liberal SF-con-going women with two husbands but rabidly Christian and Mormon harem-collectors. Households with a surfeit of wives will easily outnumber households with multiple husbands. We don't live in a perfect world, and there's not much we can do to change human nature such as it is. In our world, the one where policy writers have to live, if you grant legal recognition and the transfer of marriage rights to polyamorous households, you will soon arrive at a state where you have a large underclass of men who have no chance to marry.
History records no state that was not monagamous that succeeded as a liberal democracy. Rauch misses making an important point: polygamy is a powerful tool for conservative *women*; with more than one woman in the household, they can exert more influence over the man (provided, of course, that the women all have a common agenda), and women will have the power to "marry up" into high-status households. I think that's a point worth holding onto: in a society where polyamory in the norm, you'll have a group of women who are monogamous precisely because they can't marry up. Polygamy leads to a stratification based upon criteria liberal democracies don't want to face.
But the point inevitably comes back to the real world argument that legalized polyamory would benefit households with many wives, and those with many husbands would be rare. In such a world, there would be a class of subalterns, subordinate men with no hope of ever enjoying the stabilizing effects of marriage. Rauch concludes:
The argument is a simple one: if you grant legal recognition to polyamorous households, then the ones to take the most advantange of the system will not be liberal SF-con-going women with two husbands but rabidly Christian and Mormon harem-collectors. Households with a surfeit of wives will easily outnumber households with multiple husbands. We don't live in a perfect world, and there's not much we can do to change human nature such as it is. In our world, the one where policy writers have to live, if you grant legal recognition and the transfer of marriage rights to polyamorous households, you will soon arrive at a state where you have a large underclass of men who have no chance to marry.
History records no state that was not monagamous that succeeded as a liberal democracy. Rauch misses making an important point: polygamy is a powerful tool for conservative *women*; with more than one woman in the household, they can exert more influence over the man (provided, of course, that the women all have a common agenda), and women will have the power to "marry up" into high-status households. I think that's a point worth holding onto: in a society where polyamory in the norm, you'll have a group of women who are monogamous precisely because they can't marry up. Polygamy leads to a stratification based upon criteria liberal democracies don't want to face.
But the point inevitably comes back to the real world argument that legalized polyamory would benefit households with many wives, and those with many husbands would be rare. In such a world, there would be a class of subalterns, subordinate men with no hope of ever enjoying the stabilizing effects of marriage. Rauch concludes:
Polygamy is, structurally and socially, the opposite of same-sex marriage, not its equivalent. Same-sex marriage stabilizes individuals, couples, communities, and society by extending marriage to many who now lack it. Polygamy destabilizes individuals, couples, communities, and society by withdrawing marriage from many who now have it.
