Polygamy, voyeurism, and other fun things to do on the weekend

New York State Court of Appeals refused to overturn the state's ban on gay marriage.

Shakespeare's Sister is deeply concerned.

I wish the Court had ruled differently, but I'm not as distressed as Shakes.

Nothing the Court said or might have said matters outside of New York.  A ruling the other way might have emboldened courts in other states, but it wouldn't have set any precedents or examples they would have felt compelled to follow, especially in the more regressive states.

And a ruling the other way would still have put the issue back in the lap of the legislature, which is where the Court tossed it anyway.

And this is New York.  We're not Massachusetts, but we're getting there.  After all, this is our Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals.

Eliot Spitzer's going to be our next governor.  Hillary's running for re-election.  The two of them together will have some coattails in the fall.

It would be nice to be there now, though.

"There" being civilization.

After I heard about the ruling I got to thinking deeply on a subject that's concerned me for a long time now.

Polygamy.

I'm against it.

Whew.

Bet that's a load off your mind.

"Look, dear.  Lance Mannion's come out against polygamy.  That'll put a stop to all this Big Love talk.  No chance you're getting that second wife now, sweetie pie, not without a very, very expensive divorce.  Ha ha!"

Actually, what I was wondering about is why so many of the Right Wing "defenders" of "traditional" marriage always go right to the polygamy argument.

"If we allow gays to marry, then there's nothing we can't deny.  Next thing you know, polygamy will be legal!"

There's a delightful inconsistency here, all these Godbotherers waving their bibles in our faces, shouting, bug-eyed, "It's Adam and Eve!  Not Adam and Steve!"  Their beloved Scripture approves of polygamy, after all, and bans divorce, which is something their flocks do with the regularity and cheerfuly clear consciences of Hollywood royalty.

But I can follow the line of reasoning.  If you are trying to preserve marriage as an exclusively monogamist and heterosexual form of torture then every step away from that model is a step toward the erasure of marriage.  First you get rid of the heterosexual part, then out goes the monogamy, and finally you do away with licenses, churches, vows, and matching dishware.  And then where are you?

Trailer Park America.

They already live there, or awfully close to the border, and it's not fun.

That's not a joke, actually, and it's not a put down.  ("It's not?  Sure sounded like one, Lance."  "That's because you're assuming I'm as snotty an elitist as you are."  "Oh.  I see.  Thank you for sharing your egalitarianism, Lance.  I feel so cleansed now."  "What I'm here for.")  I think it was Kevin Drum who I first read point this out, but a lot of Right Wing America lives on the frontier between civilization and Trailer Park choas.  The reason they are so terrrified by change and the prospect of sexual and personal freedom is that where they come from all those things are aftereffects of social breakdown.

It's why many African-Americans are extremely socially conservative too.

In the more progressive parts of the country, we have managed to preserve our social order.  Somebody else can show that this is a result of Liberalism.  It's mainly a benefit of prosperity.  Somebody else can show that that's a result of Liberalism too.

Still, the leap from being a-skeered of gay marriage to watching for harems to start popping up in the neighborhood is domino theory thinking.  Problems don't always line up like dominos though.  In fact, they rarely do.  Which is a way of saying that even if you ban gay marriages, it won't stop people from arguing that polygamy is acceptable and loads of fun too.  Better to ask and answer questions one at a time.

The "problem" presented by gay marriage---is a union between two people of the same sex really that much different between the union of a man and woman that it must be prohibited?  How so and why?---is very different from the problem of polygamy.

The problem of polygamy, as I see it, is that it is unfair to the wives.

After all, nobody's talking about a truly polygamous society.  When we say polygamy we mean a system where a man gets to be polygamous with as many women as he can afford to support (or convince to support him), all of whom are required to be monogamous with him.

Once upon a time, I got a faraway glimpse of what life in a polygamous household might be like.  When the blonde and I were young and carefree, a great many of our evenings were spent playing host to one or the other or both of a couple of our close woman friends.  They would arrive at dinner time and stay until bedtime.  One of them had a habit of staying until past bedtime and falling asleep on our couch.  Then we had to carry her off to the guest room and put her to bed, so she was often there in the mornings, and, if it was the weekend, there until Monday morning.

I'm here to tell you that when you are in a room with two or three attractive and happy young women who like each other and like you, watching them make and serve dinner together---I cooked sometimes, I swear!---you get to thinking that polygamy might not only work but be a very pleasant way to live.

Of course, there was no sexual jealousy in our little menage.  And no children.  And no shared bills and expenses.

Adding just one of those elements would have thrown the whole arrangement out of alignment.

Plus, I hated it when another guy showed up.

This struck me as terribly selfish of me, but there it was.

What I'm saying is that the central problem of polygamy isn't so much about sex as about preserving harmony.  And I think the easiest, and therefore what would be the most usual, method for preserving harmony is male and predominance.

It wouldn't have to work like this.  I just think it would.  I also think that the only women who would submit themselves to this would be submissive and easily taken advantage of.  Just as I think the only men who would want this for themselves---I'm talking about a system where they could have their cake and eat too; not random opportunities for relatively guilt-free sex with different women after having said I do to one of them in a weak moment---would be selfish and domineering.

In short, I think that if marriage is a funadamental support of an ordered society, the kind of society that polygamy would support would be sexist, partriarchal, authoritarian, rigidly hierarchical, and undemocratic in the extreme.  Keeping order would require enforcement of the husband's privileges.

Working the dominos backwards, gay marriage raises none of those issues.

Polygamy is antithetical to a democratic society.  Gay marriage can be an additional support to a democratic society.

Reasonably, then, the two forms of marriage aren't anything alike at all.  Debating them as if one were just an extreme of the other is very much a case of not just comparing apples and oranges but saying they are both kumquats.

So where's the connection?

Oh, we all know what it is.

Sex.

Gay marriage is like polygamy because they both allow sex that's not limited to one man and one woman.

Ewww!

Talking as if in allowing gay marriages we are opening the door to polygamy and going from bad to worse, reveals a degree of disgust at the thought of other people's sex lives that can only come from spending your time imagining other people's sex lives.

Who does that?

Who wants to?

Ok, I know.  Amateur pornography is very popular.  But, really, I don't want to know.  I don't want to know what my friends are doing in bed---well, there was this one very attractive couple we used to know who...

Nevermind.

Sex is wonderful and I'm all for experimentation and generally in favor of whatever floats your boat, but---

Mabye I'm just squeamish, or prudish, or deep in denial, but nothing turns me off so fast as the details of other people's sex lives, even when their details aren't all that different from my own.

Dr B recently had some very lively threads going on sex and sexuality. (Jackmormon of Not Yet Enlightened provides a handy table of contents---with commentary---to Dr B's threads here.)  Being a normal heterosexual man and a bit of a voyeur the only one I've looked at is the straight women talking to straight women thread.

There's a lot of intelligent, open, funny, honest, and intriguing talk going on between a lot of smart, vivavious, open, and happily lusty women.  But quite a lot of what I read gave me the shivers.

Every other comment had me thinking Thank God I never ran into that when I was single.

I'm not talking about anything kinky or weird or sick either.  There was hardly anything I read that wasn't actually quite tame and even sort of cute and tender.

I'm talking about personal preferences in kissing styles, foreplay, what counts as an errogenous zone, expectations, fetishes of the sort that do not require costumes, props, and role playing, needs, desires, fantasies, and just plain likes and dislikes.

But I realized as I read that what was actually turning me off was my own voyeurism.  I admit it, I like to watch sometimes, and I've seen some lovely sights, but I don't mean that kind of voyeurism.  I mean the spying on your neighbors kind.

This was none of my business.

So I left.

I don't want to know, because I'm not supposed to know.  It's none of my business what you do in bed.  Or in the kitchen.  Or the backyard.  Or wherever.

Unless it's in the bathroom on airplanes.

Come on!  There are other people waiting out here!

This is probably why I can go weeks, months even, without thinking about other people's sex lives.

Watching characters in movies or TV shows or reading about them doesn't count.  You're really thinking about your own sex life then, just picturing yourself as someone else...or your usual partner as someone else.

So I've just never been able to understand the disgust that often wells up in other people when the conversation turns to homosexuality or to any sexual topic.

The ewww! factor.

Leaving aside the normal, natural, and even fun reflexive fantasizing that might be going on, I think for many people that ewww! is a reflexive expression of obligation.  They are reacting the way they've been taught they are expected to react.  Women are more likely to do this in my experience, since they're often raised to believe "Good girls don't even think about that stuff."

For other people that digusted ewww! is a reflexive translation of a titilated Oh, my! They're not really disgusted at the act being discussed but surprised at their own curiosity and excitement.

I think, though, in order for that ewww! to be heartfelt, you have to be doing more than a little fantasizing.  You have to be imagining it in a direct way that I can only describe as voyeuristic.

You have to be spying in your mind on strangers having sex.

You have to have a real, obsessive, and purient interest in what other people are doing.

Gay sex, straight sex, group sex, kinky sex, boring old run of the mill sex, doesn't matter.  When we meet someone who is that involved in imagining other people's sex lives that they can react so strongly, either with an ewww or an Oh, my! we think, "Wow, they're screwed up.  All kinds of issues there."

When an entire subculture is obsessed, is defining itself by a collective voyeurism, then something truly weird and probably depraved is going on.  There are all kinds of issues there.

I'm thinking a whole lot of molestation, abuse, and rape is not getting talked about.

Some people need to set their own house in order before they tell the rest of us how to live in ours.

Comments

[Jennifer]

Sounds about right.

[mac macgillicuddy]

"After all, nobody's talking about truely polygamous marriages. When we say polygamy we mean a system where a man gets to be polygamous with as many women as he can afford to support (or convince to support him), all of whom are required to be monogomous with him."

A variation on this arrangement is known as polyamory, which means a whole lotta love going on among several parties, men and women. Not to be confused with swinging, which they tell me is about lack of commitment and all about fun, polyamory subscribes to the belief and practice that there is no "one" for any of us out here and, in fact, there may be "many" for any of us.

Now that I think about it, perhaps we're risking a potential drift by inference back toward the gay marriage arena here, but at least polyamory is free of heirarchy, male or female. Or so goes the course description.

[Kate Marie]

Lance,

An interesting post, and I'll try to comment at greater length when I have more time, but I wanted to point out that the reason that some opponents of gay marriage mention polygamy is not always, as you say, to make a strict comparison between the two but because many of the arguments for gay marriage -- specifically, the civil rights/equal rights argument -- rely on principles and assumptions which would also logically apply to polygamy and polyamory.

Your stand against polygamy on the grounds of its sexist/hierarchical nature and its potentially negative impact on society is fine, but it concedes to the "other side" the idea that the debate about marriage is about normative principles, about values, about what's best for society -- and not about individual rights and preferences. And that's okay, because that's where I think the argument needs to be made (Dale Carpenter's arguments strike me as very convinving in this regard).

[mac macgillicuddy]

"They would arrive at dinner time and stay until bedtime. One of them had a habit of staying until past bedtime and falling asleep on our couch. Then we had to carry her off to the guest room and put her to bed, so she was often there in the mornings, and, if it was the weekend, there until Monday morning."

Oh, I forgot to say that this sort of happened to us, once. Only the outcome wasn't as blissful. Our friend arrived for dinner two hours late; there was a grease fire in the wok, and her attempt to put it out involved trying to carry the wok to the patio--spilling the flames onto the carpet and her forearms in so doing. The carpet wound up with a scorched hole; the fire department came; and I took our friend to the ER.

When all was quiet later, and she had returned to our living room couch to recuperate (painfree on painkillers and lighting a cigarette as she pointed out that firefighters are all pyromaniacs to begin with), she fell alseep and stayed alseep.

She occupied our living room for two days in this state, and eventually we just wrote her a note and left.

[DuWayne]

I have to dissagree with your feelings on polygamy - I don't have time to now but will happily return later to do so. And for the record, I am not interested in such a marriage myself - one or none is plenty for me to deal with but I do think that people should be allowed to form the relationships they like, as long as they are not abusive ones.

[joanr16]

I learned in paralegal school that "The Law" (i.e. government) views, and always has viewed, marriage as a contract. In that context, denying citizens the right to enter into the contract of marriage because of their gender is a violation of civil rights.

In paralegal school we also learned that specific types of contracts, for specific purposes, may have requirements that are more restrictive than other types of contracts (e.g., contracts for the sale of real estate must be in writing). Cities, states or Congress could enact laws restricting the contract of marriage to two parties only, and such a law would not violate our current or traditional understanding of civil rights. The polygamy argument is bogus, and was concocted by people who fail to grasp the distinction between government ("marriage as contract") and church ("marriage as sacrament").

[Hustveit]

Nice, interesting post. Say what you will about polygamy (and you say it quite persuasively), it's better to have a slippery slope-argument that ends with polygamy, than what some Cons are (nastily) suggesting, that gay marriage will end with pet-marriages.

[Michael Bains]

I'm thinking a whole lot of molestation, abuse, and rape is not getting talked about.

One of the reasons I post some really personal stuff, is because I AM normal in most ways. LOL! That's why the ways in which I'm not, hurt so freakin' bad sometimes, and I want to be myself and be amongst "normal" people, because I know so many other "normal" people who've had similar experiences.

No one in my "Liberal" Catholic family ever talked to me about what may have been the most powerful experiences of my pre-teen life. They did work with the 4 years older girl involved, though I don't know in exactly what manner. I only know they did because the other "principals" involved and I eventually had to discuss it, when I was 22, as part of a 12 step deal.

By that time, lemme tell ya, the "damage" was already done.

But, should I give up? Not socialize? Hide in a "closet" and pretend I'm just "weird"? "Let it go?" LOL! Always trying that one... {shakin'head}

I'm sure others would be more comfortable with that, and rightfully so. As you say: voyeurism of any sort can just be ewww!!! So I generally do keep this stuff to myself, but occasionally I kinda think it's important to let people know how common I've found that kinda stuff to really be.

Anyhow, I mostly comment to share where I concurr, or am moved, or just because I admire someone or something and want to be a part of them/it. So in that sense, I really AM normal! LOL

Thanks for another incisive and honest post, Lance.

(Jeez... It's really hard to click "post" on this one. Ok...)

[Kate Marie]

joanr16,

In polygamy -- if I understand it correctly -- the contract is between two people only (two people at a time). Congress/legislatures would have to enact laws restricting the number of marriage contracts people could enter into, not the number of parties per contract. The reason for doing so --that they aren't prevented by civil rights laws from interfering in the preferences of people who seek state recognition of their loving and committed relationships -- seems sort of sophistic, doesn't it? I mean, it only gets rid of the problem in the most legalistic way. It doesn't prevent advocates of polygamy asking -- entirely legitimately, in my opinion -- if it is a matter of civil/equal rights for gay people to be permitted to enter into contracts which formalize their most intimate and important relationships, why should polygamists be arbitrarily banned from doing so? And why could some polygamists not argue that banning polygamous contracts illegally discriminates against members of their religion?

[Avedon]

Well, a lot of people may say "polygamy" and mean "polygyny", but most of the long-term polyamorous relationships I know, the ones that are effectively marriages between one person and two or more other people, are polyandrous.

It's worth remembering that polygyny and polyandry have both historically existed; it's not just some modern idea for a woman to have two husbands. It's rich guys who get more than one wife, but sharing a wife with another guy is a solution for men who are not of such great material means. See, it's the economy, stupid.

And in the economy I see emerging around us, I think polyandry may be the coming thing, because it's a boatload easier for two or three men to support one woman than for one man to support two or more women. And that still matters because men still tend to bring home more money than women and, more importantly, women still tend to have babies. (And if the technology collapses, you're gonna need all that extra muscle.)

[mac macgillicuddy]

"most of the long-term polyamorous relationships I know, the ones that are effectively marriages between one person and two or more other people, are polyandrous."

Most of the ones I know of are Pollyannaish. (haha)

[Amanda Marcotte]

Agreed. I honestly can say I pretty much never think about people I know in bed, gay or straight. Odds are it's not that big a deal.

[The Other Rick]

Wow. So you equate being conservative with a close proximity to social breakdown, something you also associate with trailer parks - concurrently assuming that liberal areas are more properous. Yet claim that this is not insulting because you are not elitist.

You, uh, really need to expand your defense of the last argument in there.

Also, the argument against gay marriage related to polygamy is, as has been pointed out, based upon the arguments fronted by gay marriage advocates. If the state has no ability to deny marital contracts between two people of the same gender, how can they limit the number of such contracts? Indeed, the same legal argument has been tried and is being tried in Canada based on the same reasoning.

Your focus on prurience and voyeuristic tendencies in those who oppose gay marriage smacks more of projection than deduction. The two main arguments used by foes are actually the religious one (based on moral arguments, not ickiness) and social ones (the argument that the breakdown in certain social institutions preceeds social chaos, not vice versa).

Last, one man, many wives is 'polygyny', one woman, many husbands is 'polyandry', a state where either is possible is 'polygamy'.