CMV: Heterosexual and homosexual polygamy should be legal

I'm against some but not all of them. Monogamous marriage is worth losing a little liberty for. It's the cornerstone of our society, and stable marriages have tremendous societal benefits. It often involves a division of labor that is efficient but dangerous without a little legal protection. It is extremely useful for child rearing, for instance.

I understand this, thanks for explaining.

While monogamous marriages are worth a little loss of liberty, polygamous marriages are not. They appear to be much less stable unless backed up by more force than monogamy seems to need. They tend to be tied to extremely regressive ideologies. They have a much harder time being fair to all the participants than monogamous marriages do. So even the things I support when it comes to monogamous marriage I would not support to prop up polygamy.

I'm not sure these justifications work, let's consider them in turn.

They appear to be much less stable unless backed up by more force than monogamy seems to need.

Is there any evidence for this?

They tend to be tied to extremely regressive ideologies.

So are some monogamous marriages. Plus, polygamous marriages are illegal, therefore their being tied to a criminal element is understandable, as the law-abiding are excluded and the law-breakers are included.

They have a much harder time being fair to all the participants than monogamous marriages do.

I'm not sure what that means exactly, but more importantly, I'm not sure if we should care about that. I mean, should society at large care if Peter washes 10 more socks per week than Paul, or if Paul has more sex than Peter? I'm not sure that these factors suddenly become relevant with respect to polygamous marriage, when they aren't for monogamous marriage.

/r/changemyview Thread Parent