Via Matt Yglesias, I find this rather goofy article, Polygamy Versus Democracy. Apparently there’s a prevailing opinion in legal circles that polygamy should be legally recognized, and this is Stanley Kurtz’s argument that it shouldn’t be recognized because it isn’t compatible with democracy.
I tend to agree that traditional patriarchal polygamy isn’t compatible with a liberal society - certainly not if it’s a cultural norm. Strangely, Kurtz never mentions one of the primary reasons this is so: the fact that, by definition, patriarchal polygamy involves making women a lesser class than men. When half your society doesn’t have the same rights as the other half, truly liberal government is pretty much impossible. The closest thing I can find to an acknowledgment of women’s oppression in polygamous societies is the remark that “polygamy opens the way to marital discord, divorce, and the consequent destitution and abandonment of women and children.” Of course, this phrasing implies that women are something to be taken care of, just like children, so I’m still not at all sure that the subjugation of women is a factor in Kurtz’s dislike of polygamy.
So why does he dislike it? Supposedly, of course, because it’s incompatible with democracy. He uses the Mormon society of the 19th century to demonstrate this.
Brigham Young was simultaneously head of the church, governor of the Utah Territory, and a member of the boards of major businesses. Young decided where his followers lived, the crops they grew, where they shopped, the professions they chose–and who they married. There was little government beyond the church’s structure. Religious leaders schooled their families privately, while most of the territory’s children remained illiterate. Elections were understood not as forums for debate and decision, but as occasions for popular acclamation of God’s choice.Underlying all this was a deeply communal ethic: Men and women were willing to defer to the church’s leadership for the sake of the broader Mormon society, even in so personal a matter as marriage–within which, of course, wives deferred to husbands.
(There’s another hint at women’s subjugation… but no exploration of how this might harm a society.) It seems fairly clear here that the theocracy was the problem, not the polygamy per se. I guess the argument is that polygamy fostered a communal ethic, which then led to acceptance of theocracy. But there’s not too much explanation of how that works, and I’m pretty sure it’s not a necessary condition. (See: Scientologists - not polygamous as far as I know, but happy to let their crazy church control their lives.)
Sure enough, Mormon resistance was broken by taking apart the theocracy first:
Attending to the social and economic foundations of Mormon power, Congress set out to break polygamist rule. By 1833, the disestablishment of churches in the American states was complete, and it had been accomplished partly by state legislatures’ setting limits to the churches’ business and property holdings. Congress now applied these standards to the Utah Territory, modeling its legislation on the original “mortmain” laws that had curbed church power in England. In this way, church control of Utah’s economy was dissolved, and erstwhile church property was used to fund public education, with a curriculum designed around democratic values.The result was capitulation. With the economic and social foundations of theocracy destroyed, a shooting war unwinnable, and the quest for statehood hanging in the balance, the Mormons renounced polygamy and set themselves on the path to democracy.
Perhaps theocratic rule by a nut was what led to the polygamous practices? No mention of that possbilitiy.
Some time later, Kurtz argues that successful polygamy depends on giving up individual autonomy:
This same emphasis on rules and hierarchy within a tightly bound group explains why the Bedouin children studied by Al-Krenawi turn out all right. Things get better when Bedouin kids grow up and receive surrogate parenting from their extended kin. But that depends on giving up what Al-Krenawi calls “the Western liberal conception of individual autonomy.” To get all that surrogate parenting, the Bedouin adopt an “authoritarian and group-oriented” identification with an extended family and tribe.
Cognitive dissonance at hearing “individual autonomy=good” and “identification with extended family=bad” from a conservative aside, this is probably the most persuasive argument he has. But two paragraphs later, we get this:
Yet the weakening or even disappearance of extended kinship groups from family life in the West poses a problem. If families aren’t going to be held together by collective honor, mutual obligation, and shared economic interest, how will they cohere? The answer is love. Exclusive affection for a unique individual is the structural foundation on which Western families are built. In polygamous societies, where marriages are arranged and wives and children live collectively, too much individualized love (for spouses or children) endangers group solidarity. Yet in a democratic society, individualized love is praised and cultivated as the foundation of family stability.
Wait just a minute. Families aren’t held together by collective honor, mutual obligation, and shared economic interest? I thought those were a huge part of why people do form families! While love is a wonderful thing, it can’t be the only basis for a marriage or family. Love doesn’t conquer all, folks. Expecting it to do so is a significant factor in the current high divorce rate - if you don’t love each other any more, why stay married? Especially if you’re not supposed to hold your family together with honor, obligation, or economic interest!
After reading that, I had to google to make sure this guy is actually a conservative. He is! And in an NRO article from just last week, I found the following:
Consider Anthony Giddens, the most influential sociologist in Britain, and arguably all of Europe. Giddens’s 1992 book, The Transformation of Intimacy, with its famous notion of “the pure relationship,” is the text most frequently invoked by European demographers to explain trends like parental cohabitation and same-sex unions.Giddens’s point is that modern marriage is slowly being divested of connections with anything beyond the purely emotional bonding of adults. It used to be that the love of husband and wife was only part of the picture. Men and women were held together by love, but also by economic interdependence, and a shared commitment to parenthood. But gradually, says Giddens, the marriage alliance is becoming less and less about a shared project of prosperity and parenting. Increasingly, marriage is being reduced to a strictly emotional connection between two adults: “the pure relationship.”
For Europe’s demographers, Giddens’s idea of the pure relationship makes sense of why so many parents now avoid marriage. When having a child turns into an experiment that might possibly lead to marriage, rather than a reason to get married in the first place, you know that marriage has been narrowed into an identification with the adult love relationship. Gay marriage fits in here, as well. When gay-marriage advocates define marriage, they carefully confine themselves to the adult love relationship, insisting that parenthood has no intrinsic connection to marriage.
He goes on to argue that this trend is undermining the traditional family, which, after all, does require commitment and economic interdependence beyond just love. If you accept Kurtz’s argument in the Weekly Standard article that “individualized love is … the foundation of family stability” and individual autonomy is key in a democracy, maybe it’s gay marriage and not the traditional family that’s truly compatible with democracy!
My head is hurting from trying to wrap my mind around these arguments. So that’s the end of the substantive criticism, but there are two more ridiculous quotes that I can’t resist including.
Of course, liberal law professors aren’t defending polygamy out of affection for patriarchy. Their goal is to establish the principle that individuals have the right to create and define their families as they see fit. Ultimately, that would put same-sex marriage, polyamory, nonsexual group partnerships, and even singlehood on a par with traditional marriage, resulting in the effective abolition of marriage itself as a legal status.
O NOES! Singlehood might become just as accepted as marriage? The horror! (I thought we’d long ago stopped calling people old maids and bachelors….)
You can’t send the message that marriage means fidelity when even a small portion of recognized marriages are polyamorous.
Sorry to break it to you, but currently a small portion of marriages ARE polyamorous. There are a whole bunch of people out there who are legally married to each other but sleep with other people. (Many of them even organize their marriages that way on purpose.) I don’t think that’s harmed the general conception of marriage. Oh, the problem would only happen if the outside relationships were recognized by the government? Mr. Kurtz, what kind of conservative are you?