Why? Because it reduces the opportunities for some men to find a mate at all. (To simplify this discussion, I am ignoring the implications of gay marriage as well as polyandry. The latter as far as I know is nowhere practiced in Western societies.) For example, in some Islamic countries men are allowed up to 4 wives. But since the man is expected to support his wives, plural marriage is an option only for the well-off. This readily leads to a market in wives foreclosed to the poor and limited for the middle class. Social tensions follow, not only from class resentment but simply from the fact that unmarried men tend to be more stressed than married men – even in our society.

And there’s the math. Assuming a society with a roughly 50-50 gender ratio, if one man has four wives, then 3 must go without any. This is what leads to the “lost boy” phenomenon among the “fundamentalist” LDS sects in the US. The surplus males have to be pushed out of the community or they will make trouble.

Adultery and serial monogamy raise issues of social disruption, but I agree with Prof. Turley that criminal prosecution won’t improve things. But adultery once found out will be settled between the spouses (one way or another), and serial monogamy doesn’t freeze out other possible mates. Polygamy cannot be tolerated by a state that aspires to equality.

Marriage is two things.

1) A bond between people that has nothing to do with paper.

No laws will ever govern the vagaries of the human heart. People will love what and who they love. It is simply the way of things.

2) A contractual relationship.

The general rule in contracts is that if it’s not illegal you can contract for it. Ergo, restrictions on marriage forms is a public policy decision. In this case, a public policy decision that is prime facie biased and unfair and based on religious reasoning, not scientific fact. Governance to be good must be based in reality, not wishful thinking.

I have stated why I’m against polygamy. I was also explicit in that it was my choice, for me. If others want to live in an arrangement that I think is a disaster waiting to happen in most cases, I’m happy to let them do it as long as they don’t try to force me to come along. And I am really, really sorry for that pun. But I digress and lie about being sorry. What other pair bondings humans choose to engage in is their business unless it involves children (universally acknowledged to be evil behavior) or the dead (ditto plus a HUGE public health hazard).

It quite simply not my business IN EVERY EQUITABLE AND LEGAL SENSE OF THE WORD. I’m not a party to the contract by choice and I’m not a forced party because it somehow “offends me”. Polygamy offends me. It offends my sense of logic. But it does not offend my choice not to engage in it that practice. Live and let live. What people do in their own homes is their business. If they aren’t asking you to dance, what’s it matter, wallflower?

Open the contractual forms of marriage to allow for the full spectrum of sexual behavior. From monogamous heterosexual and homosexual unions to polygamous communes. To do otherwise fights against human nature and therefore causes unnecessary suffering. To fight the tao is to invite disaster. And right now, the law is fighting human nature.

Religion. particularly,so called christian values used by the courts to substantiate their actions against individuals means that we might do better to get the state entirely out of the bedrooms of the land and let marriage be a legal union bewtween parties however those parties might be defined. Then gays and lesbians and traditional twosomes and plural arrangements of all sorts might be achived.

-Steve.