Plural marriage is alive and well, and not just in the Third World.
In the developed world, people tend to believe that monogamy – one husband and one wife, if today sometimes without the sexual identities of the past – is the ‘correct’ way of regulating the marital relationship between men and women.
Polygamy (from Late Greek: “marriage to many spouses”) is instead often dismissed as fundamentally uncivilised and is condemned by human rights organisations as well as by women’s rights groups.
The United Nations has recommended its abolition as being in contrast with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Multiple marriages are most commonly identified with Islam: Sharia law allows a man up to 4 wives at any one time – though the obligation to treat them justly and equitably can make the menage impossibly costly to maintain.
Perhaps the most common view sees polygamy as no more than one of mankind’s antique vices, now on its way to oblivion. The facts though suggest that polygamy in many societies is much more common than is usually assumed. It also can be much ‘closer’ than we think.
Both candidates for the US presidency in 2012, Barack Obama and his challenger Mitt Romney, owe their existence to polygamy. President Obama’s father belonged to Kenya’s polygamous Luo tribe; Mr. Romney’s paternal great-grandfathers both fled to Mexico to continue the Mormon practice of polygamy, illegal in the United States.
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Plural marriage is alive and well, and not just in the Third World.
In the developed world, people tend to believe that monogamy – one husband and one wife, if today sometimes without the sexual identities of the past – is the ‘correct’ way of regulating the marital relationship between men and women.