I Don't Care If You Want to Practice Polygamy. Good Luck with That.

Polls consistently show that Americans overwhelmingly oppose the practice of polygamy. I read somewhere that as many as 92% of Americans hold this opinion. Since that is the case, it hardly seems necessary to have laws outlawing polygamy since so few folks would practice it that it wouldn’t have any of the supposed deleterious societal impacts such as a surfeit of unmarried young men.

What’s that you say? You not only oppose polygamy for yourself but you don’t think anyone else should practice it, either? You are willing to use violence to stop someone else from taking on more than one spouse at a time? Even a total stranger whose practices don’t affect you in any way?

Seriously, why should I care about the composition of someone else’s household? In what way am I harmed by polygamy or gay marriage or any other voluntary arrangement that folks try out for themselves?

Now that I have abused the device of the rhetorical question shamelessly, let me make my point plainly: except for its constituents, it’s nobody’s business how you organize your household.

I recall a church leader who explained his condemnation of homosexuals by saying that they were not living the “perfect plan of God” for their lives and that he could not tolerate that. Who is, Churchy? I am afraid of folks who will not rest until they have seen to it that God’s perfect plan, as they see it, is fulfilled in everyone. I don’t know what God’s plan is for everyone. I don’t even know what it is for myself most of the time, so I don’t reckon it makes sense for me to go around interfering in other folks’ lives, particularly through threats of violence.

A conspecific at the office defended outlawing polygamy on the basis that it would be “confusing” for inheritance and employee benefits and such. It need be no more confusing than serial monogamy. Moreover, such a legitimization of interference in household structure would apply as well to monogamous families and other arrangements.

How do so many of my conspecifics move with such facility from the proposition “I like/dislike A” to “the state must promote/outlaw A”? The second proposition rarely follows from the first, if ever. It is usually an absurd leap.