volokh, noli irritare leones, and others have articles up discussing the various legal and social ramifications of polygamy. (and it’s an odd coincidence that i’m noticing this as i’m midway through friday; although perhaps reading the book has predisposed me to notice other writings with overlapping topics.)

what fascinates me about these articles is that they mostly avoid discussions of polyamory, which seems to me to would be the motivating factor for polygamy in a western, romantic-love-notioned society. (differentiating from the economic impetus in other cultures.) rauch disposes of the issue by taking the position that as marriage is a “state grant,” making polygamy a question of public policy (and asserting that polyamory is already legal). noli approaches the question using a “changes to law” framework (consequently avoiding direct discussion of polyamory, which she seems to view rather dimly). and over on volokh, dale carpenter comments on polygamy as a strawman in the gay marriage debate.

it seems to me that the vast majority of issues raised by noli can be solved contractually. questions regarding inheritance (wills, what an idea), medical care (medical POA, advance directives, so on), custody of children (again, wills; also basic Ks), blah blah blah. (i know it’s bad form for a law student to broad-brushstroke with “blah,” but i plead insufficient sleep and daylight savings time.) makes more sense (to me) to get rid of state-conferred marriage protocols entirely. poof, bye-bye government involvement; hello more jobs for lawyers.

i don’t know if i buy rauch’s social argument that polygynous marriages would be more common than polyandrous marriages, characterizing the outcome thusly:

Other things being equal (and, to a good first approximation, they are), when one man marries two women, some other man marries no woman. When one man marries three women, two other men don’t marry. When one man marries four women, three other men don’t marry. Monogamy gives everyone a shot at marriage. Polygyny, by contrast, is a zero-sum game that skews the marriage market so that some men marry at the expense of others.

my gut reaction: yuck. this assumes that all men will marry women (and vice versa); that all men will want to marry women (and vice versa); and that everyone should get a shot at heterosexual marriage. (his argument also tracks along with the isolated, inbred polygamous fringe society in sherri tepper’s the gate to women’s country, which is neither here nor there but interesting nonetheless.) it seems to me that implicit in rauch’s argument is that polygamy would lead to the commodification of women to the detriment of society (and to the women themselves — why does no one consider that a female-scarce society could lead to women becoming more empowered rather than less?).

rauch concedes that

True, in modern America some polygynous marriages would probably be offset by group marriages or chain marriages involving multiple husbands, but there is no way to know how large such an offset might be. And remember: Every unbalanced polygynous marriage, other things being equal, leaves some man bereft of the opportunity to marry, which is no small cost to that man.

and again, this emphasis on the impact on men. *sigh*

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is there a point to my ramblings on this subject? um. nope, doesn’t look that way. in fact, my original statement — that what fascinated me was the avoidance of a discussion of polyamory — could (should?) be addressed in its own post, rather than as a subsection of a dissection of others’ polygamy discussions. perhaps i’ll shelve that for now, at least until i’ve given the topic more thought.