A story found on the New York times says that Kody Brown and his “sister wives” (who also appear in a reality TV series about their polyamorous relationship choices and multi-women family living choice) is / are filing a federal lawsuit to challenge the anti-polygamy law in Utah. The article describes some of the legal maneuvering and arguments that may be made on both sides of the issue.
sister wives polygamous family
I wonder what will become of this whole ordeal. It has been my understanding that Utah has been friendly to polygamist marriages and family living situations and only outlawed it under pressure from the federal government more than 100 years ago or something. Things certainly are different today, and there are arguments about the feds or the states getting involved in people’s choices on what they do in their own home, and I think we have seen many big changes in the public’s perception of these things.
I will add a few snippets from the article, there are a couple of things I could see happening with this lawsuit, and I can see even more challenges in other states as people start to stand up and say hey, “We live different than the standard norm, and we want to do it legally – that’s all”.
The lawsuit is not demanding that states recognize polygamous marriage. … … It will ask the federal courts to tell states that they cannot punish polygamists for their own “intimate conduct” so long as they are not breaking other laws, like those regarding child abuse, incest or seeking multiple marriage licenses.
Our society has changed a lot over the past 100 years, I imagine that 100 years ago you did not see too many open interracial relationships in America, or openly gay couples and the like, and that is one of the arguments that people are going to be using to justify decriminalizing polygamy. But there are many other major changes that I think people really do not think about with the way things are these days, and to think that some of these ways of behaving and treating family are perfectly legal, yet the choice to make a bigger family and share more is still illegal is really kind of baffling.
Surely we can come up with many examples of what is normal, legal, and accepted in today’s society – things that make the poly-loving choice of the Browns look like a much better alternative. Let’s take my one friend, we’ll call her Carmen, she has three kids, by three different dads, and she is living at home with her mom. She tries to work and pay the bills, but raising three kids these days is not anywhere near as cheap as it was in the 1950’s. Perfectly legal, but is that a better choice than to say have the three dads around and pitching in perhaps at least for rent and utilities?
Another guy I know, we’ll call him Kent. Kent has 9 kids. All nine kids are with nine different “baby momas” – now there is no way that “Kent” can afford to pay for all these kids – and the girls have to work full time jobs just to pay for baby sitting and putting food on the table. Now, Kent is not some rich sheik who can afford to buy 9 houses in America, but if all those girls, or heck even if some of those girls would be able to get along and live in a really big house, or even on a big plot of land with small modular houses – they would be able to function as a better and healthier family unit.
Would these situations work out with multiple women living in close proximity and sharing resources? Would situations work out where multiple men could live on the same property and share in the responsibility of raising their children? Well that all depends on the people involved. Just as it is difficult these days to keep a relationship together with just one man and one woman, issues are often multiplied exponentially when you start adding multiple partners – so it might not work for everybody. I do however think that for some people (and in many cultures around the world) that they could pool resources and make for a healthier and happier multiple adult family than much of what we current have going on in our country with the current “legal system” that has things a muck the way they are now.
There are many things that people do when dating or mating that are probably not legal in all 50 states. There are plenty of things that people do that are legal, and things that people do and get away with. I am sure that polygamist households are not the best for everybody in this country, but I do believe that is a choice that adults should be able to make.
It’s fine to date multiple women and get them all knocked up as long as you are not married. I am guessing that the issue would be with insurance companies not wanting to pay for three spouses for one husband working – but with the universal healthcare thing, is that really going to matter? I suggest simply decriminalizing multiple marriages as long as people have the same ability to dissolve them and split resources should the need for divorce arise. It”s time that we make less things illegal and focus more on what we can do to provide support for raising smarter and healthier people, and have a better economy. The days of being able to have one bread working working while one parent raises the child (and hopefully with the help of grandparents, and others, as it does take a village) – those days are long gone. We need to get back to family taking care of family at home, and not some cheap daycare and dysfunctional school system combined with pathetic TV raising our kids.
From what I can tell a majority of Americans who are living the relationships and raising families the “legal” way are doing a much worse job of taking care of themselves and their family than what people like Kody Brown and his polyamorous “sister wives” are doing to take care of their family.