Polygamy: The Next Frontier After Homosexual Marriage

I can recall people attacking me as "homophobic" and probably racist years ago for suggesting that homosexual marriage would open the doors to polygamy, and then after that God knows what. But now that we've seen a surge in public support for same-sex marriage, it's not so uncouth to talk about other types of marriage arrangements. Indeed, it's apparently pretty cool to consider the possibilities, if this story at the New York Times is a worthy guide.

See, "Polygamy as Lifestyle Choice, and a Reality TV Brand":

LAS VEGAS — Kody Brown, his four wives and 17 children want to be the new face of polygamy, what some consider the next frontier after same-sex marriage.

That is why, the Browns say, they invited TLC television cameras into their homes for their reality show “Sister Wives,” why they have written a best-selling book about their lives, and why they challenged Utah’s polygamy ban in federal court.

Fear of prosecution under that law led them to flee to Nevada. Last month, a federal judge partly overturned the ban, ruling that prohibiting “cohabitation” violates the First Amendment guarantee of free exercise of religion.

In their first interview since the decision in that case, they presented a family whose polygamy is more “Father Knows Best” than fundamentalist patriarchy. It was also clear that going public opened a path toward wealth.

Their four new houses arranged on a Las Vegas cul-de-sac and their television handler are testament to the fact that the Browns, who once fought penury, have turned their cause into a minor industry.

They promote their family arrangement as part of a growing wave of individual lifestyle choices, managing to anger both the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which abandoned polygamy in 1890, and to some extent their own Mormon fundamentalist offshoot, the Apostolic United Brethren.

Eric Hawkins, a spokesman for the mainstream church, said polygamists, “including those in reality television programs,” have “no affiliation whatsoever” with the church, “despite the fact that the term ‘Mormon’ is sometimes misleadingly applied to them.” Of the lawsuit, he said, “The current legal efforts will have no bearing on the doctrines or practices of the church.”

As for the Browns’ own church, it promotes polygamy but does not condone homosexuality, and its leaders have quietly suggested that they are uncomfortable with the way the decision in the Browns’ lawsuit has been held up by some same-sex marriage advocates as supporting the underlying issue of personal privacy.

Having attained a measure of celebrity, the Browns find that people seek out their homes and stop them on the street, expecting hugs. While the familiarity can be unsettling, Robyn, one of the wives, said, it means “they saw us as a family, and that’s huge.” Others, however, sharply criticize them in online forums for exposing their children to the prying cameras of reality television, among other perceived offenses.

They have also been put off by the avid interest in the specifics of their intimate lives and the questions they get. They do not “go weird” in the bedroom, as Meri, another wife, has put it; their sexual relations are separate. “These are wholesome, individual marriages,” Robyn said. “It’s actually pretty boring.”

A recent afternoon with the family here suggested that Mr. Brown is far from the domineering figure of past polygamy horror stories like Warren Jeffs, the leader of another fundamentalist group who is serving a life sentence for child sexual abuse. Mr. Brown comes off more as a beleaguered sitcom father facing the challenges of scheduling family time split 21 ways.

Children wandered among the homes, forming random groupings in a kind of Brownian motion, playing, talking and making a companionable racket. Truely, a girl born in 2010, padded around the living room with a toy cellphone to her ear, arguing earnestly with an imaginary friend on the other end of the line: “You’ve got to understand.”

Robyn, who brought three children from an earlier marriage into the family, was nursing her child Solomon, born in 2011. Sprawled nearby were older children, some now in college...

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My wife watched this show sometime last year. Me, I'm not all that interested. At this point society's becoming extremely unmoored from traditional values and the importance of monogamous heterosexual marriage as the foundation of decent society. (Christianity takes monogamous marriage as foundational to its teachings. And checking around online this Yahoo answers page has a good discussion on the importance of monogamy in Biblical teaching, "When did Marriage in the Bible change from polygamous to monogamous?")