PoAC: Gay marriage vs. polygamy
Dec. 21st, 2005 04:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
velvetpageIn a friend's journal, someone I didn't know responded to a comment of mine by quoting stats reflecting a high percentage of gay relationships that involve abuse, and questioning whether my comments about culturally-sanctioned abuse in traditional polygamous marriages could also, therefore, be applied to gay marriage. This is my response, posted for your perusal and comments.
There are several building-blocks of a healthy marriage. The first and most important is the self-worth of the partners; they have to each see themselves as deserving of respect and fair treatment. The second is trust - that the other person will deal fairly and lovingly with the huge responsibility such a relationship entails. Those two are the ones that count for this discussion, so I won't go into the others.
People who choose to cohabit without marriage do so for many reasons. Some of them have the self-worth they need to see that they don't get abused, or that they don't continue to be abused for very long. Those ones aren't really part of this discussion, either. Others, however, choose to cohabit because they feel they are not valuable enough to be worth marrying, or because pleasing their partner is more important than their own happiness, or because it's a fast way out of their parents' house - in other words, the reasons that lead to cohabitation can often reflect a reduced sense of self-worth. Abuse is far more common in these situations because the relationship is faulty to begin with. The lack of legal marriage is a symptom of a bad relationship. It is not the cause of one. In fact, in situations like this where the couple is married, the abuse can be worse than it would be if they weren't married, because it takes more to get out of it.
That's common-law marriages. Now consider the gay community.
Gays grow up with the knowledge, sometimes from early childhood, that they are different, and the vast majority realize quite early that their differences are not acceptable to society. They are taught to conform, denying who and what they are; when they fail to conform, the consequences can be severe and can include bullying of many types, physical violence, shunning by family and friends, etc, etc. This is a recipe for poor mental health, and indeed, the incidences of depression and suicide are considerably higher amongst gays than they are in the general population. When they get to an age where they're looking at forming long-term relationships, they take their lack of self-worth with them. One of the key building blocks of a relationship has an excellent chance of being missing entirely or at least very shaky. When self-worth is shaky, trust often is, too; would you be quick to trust a lover if your own parents had shunned you for something you couldn't help?
So again, the abuse in those relationships is not about the nature of gay relationships themselves; it's about the socialization that gays have received from the rest of society. Legalizing gay marriage serves to send a message of acceptance by society, which should, logically, IMPROVE the rates of abuse over time.
To summarize: traditional marriage does not stop abuse; however, marriages are less likely to occur in sick relationships, so sick relationships have a higher rate of abuse. Gay relationships have a higher rate of sick relationships because gays grow up with the idea that they are not accepted or valued by society. Acceptance of gay relationships, in the form of legal marriage, should over time work to equalize the situation and reduce the number of sick gay relationships.
Now, the polygamy abuse: this is an entirely different story. Every society that accepts polygamous marriage has, entrenched in its culture, an attitude that makes women subordinate to the men in the relationship. Legalizing this would not improve the situation; instead, it would tend to legitimize the culture of abuse, thereby making it worse. I am familiar with several polyamorous families where this pattern does not exist; but at the moment in North America, modern polyamorous relationships would not make up the bulk of polygamous marriages. In fact, they'd be a very small minority compared to the number of Mormon or Islamic polygamous marriages that would exist, and these are cultures where abuse against mutliple spouses is common and condoned by the culture in which they exist.
Therefore, at this time, I would say we are not ready for polygamous marriage because the cultures that have condoned it in other parts of the world do not meet our standards for fair treatment of all partners in the marriage. At some point in the future, we may be ready for it, and I see no reason to discriminate against common-law polyamorous families provided there is no pattern of abuse or fraud in them.
*Disclaimer: I've used the term "gay" to refer to all homosexual unions, for simplicity's sake; no offense is intended. Also, this is intended as an example of how the stats in question could be reinterpreted to reflect a benefit to gay marriage. I do not mean to imply by them that all gay relationships are ill. I apologize if anything I said came across that way.
There are several building-blocks of a healthy marriage. The first and most important is the self-worth of the partners; they have to each see themselves as deserving of respect and fair treatment. The second is trust - that the other person will deal fairly and lovingly with the huge responsibility such a relationship entails. Those two are the ones that count for this discussion, so I won't go into the others.
People who choose to cohabit without marriage do so for many reasons. Some of them have the self-worth they need to see that they don't get abused, or that they don't continue to be abused for very long. Those ones aren't really part of this discussion, either. Others, however, choose to cohabit because they feel they are not valuable enough to be worth marrying, or because pleasing their partner is more important than their own happiness, or because it's a fast way out of their parents' house - in other words, the reasons that lead to cohabitation can often reflect a reduced sense of self-worth. Abuse is far more common in these situations because the relationship is faulty to begin with. The lack of legal marriage is a symptom of a bad relationship. It is not the cause of one. In fact, in situations like this where the couple is married, the abuse can be worse than it would be if they weren't married, because it takes more to get out of it.
That's common-law marriages. Now consider the gay community.
Gays grow up with the knowledge, sometimes from early childhood, that they are different, and the vast majority realize quite early that their differences are not acceptable to society. They are taught to conform, denying who and what they are; when they fail to conform, the consequences can be severe and can include bullying of many types, physical violence, shunning by family and friends, etc, etc. This is a recipe for poor mental health, and indeed, the incidences of depression and suicide are considerably higher amongst gays than they are in the general population. When they get to an age where they're looking at forming long-term relationships, they take their lack of self-worth with them. One of the key building blocks of a relationship has an excellent chance of being missing entirely or at least very shaky. When self-worth is shaky, trust often is, too; would you be quick to trust a lover if your own parents had shunned you for something you couldn't help?
So again, the abuse in those relationships is not about the nature of gay relationships themselves; it's about the socialization that gays have received from the rest of society. Legalizing gay marriage serves to send a message of acceptance by society, which should, logically, IMPROVE the rates of abuse over time.
To summarize: traditional marriage does not stop abuse; however, marriages are less likely to occur in sick relationships, so sick relationships have a higher rate of abuse. Gay relationships have a higher rate of sick relationships because gays grow up with the idea that they are not accepted or valued by society. Acceptance of gay relationships, in the form of legal marriage, should over time work to equalize the situation and reduce the number of sick gay relationships.
Now, the polygamy abuse: this is an entirely different story. Every society that accepts polygamous marriage has, entrenched in its culture, an attitude that makes women subordinate to the men in the relationship. Legalizing this would not improve the situation; instead, it would tend to legitimize the culture of abuse, thereby making it worse. I am familiar with several polyamorous families where this pattern does not exist; but at the moment in North America, modern polyamorous relationships would not make up the bulk of polygamous marriages. In fact, they'd be a very small minority compared to the number of Mormon or Islamic polygamous marriages that would exist, and these are cultures where abuse against mutliple spouses is common and condoned by the culture in which they exist.
Therefore, at this time, I would say we are not ready for polygamous marriage because the cultures that have condoned it in other parts of the world do not meet our standards for fair treatment of all partners in the marriage. At some point in the future, we may be ready for it, and I see no reason to discriminate against common-law polyamorous families provided there is no pattern of abuse or fraud in them.
*Disclaimer: I've used the term "gay" to refer to all homosexual unions, for simplicity's sake; no offense is intended. Also, this is intended as an example of how the stats in question could be reinterpreted to reflect a benefit to gay marriage. I do not mean to imply by them that all gay relationships are ill. I apologize if anything I said came across that way.