Polygamy is not healthy

Editor,

I would like to respond to a letter published a few weeks ago arguing that if homosexual marriage was legalized, then polygamy should follow. In defense of polygamy, the letter states people who love more than one person should be able to marry if homosexuals are given such rights.

This letter states that there is more evidence in the wild of males having more than one sexual partner, and this shows us that it is more natural for us to do the same. It is not only prevalent that males have more than one female partner, but that females have more than one male partner. It is also proven that homosexual behavior is completely common in the wild. So there is not natural or unnatural in this argument. We are obviously going beyond the fact that we are not in the wild, but in a supposedly civilized society, in which such arguments wouldn’t make sense in the first place.

Where homosexuality doesn’t hurt those involved, polygamy is a sexist and abusive practice. It is the reinforcement of a kind of blind absolute power of a man over women, reducing women to commodities, like trophies to be collected. These women are emotionally and often physically abused. No matter what they tell you, this was not a happy living arrangement among the women and never could be. The children produced of such unions are often left in poverty and without a healthy relationship with their own father. And you think loving someone of the same sex is a sexual perversion, but bed-hopping amongst 56 wives isn’t?

The writer tries to defend himself by saying, “don’t get me wrong, I love my wife.” I’m sure he does, and I’m sure she loves him, too. And I’m sure she would absolutely love him if he came home and said he had another woman to add to the family. I know it may seem that I am attacking him for stating his beliefs, but I just want to make it clear, that the ideology that polygamy doesn’t hurt other people is a completely false one.

Sara Lundberg