by It has long been my sense that most men’s sexual orientation is attraction to numerous female partners. Most, at least after marriage, do a pretty good job of controlling that inclination. Even those who cannot control themselves generally profess to believe in the moral and social responsibility to remain monogamous. This may be changing. A new category (or maybe an old category with a new name), polyamory, may be emerging and has made its way into the law school literature.
I first heard of this category several months ago when a friend’s husband announced that he was “polyamorous.” He claimed that he was attracted to and had the capacity to love numerous women. His job consistently took him to various cities throughout the world and he had (or hoped to have) regular relationships in each of them. My friend was unwilling to go along and they are now divorced. My friend and the children are experiencing the host of emotional and financial challenges that women and children generally bear upon divorce. That story is all too common. The unusual aspect of the story (for me) was that the husband defended his actions based on his claim to be polyamorous.
A recently posted SSRN article argues that “anti-discrimination protections for polyamorists are warranted.” See “Polyamory as a Sexual Orientation” by Ann E. Tweedy.
It argues that “the current definition of ‘sexual orientation’ is very narrow, being limited to orientations based on the sex of those to whom one is attracted” and that (quoting numerous behavioral scientists) “sexual orientation” should be expanded to include any “settled ‘sense of direction or relationship…’ or ‘choice or adjustment of associations, connections, or dispositions…’ that relates to ‘libidinal gratification.’”
After discussing a variety of sexual orientations that could be given legal protection, the article argues:
Given the potential difficulty of arriving at an overarching principle by which to distinguish genuinely harmful sexual preferences from those that are disfavored because of prejudice, it may be more feasible to expand the definition of ‘sexual orientation’ in a piecemeal way to include at least some of these preferences within the realm of antidiscrimination statutes. Some of the more promising possibilities include preferences for partners of other races, preferences for transgender partners, preferences for polyamorous relationships, and preferences for sadomasochistic (S/M) relationships, to name a few.
As I mentioned, it is my sense that most of the men I know are polyamorous (whether they act on it or not). This view is expressed (without the fancy terminology) in somewhat crude terms in an exchange in the movie “When Harry Met Sally”:
Harry (Billy Crystal): [N]o man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.
Sally (Meg Ryan): So, you’re saying that a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive?
Harry: No. You pretty much want to nail them too.
Though polyamorists speak in high-minded terms about personal autonomy, consent, and respect for natural inclinations, I think that their idyllic world, like so many of the social experiments that we have tried in the last 50 years, would ultimately damage women and children. In my friend’s case, she and the children were the primary victims of the husband’s expression of his sexual orientation.
Not only will women and children suffer, I think that (back to Harry and Sally) friendship will suffer when every relationship has the potential of sexual consummation. Friendships work well in a marriage and in relationships where there is not the potential of sexual intimacy. They do not work well when either party has a sexual agenda or suspects the other of a sexual (or other) agenda.
At some point, people need to sacrifice their sexual desires for the greater social good, as well as the more immediate social good. I am coming to believe, however, that once religious teachings concerning sexual practices are left behind, there is no stopping place.
I agree. I would note also this interesting excerpt from one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s letters to his son Christopher:
“However, the essence of a fallen world is that the best cannot be attained by free enjoyment, or by what is called ‘self-realization’ (usually a nice name for self-indulgence, wholly inimical to the realization of other selves); but by denial, by suffering. Faithfulness in Christian marriage entails that: great mortification. For a Christian man there is no escape. Marriage may help to sanctify & direct to its proper object his sexual desires; its grace may help him in the struggle; but the struggle remains. It will not satisfy him – as hunger may be kept off by regular meals. It will offer as many difficulties to the purity proper to that state, as it provides easements. No man, however truly he loved his betrothed and bride as a young man, has lived faithful to her as a wife in mind and body without deliberate conscious exercise of the will, without self-denial. Too few are told that — even those brought up ‘in the Church’. Those outside seem seldom to have heard it.”
As far as legal protection for polyamory is concerned, what exactly would that entail? Laws prohibiting adultery or fornication are already defunct in practice, I imagine. So what more legal protection might be called for? A constitutional right to engage in polygamy? I know people who think that this conclusion follows almost inevitably from Lawrence v. TX and decisions like Perry v. Schwarzenegger (if it stands). I would predict otherwise, though. In part because I think the issues can be distinguished, but mostly because I don’t think there’s any politically powerful movement to legalize polygamy.
I do think that there is a difference between someone in an established relationship unilaterally deciding to change the “rules” (in that case, it’s breaking faith with your partner, who agreed to marry you under a certain set of conditions), vs. deciding that you are a polyamorous person who wants to be involved in polyamorous relationships, and being honest about that from the get-go.
I am a polyamorous woman, and I am VERY happy that I have the freedom to lovingly and openly have long-lasting, loving relationships with my partners.
These relationships are no less stable than many monogamous relationships — the difference is that if two poly people break up, others rush to blame it on their “lifestyle”, whereas if two mono people break up, it’s just chalked up to relationship incompatibility.
PolyAMORY gives women free choice to have male, female, trans/etc. partners — polyGYNY (which is the technical term for most “polygamy” discussed in the world today — one man, multiple wives) can be discriminatory and oppressive towards women, and can result in the expulsion of young men from polygynous communities due to a scarcity of women. In polygyny, women are a commodity. In polyamory, women can have multiple husbands, or whatever relationship configuration works for them.
As to legal protections — even as a polyamorous person, I’m not asking for legal sanction of group marriage (because of the difficulties it would entail with inheritances, taxes, welfare benefits, child custody, etc.) . . . but I would like it to be a protected class in terms of discrimination in employment and housing (i.e., some locales have a regulation forbidding more than _x_ number of ‘unrelated’ adults in a household, even if there is plenty of space and other zoning requirements are met.)
Polyamory isn’t just sanctioned cheating. It sounds like your friend is using the word to try to put a high-minded cover on infidelity . . . but, in truth, polyamory is and can be a very different state of *cough* affairs.
Jonathan, thanks for sharing Tolkien with us. One can never get enough Tolkien. He is his usual, refreshing, candid self. I, too, wish the church was as candid with its children as Tolkien was with his son.
Steve, the article linked in my earlier post argues the polyamorists are subject to various types of discrimination and should have the benefit of anti-discrimination laws. I don’t see any evidence of that, buy I live (as you do) in California.
Andrea, thank you for sharing your life experience with us. Obviously, the attractiveness of a variety of love and sexual partners is not limited to men. My question is whether such a lifestyle will turn out to be personally and socially beneficial. Time will tell. The almost universal teaching of the religious traditions is that it will not. You may or may not grow to desire an exclusive, mutual commitment with a single partner.
Socially, I have two concerns. Children often come along (and thank God that they do). They need stable family relationships and I believe they do best if they have stable father and mother figures. I don’t think the sort of group relationship that you describe is likely to provide that. In the 60s, many of us thought that communal living would be a good environment in which to raise children. It and most of the other family experiments growing out of the 60s have not worked very well.
Second, I don’t think the moral parameters you and some polyamorists use to describe your relationships are likely to hold. Why should my friend’s husband not be able to pursue his chosen lifestyle? Our easy-divorce culture gave up on that long ago. What is sacred about someone’s commitment? I believe in the Christian limitations on family because they came with the package of beliefs and commitments that is the Christian faith. But I also believe that they are the best limitations for people generally (especially children). I don’t believe the limitations you place on polyamory are likely to hold, and I think that the end of that road is likely to be very destructive.
Is the social good a relevant concept in the constitutional treatment of family law issues, or is it only relevant to the extent it can be expressed in terms of the child’s best interests? In terms of the law disfavoring (or failing to recognize) polyamorous relationships, this would require 1) the existence of children; and 2) the existence of empirical data supporting the superiority of monogamous relationships as a venue for child-rearing. It seems a pretty thin reed for treating polyamorous relationships differently across the board. (Note that I’m not saying constitutional law should be understood to lack the resources to make such distinctions; I’m saying it seems that it is understood to lack those resources.)
I think you are generalizing about polyamorous people, when you probably know very few. My partner is polyamorous and I can see that he is very different from other men I have known. He was married, had an affair in secret (not with me), as well as an emotionally intimate relationship with another woman that is not sexual and still continues.
He stayed in his marriage for 10 years because of his children. He didn’t realize he was polyamorous he just knew he was very unhappy and so was his wife.
I researched polyamory as a way to make sense of this man that I love. He tried to be monogamous for me but doing this he was not the same man that I had fallen in love with. It is not easy for either of us. He works very hard to make sure that I remain feeling secure and loved, even though I am not his only love. I work hard to overcome feelings of inadequacy and jealousy. I am his primary partner and we negotiate around the time he spends with his others. We both work very hard at communication. These are what I call the differences between a “player” and a “poly”. Despite the challenges it is the best relationship I have ever been in.
Bob, I’d echo Steve’s comment — isn’t “polyamory” already legally protected, or at least not prohibited? In the NYC Metro area where I live, “polyamory” seems to be the norm, at least among many young people. There isn’t any law, at least not any enforceable law, against sleeping with multiple partners at once. Nor are there laws against contraception, probably a necessary condition for polyamory — didn’t Griswold nail that one? But I guess polyamorous people want accommodations in hiring and so on?
BTW I’m only using the term “polyamorous” here because that’s what the linked article used — seems like a silly category to me, given that every normal human being has the capacity to love and have sex with more than one person. Is any person with hormones not “polyamorous” by orientation? We become monogamous, if we do, by choice.
Great topic, Bob. This discussion reinforces the brokenness of the human condition, and, I guess, the role of law in trying to deal with that brokenness. From a Christian perspective, almost any form of human relationship shares in aspects of divine goodness and human sin, even the traditional monogamous marriage. As some of the posts suggest, law cannot identify, ensure or protect a “perfect” relationship in conditions of sin. What it can perhaps do is to identify the least worst options and give them the limited amounts of protection it can to preserve as much of people’s dignity and circumstances as possible in a situation of brokenness. Although it seems to me that my children’s different generation has a somewhat different take on this, the following seem true in my observation:
a)sexual intimacy creates a relationship, if only of a commercial kind (e.g., I’m satisfying my wants using another person, for which I’m willing to pay in a limited way). Whether it is distinctive among relationships, whether we want it to be distinctive in some way is a conversation we need to have anew in this culture. Whether we want to draw the dividing line for valued/protected intimate relationships at a different place between exploitative/abusive and agapaic than tradition currently draws it, and reinforce that line with law or social sanctions, is worth more discussion in this age where sexual variety is seemingly accepted as one form of (good) human diversity.
b)in a condition of sin, satisfying one’s desires (more or less)is not per se good (or evil), even when it is not immediately apparent that it “hurts” anybody else, because human desire or “need” is just as flawed as anything else. Think of the desire for food, which varies a lot from person to person–it is not necessarily good to eat as much as we desire because we need food and it is “natural” for us to do so.
c)if we are made for love,as Christians and others would say, then we need to be brutally honest with ourselves about both the limits of our capacity for love and the actual relationship between love and sexuality. I am very skeptical, for example, that most men can truly love, as in give their life for, even one person, much less more. As a woman, I know how hard it is for women, even when it is their child. If men claim they can really “love” many women (or vice-versa), I would like to see the evidence. If they claim that it’s all right to have sex and walk away from some or all without love or commitment, then we can have a discussion about what they do morally with the fact that perhaps their partner can’t do that. (Assumption of risk, the usual retort, seems to me an empty response here.)
Similarly, the reports of polyamorous folks or even polygamous families where the women support each other, including the one here, suggest that polyamory or polygamy is no cure-all for what ails monogamy. On the other hand, the legal paradigm of monogamy has historically encouraged polyamorous men toward their worst instincts, which is to satisfy their desires and move on, leaving behind devastated paramours and vulnerable children in their wake. How can that be good?
At bottom, until we can figure this out in a modern age of (relative) sexual equality in Western countries, it behooves us all, I think, not to simply “mind our own business” on sex as we are trained to do in this culture, but call family and friends to accountability on what we perceive to be sexual practices which are damaging human lives and spirits, or threatening to do so. That starts with our partners and our kids.
Again, the argument of the article I linked in the original post is that polyamorists should have anti-discrimination protection. I also do not see any discrimination to be combated. I suspect it is an attempt to gain cultural legitimacy through law for the practice. At some point, I suspect there will be arguments for the rights that accompany marriage (tax benefits, hospital visitation, etc).
The significance of polyamory is that it gives us a picture of life a bit further down the road we are already on. Ultimately, the question will be, why give any special status to any marriage relationship? In my view, once we go past monogamous, husband and wife marriage, there is no stopping place. The same arguments that are currently made for gay marriage will be made for every combination. That may not be a tragedy. I suspect the practice of marriage will ultimately survive all sorts of attempts at legal redefinition.