Polygamy should be legalised if marriage is still present in the society in question.

Polyamory does not feature in any census tick box but anecdotal evidence suggests that it is on the rise. Some are even calling for it to be recognised by law following the legalisation of gay marriage in the UK and the US. All this raises of the question of whether the future of love may be very different from our current conceptions of romance.

But love has always been the same, right? A man falls for a woman, they get married, pop out a few children and stay together in a harmonious and monogamous relationship for life.

Sorry romantics. This wasn’t, and still isn’t, always the picture of love. Polygamy – where more than one spouse is allowed – was the norm for many of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Monogamy started flourishing when our ancestors began to settle down. A preference for it then appears to have arisen, among many other reasons, for economic purposes.

It made it easier for fathers to divide and share valuable commodities such as land with their children. Monogamy later got hijacked by romantic love by idealistic 19th Century Victorians. “The idea of sexual exclusivity started emerging fairly late in the game,” says professor of law Hadar Aviram at UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, US.

Even today monogamy is the minority relationship style around the world. Cultural estimates suggest that as many as 83% of societies around the world allow polygamy.

To start with, in a 2014 review paper Conley found that polyamorous people tend to maintain more friendships as they keep a wider social network. They are also less likely to cut off contact after a break-up.

Monogamous couples on the other hand, often withdraw from their friends in the first, loved-up stages of their relationship.

Conley also found that individuals in poly relationships are better at communicating and that jealousy is often lower. In new research, not yet published, she even discovered that overall relationship satisfaction can be higher in poly relationships, though another earlier 2015 review found that satisfaction was similar among monogamous and “consensual non-monogamous” relationships.

Nor do they seem more likely to spread sexually transmitted diseases. Indeed, an anonymous online study revealed that openly non-monogamous people are more likely to practice safe sex than cheating individuals in seemingly monogamous relationships. 

Taking all her findings into consideration, Conley says that married monogamous couples could learn from a poly way of life. They could use using similar ways to communicate and resolve conflict for example. “The idea is that we put too much stress on marriage and need to give it more oxygen by giving people more resources,” she says. “A lot of the strategies used in poly relationships can map onto suggestions of how we improve marriage.”

I discovered polyamory when I was 23. I met a parliament of poly performers at the Adelaide Festival who were hippyish, liberal and kind. These performers spoke about their partners, children, poly-families. There were ex-couples who were working together on shows while their other poly families toured elsewhere, married couples who had live-in partners, triumvirates where they all balanced an equal partnership. I was entranced by their openness. It seemed symbolic of our changing global world, and most peoples developing nomadic lifestyles where we travel for work and find love with others on the way.

So when I went to study at theatre school in Paris (fresh out of a relationship with a 45-year-old French father of three), I decided to embrace my inner Barbarella. And the reality? Non-monogamy is rather ordinary and occasionally dull. Stereotypes of weird Eyes Wide Shut sex parties and Sartre/de Beauvoir/Olga ménages à trois aside, it’s like any normal relationship, except with more time- management, more conversations about “feelings” and more awkward encounters with acquaintances at parties who try to use you as their “Sexual Awakening Friend Bicycle”, ie that shy girl from book club will get drunk and put her hand on your leg, before leaning in to kiss you, hiccuping: “I really loved Orange Is the New Black…”

There are misconceptions – a date once grabbed me for a kiss unexpectedly despite the fact I had made it clear I was in no way interested (my words were exactly: “This is not going to work. We have entirely different opinions on the EU and you have just told me I am ‘very funny for a woman’.”) When I pushed him away he was shocked. He believed because I was “sexually awakened” he could do what he liked. Luckily my experiences have meant that I am more vocal and confident, and able to stand up for myself. Yes I am open about my relationships and desires, but that doesn’t mean anyone’s allowed to touch me without my permission. Sexual awakenings do not mean the absence of consent.

I must admit, when I first dipped my toes into polyamory I misunderstood, went overboard with Tinder. The experience was stressful and would involve me asking awkward questions like: “Do you think crabs think fish can fly?” while wandering around the National Gallery for the third time that month. (There is no denying that polyamory suits the self-employed schedule). I learned that when people don’t know what polyamory is, they misunderstand it as another term for “hook up”, which it’s not. So previous partners have usually been friends I trust.

People often ask: “How can you truly love someone if you want to be with someone else?” and “Don’t you get jealous?” I think these statements enforce unhealthy relationship ideals. I feel it’s dangerous to think that you’re the only person that can complete someone else’s life, and be their confidant, their friend, their support network and their sexual partner. It’s too much pressure! When you take a step back, drop your ego and realise you’re one unique component of someone’s life, it’s liberating and freeing. Jealousy ebbs away and you realise that, of course, they may find another person attractive, because we’re all different pieces of a puzzle. This has made me more comfortable about myself – I am not holding myself up to standards about traditional female beauty, because I can experience it in a hundred different ways.

Of course, there have been tears, heartbreaks, existential crises and moments when I felt left out. I’ve wondered if it was actually making me more free, or more insecure, with jealousy popping up at the most inconvenient times. I’ve dated people who have lied and I’ve had relationships that have ended because they didn’t trust or believe in polyamory.

But, despite the downs, non-monogamy has revolutionised the way I view love. First, it made me less ashamed of my sexuality. I fancied girls way before I fancied boys. But as a teenager at house parties I remember being made to think that female sexual relationships were purely to turn men on. We’d all seen that scene in Cruel Intentions. I remember girls kissing at parties and the guys cheering. It was performative. Except, I wanted to kiss girls because I liked girls.

When I started getting to know people in the poly community it was as liberating as taking off an underwired bra. I have had partners of both genders. I didn’t have to “choose”: the people I met understood that it was possible to give infinite, equal love to both sexes. My confidence soared. I wasn’t hiding. Men and women had equal place in my life. I no longer felt like a pendulum, swinging from one to another. This refreshing awakening did result in many awkward conversations with my mum and dad though, which would go something like this:

Elf: “Mum and Dad, I am queer.” [Mum puts the hummus down.]

Mum: “What does that mean?”

Elf: “It means I have relationships with men and women”. [Mum picks the hummus up.]

Mum: “Oh! Well, I’m queer. Your father’s queer, your grandmother’s queer, we’re all queer darling!”

Elf: “No you don’t understand. I mean I have sex with men and women.” [Mum drops the hummus.]

Mum: “Oh Elfy… No wonder you’re so tired.”

Although I love sex, because of past unpleasant experiences I’m also mildly afraid of it. So when I started experimenting with non-monogamy the idea of being intimate emotionally as well as physically with more than one person was a challenge. But, the choice gave me a power and ownership over my wants which I felt I had lost and been made to feel ashamed about. I’m not saying I jumped in the sack with everyone I met. God no. I’m too busy. But through being less judgemental on myself, I relaxed, opened up to the people I trusted and started loving myself again. It forces you to be really honest, to live life with an undefended heart.

It’s not been plain sailing. But to quote RuPaul: “If you can’t love yourself, how the hell can you love anyone else” – this is integral to non-monogamy. You can’t use multiple relationships to fill the void and give you the gratification that you should be able to give yourself. More love doesn’t mean better love. If you are dating multiple people in order to enhance your self-worth, you end up feeling like out-of-date hummus, feeling jealous anytime anyone chooses to spend time with anyone else, resulting in you treating your partners badly and without respect.

We shouldn’t feel ashamed about being socially and sexually confident. Women have been made to feel embarrassed for their desires for too long. It’s about having the trust to speak our minds and behave the way we want to. The moment you start to crumble you need to stop and ask exactly what it is you want and if it makes you happy. Being loved and loving multiple people should make you feel stronger, not weaker.

It forces you to be really honest, to live life with an undefended heart

In a time of censorship on women, increases in assault and constant critiques on how we should behave, polyamory and its manifesto of embracing our evolving feelings, sharing responsibility and communicating and working effectively with people from all around the world could help revolutionise the way we tackle privilege, inequality and control of women’s rights.

I have an authority and a voice that I didn’t feel I had before. My friendships are better, my health is better. Through being polyamorous and being a part of the community I have been made aware of issues, both personal and political, that need to be uncovered and addressed.

The world would be a better place if everybody was more open to polyamory. As well as that traditional idea, that it takes a village to raise a child, it would mean we’d all love more, and love better. Loving different people at the same time is like learning a different language. There are different rules every time and it’s always open for discussion. You start to realise that love is infinite. Every time you say “I love you” to someone it takes on a new meaning. It’s retranslated, and it’s wonderful.

The polygamist family featured in the reality television show “Sister Wives” lost its bid to overturn parts of Utah’s anti-bigamy law under a federal appeals court ruling issued on Monday.

The case, filed after the show’s popularity prompted a criminal investigation into whether star Kody Brown was illegally married to four women, drew international attention and raised questions about whether the state could bar consenting adults from living together as a family.

Polygamy is illegal in all 50 states. But Utah’s law is unique in that a person can be found guilty not just for having two legal marriage licenses, but also for cohabiting with another adult in a marriage-like relationship when already legally married to someone else.

Brown is legally married to one of his wives, and “spiritually” married to the others.

In 2013, U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups struck down part of the state’s law, saying it criminalizes intimate relationships among consenting adults.

But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit overturned that ruling on Monday. The court said because the Browns had not actually been charged under the law - and the state said it would not prosecute multiple marriage cases unless there were allegations of fraud or criminal activity - the case was moot.

“Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction,” the court wrote. “They lack power to decide issues - however important or fiercely contested - that are detached from a live dispute between the parties.”

What is polygamy?

Polygamy is the act of marrying multiple spouses, that means having more than one husband or wife at the same time.

The term is the opposite of monogamy which is the more common practice of having just one spouse at any given moment.

The habit was once quite widespread across parts of the globe and is still practiced by some to this day.

But in most countries, polygamy is now illegal or at the very least not officially recognised.

What forms does polygamy take?

There are generally assumed to be three forms of polygamy: polygyny, polyandry and group marriage.

• Polygyny is when a man has multiple wives.
  
• Polyandry is when a woman has multiple husbands
  
• Group marriage is a bit of a free for all where the family unit consists of a mish-mash of spouses from both sexes
  

As I noted in my last post, the ethnographic evidence suggests that human nature is adapted to an ancestral mating system that was predominately polygynous (one husband, multiple wives). Most ancestral men aspired to polygyny (even though most weren't impressive enough to attract more than one wife), and some ancestral women preferred to be the co-wife of a really impressive man than the sole wife of a second-rate one.

In other words, the genetically encoded psychological machinery of human mating behavior was built by, and for, a world in which striving for polygyny was often reproductively advantageous. That's why people living in modern societies often seem inclined towards polygyny, even in cultures that have attempted to abolish it.

This last point raises a key question: Why have so many cultures attempted to abolish polygyny? If our ancestors' environments were so polygynous, why is "socially imposed" monogamy—the moral and legal prohibition of polygyny—so common in modern societies? Or more accurately, why is it so common in the West? (Polygyny remains legal and common in many non-Western societies, especially sub-Saharan African and Islamic countries).

Monogamy's spread in the West had something to do with the influence of Christianity, but not as much as you might expect. Mainstream Christianity has always endorsed and enforced monogamy, and as Christianity spread across Europe in the centuries following the fall of Rome, monogamy spread along with it. However, Christianity's condemnation of polygyny has never been as straightforward as anti-polygyny church leaders would have preferred, because no Biblical passages explicitly prohibit plural marriage. Indeed, leaders of breakaway Christian polygynous sects, like 16th-century German Anabaptists and 19th-century American Mormons, have always been eager to point out that several central Old Testament figures are polygynists. Abraham, for instance, had two wives simultaneously, and Solomon had 700 (plus 300 concubines).

I would love you to observe that polygamy occurs to a maximum of 4 women per man and is fundamentally about family dynasties marrying rich women off to rich men... so spare me the idea that polygamy punishes the poor, all that happens is these super-inferior extreme of ugly, poor, dumb and even emotionally toxic men end up ideally with no one at all as the women would rather be single than marry such a man for any reason other than finance, in which case they'd actually benefit more from polygamy than a society without it. 

If the richest and most powerful 10% of men have, say, four wives each, the bottom 30% of men cannot marry. Young men will take desperate measures to avoid this state.

The taking of multiple wives is a feature of life in all of the 20 most unstable countries on the Fragile States Index compiled by the Fund for Peace, an NGO.

It's blatantly unrealistic and unjustifiably nonsensical that we are raised from a young age via fairytales and Conservative-styled nuclear family idealism to think that one man is both enough for a woman who is singularly enough for the man.

[will produce male offspring without roots or hopes and] young men without roots and without hope are the most dangerous group in the world.

Many European countries once had anti-adultery laws on the books, but most were repealed in the 1970s and 1980s. The last European nations to decriminalise infidelity were Austria, in 1997, and Romania, in 2006.

The story is similar in Latin America, which saw a flurry of decriminalisation in the 1990s.

In the US, however, adultery remains technically illegal in 21 states. In most states, including New York, cheating on your spouse is considered only a misdemeanour. But in Idaho, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, among others, it is a felony crime punishable by prison.

However, attempts to enforce historic anti-fornication laws are vanishingly rare.

The laws remain on the books largely due to inertia, says The New York Times. Getting rid of them would require politicians to vocally oppose them - something few are willing to do.

Additionally, “many like the idea of the criminal code serving as a kind of moral guide even if certain laws are almost never applied”, says the newspaper.

That certainly was not the case in South Korea, whose adultery laws still very much had teeth in the 21st century. Between 2008 and 2015, when adultery was finally decriminalised, more than 5,500 people were successfully prosecuted for cheating on their partner, CNN reports.

Elsewhere in East Asia, adultery remains illegal in Taiwan and the Philippines.

Hi, I’m Kale. Today I want to talk about the differences between relationship anarchy and non-hierarchical polyamory.

First, I should give a quick explanation of what hierarchical polyamory is.

Hierarchical Polyamory

Polyamory (or poly for short) is the practice of having multiple, simultaneous, consensual relationships.

Hierarchical poly is when there is a ranking system among sexual relationships. At the top is a person’s primary. Primaries often live together and share resources, make decisions together, spend the most amount of time together.

Secondaries are what they sound like, secondary relationships. A secondary partner will get less time and resources, and often have less say in what their relationship with someone else’s primary looks like.

Sometimes a primary will maintain the right to veto power, which means they can demand their primary partner end a secondary relationship.

Veto power is the ultimate display of holding power over a secondary. It means that the person with veto power can end a relationship they are not even a part of.

It pretty much goes against everything I believe as a relationship anarchist.

Non-Hierarchical Polyamory

Non-hierarchical polyamory grew out of polyamory, as a way to practice multiple simultaneous relationships without imposing hierarchies.

This means that there is no ranking system of primary and secondary. It means no person has extra influence over a person’s relationships. It means there is no veto power.

It means that certain people don’t get more privilege because you live together or have been together longer. All important people get a seat at the table, they get to have a voice.

While non-hierarchical poly people do not have hierarchies within their romantic and sexual relationships, they do still have them in their overall social network.

Relationship Anarchy

Relationship anarchists reject all hierarchies. They reject them in all their social relationships, including their romantic, sexual and platonic relationships.

Part of rejecting social hierarchies means not separating partners from friends. It means not saving intimacy or romance just for people they have sex with.

It also means rejecting hegemony, or predominant influence exercised over another person. It is about living free and independently.

Relationship anarchy came out of a political philosophy, as a way to apply anarchistic principles to interpersonal relationships.

Relationship anarchy is a way to live in accordance with these principles, such as rejection of authority and entitlement, and respect for autonomy and personal choices.

It’s about valuing relationships as you choose to, not based on imposed structures.

It’s not about everything always being equal, it’s about each person following their own path, and coming together based on mutual desires, not duty and obligation.

Relationship anarchists are looking at their relationship dynamics in a totally different way. They are actively working against hetero and mono normativity, and societal structures.

They are building from the ground up, rather than renovating.

Your DNA contains a record of your ancestors, but you aren’t a carbon copy of any one of them. The particular mix of DNA you inherit is unique to you. You receive 50% of your DNA from each of your parents, who received 50% of theirs from each of their parents, and so on.

Con's essential counter-case in my own words, if I may, is that humans are inherently greedy, Patriarchal and without moral restraint in the face of laws allowing people to do things that they otherwise would so then Con's ultimate case against the resolution is that laws should exist to help us fight our darker nature and/or assist us in stabilising things to achieve the best for all.