Clash of Cultures
These days such a title could mean anything, from US-Iraq "relations" to Arab-Jew hostility, from Chinese-American economic tussles to German cyber attacks on neo-Nazi sites. This post deals with a hidden culture within the US, and it’s history of repression and ostracism by our protestant underpinnings of denied prurience.
In Salt Lake City, children of stable, polygamist families speak out in favor of their upbringing. while only a tiny minority of Utah’s - some 250 supporters came to City Hall - they have the right to speak out against a history of human rights abuses, losses of freedoms, and intolerance. They suffer these indignities at the hands of a Christian majority pathologically incapable of a healthy respect for human procreation. They can’t talk to their children about it; they deny their teenagers to explore their sexuality; they refuse to let others choose a lifestyle that differs from the perceived norm; they can’t even talk to their spouses about their own desires. Christian attitudes toward sexuality is an illness in itself.
Today’s youth, expressing themselves in a truly Democratic fashion, are challenging authority unlike anything seen since the 1960’s. This is perhaps as replay of the upheaval of the Boomers, a continuation on a smaller scale of social progression and cultural maturity, kick-started then abandoned by the teens of the sixties in favor of profits and creature comforts.
What is wrong with Polygamy? I neither endorse nor condemn the practice. If consenting adults agree to such an arrangement, so be it. A stable family is a happy family. Any resulting children, if raised in openness and awareness of its surroundings, will thrive and be capable of making healthy lifestyle choices of their own.
Have there been unbecoming behavior associated with polygamy? Yes, but any other lifestyle can claim its own collection of tyrants. What the Christian majority has proselytized against is no more evil than bouts of ethnic cleansing that allowed Mormons to settle in Utah in the first place. Didn’t Jesus say: "He without sin may cast the first stone"? Something like that.
Just a few of many word spoken by the man most revered by Christians worldwide that are ignored in modern life.
August 21st, 2006 at 11:32 am
I have several friends who have been or are involved in polyamorous relationships. The ratio of men to women in these relationships has varied, it’s not a simple situation of many women with one man or many men with one women. However, recently one of my friends was in a relationship of 3 women with one man, and in fact that man has a young son.
Each one of my friends who has practiced polyamory has had good and bad experiences, but something that a friend of mine recently said has really stuck out in my mind. She said that all relationships have their share of problems, but in polyamory, often many problems are happening at once. when 3 or 4 people are all together in a relationship, the dynamic is even more complicated than when a simple couple are in a relationship. The problems between two people become the problems of all involved, compounded with any problems any of the other combinations may have.
On the converse it is also true that the strong bonds that are formed can positively affect the whole group. And when children are involved, they reap the benefit of having a small village to raise them (to paraphrase a popular axiom).
It seems to balance out for people who are prepared for it. Though obviously unwilling participation in such a relationship is reprehensible and even worse than any clash of cultures or subcultures.
Basically, all loving relationships are intense and often polyamory requires even more dedication and personal investment, but in a group relationship that works, everyone bears the burden and lightens the load for everyone else. Just like a successful monogamy.