General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Gay people can have multipartner relationships too. [View all]pnwmom
(109,039 posts)more egalitarian. It isn't a coincidence that modern egalitarian cultures do not embrace polygamy. They've rejected it.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/polygamy-not-next-gay-marriage-119614.html#ixzz3fQEkjTAb
In this article, I noted other research suggesting that societies become inherently unstable when effective sex ratios reach something like 120 males to 100 females, such that a sixth of men are surplus commodities in the marriage market. That's not a big number: "The United States as a whole would reach that ratio if, for example, 5 percent of men took two wives, 3 percent took three wives, and 2 percent took four wivesnumbers that are quite imaginable, if polygamy were legal for a while."
By abolishing polygamy as a legal form of marriage, western societies took a step without which modern liberal democracy and egalitarian social structures might have been impossible: they democratized the opportunity to marry. It's no coincidence that almost no liberal democracy allows polygamy. Here's the map:
SNIP