Habayit Hayehudi Hashalem Promotes Polygynous Freedom to Marry

This article is a long one looking at a movement in Israel to lift the ban on the polygynous freedom to marry.

A new organization is trying to reinstate polygamy into mainstream Orthodox Judaism, despite it being against the contemporary norm of Jewish law, and prohibited by the state.

This blog supports full marriage equality, not just the polygynous freedom to marry.

It is being promoted as the Jewish solution for the abundance of single women, the Arab demographic threat and the male predicament of seeking extramarital relations.

There is nothing wrong with anyone being single, if that is what they want (the articles say the women prefer polygyny to being unmarried.) But if they want to be married, they should be allowed to marry the consenting adult of their choice, even if that adult is already married. I don’t see any race as a threat. And I have nothing against “extramarital relations” as long as they are consented to by all involved. The best justification for marriage equality is fairness and freedom of choice.

Polygamy More Ethical?

Don Lee makes a case that "Polygamy is more Ethical than Monogamy.”

He explains that professing monogamy isn’t always matched with actual monogamy.

In Western culture this is generally referred to as either "family friend" or "serial monogamy", neither of which are true monogamy. While being legally married, approximately 80% of all couples experience a sexual contact outside of marriage, and this remains the 2nd largest cause of classic divorce.

It may be cited as a cause in a certain number of divorces, but in a good chunk of those cases, it is not the cause. It may be a symptom. Yes, there are some divorces in which cheating (a physical, emotional, or financial relationship with someone in violation of the agreement with the spouse) is the cause, but I think it is clear to less biased observers that the cheating is a symptom of the real problem leading to the divorce.

The largest cause of divorce is loss of income, itself a revealing indicator of what Western Marriage is really all about.

Moral monogamy is "marriage until death" in most cultures. Legal monogamy is having only one legitimate spouse. These are in no way similar concepts, and in practice are quite diverse. Legally, you can be "monogamous" about nine or ten times, and some people have been married more than a dozen times.

In general (prostitution and consanguineous sex being generally illegal, and thus excluded) a married person having sex with someone other than his or her spouse is not criminalized in the US, though in a few states it can be subject to a lawsuit in civil court.

My point is not just that "serial monogamy" isn't really monogamy, and it isn't, but that many completely happy 30+ year marriages indulge in "private activities" which involve other people. Apart from the roughly 90 million Americans [almost one in three] who are members of sexually-themed clubs, or swingers, there is the harsh reality of cheating. 8.5 in 10 marriages experience infidelity according to most studies. The number ranges from 6 to 9 in 10 depending no the focal group, however the larger the group - the higher the ratio trends! Meaning, the likelihood that more people "cheat" is found to be more significant when studying larger groups.

As I have said before, actual monogamy is a minority behavior.

The chances of a successful marriage are less than 30% by most calculations, and those are odds I would not play even in Vegas.

This is where I think the writer gets it wrong, depending on how one defines “successful.” I suppose it is possible to say that if you exclude all marriages that end in divorce, separation, estrangement, or otherwise experience significant trouble, no matter how long they lasted or what was accomplished during the marriage, you could arrive at this figure. Mostly, though, when emotionally healthy and mature people marry with no prior marriages or other significant baggage (prior children, large debts, serious criminal record, Anita Bryant record collection), the odds of it lasting until death are high. But you do have these people, especially a lot of these types who tend to be against marriage equality, who marry and divorce three or four times, skewing the odds.

Polygyny in Israel

There's a battle in Israel over polygyny in some of the Muslim population. There are groups actively trying to end the practice.

Since polygamous marriages aren't recognized by the government, no official statistics exist. But the Research and Information Center of Israel's Knesset, or parliament, estimates that somewhere between 20 percent and 36 percent of bedouin households in the southern Negev region, where most of bedouin live, are polygamous.

Whatever the percentage, it is clearly not a rare practice.

Primarily a media campaign using posters with women's testimonials, the "No Excuse for Polygamy" initiative also holds meetings and seminars aimed at educating single women about the price of polygamy.

I have no problem with someone explaining to anyone else willing to listen why they would not want to participate in a polygynous marriage. But adults should be able to freely choose their own marriages, and that includes a woman choosing to be one of two, three, or four wives to one husband.

With an annual growth rate of 5.5 percent, Israeli bedouins are one of the fastest growing populations in the world.

Many polygamous populations are growing faster than the general population. That is going to mean more popular support for the right to polygamous marriage.

"Women are the greatest beneficiaries of polygamy," Abu-Da'abes told the Israeli-Arab weekly Kul Al-Arab.

Abu-Da'abes, while a supporter of the right to polygynous marriage, is no supporter of full marriage equality…

For that reason, Abu-Da'abes criticized Arab men who take foreign women in addition to their Arab wives, saying he would like to issue an Islamic legal opinion, known as a fatwa, against mixed marriages.

Any adult should be allowed to marry any other consenting adult(s).

Yazbak dismissed Abu-Da'abes' argument, saying polygamy causes poverty and dissolves the family structure.

I would like to see a comparison of divorce rates and other indcators of “dissolving the family structure” between this bedouin population and the professing monogamists in that country. I suspect the bedouins have a stronger family dynamic.

Again, I would like to point out that I support full marriage equality, and as part of that, gender equality. Both men and women have to be truly free to make their own choices about getting married and, if need be, getting divorced. I support the right to polyandry as much as I support th right to polygyny.