STANLEY KURTZ has responded to my earlier post on polygamy. His big worry: I’m too influential! Actually, there’s a lot more to it than that, and I’ve got to get ready for a committee meeting followed by two classes, so further reply on my part will have to come later.

UPDATE: Well, the polygamy post generated considerable email. Reader Cameron Gressly sends a rather lengthy email, but here’s the key part:

Polygamy may sound fairly innocuous to someone who has not lived in a polygamous culture, but if you were able to take a year or two off to live in say, Mali, you would not find it so impressive. The olygamous culture produces weak families with serious inter sibling and inter spousal rivalries – something that spills out into the society at large. Men marry, deceiving their first wives into believing that they will not do to them as their neighbors have done, then blithely bring home wife number two, then wife number three or more. The women, the wives, are expected to work to maintain their own offspring. African women have asked me why they should be expected to invest much in their marriage when the husband betrays them with co-wives. I have had African men tell me they did not understand why their father betrayed their mother with another wife. I have lived nearly 20 years in Africa, so this comes from first hand witness.

I’ve never been to Mali, but though my Nigerian family are not polygamous (Anglicans seldom are, with the quasi-exception of Prince Charles and his ilk), the stories I hear of polygamous wives asking how monogamous women can stand being the only one to look after a husband without help don’t jibe with this. But there you are.

Clayton Cramer, meanwhile, sends a link to this post, arguing that child abuse, etc., is common in “polygamous subcultures” within the United States, such as splinter Mormon groups and the David Koresh cult. Well,this is no argument: When polygamy is criminal, it makes sense that criminals will be polygamists. Cramer also links to an earlier post of mine on Rick Santorum, but seems to miss the point.

However, this passage of Clayton’s pretty much matches my view:

If two (or three, or four, or five) adults want to live together in “plural marriage” or have a “polyamorous” arrangement, I don’t see any strong argument for the government knocking on the door and asking them to explain their actions. But I also don’t see that the government has an obligation to give them any recognition or financial support. If your argument for your sexual relationships is based on a right to privacy, don’t demand public recognition or assistance.

But why does any relationship produce an obligation on the part of the government to provide recognition or support? It’s certainly true, as some other readers pointed out (and as Clayton’s linked Mormon story reports) that some polygamous arrangements now are basically welfare scams. But that’s a welfare issue, not a marriage issue.

Kurtz, on the other hand, says that Western marriage is based on “companionate love.” I certainly hope so, but I wonder whether the cultural concern that he describes forms an adequate underpinning for legal requirements. (And wouldn’t that, in itself, be an argument in favor of gay marriage, so long as it was based on companionate love?)

He also writes: “For me, the key issue is polyamory.” Well, that’s been around since the ’60s (and still is: someone was just telling me that “the Knoxville swinger scene is unbelievable”) — though in my observations of those many who tried it in in my parents’ generation, it fails a lot more than it succeeds. Not being a polyamorist myself, I’ll leave the practical details to Eric S. Raymond or someone who can say more. But I do remember a conversation I had with Saul Levmore years ago, when U. Va. was thinking about banning student-faculty relationships. I observed that in my observation those usually didn’t work out. “So what?” he responded. “Hardly any relationships work out!”

Having watched my parents’ generation make fools of themselves experimenting with open marriage, I’m not overenthusiastic about polyamory or polygamy. But on the other hand, my experience is that people can make the most unpromising relationships work out well, and the most promising ones turn out badly. I’m also not at all convinced that the state is better at picking winners in this field than in others.

Meanwhile, I’m happy to say that I’ve gotten no hatemail on this post. Pejman may not be so lucky.