The practice of polygamy, or having more than one spouse at the same time, is illegal in all US 50 states.
But the percentage of Americans who say the practice is morally acceptable reached an all-time high this year, according to a recent Gallup poll.
Gallup has measured American attitudes toward a number of social issues and behaviours, such as divorce, same-sex relations, and stem cell research, since 2001.
In that time, the percentage of Americans who find polygamy to be morally acceptable has risen from seven to 17 percent.
Of all the issues and behaviours Gallup asked about, polygamy is among those to gain the most ground on moral acceptance since 2001, after same-sex relations, having a baby out of wedlock, sex between an unmarried man and woman and divorce.
Gallup initially attributed a 2011 bump in Americans’ acceptance of polygamy to a change in the wording of the question. Before 2011, Gallup defined polygamy as being when “a husband has more than one wife at the same time.
”But polygamy is actually a gender-neutral term that refers to the practice of having more than one spouse at a time.
The majority of polygamous societies around the globe practice polygyny, when a man marries more than one woman. Another form of polygamy, called polyandry, refers to when a woman has more than one husband.
In 2011, Gallup changed its definition to reflect the term’s gender-neutrality, identifying polygamy as when “a married person has more than one spouse at the same time.
”The change in wording coincided with a bump in the percentage of Americans who found polygamy morally acceptable ― but the continued rise likely has little to do with semantics, Gallup analyst Andrew Dugan wrote in a recent article.
The growing moral acceptance of polygamy may be part of a “broader leftward shift on moral issues,” Dugan wrote, as well as increased depictions of the marital practice in popular media.
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling legalizing same sex marriage in all 50 states, scholar and cultural commentator Fredrik deBoer argued in an article on Politico that polygamy would be “the next horizon of social liberalism.”
DeBoer seemed to echo in positive terms what many social conservatives ominously warned: that legal changes to so-called “traditional marriage” could lead to anything ― even group marriage. Continue reading
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