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Bill Duncan at the It Takes a Family Summer Conference  Bill Duncan gave this talk on marriage law as part of Ruth Institute's student conference this year in Southern California. He traces how United States law has treated marriage, explains how its legal views have altered over the centuries, and finally discusses the way that Judge Walker's federal Prop. 8 ruling demolishes the core meaning of marriage. (Click the POD icon.)

Action Item: Go see either Jamie in D.C. or Dr. J in Oakland THIS WEEK! (See more information above and to the right.)

Talking Point: “(M)arriage … is something more than a mere contract. It is an institution, … the foundation of the family and of society, without which there would be neither civilization nor progress.”

~Justice Stephen Field, US Supreme Court in Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190, 210-211 (1888), as quoted by ITAF Lecturer Bill Duncan.

Lutheran Public Radio: Dr. J is usually on live on Tuesdays from 2-2:15 p.m. Pacific Time (Click the link to listen live or find a station near you.)

October 2: COLFS Dinner and Gala (Culture of Life Family Services) San Diego, CA.

Where Dr. J will be: These events are open to the public. More details to follow.

September 16-18: Executive Director Jamie Gruber will be in Washington, D.C., for the Values Voters Summit

September 18, Oakland Manhattan Forum Conference: Keeping Faith in the Public Square. 

September 22-23, Effingham, IL (St. Louis area) Family Life Center Fundraising Banquet, "By God's Design." Seating at 6:30. Dinner and program at 7:00. Dr. J--Keynote Speaker. Dinner is complimentary. RSVP (217) 342-5433

September 24, Boston
October 12, Phoenix
October 16, Grand Rapids

Miss an issue of the newsletter? You can find recent main articles by going to the Ruth blog and selecting the category, Newsletter Articles.

Do you need advice on how to improve your marriage or relationship, or on how to find the right person for you? Expert Dr. J is here for you. Click here to ask your question, which may be featured anonymously in this newsletter for the benefit of all.

Read past questions and answers here.

Need help with your marriage? You can also check out Dr. J's "101 Tips for a Happier Marriage!"

• To prevent mailbox filters from deleting mailings from The Ruth Institute, add jmorse@ruthinstitute.org to your address book

Don't miss an opportunity to meet Jamie and Dr. J this week!

Young Adults and College Students of the DC area: Ruth Institute Executive Director Jamie Gruber will be at the Values Voter Summit September 16-18. Come meet her for dinner! Email her for location information.

On September 18, Dr. J will be in Oakland for the Manhattan Forum Conference: Keeping Faith in the Public Square. If you attend this event, the first seven people who sign up can sit with Dr. J while you eat your bag lunches. ;0) Preference will be given to college students. If you know anyone going to school in the Bay Area, encourage them to come to this event!

Tip #17 from 101 Tips for a Happier Marriage

Picture yourself five years from now. See yourself grateful that you stuck with your spouse. Researchers from the Institute for American Values followed couples in crisis who contemplated divorce. Five years later, most of those who stayed married were glad they did.

Remind yourself of this the next time you think you can't take any more. Take a deep breath, pull your shoulders back, and keep moving forward, doing what needs to be done to make things better.

Want more marriage-saving tips? Find all 101 here.

by Ruth Institute Board member William C. Duncan

While the United States is occupied with the federal challenge to California's Proposition 8, Canada has its own pending marriage case, which is likely headed for the Canadian Supreme Court. Canada, which redefined marriage nationwide to include same-sex couples in 2005, against the backdrop of successful provincial lawsuits against the country's marriage law, could be moving on to bigger things -- literally. Specifically, polygamy and polyamory, as this case invokes the question of whether the government can continue to criminalize multiple-partner marriages. The case itself, initiated by the British Columbia Attorney General under a special provision of that Province's law, arises in the wake of failed prosecutions of polygamous sect members in British Columbia.

Advocates of polygamy and polyamory seem to have an ally in the Law Commission of Canada, a statutory body of government appointees who propose changes to modernize Canadian law and report to the Justice Ministry. In 2001, the Commission issued a report, Beyond Conjugality: Recognizing and Supporting Close Personal Adult Relationships, that questioned the continuing illegality of consensual polygamy in Canada.

Recently, the case has been uniquely complicated by an intervening interest group called the Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association. The Association is seeking an adjudication of sorts that the Canadian laws regarding polygamy (one man with more than one wife) do not apply to polyamory ("multiple conjugal relationships"). CPAA's "twist" on the law is that polyamory is just fine, and ought to be allowed, while polygamy can remain unsuitable for Canadian society. The rationale for their argument is the contention that, beyond the social science data that shows it is harmful, polygamy promotes gender inequality, and often involves coercion.

"Polyamory," by contrast, is strictly egalitarian and consensual, according to CPAA, and thus does not involve or promote one gender over the other. Affidavits filed in court detail (1) a woman and her male partner who live and have relationships with two other adults in the household (they also have a child living in the home) and who have agreed that each can pursue relationships with others, (2) a woman who lives with two other men (two of her teenage sons also live in the home), (3) a husband and wife who live with another adult (and the married couples' two young children and the third person's teenage children), and (4) a man who lives with a woman and another man (with whom he is raising a two-year-old child). Polyamory advocates also tout a lack of social science evidence showing any harm from its practice. In other words, the CPAA is arguing that since you can't prove that polyamory is bad for society, it must be good. By this rationale, we can all rest assured that Jimmy Hoffa is alive and well.

It may also be true that there is a dearth of published studies of harm caused by polyamory. This would not be surprising given the novelty of the practice and its small set of practitioners. There seems to be no shortage of breathless stories in newspapers and magazines about these kinds of arrangements but these do not equate to research. Any study of polyamorous "families" is likely to be plagued by methodological difficulties -- large holes in data, voluntary samples, reliance on self-reporting, small sample sizes, poor comparisons, and misplaced focus.

Even if the courts accept the egalitarianism, consent, and no data arguments as true, the proposed distinction between multiple-wife polygamy and polyamory in terms of social harms is spurious. In fact, it may be the case that acceptance of polyamory would, if possible, be more harmful.

For instance, the social science data we do have on children who experience a succession of relationships with parents' cohabiting partners (a kind of de facto serial polyamory, or as the sociologists call it, "multiple partner fertility") is not encouraging (here and here). They are at higher risk for abuse, behavioral problems, and household instability. The presence of two sets of unrelated children mentioned in some of the affidavits also does not sound promising for the well-being of younger children. We should not be sanguine, therefore, that children raised in polyamorous homes will be just fine.

If we take seriously the idea that marriage laws have an educative function, polyamory raises red flags. On each of the core functions of marriage -- promoting fidelity, providing a tie between children and parents, securing permanence for spouses and their children -- polyamory seems particularly harmful. Both traditional polygamy and polyamory promote types of infidelity (though the former is of a more orderly variety), of course, but the chaos of polyamory blurs distinctions of parenthood more significantly than does a setting where a child has an established set of parents and lots of half-siblings. The ethic of "choice" at the root of polyamory does not bode well for permanence either.

As complicated as the day to day existence must be for children in homes with multiple adults acting as "parents," the breakup of polyamorous relationships would be dramatically more complicated for children. There would be an exponential increase in the possible divisions of a child's time, of decision-making authority and demands for the child's loyalty, when the dispute involves three or more people than when only two disputants are involved.

Clearly, when it comes to marriage, the adage "the more the merrier" does not apply.

This article was first published at The American Spectator on September 2, 2010.

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