Legalization[edit]
United States[edit]
Polygamy is currently illegal in the United States. On 13 December 2013, a federal judge, spurred by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups,[124] struck down the parts of Utah's bigamy law that criminalized cohabitation, while also acknowledging that the state may still enforce bans on having multiple marriage licenses.[125]
Individualist feminism and advocates such as Wendy McElroy and journalist Jillian Keenan support the freedom for adults to voluntarily enter polygamous marriages.[126][127]
Authors such as Alyssa Rower and Samantha Slark argue that there is a case for legalizing polygamy on the basis of regulation and monitoring of the practice, legally protecting the polygamous partners and allowing them to join mainstream society instead of forcing them to hide from it when any public situation arises.[128][129]
In an October 2004 op-ed for USA Today, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley "argued that, as a simple matter of equal treatment under law, polygamy ought to be legal. Acknowledging that underage girls are sometimes coerced into polygamous marriages, Turley replied that banning polygamy is no more a solution to child abuse than banning marriage would be a solution to spousal abuse."[130]
Stanley Kurtz, a Conservative fellow at the Hudson Institute rejects the decriminalization and legalization of polygamy. He stated: "Marriage, as its ultramodern critics would like to say, is indeed about choosing one's partner, and about freedom in a society that values freedom. But that's not the only thing it is about. As the Supreme Court justices who unanimously decided Reynolds in 1878 understood, marriage is also about sustaining the conditions in which freedom can thrive. Polygamy in all its forms is a recipe for social structures that inhibit and ultimately undermine social freedom and democracy. A hard-won lesson of Western history is that genuine democratic self-rule begins at the hearth of the monogamous family."[131]
In January 2015, Pastor Neil Patrick Carrick of Detroit, Michigan brought a case (Carrick v. Snyder) against the State of Michigan that the state's ban of polygamy violates theFree Exercise and Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.[132][133]
United Kingdom[edit]
Bigamy is illegal in the United Kingdom, unlike polygamy, which is not mentioned as a criminal offence in the United Kingdom.[134][not in citation given] In a written answer to the House of Commons, In Great Britain, polygamy is only recognised as valid in law in circumstances where the marriage ceremony has been performed in a country whose laws permit polygamy and the parties to the marriage were domiciled there at the time. In addition, immigration rules have generally prevented the formation of polygamous households in this country since 1988.[135]
The 2010 Government in the UK decided that Universal Credit (UC), which replaces means-tested benefits and tax credits for working-age people and will not be completely introduced until 2021, will not recognise polygamous marriages. A House of Commons Briefing Paper states Treating second and subsequent partners in polygamous relationships as separate claimants could in some situations mean that polygamous households receive more under Universal Credit than they do under the current rules for means-tested benefits and tax credits. This is because, as explained above, the amounts which may be paid in respect of additional spouses are lower than those which generally apply to single claimants. There is currently no official statistics data on cohabiting polygamous couples who have arranged marriage in religious ceremonies.[136]
International Law[edit]
In 2000, the United Nations Human Rights Committee reported that polygamy violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), citing concerns that the lack of "equality of treatment with regard to the right to marry" meant that polygamy, restricted to polygyny in practice, violates the dignity of women and should be abolished.[137]Specifically, the reports to UN Committees have noted violations of the ICCPR due to these inequalities[138] and reports to the General Assembly of the UN have recommended it be abolished. [139][140] Many Muslim states are not signatories of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Malaysia, Brunei, Oman, and South Sudan; therefore the UN treaty doesn't apply to these countries.[141] It has been argued by the Department of Justice of Canada that polygyny is a violation of International Human Rights Law.[
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