How would you feel about sharing your spouse with another? I know for a fact that I wouldn’t like it and neither would Mick like being part of such an arrangement. Yet that is apparently what Keysar Trad who is president of the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia suggested recently as guest speaker when talking at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney. He doesn’t see why bigamy or polygamy should be a crime.
Others, undertandably, didn’t agree.
On Monday 5th October the Sydney Morning Herald ran a number of letters picking out a few of the flaws in his argument for polygamy. A few of the letters suggested tht it was a case of double standards to suggest polygamy should be a crime and asked what about polyandry, which is one women having multiple husbands.
Another letter suggested that given Aussie men do less than their share of housework, it would make sense from a pratical point of view. Well, no way I want another person in this relationship. Yes, I have a husband who certainly does his share around the house because we are a partenership, but even if he didn’t I wouldn’t want to have another husband.
One of the points Keysar Trad made was that men have affairs anyway, so it would be better to make it legal. One problem Mick saw with that when we discussed this issue, is that half the problem is that people always want what they can’t have, a point also brought out in a show we’ve been watching on TV called Heart and Soul. So whether a man has one wife or six, it’s still going to be the same thing. They’re still going to want the one the haven’t got – the one they can’t have.
The other problem Mick indentified is that many people have enough trouble living with one spouse. Imagine if they had to live with more than one! Do they think it will stop some married spouses wandering? It won’t! It will just mean more sex with more people and more complications for families. Don’t we have enough of them already without adding to the mix?
Instead of throwing up ideas such as polygamy and polyandry, how about trying to improve the marriages each of us have and be loyal to the spouse we have committed to?
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