Polyamory Legalized in Boston Suburb
The Cambridge, Massachusetts city council voted on March 8 to redefine the term “domestic partnership.” A “domestic partnership” used to be defined as two unmarried people living together. Here’s the new definition, as reported on Reason:
Now, a domestic partnership in Cambridge “means the entity formed by two or more persons” who are not related and file a registration declaring that they’re “in a relationship of mutual support, caring and commitment and intend to remain in such a relationship,” are “not in a domestic partnership with others outside this partnership,” and “consider themselves to be a family.”
What does that mean?
It means a domestic partnership can have as many people as desired in it, but the partners can’t join multiple partnerships.
This legalizes polyamory (the technical term for a domestic relationship with more than two partners) in the fourth-largest city in the state and a major suburb of Boston.
This is the second municipality in America to legalize polyamory, after Somerville, Massachusetts, another Boston suburb, did so last year.
Polygamy in the West used to be considered a practice that was anti-family and heavily discriminatory to women. Images spring to mind of pharaohs and Turkish sultans nabbing any beautiful woman they desired as their “wives.” This view of marriage turned spouses into little more than concubines. This trend probably won’t make harems in vogue in Massachusetts. But the redefinitions are a step in that direction.
It isn’t only America that’s flirting with legalizing polygamy. British society has been doing so for years. Britain has a large immigrant population. Some countries, like India, Pakistan and most of the Arab world, allow polygamy. After people from these countries immigrate to Britain, some “keep” their multiple marriages. And the British government recognizes them for features like welfare benefits (although this is due to change this year). As of 2016, there were an estimated 20,000 polygamous marriages in Britain.
Legal marriage is still limited to two people. It used to be defined in America as two people of the opposite sex. The homosexual revolution changed that. If polygamy becomes more and more popular, will actual marriage be next on the chopping block? Where will the road of butchering traditional family life end?
The United States Supreme Court recently compared the normalization of polygamy with the normalization of homosexuality. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for a suit against California’s Proposition 8, which banned homosexual “marriage.” Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that legalizing homosexual “marriage” would open the floodgates so there would be no restrictions on marriage whatsoever. She said: “If you [the plaintiff] say that marriage is a fundamental right [regardless of who it’s with], what state restrictions could ever exist? Meaning, what state restrictions with respect to the number of people, with respect to [incest], what’s left?” Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld agreed with Justice Sotomayor’s assessment.
Like homosexuality, support for legalizing polygamy has gained momentum through pop culture. The reality television show Sister Wives, while recently canceled, brought polygamy to the mainstream. Portraying the “day in the life” of a man with four “wives,” the show’s premiere had a viewership of 2.2 million in 2016. The “patriarch” of the family, Kody Brown, challenged a state law in Utah that banned polyamorous cohabitation. The challenge was successful.
One has to wonder where this trend will eventually lead. Will “marriages” with more than one spouse become the norm in Western society soon?
Trumpet managing editor Joel Hilliker writes in our free booklet Redefining Family:
The fact is, the great majority are forming views, making decisions and creating policies having been influenced—even bullied—by political correctness, peer pressure or societal coercion. There has been a clandestine yet concerted effort to radically change people’s minds about homosexuality. And whether they realize it or not, many people have come to accept and embrace this idea because they’ve been unwittingly manipulated to do so.
What about you? Have you already made up your mind on homosexuality? Are you sure you are right?
We can ask the same question regarding polygamy. Currently, a majority of U.S. adults think polygamy is wrong. It used to be the same with homosexuality. Yet look at what a few years of cultural and political activism can do to the views of a population.
“There is an unseen dimension, many layers deep, that makes this matter far, far more important than most people realize,” continues Mr. Hilliker. “Whether or not you recognize it, this issue touches many of the biggest, most profound and important questions in life.”
Marriage has a history, purpose and function unique among societal organizations. People may assume that they’re tampering with a humanly devised social construct. They may see their impact on society as negligible. But traditional, biblical marriage has a purpose far more important than most realize. To learn more, request our free booklet, Why Marriage—Soon Obsolete? by Herbert W. Armstrong. Also request Redefining Family to learn the true effects of society’s mass experimentation on marriage.