14th October, 2009
JIM WALLACE

The debate now emerging about legalising polygamy will rightly inflame most Australians.

In early October - in the same week Australia was recognised as second only to Norway as the best place in the world to live - we were again told by people who have come from some of the worst places in the world to live, to make it more like home - their original home.

After writing in The Age on 2nd October about the supposed merits of polygamy, the President of the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia, Keysar Trad, quickly found himself on the defensive in trying to justify multiple wives.

Few women will run to join the Islamic Friendship Association in the hope of romance, knowing that as Trad says: “the willingness of a man to take on another wife is in fact a form of praise to his first wife.”

Most women, and indeed men, would think the highest form of praise one could have for the other is faithfulness. This principle might be under considerable threat within the throwaway consumer society we have created, but should nonetheless be upheld as an ideal in relationship.

Despite Trad's unsupported claims that “studies consistently reveal that most men admit to having affairs,” the opposite is very much the case. Loyalty is valued by people in marriage; with the Sex in America study showing that 90 per cent of wives and 75 per cent of husbands claim never to have had extramarital sex.

Yet still much of the Islamic Friendship Association's argument seems to hinge on the lesser of two evils. As the West is so morally corrupted, and it's impossible to remain loyal to one wife, let's make more than one legal!

The argument carries implications that adultery is only practised in the West, but anyone who has lived in other societies, including Islamic ones, will know that that is not the case.

While the fear of consequences in these societies keeps things very much under the table - it is very much a man's world.

But the logic in the argument for polygamy is itself flawed, even in Islam, which is doubtless seeking to impose a moral code.

While it is the case that a man taking more than one wife in Islam is required to treat each equally, it is surely hard to trivialise the effect on the first wife as Trad does, by saying she is giving only a fraction of her husband's affection to the second. Surely by definition that fraction is 50 per cent!

In a modern society in which couples already have too little time together, this fraction will be as unacceptable for practical and emotional reasons as the whole concept of polygamy.

This consideration of polygamy is an inevitable consequence of the challenges to our concept of marriage being most recently brought by the gay and lesbian community. If this flood gate is opened there is no turning back.

Compromise of the concept of marriage overseas to include same-sex marriage, has led to a raft of claims to broaden the concept even further, from polygamy to even more bizarre ambit claims!

If marriage is not preserved, as our heritage and culture demand, we have no right to deny the inevitable claims on it which will flow not just from alternate faiths, but from those with deconstructionist agendas simply looking for a vehicle.

In the end, to paraphrase Field Marshal Montgomery: “we have to decide on what side we stand”.

On this and other issues, we have to either confirm the Judeo-Christian heritage that is so much responsible for our being second only to Norway as the best country in which to live - or accept the consequences.

Jim Wallace is the managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby.

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