This morning, Baroness Warsi argued that the government is failing to act adequately against polygamy. She said "in this country, one married man is allowed to marry one woman". In contrast, Manzoor Moghal, chairman of the Muslim Forum, asked:
Why would you not allow Muslims to conduct their affairs in their cultural, religious framework, without interference from the state?
Why should we take them to task for having a second, third and a fourth nikah [marriage] which is compatible with their religion?
I believe that Mr Moghal is broadly correct and Baroness Warsi misguided.
First, Baroness Warsi is mistaken in her statement. It is not true that in Britain one man is allowed to marry one woman. Rather, one man is allowed to marry only woman at a time. Our system is serial monogamy.
Second, it is not illegal to be non-legally polygamous in this country - specifically, it is not illegal to have a wife and a mistress (or just to have two non-legal-marriage partners). Baroness Warsi appears to want a greater burden upon good Muslims than upon atheists or immoral Muslims in this regard - under her system, the atheists and the bad Muslims would be permitted to be polygamous (would be legally permitted to have mistresses), yet proper Muslim men who wanted to honour their second and later wives by having religious ceremonies would be forbidden from doing so. Why should adulterers be more legally supported than honourable explicit polygamists? Why should amoral atheists be more legally honoured than devout Muslims?
Third, Mr Moghal's point is powerful - why should we not facilitate Muslims in their contractual relationships regarding polygamy? Is the point that some people believe polygamy to be wrong? Well, virtually everyone thinks adultery is wrong, yet we marry adulterers. Do we think that these relationships involve asymmetric power interactions? So, you really believe that a 35 year old businessman divorcee who marries his 16 year old schoolgirl mistress is in a symmetric power relationship? Yet our law allows these to marry. Is it that some polygamous marriages might be abusive? Are there no abusive monogamous marriages?
No. We have long since deserted the concept in Britain that legal marriage has any connection to morality or power. It is simply (a) a convenient way to wrap up a number of contracts that people might undertake separately; and (b) a mechanism that simplifies division of property in the event of separation.
So, I go further than Mr Moghal. Whilst Baroness Warsi wants honouring polygamists to be treated worse than adulterers, I want them to have access to official legal sanction - I want there to be civil unions for polygamists. These should obviously be available to anyone (including multiple men and the same woman or all men or all women or multiple men and multiple women) - you shouldn't need to belong to a specific religion to access them. They should not be "marriages" in the sense that churches would be obliged to offer them.
Many of you will have objections. My challenge is this: In your objections swap the term "polygamist" and "homosexual" and see whether your objections really look any different to the objections many offered (mistakenly) against homosexual civil union. Why should polygamy be any less honoured before the law than homosexual union (which I favoured)? (And the answer had better not be "because polygamy is wrong", for we established at the time of the Section 28 and age of consent equalisation debates that it was not the function of the law to provide moral signals and the legal provision of homosexual civil union had nothing to do with the belief that it was morally right.)
