Domination & submission _ the BDSM relationship handbook ( PDFDrive )

Group Marriage and Polygamy
Polygamy is simply polyamory applied to the institution of marriage. There are
three types of polygamy: Polygyny, polyandry, and group or plural marriages.
Polygyny is defined as a man having multiple wives. Polyandry describes a
woman with multiple husbands. Group or plural marriages are umbrella terms
used to describe any marriages or relationships resembling marriages that have
more than two partners.
Plural marriages have been around, in one form or another, throughout human
history. About half of the over 1200 societies listed in the Ethnographic Atlas
Codebook have a significant incidence of plural marriages occurring in them. In
most of those cultures, plural marriages are relatively rare, even when accepted
and legal. In modern times, polygamous marriages have been practiced and
legally recognized in Tibet, Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka, and 21 of the 22
countries that are members of the Arab League, with Tunisia being the lone
hold-out. In Senegal, 47% of all marriages are polygamous, while in highlywesternized
South Africa, it is not only practiced and legal, but President Jacob
Zuma has four wives and twenty-nine children.
In the United States, polygamous marriages were practiced by the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the Mormon Church) from 1832
until 1890, when it was officially renounced by the church’s leadership and
made an excommunicable offense. Since that time, splinter groups in the latterday
saints movement, most notably the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, have continued to practice polygamy in isolated communities
in the western United States and in Canada.
Another experiment in polyamorous living was founded in 1848 in New York by
a group called “Christian Perfectionism” which was led by John Humphrey
Noyes. The members of this community, called the Oneida community,
practiced a form of group marriage wherein all of the males in the community
were married to all of the females, and vice-versa - a doctrine which they called
“complex marriage.” The community thrived for thirty-three years and, at one
point, boasted over 300 members before being disbanded in 1881.
In addition to the Mormon and Oneida experiences, there have been other, more
modern, institutional attempts at polyamorous living in the United States. One
of those experiments was the Kerista Commune, which existed in the San