Polygamous Marriage Should Be Recognised

As proposition we strongly disagree that the impact of recognising polygamous marriage would be negative and that we can do nothing about it. We believe that publicising polygamy would make people more aware and will erase the problems polygamy does have but it also will show that there is more good than bad.

We understand the opposition's point that more people will pursue polygamy if it is legal. But this is self evident, as people would be unlikely to do something illegal and practise it more if it is legal. But also people who do start to marry will be people who have already practised polygamous relationships and know that it is better for them. Obviously, no rational person would engage in any nuptial relations unless they are completely sure it is better for them. They would experiment and have long term relations with people and only decide to marry if it's beneficial for them, and they want to do it. We are not forcing any one into anything that is harmful, but rather we give them a choice because it could be better.

Secondly, team opposition, claim that women's rights will be limited. This is not true. Murdoch says that polygyny will prevail, but looking at the reasons why, this information is outdated and overlooked. People used to value lots of children because they needed as much help to assist the family business. And even in labour work, 5 husbands would be better than 5 children. Wombs maybe scarce but in today's society a family may only need 1-5 children, and that can be achieved without 3-7 wives. In today's society, their are millions of confident, strong women willing to take the lead. And as we introduce polygamy more and more people will be aware and this biased belief of male dominance will be erased. Because there are homosexuals, hetrosexuals, and mixed. All different in representation of sex. Some women may want polygyny, and some men want polyandry. We want people to choose, we don't want society to say polygyny will prevail.

To introduce the team line of team Czech Republic, we are not against people having polygamous relationships in the privacy of their home, but we strongly believe that state should not officially recognise such relationships because of all harms brought by them, as we will show in our arguments.

We say that the policy proposition suggests will have two major impacts. Firstly, that not only will people who already live in those relationships be allowed to marry but more importantly more people will start to seek such relationships because the mindset and perception of society will change. Therefore there will be more people living in polygamous relationships which we will consequently show are harmful.

Secondly we claim that even though proposition suggests that both polyandry (one woman having more than one man) and polygyny (one man having more than one wife) will be equally possible, we claim that due to socioeconomic factor, polygyny will naturally prevail. (According to Murdoch’s Ethnographic Atlas, out of 1170 recorded societies, 850 are polygynous. http://goo.gl/OZKQ8)
In a monogamous couple, both sexes are represented equally, given the same rights and responsibilities, such as equal contribution to the development of a child or equal contribution in decision making process. Initiative of one to be in couple doesn’t stem just from sheer love to partner, but also from environment and circumstances such as having child, being dependent on the income of partner (almost always man) and for example family peer pressure. Same can be applied with initiative to divorce. In polygamous couples, we can see that even though some women intrinsically don’t agree having such relationship, they rather approve, persuaded by the extrinsic factors such as financial security, fear of leaving the child and for example pressure from family.

Therefore we claim that proposition policy will result in more marriages that are harmful to women and limit their rights.