And there could be cancelling out effects - some Mormon men might have 2 wives, but women like Anna Nicole Smith could have 3 husbands.

I didn’t understand the raising of children to have been the raison d’etre for the marriage of, say, Bob Hawke and Blance d’Alpuguet.

Further I’d challenge the notion that there’s something distinctively heterosexual about love between two people. In our society, the notion of the love-bonded, coupled relationship is a powerful cultural icon (of relatively recent origin) and it resonates equally for heterosexual and homosexual. That doesn’t mean that it’s the only legitimate affectional bonding but it’s primacy is undisputed.

“Then why not polygamy” is often raised as a counter to gay marriage in this context - always by heterosexuals - and I wonder if it’s not related to the inability of some heterosexuals to understand that if you’re homosexual it doesn’t mean that you’re less entitled to express your love in the same relationship framework as heterosexuals. Gay men and lesbian women in Australia tend to aspire pretty much to the same relationship construction as do their heterosexual peers. Validating homosexual coupling doesn’t logically “open the door” to anything - unless you think that homosexual coupling is inherently invalid.

So I think that the question of whether or not polygamy should be permitted in Australia is a discussion unrelated to the legal validation of gay relationships.

I recall hearing that a man can have up to 4 wives in the United Arab Emirates, but that each wife demands to be treated the same as the others, so there are dwellings (eg on the highway between Dubai and RAK) comprised of identical houses on the one block of land, sometimes facing each other.

I’m fairly pragmatic about it, so, if in terms of adoption, children grow up fine in these types of families, its all good by me.

It has to do with it in the sense that if we are going to widen the scope of marriage to more than “A man and a woman”, then other types of marriages should be considered too. Polygamous marriages can be just as loving and stable as monogamous heterosexual or homosexual marriages.

Although Yobbo brings it up, it seems to me that homosexual marriage has little to do with polygamous marriage (the key feature of polygamous marriage being that more than two people are involved).

Many cultures have a long and successful history of raising children in polygamous households. Many more than have a history of raising children in homosexual households. If homosexual marriage is to be recognised then there is absolutely no reason why polygamous marriages shouldn’t be too.

Polygamous marriages have many good points, not the least being a flatter distribution of wealth (which should please the lefties who currently think introducing polygamy into the argument is some kind of strawman).

Rich men are the ones who take more than 1 wife in polygamous societies, which has the run-on effect of distributing their wealth more evenly to a greater number of individuals. Which means the state doesn’t have to do it for them.

This is a classic case of correlation not saying anything about causality.