
Beavers, bald eagles, and gibbons mate for life, among the few animal species that do. Others vary from males with harems, to queen bees who mate in midair with any male she encounters. Humano Sapiens run the gamut: monogamy, polygamy, polyandry, promiscuity, hetrosexaulty, homosexuality, bisexuality, transexuality, autosexuality, orgies, and quickies.
In some societies, men are expected to have several wives. There’s a reality TV show called Sister Wives based on a real American family of one man, four women, and sixteen kids. Will there soon be one titled, Brother Husbands? I’d say no because polyandry, which is practiced in Tibet, Nigeria, Kenya, parts of China, and a few other places, is not as attractive to male audiences.
Despite this ebullient diversity, people like presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, go ballistic over anything but one-man-one-woman, dictated, they say, by the Judeo-Christian Bible. The Bible has many polygamous figures, but opponents can always “prove” that that doesn’t mean a thing. Since religion is often the basis for family structure, one can argue that decreeing one kind of family limits freedom of religion. One-man-one-woman works for me, and if it works for you, why fret about others? Maybe the protesters are trying to shift attention away from their own flaming libidos.
America had a frontier for some 300 years. Those needing to live by their own rules could always find room, allowing Mormons, Amish, Oneida Community and others to make and live by their own rules. Now the frontier is gone. and the Michele Bachmanns of the world seek to impose their own myopic rules on everyone.
How liberating it would be to have a society as riotously diverse as nature itself, with families that are straight, gay, polygamous, polyandrous, Christian, Jew, Islam, Hindu, Buddist, Sikh, Shinto, Animist, Atheist, and all others living in harmony and mutual respect, a glorious Edenic garden of diversity, every new bloom greeted with joy. If Humano Sapiens manages not to destroy itself, that can be its glorious destiny.