This may be the very definition of "can of worms". Here I go anyway...
The question of polygamy is not an easy one to resolve, particularly, I think, for feminists. Or at least for people like me, who believe simultaneously that people should generally be free to make whatever romantic/sexual/matrimonial choices they want and that women should have just as much freedom, power, and agency as men.
In Canada at least, polygamy is largely discussed as a religious issue, almost always in relation to Bountiful, B.C. Bountiful is a "Mormon"* community in British Columbia headed by a couple of authoritarian patriarchs named Winston Blackmore and Jim Oler. Plural marriage is practiced extensively; the leading men of the community have multiple wives, many of whom are "married" when they are very young to much older men. Religiously-linked polygamy is also often discussed in relation to Islam. As this Vancouver Sun article makes clear, the two categories of religious polygamy are related, or at least are seen to be.
You'll notice that we're talking pretty much exclusively about poygyny (one man with multiple wives). Polyandry (one woman with multiple husbands) doesn't seem to come up much in the discourse. Maybe if it did, we'd be better able to separate the polygamy issue from the women's rights issue.
Because it seems to me that the problem with religiously-based polygamy is not the multiple marriages in and of themselves. If more than two people want to devote their lives to each other, how does that hurt anyone, after all? The issue is with the way polygamy is practices in sects like Bountiful, and is perceived to be practiced in Islam. The issue is with girls and women being raised in a tightly-controlled patriarchal environment, and offered no choice in the matter. The issue is with marrying girls off at such a young age that it's perilously close to child abuse. The issue is with the control, the power. It's not the marriages per se.
Similarly, I don't think there's anything inherently evil with multiple Muslim women marrying a single man, if that's what they want, and everyone's happy with the arrangement. The issue is with force, coercion, and disempowerment of the women. That's what we need to address -- not the marriages themselves.
Having said that, I don't know what the best way to deal with something like Bountiful is. I would like to believe that we could lay charges on the basis of child abuse and unlawful confinement, or something that addresses what strikes me as the real problem. I've no doubt, however, that Blackmore and Oler are clever, devious men, and that they're staying within the letter of the law to avoid providing any grounds for such charges, leaving only the polygamy charge. They're gambling -- and I'm sure they're right -- that the polygamy charge won't stand up to a Charter challenge. If all we can charge them with is polygamy, they're going to get away with it, and they're going to be free to continue their repressive, abusive little cult.
I don't believe polygamy should be illegal. I believe that, if people want to spend their lives together, they should be allowed to make vows to support that, no matter how many of them (or what combination of sexes) there are. I would love for multiple marriages that are loving, egalitarian, and functional to be out in the open. It's just the abuse that I want to see stop. And we're not going to stop the abuse by focusing on polygamy, which is ultimately a symptom, not a cause.
* very important to note: they're not part of the mainstream LDS Church; Mainstream Mormons disavowed polygamy quite some time ago. Bountiful's more of a breakaway cult using the Mormon name for legitimacy.
