Only if I felt some sort of empathy for them. The only polygamists that I've even heard of (thanks to the Internet) are those who use a twisted reading of the Bible to justify one man keeping a flock of subservient women as his personal harem. I'd have extreme difficulty finding such people sympathetic.
On the other hand, if I knew of a multiple arrangement where the people involved were otherwise seemingly intelligent, and really were operating out of free will, I might be open minded enough to accept them as friends. It might just be out of curiousity to see if they really were all OK with the arrangement, I just can't see how it might work in a practical manner! But I sure wouldn't expect the vast majority of people (including my wife) to feel OK with them, women always associate something like that with some evil intent on a man's part.
Now if it were two men and one woman....Not exactly sure how Mrs. hunter112 would feel about it, but it would weird her out, big time!
So long as you have never met any polygamists, as you are aware, you think it's not an issue. It's easy for you to be in denial that it exists. I can't enjoy such blissful ignorance, since I know we aren’t talking about some theoretical practice.
I'm not in denial about its existence, I just don't think that it's prevalent. As men and women become more equal, in socialization and education, I can only see the practice dying off. I think a woman has to be pretty sufficiently damaged to run off and hide herself with a man and a group of "sister wives". I would imagine that anyone who could be lured into prostitution could be entrapped in a plural marriage scheme.
The fact remains, polygamy is no more socially acceptable now than it has ever been, unless you want to cite the "hippy commune" period of the 60's and 70's. There are deep reasons that people have to be someone else's one and only.
Ah! So that's it! You base your opposition to polygamists' "right" to marry on whether or not you know any.
You look around, and you see only monogamous marriages (you think) in your town, your workplace, your neighborhood, or your church. It's easy to get caught up in thinking that the rest of the world is pretty much like the people you know.
Out there in the cities, or in suburbia, a lot of people, liberal, conservative, and mushy middle, know polygamist people.
Are you so "mean spirited"--to use your term--that you would deny these harmless folks the right to marry whom they want? Don't you know, their marriage doesn't affect your marriage?
On the other hand, if I knew of a multiple arrangement where the people involved were otherwise seemingly intelligent, and really were operating out of free will, I might be open minded enough to accept them as friends. It might just be out of curiousity to see if they really were all OK with the arrangement, I just can't see how it might work in a practical manner!
The polygamists I've met are nice people. They made the decision to reject monogamy for their personal lives, in harmony with their personal religious beliefs.
You're deluding yourself if you paint them all in your mind as living in a man's "personal harem" with "subservient women." You really have no idea what you're talking about, since you haven't met any polygamists personally. Your opinion is therefore based on a bigoted notion of the persons whom you impose your views on.
Now, since you believe the courts should base their decision on polygamy according to your preconceived notions, what do you think will be the result when those notions are on trial? "Don't allow John to marry Sue and Mary, because they are social misfits." That's simply bigoted.
Denying marriage to polygamists based on bigotry is a sure recipe for the courts to make polygamy legal.
Instead, polygamists should be denied marriage based on the moral beliefs of the majority. But as you see, that legal standard was dismantled by the courts, in order to create homosexual marriage.