It's not surprising. With the traditional family, religion, and community ties dying out, something like that almost has to replace it.
The world is spinning too fast to even try to keep up.
I’ve waded into these muddy waters before and have to once again since there are so few people with actual experience with polygamy. I will treat the subject from the POV of a man with two wives.
There are a lot of misconceptions about the motives for taking a second wife. Reading this thread it appears many – if not most – attribute the whole thing to sinful sexualism. I’m sure that plays a part in many situations... but not all. There are no rules – written on paper or scribed in stone – that dictate who or how people fall in love. It sometimes happens, catching you off guard and different people handle it in different ways. Some opt for divorce from wife #1 and subsequent marriage to #2. Strange as it may sound to some, the man may still love #1 but is going through motions that satisfy only those who are watching from the outside. Another alternative is to cut off all contact with #2, which may be just as painful but more “deserving” of the respect of those aforementioned outsiders.
But a third alternatives still there: Polygamy. Few people in our society accept such an arrangement, either for themselves or for their friends, neighbors or relatives. Mentioning that you have two wives is much like casually dropping a remark about your previous experiences as a child molester. Getting and holding a job brings other trials too. Renting a house or apartment gets dicey too; “You only need one bedroom? For the three of you?”
Let’s see... that’s three paragraphs. That should be enough for the uber-religionists to trot out their arguments about God ordaining marriage as between one man and one woman.
To get past that dead-horse, let me point out that NOWHERE IN THE BIBLE does it say that. God was pretty definite when he laid down his rules for us humans, beginning each commandment with “Thou shalt...” There’s not much equivocation there folks. I think he meant what he was saying and tried hard to keep us poor, flawed humans from having to “interpret” his meaning. Many will point out that Adam had only Eve. That was God’s choice in THAT case. I’m a fairly bright man but I won’t try to extrapolate from such scant data that God meant all humans had to pair off in similar unions. YMMV! There is one passage in the New Testament (I’m not going to look it up now) where Paul said that certain high-ranking clergy should be husband to only one wife, so polygamy must have been more or less common then.
So... one more time: I’ve been there and done that and I can’t recommend it. In our society and in this time it will probably not work. Perhaps differences between the people involved will cause a break-up but the greatest hazard is from those “outsiders” I mentioned earlier. That is what broke up my family. A veritable host of do-gooders trying to “help” us drove #1 away. Fortunately, #2 stood by me. Death claimed #1 about a year ago. I still cannot think of her without choking up. I am joined in my sorrow by #2. We all loved each other and continued as friends for over 25 years. I have one photo of my family; me, my two wives and our three children. Those were the happiest days of my life.
There are a few basic truths about Love: Real love is constant and doesn’t ebb and flow with the tide – lunar or hormonal. Real love is forgiving, even the most painful injuries must be forgiven. Real love understands the trials suffered by the object of their love or of their inadvertent injury. Real love is unconditional, it does not depend on what someone else says or does. Love is not like a pie where you cut a certain number of slices, pass them out and let everybody else go hungry. Love is like pi, never ending and irrational.
Polygamy at least goes back to the Bible and has religious rules around it in several major faiths.
Homosexuality was NEVER seen as equal to male-female marriage, in no major culture in human history.
The Greeks held it as an ideal for male bonding mentor to adolescent student who had to stop when HE became a man. Romans saw men as the penetrators, unless he was an inferior rank or slave. That’s why FU is such an insult, it is both a sexual violation and reduction in status.
The Chinese and Japanese had varying tolerances for homosexual behavior, but they also required the men to have a wife to perpetuate the line.
And in every society that tolerated homosexual behavior with men, women were always treated as inferior. Per Dennis Prager’s brilliant article, it is only when Judaism confined sexuality to the marriage that men started to respect women more, eventually leading to equality for them.
I think of Will and Grace and other shows in the 1990s that seemed designed to normalize homosexuality.
And “Big Love” and “Sister Wives” of the early 2010s to normalize polygamy.
Now there is “Transparent” on Amazon instant video and “Orange is the New Black” and some other show to normalize transgenderism.
It is a non-stop PR campaign to normalize these things.