"So it's wrong when religious zealots have polygamy, but when they do it, it's okay? Double standards are great."

So came one comment in the Reddit thread discussing the implied polyamorous resolution of the tension affecting X-Men Jean Grey and Scott Summers( codename: Cyclops)' longtime marriage and the issue of their respective other partners, James "Logan" Howlett III( Codename: Wolverine) and Emma Frost.

I thought I'd take up the challenge of educating to counter this common, poorly-founded argument against polyamory. As always with social history lessons, thanks to my 7th–10th-grade History teacher, Mr. Larry Brown, for teaching me much of the history included in the essay below. Thanks also to the comic book authors and artists, and to MTV's "Sex in the '90s" specials which talked about a lot more than just sex, in a way Millenial teens and Gen X adults could easily digest to start learning about paradigms outside their 'traditional' norms.

Religious polygamy, at least within Western religions like Christianity/LDS and Islam, as well as within most cults, has been exclusively polygyny—one man with multiple wives, who view each other either as not being family, or as like sisters, either rivalrous or supportive; and none of those wives have other husbands( no polyandry) nor any wives of their own.

Obviously, that is blatantly sexist, which to sensible, equality-minded people, is the main reason why it's wrong; and most people who believe it's not the main reason still usually think sexism is among the reasons why religious polygyny is wrong. The same setup but with a polyandrous focus( i.e., a single woman having multiple husbands and none of the husbands allowed other relationships) would also obviously be sexist and wrong.

So why is the wrong term used for polygyny? Well, "polygamy" used to be used partially to avoid separating it from polyandry, so that cultures which promote sexist polygyny don't give women ideas by accident!

During the women's liberation movement and feminist revolution some women tried to change that, but at the time, the Christian majority, with more money, pushed back even from within the movement, mostly because polyandry would weaken the church organizations that are male dominated, risking that polygynous men and their wives, along with polyandrous women and their multiple husbands who were fine with it, would rebel if the churches refused to recognize their relationships. Even if churches had chosen to formally recognize bigyny and biandry, as they easily could have done by leaning on the fact that many biblical figures had multiple wives, they would have been risking that every new spouse a churchgoer found, especially after placating their parents by already marrying inside the faith, might be outside the church and introduce children who would be raised outside of it. This could spark a rebellious attitude in children who were forced to attend Church while their live-in half siblings weren't.

It could also create a new risk that people would also argue for polygynandry( group marriage) since even heterosexuals might be very close friends with their spouses' other spouse(s), and if, for example, a woman was in a car crash with one of her husbands, her other husband(s) and the injured husband's other wife(/wives) might very well want the right to visit *both* of them in the hospital, yet acknowledging any of them as married to both parts of the injured couple in any capacity would weaken the churches' ability to scapegoat homosexuals and bisexuals, and group marriages could lead to coalitions of married groups campaigning to formalize ties between all spouses of any member, again potentially creating situations with children who wouldn't be brought to church by default.

So when legal and social, if not economic, equality between men and women was clearly becoming inevitable, at the same time as they switched sides publicly to support female equality, behind the scenes churches desperately campaigned to deliberately equate sexual freedom with the clearly sexist practice of polygyny( and called it polygamy instead) to continue enforcing the idea that it would center on a man by default, hoping to avoid or calm scrutiny that gender equality was bringing on their organizations' power structures.

It's possible that, had they known that homosexuality would also see a surge in acceptance followed by a rise in gays raising families, and church attendance would drop as many women and then homosexuals felt betrayed by the churches' late or non-existent turn to their side, and left taking their children with them, the churches would have leaped to get on-board with equal and perhaps multiple marriage, having far less to lose from it than, in reality, they thought at the time. But as with pushing back on racially-mixed congregations and marriages for people of color who were always bound to advance their civil rights movement, the churches are *always* behind, always hoping to keep church men in charge, and that's why they're dying. Basically, churches mostly say that it's about morality, but sometimes admit that "it's about butts in seats" and as with the abortion fight, they thought they were guaranteeing more children born within the faith(s), when in fact they're now stuck with an argument that may produce children but drives their parents away from faith altogether.

Today, the term is still deliberately used to try to extend the most widely-accepted argument(s) against polygyny( which would also be valid against polyandry) to also include the rarely-seen polygynandry, equal marriage between all members of a mixed group that includes men and women—even though rationally, those arguments don't all apply. This deliberate misnomer is a cynical tactic that tries to circumvent the reality: that none of the arguments against open or multi-partner relationships, except sexism if it's specifically only polygyny or only polyandry, actually make sense, and most of them have been debunked by science.