Genesis Does Not Prescribe Monogamy

At the mention of polyamorous marriages, evangelicals often repeat the myth that God's original intent for marriage was monogamy, though God tolerated polyamorous marriages for a time under Mosaic Law.  Setting aside the fact that a morally perfect deity could never enforce or reveal legislation even codifying or regulating a sinful thing (James 1:13), the Bible is explicitly clear that nothing is immoral about polyamory.  Since Genesis details the account of the first marriage, and since no other place in the Bible prohibits polyamorous marriages, the fact that the opening chapters of the Bible do not even hint at any intent for humans to only have one marital partner at a time dispels any contrary ideas.

That God created Adam and Eve as the first humans, as opposed to multiple men and women who acted as shared marital partners, does not mean that God discourages or loathes polyamory; this simply does not follow.  Like complementarians and those hostile towards nudity (in other words, many contemporary conservative theologians), anti-polyamorists misrepresent the opening book of the Bible by positing mere assumptions rooted in tradition-based constructs, when the creation account that they point to refutes them instead of vindicating them. 

Nowhere does Genesis prescribe monogamy as an obligatory thing, so it certainly cannot establish that polyandry and polygamy are sinful despite the fact that the narrative of human creation in Eden features one man and one woman.  Even a cursory examination of the first chapters of Genesis reveals that there is no command to marry just one person anywhere in the text.  There is nothing about this that should shock or offend Christians!  What should bother them is how unintelligent every argument against polyamory is--every single one reduces down to an appeal to subjective emotions or arbitrary societal preferences.  If the Bible is true, neither has any authority.  If the Bible is not true, neither has any authority.

Evangelicals pretend like romantic affection cannot be legitimate if it is channeled into two or more committed dating/marital relationships simultaneously, as if having a plurality of spouses somehow means that one has betrayed the initial spouse.  But having an overt romantic and/or sexual bond with a second person does not exclude a strong love for the first one.  Both are logically compatible; neither has to displace the other.  Just as people can have multiple close friends, deeply cherishing each one of them without neglecting the others, so too can they enjoy romantic intimacy with multiple spouses.  Adultery involves extramarital sex once one is already married, so being married to more than one spouse at once cannot be adultery.  In their rush to defend worthless assumptions, evangelicals overlook this fact out of ignorance or out of intellectual stubbornness.

The consciences of evangelicals may scream out their petty, emotionalistic objections that have been instilled in them by years of immersion in strictly monogamous American social norms and Protestant subculture, but nothing about the truth is affected.  The creation narrative, Mosaic Law, and other portions of the Bible agree: there is nothing immoral about polyamory, or else God would have condemned it (as usual, see 1 John 3:4, Romans 7:7, and Deuteronomy 4:2).  God did not intend for all married people to practice either monogamy or polyamory.  Neither is ever declared sinful, with some people naturally gravitating towards one or the other.  Individuals are free to choose between monogamy and polyamory as their personalities, life circumstances, and longings dictate.