STEVE HAYWARD ON POLYGAMIST-RIGHTS LAWSUITS IN AMERICA, and their likely effect on the gender balance:

The first Republican Party platform of 1856 said that the main object of the new party was to rid the nation of “the twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery.” The argument at that time was that the “barbarism” of both “peculiar institutions” rested on the same ground—both are an affront to human equality. In the simplest terms, if one man is to have more than one wife, some other man will have none. Why should we care about this? Well, check in with China in a few years, where the widespread practice of sex-selective reproduction favoring males (where are the global feminists on this, by the way?) is leading to a major demographic distortion that will surely have significant social consequences.

Relax, Steve. This logic would have held in the America of 1856, or even 1956, but now the technological revolution — coupled with events in China and India — means that by the time this problem hits the states, humanity will have perfected the Fembot, and the real problem will be getting men to marry actual women at all. That, of course, raises its own problems.