Polygamy is the practice of a man taking more than one wife at the same time. Polyandry is when a woman takes more that one husband at the same time. Polyandry is rare compared to polygamy, because it is only known to be inexistence in two parts of the world. One is among the Nair people who are inhabitants of India's Malabar Coast. The other is in Tibet, where a woman can take her husband's brothers as her mates. This paper will be focused strictly on the debate over polygamy. It does more harm than good and should be banned and enforced strongly within the United States' borders. Being married to more than one person at the same time has been illegal in the U.S. since 1862, but has not been enforced strictly. The Mormon Church is well known for practicing polygamy, but the church banned it in 1980. Over a period of forty years, the church endured serious federal efforts to crack down on the practice of polygamy. Dr. Irwin Altman, a professor of psychology at the University o!
             f Utah in Salt Lake City say, "Today there are some twenty thousand to forty thousand people who are practicing polygamy in the state of Utah." He also states, "Some forty years ago, the numbers were within the hundreds or low thousands." It has also been estimated that there is an equal amount scattered around the rest of the United States. This number is said to be as large as a hundred thousand people, just in America alone. Most of these people reside in the western states of the United States. The patriarch figure in these unions usually does one of two things when it comes to additional wives. He either marries his first wife legally and then is sealed to the other wives, in a religious ceremony or he divorces one wife (but stays with her) before he marries another wife and repeats this process. So these men seek a civil marriage license only once and the brides to follow are taken in private religious ceremonies. In o...