This article investigates the often cited and dismissed, but rarely examined, relationship between legalizing same-sex marriage and polygamy. Employing a comparative historical analysis of U.S. and South African jurisprudence, ideology, and cultural politics, we examine efforts to expand, restrict, and regulate the gender and number of legally recognized conjugal bonds. South African family jurisprudence grants legal recognition to both same-sex marriage and polygyny, while the United States prohibits and resists both. However, social and material conditions make it easier to practice (...) family diversity in the U.S. than in South Africa. Our analysis of the very different histories of polygamy and same-sex marriage in the two societies suggests the centrality of racial politics to marriage regimes, yielding paradoxical narratives about the implications of legal same-sex marriage for the future of polygamy and sexual democracy. If there is a slippery marital slope, we argue, it does not tilt in a singular or expected direction. (shrink)

Feminist scholars argue that women generally gain political rights followed by civil and social rights. However, this argument is based on data from North America and Western Europe, and few scholars, if any, have examined the progression of these rights within countries currently undergoing transitions to democracy in different parts of the world. Through in-depth interviews with members of women's organizations in Ghana, the author extends this literature. The findings both contradict and support the prior feminist argument. They indicate that (...) prior to democratization, women focused primarily on social rights to improve their economic well-being. However, new opportunities emerged with the transition, which allowed women to use their political rights to secure more civil and social rights. (shrink)