The Next Marriage Frontier: Biblical Polygyny, Gen Z Polyamory- America's Future Legal Battleground

America spent the last decade insisting that redefining marriage to include same-sex couples would never open the door to anything else. Opponents were dismissed as hysterical, warned that slippery slopes weren’t real. But marriage did not stop evolving at “two people.” A new frontier is forming — not directly from the LGBTQ movement, but from two radically different cultural currents now converging on the same legal question.

 On one side is a revival of biblical polygyny, championed by figures such as Missouri pastor Rich Tidwell and author and cultural commentator Rob Kowalski. On the other is Gen Z’s normalization of polyamory, open relationships, and multi-partner domestic partnerships.

The two movements share almost no cultural DNA. But they share one legal pressure point: America’s 19th-century bigamy and polygamy laws, and the longstanding assumption that marriage must involve only two adults. Beneath both movements lies an even deeper force — the West’s accelerating demographic decline.

While traditionalists clutch their pearls and the manosphere warms up the popcorn, a deeper collision is forming beneath the noise. The revival of biblical polygyny and Gen Z’s rapidly growing embrace of polyamory are both pressing against marriage laws written in the 1800s. If both sides push at once, the legal structure that has confined marriage to two consenting adults may not remain intact.

While the more left-leaning, secular phenomena of polyamory, ethical non-monogamy, polycules, open relationships, and "situationships" abound, the unexpected conversation around Biblical polygyny or plural marriage has been largely undiscussed by mainstream or conservative media, beyond critique.

A Theological Revival Few Expected to Resurface

When Pastor Rich Tidwell revealed publicly that he had taken a second wife, he ignited a wave of criticism across conservative media — from denunciations on major podcasts to watchdog articles in evangelical circles. Unlike past controversies that fizzled quickly, Tidwell responded not with rhetoric but with Scripture.

In an interview with Matt Holloway, Tidwell said his position emerged from a broader attempt to reconcile modern Christian practice with biblical sexual ethics.

For Tidwell, the issue begins with jurisdiction. “Marriage is between the individuals and God rather than the individuals and Caesar,” Tidwell told Holloway. “I spiritually do not feel compelled to get a license — even if I was monogamous.”

Tidwell frames marriage as a covenantal act outside the state’s authority, drawing on Old Testament law and early church practice. He said that when he began reexamining Scripture, plural marriage was not the starting point.

“Nobody had a good answer for pornography. Nobody had a good answer for hookup culture,” Tidwell told Holloway. “I saw brokenness everywhere. So I asked: What does the Bible actually say?”

Tidwell argued that Scripture treats sexual union itself as covenantal. “If we make sex marriage, which is what the Bible does,” he said, “Tinder culture is destroyed. Sex as casual culture is destroyed. And now we’re requiring men to be responsible for their sexual behavior.”

That framework, he said, carries consequences many modern Christians avoid confronting. “Polygyny is a consequence of that reality,” Tidwell told Holloway. “What happens when a man enters two lawfully available women? He’s required to be a husband to both of them.”

Tidwell maintains that biblical polygyny is not presented in Scripture as moral chaos, but as regulated conduct. In an interview, he pointed to passages where plural unions are acknowledged and governed, rather than condemned outright, and to moments where God contrasts lawful plural unions with unlawful sexual behavior.

“God was utilizing what I thought was an unholy marriage dynamic to contrast with an actual unholy marriage dynamic,” Tidwell told Holloway. “That really shook me.”

He rejected the charge that biblical polygyny loosens sexual ethics. “Biblical polygyny is not about sexual freedom — it’s about sexual responsibility,” Tidwell said. “It tightens sexual ethics. A man is accountable to every woman he joins himself to.”

Tidwell has also leveled sharp criticism at modern Christian family planning. In a post on X, he wrote that “Monogamy-Only is a Doctrine of Demons,” citing 1 Timothy 4:1-3, and arguing that current norms leave millions of Christian women unmarried and childless despite biblical commands toward family formation.

In his interview with Holloway, Tidwell expanded on that critique. “Even monogamous Christians have gotten sucked into this,” he said. “After two kids, they want a vasectomy. But the first commandment was ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’”

For Tidwell, the controversy is not about cultural shock value. It is about biblical consistency.

A Demographic Crisis Turning Theology Into Strategy

Rob Kowalski approaches the subject from a different angle. In a December interview with Matt Holloway, Kowalski framed biblical polygyny not only as theology, but also as a response to demographic collapse and cultural instability.

Kowalski argued that the modern marriage paradigm is failing to produce stable families, durable pair bonds, or replacement-level birth rates. “Birth rates are collapsing across the West,” Kowalski told Holloway. “And we’re not going to fix that with the marriage paradigm we have right now.”

He challenged what he described as selective moral outrage among modern Christians.
 “How can you read a Bible…adjust your whole life to the teachings of a book written primarily by men with multiple wives,” Kowalski told Holloway, “and then accuse men today of being in a cult? If this isn’t the greatest psy-op ever perpetrated on humanity, I don’t know what is.”

Kowalski told Holloway that his critique is not aimed at monogamy itself, but at mandatory monogamy enforced as a moral doctrine. “God gave us three options — celibacy, monogamy, and polygyny,” he said. “And the church boarded up the third door. What that caused was us kicking a hole in the wall called sex before marriage.”

He also connected marriage norms to broader civilizational competition. “Islam is outbreeding us four times faster,” Kowalski told Holloway. “And we’re calling them a cult while ignoring the book we claim to follow.”

To Kowalski, demographic decline reflects a deeper breakdown in trust, masculinity, and family formation. “We’ve created a system where men and women don’t trust each other and don’t marry each other,” he said. “Something is going to fill that vacuum.”

A Scholarly Counterweight: Where Law and Theology Draw the Line

Not all Christian theologians agree that a revival of biblical polygyny can be separated cleanly from the legal and theological consequences it invites.

In a January 9 interview with Matt Holloway, Dr. Owen Anderson — a professor in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies at Arizona State University and pastor of Christ the King Reformed Church in Phoenix — warned that once marriage is redefined procedurally, its boundaries become difficult to defend.

“Once you redefine marriage just to mean consent,” Anderson told Holloway, “why would it stop at two people? There’s no logical reason.”

Anderson rejected the claim that biblical examples of plural marriage establish a Christian norm. “Next time you’re king of Israel and God tells you He would have given you more wives, then you can be a polygamist,” Anderson told Holloway. “But no one views that as normative for all Christian marriage — and Christ certainly didn’t. He references Genesis.”

He applied the same reasoning to other biblical figures often cited in defense of polygyny.
“The case of Jacob is not normative,” Anderson told Holloway. “He was tricked into marrying Leah, who could not be abandoned, but she was not the promised wife. Abraham, meanwhile, was chastised by God for sleeping with Hagar.”

For Anderson, Christian marriage is defined not by Old Testament exception, but by New Testament fulfillment. “The norm for Christians is Christ and His Bride,” he said.

Anderson also pointed to legal precedent. “The United States already gave its Christian argument for marriage against the Mormon practice,” he told Holloway. “If someone comes back and says Christianity justifies this, we already have precedent that says no.”

He challenged libertarian calls to remove the state entirely from marriage regulation. “The government has an interest in one relationship and one relationship only — a man and a woman — because they produce new citizens,” Anderson said.

Beyond law, Anderson described a cultural divide between Christian marriage and both historical and modern non-monogamy. “Pagans have always done polygamy and polyandry,” he told Holloway, arguing that as societies move away from Christianity, older sexual norms predictably reassert themselves.

Gen Z Polyamory: The Opposite Movement With the Same Destination

While biblical polygyny advocates look backward to Scripture, Gen Z is moving in the opposite direction.

Survey data and local law changes reflect that shift:

• A 2025 Newsweek report citing a Rayden Solicitors survey found that 42% of adults aged 18–24 consider monogamy “outdated.”
• A 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that 51% of adults under 30 view open marriages as morally acceptable.
• A YouGov poll commissioned by Ashley Madison found that 57% of Gen Z respondents would consider non-monogamous relationships.
• Massachusetts municipalities, including Somerville, Cambridge, and Arlington, have formally recognized multi-partner domestic partnerships.
• Berkeley and Oakland, California, have passed Anti-Discrimination ordinances based on Relationship/Family Structure.

Gen Z’s push is experiential rather than theological, rooted in autonomy and identity rather than Scripture.

In an interview with Holloway, Tidwell noted the irony. “If the secularists get there first,” he said, “they’ll shape the future.”

Kowalski echoed the concern. “If the polyamory movement gets there first,” he told Holloway, “they will guide the moral and legal conversation. Christians won’t like where that goes.”

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SEE ALSO: Funny How Modern Views on Sex Always Run Opposite to God-Given Advice

Polyamory Gets Another Push, This Time From Harvard Law

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The Legal Structure: A 19th-Century Framework Facing 21st-Century Realities

Reynolds v. United States (1879) held that religious liberty does not protect plural marriage. Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), however, reframed marriage as an evolving institution grounded in autonomy, dignity, and equal protection. That reframing, though, now faces renewed scrutiny after Justice Clarence Thomas argued in a concurring opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson (2022) that the Supreme Court “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.”

In an interview, Kowalski told Holloway that this creates legal tension. “The case law for homosexual discrimination is the same case law that would apply in polygamous discrimination,” he said. “The government doesn’t want to touch it unless there’s abuse.”

Tidwell argued that biblically grounded marriages should fall outside state jurisdiction altogether. “The church has to oversee marriage,” he told Holloway. “The government has failed — it’s secularized.”

Anderson, as noted above, cautioned that courts are unlikely to carve out religious exceptions. 

He added that legalizing plural marriage would almost certainly expand beyond polygyny.
 “Polyandry — why not multiple husbands?” Anderson asked.

Trust, Masculinity, and the New Sexual Marketplace

Both Tidwell and Kowalski tied the revival to deeper social instability. “The days of being average and being successful with women are over,” Kowalski told Holloway. “You have to be the kind of man a woman would share — probably even just to get one nowadays.”

He warned against naïve adoption. “As soon as men discover biblical marriage, they jump on dating apps,” he said. “They need to level up. Purpose before person.”

Tidwell framed the problem in moral terms. “There are lawful unions and unlawful unions,” he told Holloway. “We’ve lost the distinction.”

Anderson pointed to cultural reinforcement. “Last fall, ASU hosted an event about the benefits of polyamory,” he told Holloway. “I’ve never seen one about monogamy or chastity.”

In a post to X at the time, Anderson described the presentation writing, "'The Politics of Perverts,' a presentation at ASU West. It will combat the problem of heteronormativity by promoting ‘non-traditional sexual orientations and practices, such as Polyamory, BDSM, the Furry Fandom, Nudism, and the large bisexual population.’”

In a Substack article, Anderson remarked, “There are no similar events supporting the ‘wholesome.’ As in other cases, you will find only one view, the radical leftist view, given privilege at ASU. Why is that? Why not have an equal presentation about the benefits of heteronormativity? You won’t see that happen at ASU West.”

A Pastoral Reality Check from the Local Church

In an interview with Matt Holloway, Pastor Trev Mahoney of Crossings Church in Glendale, Arizona, said the biblical case for polygyny collapses when Scripture is read holistically.

“Genesis presents marriage as one man and one woman becoming one flesh,” Mahoney told Holloway.

He acknowledged biblical figures who practiced polygyny, but rejected claims of endorsement. “It was allowed,” he explained, “but it wasn’t something that was ever endorsed… and it never goes well.”

Mahoney pointed to David and Solomon as warnings rather than models. “You see nothing but tragedy,” he told Holloway. “Solomon ignored his own wisdom.”

“The New Testament sharpens the standard,” Mahoney added. “It doesn’t dull it.”

He concluded bluntly: “It doesn’t work. It creates jealousy and instability. People see that — even outside the church.”

A Collision That Could Redefine the Marriage Debate

For decades, marriage debates centered on who could marry. The next debate centers on what marriage is.

“Whether people like it or not, marriage is going to be reexamined,” Tidwell told Holloway.

“This is happening,” Kowalski said. “The question is who frames it.”

Anderson emphasized institutional stability. “The relationship the state cares about is the one that makes new citizens,” he said.

One Question Now Defines the Future of Marriage

If marriage law continues shifting toward individual autonomy and equal protection, plural marriage challenges will follow — whether from TikTok polycules, biblical polygynists, or both.

If the state retreats from marriage regulation, the question becomes which institutions — churches, communities, or new cultural movements — will fill the vacuum.

Either way, the next marriage battle isn’t coming.

It may be in its earliest stages — but it’s here.