'Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?' the Imam solemnly intones. 'I do.' 'I do.' 'I do.' 'I do.' So reply the four blushing brides in the pecking order of matriarchal seniority. 'The bridegroom may now kiss the brides,' says the Imam. [Rubrics in the Book of Common Prayer: Bridesmaids may assist the brides in taking off their purdah or niqab, while the best man may help in combing the groom's beard after he has kissed the brides]

Che macello! What a mess! Literally, what a slaughterhouse! Hamza Piccardo is stirring the polygamous pot in the holy city of Rome. Piccardo, an Italian convert to Islam, is founder of the Union of Islamic Communities and Organizations (UCOII), an umbrella organization representing most of Italy's Muslims.

Allora? So what? Piccardo's logic is unimpeachable. 'Muslims do not agree with homosexual partnerships, and yet they have to accept a system that allows it. There is no reason why Italy should not allow polygamous marriages of consenting persons,' he argues. In May this year, Italy granted gay couples the legal rights of married couples except the right to adopt children. 'If it's only a matter of civil rights, then polygamy is a civil right,' Piccardo wrote on Facebook.

Perchè no? Why not? The more in a marriage, the merrier the marriage. After all, we in the West have legalised 'same-sex marriage'--a form of marriage that has never existed before. Polygamy--whether polygyny or polyandry--has been around for centuries in most cultures. Why get so squeamish about it? Why not rehearse a familiar gay argument--polygamy is widespread in nature! I had four hens in the Vicarage coop and they only needed one cockerel. And as every Sunday School child knows, King Solomon had 300 wives and 700 porcupines.

If a husband can handle four mothers-in-law at a time and four wives with PMS at four different times of the month, who am I to judge, as Pope Francis himself would say. Don Piccardo has even claimed that Pope Francis's silence regarding his suggestion means that the pontiff has perhaps understood that polygamy is a 'simple civil right' and a matter of equality.

Imagine the savings! One household paying one bill for council tax, BBC licence fee, Internet connection and SKY TV with a special offer on a free Islamic S & M channel from Saudi Arabia televising close-ups and re-runs of the best Friday floggings, Saturday stonings and Sunday beheadings from Mecca. Channel 4 would even be able to offer new forms of Reality TV like 'Wives Swap' and 'Polygamous Big Brother'. Cool! Che figata!

So why is the Babylonian Broadcasting Corporation strangely silent on the issue? Are the Guardianistas and the feministasi taking a summer holiday from male domination? Or is polygamy now acceptable because Islam says so and in a multicultural society we've got to accept all forms of multicultural madness? American feminist Jillian Keenan actually supports the idea that half (or quarter) a husband is better than no husband at all.

'Let's not forget that the fight doesn't end with same-sex marriage. We need to legalize polygamy, too.... The definition of marriage is plastic. Just like heterosexual marriage is no better or worse than homosexual marriage, marriage between two consenting adults is not inherently more or less "correct" than marriage among three (or four, or six) consenting adults,' she writes. 'Legalized polygamous marriage would also be good for immigrant families, some of whom have legally polygamous marriages in their home countries that get ripped apart during the immigration process,' she adds.

Only Russia Today has plunged into the debate in an interview with political commentator David Vance and Azad Chaiwala, founder of secondwife.com and polygamy.com--two UK based websites touting the glories of plural marriage. Poor Vance was struggling to defend monogamous marriage because Chaiwala was revelling in the argument based on the legalisation of same-sex marriage. We shouldn't legalise polygamy because there is absolutely no demand for it outside of a tiny group. That was the premise of Vance's argument!

'The whole spurious comparison with same-sex civil partnership is again ludicrous. In Italy, there is majority community support for that. There is no such thing in Italy, or indeed, and as far as I am aware, anywhere else in Europe, as majority support for polygamy,' said Vance. Chaiwala shot back and pointed out that he already had a hundred thousand registrations for his websites--most of the punters were non-Muslims.

Uffa! The liberals have thrown a juicy steak to the mad dogs of moral relativism. Morality is a now matter of supply and demand. A referendum can now decide on the definition of marriage by democratic vote. Marriage can be whatever the majority wants it to be. The proverbial faecal matter is hitting the fan and the brave new world of Western morality is running for cover.

In 1935, Oxford anthropologist Joseph Unwin tried to prove that marriage was an irrelevant institution. After studying 86 different cultures, his research led him to conclude precisely the opposite--only marriage with fidelity would give rise to the cultural prosperity of a society. He called this form of marriage 'absolute monogamy'.

Addressing the British Psychological Society, Unwin said, 'I do not know of a case on which great energy has been displayed by a society that has not been absolutely monogamous... If...a society modifies its sexual regulations, and a new generation is born into a less rigorous [monogamous] tradition, its energy decreases... If it comes into contact with a more vigorous society, it is deprived of its sovereignty, and possibly conquered in its turn.' Santa Madre di Dio!

Remember what Jesus said about polygamy? 'For this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' Remember what Mark Twain said about polygamy when arguing with a Mormon who asked him to cite any passage of scripture expressly forbidding the practice? 'Nothing easier,' Twain replied. 'No man can serve two masters.'

The Rev'd Dr Jules Gomes is pastor of St Augustine's Church, Douglas, on the Isle of Man.