Monogamy LONG antedates Christianity
[QUOTE=Rubber Nursey]This is the (developed by Christianity) idea of male 'ownership' of women and children, as a way of ensuring that your wife only bears *your* children. In this day and age, where women have access to birth control and can pick and choose when they get pregnant, it is completely irrelevant.
Extra-marital sexual activity is no longer directly related to childbearing. As far as I'm concerned, if my partner believes he has the 'right' to screw around for fun or variety, then so do I. End of story.[/QUOTE]Sorry, but the idea of fidelity long antedates Christianity. Jews are really worried about fidelity, and they have been around long before the church. Chinese people have been around as long as Jews (who started out as a tribe and then became strict monotheists), and they are just as worried about paternity/ marital fidelity.
A good place to read about this is during Imperial China. This story forms the basis for lots of Chinese dramas: There is an emperor somewhere who has some number of concubines. There are eunuchs who keep track of the women's menstrual periods and and the only ones allowed to be around these concubines because they are the only ones who could not impregnate these women. The eunuch does some dirty trick to get the person that he wants put into some post. (The first emperor, Qin Shi Huang's son killed himself as a result of a letter that was forged by, I believe, Zhao Gao so that he could have his adopted son appointed emperor. Many centuries later, when Ci Xi was maneuvering to get herself appointed Empress Dowager, her eunuch was the one who helped her hatch the plot.) The idea of "eunuchs" also shows up in a lot of things that I have read about the Middle East.
You can do some looking into a Jared Diamond book "The Third Chimpanzee" and he details the sexual behavior of the Great Apes. Some of them are monogamous (gibbons, I believe), others very promiscuous (bonobo chimps) and others still live in harems, protected by the strongest male possible (silverback gorillas). It was also interesting to note this book's documenting that if a gorilla came across any female with a baby that was not his, he would kill the child. If she didn't have a child, he would leave her alone.