Next Step in the Debate: Polyamorous, multiple-partner marriages?

Great Debates
21

Savaka, I don’t see any research worth a damn showing the superiority of multiple-partner arrangements in general. This question is moot.

There is a real difference in America between what society will tolerate for individuals and what it will accept as the norm. I believe that people in general will be left alone if they want to be left alone. If they want to change societal norms, society will push back, and not always kindly. This is normal and natural.

The discussion of who would be responsible for which children this thread has spawned has demonstrated many of the problems inherent in these arrangements. Individual cases aside, in general these questions are handled easily in traditional families. Both parents are responsible for the physical and financial care of the children, and are present to take care of these responsibilities.

22

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What Illinois state laws against cohabitation? My mother and ex-stepfather “lived in sin” for13 years in Illinois. (They were never offically married, and the lack of common law marriage laws made things messy when they split up.) No one every gave them any grief over cohabitation laws.

23

Tars Tarkas, the laws against fornication and adultry for starters. There was a prosecution based on the law against fornication as recently as 1998, there may have been more since. Also, I was given grief over cohabitaion laws in Illinois in 1988 when my future hubby and I were looking for an apartment here. Add to that the recent rash of prosecutions for bigamy even when the previous marriage had been ended by divorce and we are looking at a very scary picture. Two people living together has become more accepted, three still causes questions and sometimes persecution.

24

RexDart, many communities restrict the number of unrelated adults who may live together, usually to prevent students from shacking up together in large clumps and creating boarding houses (you get more rent out of them if you force them to live at most three to a house – keep in mind that landlords write most of the housing code). At least one community I read about in law school restricted it to at most one unrelated adult per residence, with the specific intent of targeting gays and lesbians; such laws have also been used to target the poor. “Housing capacity” regulations are routinely enforced, and have withstood Supreme Court review on occasion (although not universally).

Illinois makes it illegal for any two persons not married to one another to “openly and notoriously” cohabit. The most recent prosecution I am aware of was in Chicago in 2000. Convictions from 1998 have been upheld on appeal. There is a parallel law prohibiting adultery (the “open and notorious” cohabitation with a person not your spouse).

25

I had thought that many communities might restrict “group” marriages through zoning regulations related to the definition of “single family dwellings”. And, indeed, that appears to be the case. But when challenged, the courts have not upheld such strict definitions related to marriage or blood.

For anyone interested, this site discusses recommendations for communities attempting to define “family” in relation to zoning. It’s kinda long and dry, so I would only suggest reading it if you are truly interested.

It concludes that if “family”, in relation to zoning restrictions, is defined with the following parameters, it will likely hold up to court challenges:

Oh, and lee, I heard on the local news tonight that the fornication law here in Georgia is being challenged by the ACLU. Apparently, two teens were charged when the girl’s mother caught them “going at it”. Here is a write-up from the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

26

That is good news, AZCowboy. It would be nice if such laws were repealed. I am very pleased by the movement towards considering those who act as a family to be a family for the sake of the law. I wish that this was something I did not have to worry about. I am not asking my insurance to cover all my family, I am not asking for any tax benefits. I want to be left alone and so far I have been, but I fear that will change.

27

I would imagine that these old blue laws still on the books are enforced only when there’s something else keying the action. Sort of like how in most states you can’t get a ticket for failure to wear a seat belt unless you’re first pulled over for a different moving violation. Perhaps the prosecution for that cohabitation violation was used in combination with another effort to achieve a different goal, such as removing a child from a physically abusive home. Perhaps in that particular situation, the most expedient course of action was to prosecute for the cohabitation, lacking the evidence they might need otherwise. Al Capone was finally jailed for tax evasion, not racketeering, but the effect was the same.

I find it very hard to believe that a prosecutor would simply pick out a cohabiting couple and indict them for that alone. There are surely any number of couples openly and notoriously cohabiting throughout Illinois. I grew up there, I know. Why would one couple be singled out for prosecution unless something else was going on there?

As for the issue of housing codes trying to limit the cohabitation of college students, I think there may be a compelling local government interest apart from simply raising the revenues of landlords. First, there is the danger of landlords actually exploiting students with those arrangements, packing them like sardines into rundown buildings. Remember that the abuse most often committed by landlords is overcrowded housing, not the reverse. Secondly, there is a need to control the health conditions in those facilities. I imagine many municipalities mandate more frequent inspections of boarding houses, dormitories, fraternity houses, etc., because of those crowded living conditions. Also, if there was food being prepared in those houses for such a large number of residents, there would be inspections to ensure minimum food handling safety standards were upheld.

This isn’t to say these laws couldn’t and shouldn’t be redrawn to avoid any unfortunate impact they might have on people simply trying to live their adult lives as they please, but one must admit that there are some legitimate public concerns the laws are trying to address. As always, the validity of such laws must be weighed through a balancing test: privacy on one hand, public health and safety on the other.

28

RexDart: Ah, the idealism of the law student. No, the most common reason for prosecution of a “blue law” is harassment. The Chicago prosecution I read about took place in public housing and was targeted against a tenant deemed “undesirable” but for whom no legal cause for eviction existed. The fornication prosecution provided a legal basis for eviction, and so it was prosecuted. The use of the law in this manner constitutes harassment.

29

The question most certainly is not moot. Savaka used a hypothetical to clearly show the flaw in your logic. To your credit, you at least admitted that your position is biased. Unless you can provide “research worth a damn” showing the superiority of traditional (serial) monogamous relationships over multiple partner arrangements in terms of the health of the children raised in such environments, you have nothing to support your bias.

Hardly. This thread barely addresses problems inherent in multiple partner arrangements related to child rearing. And there are reams of studies that show that child care issues are not easily handled in traditional families. In fact, many of the child-care issues associated with traditional families are completely eliminated in multiple partner arrangements.

Which doesn’t magically change in a multiple partner arrangement. It’s just that both parents may have more help, additional role models, and superior support structures in these alternative relationships.

While cultural inertia may explain your bias, it is not useful for supporting its continuance. Society once resisted outlawing slavery, giving women the vote, …

30

No offense, but can i get some cites on these cases? my websearch yeiled this website which doesn’t mention Illinois as the 10 states with cohabitation laws (Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Virginia and West Virginia being the ten it lists). And i couldn’t find the cases mentioned here.

31

Tars Tarkas:

My mistake, the offense is one of sexual congress, not of cohabitation.

32

Sure, I’m biased in favor of traditional families. I do believe that they are better than most alternatives for adults and children.

I have seen lots of research showing the potential harm to children by nontraditional arrangements. While these studies focused on single parenthood, they neverless show that, in general, distinctions can be made about what sorts of families better suit children.

If society decides that, in policy and law, they want to promote traditional families, I believe this is right and legitimate. I would have a problem if society wanted to impose this behavior on others or prohibit them from coming up with their own arrangements.

The question really is whether marriage will remain in its traditional form or whether the definition of marriage will be broadened to include any arrangement human ingenuity or deviance can dream up. Once this happens, the distinction between married and unmarried becomes meaningless. Marriage will count for nothing in law, and trends away from it will be exacerbated.

Sure, I’m biased. My biased brain fears this intensely, not because I have any hatred for lee and KellyM, but because I hate the idea of kids enduring a string of stepparents who may or may not give a damn about them. I wish lee and KellyM well in their lives, but I don’t see a way to recognize their union as a marriage without ruining the institution of marriage entirely.

33

Mr. Moto, you really should drop the subjunctive case. Society does seek to impose the traditional family model on everyone and does seek to prohibit the formation of different arrangements, both passively and actively. And yet, I don’t see you “having a problem” as you promise you would.

34

KellyM, I see that you are living in a nontraditional arrangement. I’m not going to tell you that you can’t or shouldn’t do this, and I really do wish you the best.

I’m certain that you have had to overcome obstacles based on your choices. So have I, and I’ll bet that everyone on this board has to some degree. Some choices impose more hardships.

Since I favor traditional marriage, I would support measures that lessened the hardships for people that choose this path. You may see this as imposition of a model. I see it as preservation of American family lifestyle.

I’m not sure what you mean by society seeking to prohibit formation of different arrangements passively and actively. Prohibition is an active act, centered around lawmaking and law enforcement. I have made it clear in my previous posts that prohibition of these living arrangements is wrong, and I do oppose such prohibition.

If your choices are very far outside the mainstream, you won’t get much societal support. Is this what you mean by passive prohibition? If so, I disagree. You should not expect a subsidy, discount, or sanction for every choice you make.

35

Mr. Moto, my living arrangement is prohibited by the law of my state (I suspect posting about it on the Straight Dope makes it “open and notorious”). This has been made clear to you. And yet you do not rise up in opposition to this situation, as you have repeatedly promised you would in this thread. Instead, you conveniently claim that I am demanding a “subsidy, discount, or sanction.” I see this as hypocrisy on your part: you have said that you oppose a thing, and when presented with evidence of that thing, instead of standing behind your words, try to weasel out from underneath them.

Stand by what you have said, or kindly quit the field.

36

I’m not sure we’re disagreeing, RexDart. Tenancy by the entireties is available only to married couples in common law states - which are the overwhelming majority of states in the U.S. I highly doubt that married couples own their homes as joint tenants or tenants in common, (i) because both of those forms of tenancy are less beneficial and (ii) tenancy by the entireties is the default form of tenancy for married couples.

Sua

37

Well, if you are using moot to mean “subject to debate; arguable,” then I couldn’t agree more. If you are using moot to mean “irrelevant; having been previously settled,” then AZCowboy is exactly right: this point is most certainly not moot.

You have produced no relevant evidence to show that multiple-partner marriages are deleterious to children or adults. The research you have cited applies to single-parent families, as you’ve admitted, to your credit. However, these studies almost certainly did not compare single-parent families, on the one hand, to every other conceivable family arrangement, on the other. Most likely, they compared one-parent and two-parent families, and generally found the one-parent families wanting.

This says absolutely nothing about the viability of multiple-parent households. We can draw no conclusions whatsoever about multiple-parent households from this research. In fact, I might validly conclude that the reason two-parent families do better is because there are more adults present, and in reality, this is almost certain to be a contributing factor. Therefore, I would expect that either 1) children’s functioning improves with increasing numbers of parents ad infinitum, or (more likely) 2) children’s functioning improves with increasing numbers of parents up to a certain optimal range, which has not yet been determined, but is certainly higher than two.

[Note: I am not claiming that either of the above options are true, just that, in the absence of truly relevant research, these possibilities cannot be discounted merely because they are non-traditional.]

And so we return to my original question. If we are making national policy decisions solely on the basis of what is best for children and families, should we not promote multiple-partner marriage and disallow two-partner marriage if research shows the former to be the most beneficial for everyone involved?

38

KellyM, I am in favor of the repeal if the Illinois law that you mentioned. This matters little, since I am not a citizen of the state of Illinois. Should I move there, I will lean on my state legislators to change this situation. Until then, you’ll have to take me at my word as to what I support and do not support.

I believe there is value in maintenance of the traditional family structure, for the reasons I have stated above. I fear dissolution of the institution of marriage, and the consequences thereof. Therefore I favor reserving marriage for heterosexual couples, one to a marriage. I do so even if there is evidence that children do as well or better in polyamory situations.

39

Massachusetts is not a common-law state; however, as someone who has prepared a number of deeds within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I would like to assert that Massachusetts does have tenancy by the entirety. I typed it often enough, after all. . . . (I’m not a lawyer, I’m a paralegal, which means mostly that I did the typing for a lot of documents.)

One of the things that I think is convenient about the way that my family structure is that we can “pass” for two married couples who happen to be close to each other, if we so choose. (Incidentally, as RexDart phrased the initial question, that sort of polygamy would not suit my family, which contains four people, two current legal marriages, and two additional primary bonds. I have no marriagelike bond to my mate’s wife, and my partners do not have such a bond to each other.)

It seems to me that with a larger number of sympathetic adults in the vicinity, a child will have someone they can trust to talk to about a variety of issues – and all four members of my family have fairly different personality traits, so it seems likely to me that any child of that family will have someone they can relate to about something.

I can talk to a hypothetical kid about the martial arts and and herpetology and music and pottery; my husband can talk about military history and tactics and play games until the end of the world; my mate can share an endless enthusiasm for trains, and build stuff in a variety of media; my mate’s wife can talk about literature and poetry, share a delight in the natural world. . . If one of our as yet unborn children develops a sudden interest in horseback riding or World War II aircraft or abstruse bits of the physics of turbulent flow patterns or the proper care and feeding of a garden, they have one or more parents available who can not only understand that enthusiasm, but share it.

I think that’s kinda cool, y’know? Setting aside the practicalities of income, the question of how many people are around to look after a child’s minor injuries, the ability to schedule around a child’s needs when there are four people there who might be able to do doctor’s appointments and t-ball games and supervising trips to the zoo, and twice as many loving parents to show up at the piano recital.

And at least we’ve got everyone covered by a legal marriage for health insurance purposes and to deal with the possibility of disaster in the absence of written wills. :stuck_out_tongue:

I think that an actual legal system that would cover the concept of multiple marriages would have to start dealing with marriage as another example of a contract, and therefore making it negotiable. I think, much as is the case with a majority of contracts, there will be a handful of boilerplates that most people use, and the really nitpicky or atypical cases would go to a lawyer to have the contract written up.

It seems to me that if the (US) government doesn’t want to revamp things like taxation to consider households of different structure than “single” and “married dyad”, the contracts could be written such that certain provisions can only be granted to single person – like the married tax status thing. (Personally, I’d rather it be possible to file taxes as a household, with more fluid rules on what makes a household a household – whether a poly family, or a family that also supports several elderly relatives, or a commune, or whatever, but that’d be a bit hard to push. I know some poly families have done essentially this by incorporating, but I don’t see the benefits of that as being much worth the costs, personally.)

I’m long-winded again.

40

If 1/2 of the marriages in this country fail as it is. I can only assume that if you increase the number of “partners” that number would increase. At some point or another, someone is going to want to opt out. Leaving aside, for the moment, the financial aspects of raising children - it hurts a child when a parent leaves. Parents coming and going would give the child a sense of impermanence, IMHO. If Daddy A can go away and next year there’s a new Mommy C, I think many children would worry about who’s going next, or if “they can go away, does that mean I (the child) have to go away soon”? Kids need stability.

That’s not even getting into the fact that most kids want to fit in, want to be like their peers. Would other children torment the kids because their family life was different? There was talk on the boards about the kid who’s mother was still breastfeeding him at 11 years old and the grief he’d get at school. Do you think children of such unions would get any less?

I feel that what consenting adults do in their own homes is their business, but families are a different thing. The bond between parent and child is more than discussing different subjects or playing games. I believe adults other than parents can love children – I love my nieces and nephews. That doesn’t mean I have a parental bond with them. Kids deserve as much stability and love as possible.

StG