As a corollary to the gay marriage thread, this one.
Why stop at gay marriage? Let people who want to have more than one spouse have one.
You may be surprised at the number of people out there who already support polyamory, and they’re not all swingers, either.
Polyamory has many applications:
Sometimes people form a triad or even larger group. It works for them. They deserve the same right to form a domestic partnership as any straight or gay couple. Just as people can insure multiple children, they should be able to insure multiple partners, have them officially considered family for hospital visitations, etc.
A childless couple can invite a new person to join the family, either for a limited or extended period, for the purpose of having kids (where only one person in the couple is infertile).
I think it would be a shame if gay persons, who have struggled so much to receive justice for their own cause, support a definition of marriage as “between two people.” Concubinage, polygamy, and even polyandry have had a long history in the human race, and in may societies these systems have played a healthy role. Our not accepting them in America is just another species of bigotry.
And no, I’m not joking or trying to argue against gay marriage by means of a slippery slope argument. Rather, I think the slope should be slippery for any couple–or group–that wants to slip.
Tell me what you think. I’m ready to power-argue this one!
One addendum: I think people NOT sexually active should also be able to form domestic partnerships for the purpose of getting insurance and other benefits. Ultimately, it’s about the fluid formation of families in total freedom, NOT about judging people on their sexual orientation or level of completeness via a sexual partner.
The main problem with legal recognition of polygamous relationships is (I think) the division of property/responsibility on termination of the contract - in a conventional monogamous union, both partners will have brought property, financial wealth etc to the partnership and (usually) will contribute to a shared pot of resources on an ongoing basis - if it all goes awry, the task of dividing the pot might be a bitter one, but at least it only (generally) involves an adversarial struggle.
If, say, we’re talking about a man with two wives, how is the union and separation of resources effected? Does wife B have a claim on contributions brought/added by wife A? If not, how is everything kept identifiably separate?
I’m not suggesting this is an insurmountable problem, just that it is a much bigger and more complex issue than it would be in a two-partner union.
Ideally, I think we’d end up having the government officially recognize one all-purpose agreement: the “family contract”. Couples or groups of adults (of whatever gender(s)) sharing sexual/procreative relationships could officially declare themselves a “family”, but so could other groups of adults with other kinds of relationships (elderly widowed sisters, adults and their dependent parents, platonic friends who choose to be life partners, etc.).
Children born to any family member would also become members of the same family (with the same sort of options for adoption, shared custody, etc., that we have now). On reaching legal adulthood, they would be free to “leave the nest” and form a new family with (a) romantic or platonic partner(s), or else be independent adults with no official family affiliation.
Yes, the legal entitlement issues could get hairy, and perhaps you wouldn’t be able to get government recognition for your family without entering into some legally binding “pre-family agreement” specifying the outcomes in case of a breakup; much as you now can’t legally own a car without having some kind of insurance for it (in most cases).
Marriage, gay or straight, mono- or poly-, would doubtless still be viewed as a very special and celebratory event on a different level from a platonic, pragmatic “family partnership” agreement, but the government would grant it no special status. The government would be cognizant only of self-declared family units, and would not have any assumptions or rules about which of their adult members were having sex with whom.
Whaddya think? Specifically, would it be necessary to have a legal cap on the number of participants in a family contract (just to keep things from getting too multiply complicated), and if so, where would you draw the line?
Eloquent again! My goodness you write most clearly. I agree with what you’re saying 100%
Is a cap necessary? Probably just for practical purposes. However, there could be layers of rights for different kinds of family members: spousal rights, children’s rights, and maybe a kind of extended family rights.
We could also think of people as being axes in a matrix, so I could give hospital visitation rights to 5 people, etc., and they in turn could choose 5 people, etc.
We might as well start working on the details, since this is the wave of the future!
I like the idea of the generic family contract. The only issue I see would be the abuse of it. Would you wind up with large and complex family groups trying to take advantage of insurance, welfare, or other services? I’m sure you would, if there weren’t tight enough controls on who can enter the contract, and what services are made available to ‘spouses’.
Well, when conservatives said that opening marriage up to gay people would eventually make marriage essentially meaningless, gay people said not at all. We just want the same rights straight people have.
Well, turns out some don’t want the same rights straight people have. Some want all sorts of “rights”, and will use the arguments presented to get them, regardless of whether the end result is good for society or the individual members of the so-called “families” involved.
Ramming such profound changes down the throats of the American people by judicial fiat isn’t conducive to social order. At the very least, we should have an honest debate about the consequences of the changes.
Two questions- 1: Who is ramming anything down the throats of the American people? I see relatively civil discussion but I don’t think anyone participating in this thread has the power to do anything by judicial fiat.
2: Why are you assuming that the group of people who would like to see group marriage or family contracts extended is the same group that pushed for gay marriage rights? Why would you consider this to be something that’s only desirable to gay people?
You seem to be implying that gay activists lied about what they want. You seem to be making a “give them an inch, and they’ll take a mile” argument. It is simply a mistake to assume that polyamory is a gay issue. There is nothing to suggest that the people lobbying for gay marriages are the same people who are raising the issue of polyamorous legal contracts.
Many posters on this board have expressed an interest in seeing same-sex marriage legalized.
Of those, many are gay - I have no idea how many are “activists.” But of those gay posters favoring legalization of same-sex marriage, who among you also would support the OP’s proposal?
Well, Mr Moto, I’d like to see a cite for your bolded statement. AFAIK, except for that group of people who believes that marriage as a legal entity should be abolished altogether (and anecdotally, the majority of those suggesting that here are, I believe, straight), I have seen no gay people arguing in favor of “all sorts of ‘rights’” – other than a concession by a couple of gay people that those who want polygamous marriages declared legal have a point.
If you’ve been following these debates, you would recognize this. The gentleman who wrote the OP here is in a straight marriage, and described in another thread the difficulties he had in bringing his wife to America legally.
I agree with you that the entire “what constitutes a marriage” question deserves a valid debate, and not a flamefest. But I’d suggest the following propositions as groundwork for such a debate, which I’d like to see your answers to. Answers should be predominantly in legal terms, not in what you hold to be morally right, where the line differs.
What constitutes a valid marriage in legal terms? Why are these criteria the necessary and proper ones?
Is marriage a right? Why or why not?
If marriage is a right, why are the delimitations from (1) on it acceptable?
What comprises a valid “family”? Why are these limitations the necessary and proper ones?
What legal reasons are there to prohibit same-sex marriages? If one’s reasons are religiously or morally based, why should they be a part of our social fabric? (This is not a trolling question – there may be valid reasons for enforcing a moral social judgment as a legal proscription – e.g., few of us would argue that a horny 14-year-old and an adult have a “right” to a sexually active relationship that the law has no business getting involved with.)
What reasons might there be for prohibiting a polygamous marriage – the presumption here being that all parties are fully aware of the nature of the relationship and entering into it of their free will? (I.e., distinguish a man and two women who wish to marry each other from the fringe pseudo-Mormon cult patriarchal polygamies or a bigamous relationship in which the two wives are not aware of each other.)
What grounds might there be for prohibiting a “Platonic marriage” – the sort of relationship mentioned above in which the partners desire to enter into a marital-type bond with or without sex contemplated, for the primary reasons of creating a relationship which benefits them emotionally or financially?
BTW, I’m going to make a semantic distinction here, for purposes of this discussion, and would like to see it accepted. “Polygamy” has traditionally meant any marital combination of more than two persons, formally creating a single marriage and a single family unit. “Polyamory” defines the right to have multiple sexual partners, with or without a marital bond between them. “Polygyny” is the union of one man with multiple wives; “Polyandry,” one woman with multiple husbands; and “Plural marriage” the relationship of two or more men with two or more women, all being deemed married to each other. “Bigamy” is the practice of having two or more wives in separate family units – and presumably would apply to a woman with two or more husbands in separate family units as well. Because some folks use “polyamory” to mean what I defined “polygamy” as, and others to mean the definition I gave, and “polygamy” to mean my definition of “bigamy,” I’m suggesting these as a means of keeping clear what we are speaking of when we get into multiple-person marriages. It’s not so much a desire to play grammar Nazi as a means of ensuring that all participants mean the same thing by what they say. E.g., Aeschines might simply say “When I say ‘polyamory’ I am referring to what Poly defined as ‘polygamy.’”
I agree with most of your semantic stuff, and that’s how I use them myself; it’s worth noting, though, that polyamory is a significantly broader term than polygamy, because not all relationships in a polyamorous system are going to be spousal.
Polyamory includes relationships like, “I love this person, I want to have this person in my life long-term, I like spending time with this person, if we tried to make a marriage out of this not only would we probably lose the relationship and likely the friendship, but one of us will probably be doing hard time for axe murder. So we’ll just keep it to the relationship that works rather than feel herded towards marriage to ‘justify’ it.”
Many polyamorous folks who are interested in the legalisation of polygamy use “legalise polyamory” (despite the fact that it isn’t illegal in the first place in most places) because so many people equate “polygamy” with “patriarchal religious polygyny”. They tend to aggravate me a bit for the reasons of clarity that you cite.
And hey! On the new board format I can, like, make direct reply work and it does the quotes for me!
Yup. Makes it much easier to find partners, because just because she’s married doesn’t mean that she won’t be willing to be involved with you.
The “I can’t get a partner, and now other people want two, so it’ll make my life more difficult” line only makes sense to me if one presumes that only one sex is allowed to partner multiply. Usually it’s the men who are nicking all the chicks in these complaints.
Which entertains me, since I know far more MFM groups than any other firm structure. . . .
