Whether or not gay marriages should be allowed is a subquestion. What about plural marriages?
The only logical conclusion to come to is this: marriage should be an legal recognition of an N-way relationship between consenting adults. A man and a woman, two men, three men, six women and four men, whatever. Nothing else makes sense.
As long as all the parties involved are capable of giving consent, there is no reason to deny them the official sanction of the state. I bet that 99% of all marriages would continue to be one-man-one-woman anyway.
In his column,What’s the big deal about gay marriage? Why do we have marriage laws at all? (28-Jan-2000), Cecil doesn’t raise the issue of multiple marriages, but I also see it as a logical extension. In my opinion, there should be a division made between legal “family contracts” made between two or more people for the purpose of creating a “family unit”, regardless of the gender of any of the participants in the contract, and marriage should be reserved for a religious ceremony performed in a church. Therefore two people married (in the traditional sense) in a Catholic Church for example would still need to get a government “family contract” for legal reasons.
That’s an interesting idea, Arnold, which raises a whole host of questions ducked by Uncle Cecil in his article. If the main idea behind the legal institution of marriage (as opposed to the religious institution) no longer is encouragement of life-long procreative relationships, then what is the reason to have a legal relationship that confers benefits and liabilities?
One of the potential reasons for acknowledging ‘marriage’ legally is to create an easy framework for parental rights and property inheritance rights. Another potential reason to encourage ‘marriage’ through a legal recognition is to encourage families, that is, cohesive, stable, long-lasting relationships between children and their parents. To a large degree, none of these needs applies to a relationship that doesn’t entail the creation of children; indeed, why worry about ‘marriages’ that don’t have kids and don’t intend to have kids, even when the adults are heterosexual?
In short, if society is going to confer a legal benefit (and concomitant legal responsibilities) on a couple by recognizing their choice to be ‘married’, it should have concrete policies that are furthered by such an arrangement, and admit to the status anyone who wishes it so long as doing so does not hinder those purposes. Otherwise, eliminate the legal institution. But don’t discriminate based on mores that are religiously based.
Here’s what is done in Europe (or at least in some European countries). The government gives a financial “grant” to families with children, $x per child, with the amount diminishing for each child. So if the government wants to encourage procreation, it could do it that way. The problem of people having multiple children and trying to get an income that way is obviated by the provision that the financial grant amount diminishes for each child (and usually stops after a pre-determined number of children.) It seems to me that this system would be a discouragement for people to terminate their family contract that already has children, and start a new one with the purpose of having children, since the later children would not benefit from the government support.
In the case of “family contracts” without children, the main legal purpose would be (setting aside the motivation of declaring your love and trust in another person) to ensure that your partner(s) would be responsible (financially and otherwise) for each other, e.g. can make health care decisions for you in case of incapacitation.
Poly marriages are usually brought up in connection with SSM as a slippery slope argument. “If we allow SSM, where does it stop?” Poly marriage has come up in a number of the other gay-related and marriage-related threads around the boards. Philosophically I have no qualms about it so long as all the parties freely consent to the arrangement. My concern about poly marriages is how they would be legally constructed so everyone’s rights are safeguarded. Example: If A marries B then A marries C, B and C each have claims on A’s property. If A then divorces B triggering a division of marital property, some of the property on which B has a claim is also C’s. Whose property rights take precedence? What if A, B and C each marry both of the others and B decides to divorce A but not C? How do we craft laws, short of banning marital property entirely (which would be a tremendously bad idea) so that all the partners of a multiple marriage are protected?
My solution (please note, I am no legal expert) is that as soon as you join a poly-“marriage”, you share equally in all the joint assets. You cannot have separate “marriages” inside the poly-“marriage”, it’s an all or nothing deal. So if you want to “divorce” from one of the members, you have to “divorce” from the whole group, and in that case you should get your 1/n share of the joint property, where n = number of people in the poly-“marriage”.
As mentioned above, I personally would reserve the word “marriage” for a religious ceremony, and call the legal implementation by a different name, something like a “family contract”. Some people might be married in church but not go through the legal formalities, and vice-versa.
So people who are not religious in the traditional sense, but want to have a ceremony to affirm their commitment could do so through a “marriage”. Then they too would file a “family contract”? Even if they didn’t intend to have children?
A religious marriage ceremony as the law now stands is insufficient to create a legal marriage contract. The couple still has to satisfy the other legal requirements of the state (applications, fees, ID, etc.). If a “family contract” law is ever enacted I would assume given the legislative climate in America that clergy will still be able to perform any necessary ceremony.
First of all “family contract” was a name I made up. I’m sure a better name could be thought up. And it wouldn’t necessarily have to include the act of reproduction, in the same way that a marriage doesn’t necessarily mean the couple are going to have children.
Arnold, I think “family contract” is marvelously descriptive and appropriate. However, the terms of the contract should be negotiated by the individuals beforehand with focus on marital property, children, and such. I would also say that any marriage/family contract should have a definite expiration date with a clause that it can be renewed by doing X. Personally, I believe that it would cause many people to think about their lives and what is important within it and thus would help maintain a happier marriage. It would be kind of like a mandated renewal of vows.
Personally, I’m rather fond of the ancient custom of handfasting. You get hitched for a year and a day, and if you do that 3 years in a row, you do it for life.
The purpose of marriage is to facilitate procreation??? I never realized it needed a lot of facilitating. Unless Cecil groups the care and protection of pregnant women and the rearing of children under “procreation”.
The protection/rearing issue aside, I’d always heard that marrige (as a formal social contract) had to do with conveyance of property rights to land, livestock, titles and so on to legitimate offspring. (And at least in Western culture, the definition of "legitimate"was very flexible). In a preliterate society, an understandable accomodation to a social need.
Nowdays, the need to preserve property through descent isn’t all that necessary. We have lawyers, inheiritance laws and such. DNA testing could take care of the who’s the father issue.
The idea of gay or multiple marriages being wrong seems more like one of those “It’s wrong because I know’s its wrong” kind of things than anything based on social need.
