Actually, this is one of the few times I actually wrote exactly what I meant. Children aren’t allowed to consume alcohol…unless their parents consent. Children aren’t allowed to see certain movies…unless their parents consent. There are alot of things that children aren’t allowed to do on their own, but most of them are legally OK with parental consent. And there are parents out there who would consent to let their prepubescent have sex. There are even families where the children have sex with their own siblings. These things are illegal to protect children whose parents would do that type of thing. Therefore the class of pedophiles is being prevented from carrying out their preferred sexual relationship and few people would argue that is a bad thing.
That’s clever, I gotta admit, and something I should have thought of.
But clearly a gay person who marries a person of the opposite sex is going to have a miserable fake marriage, not what we hope a real marriage will be, with love expressed in all its forms, including the physical.
Outside of things like pedophilia–which we don’t need to get into for reasons John Mace already mentioned–there are three ways people can go, sexually: Gay, straight, or bi. (I know I’m painting with a broad brush here and that there are numerous ways sexuality can express itself. But you’ll be expressing your unique sexuality with either men or women.)
Now almost everyone, regardless of orientation, is attracted to many people. Threesomes are a pretty common sexual fantasy, among gays and straights alike. And if you can make this work in reality, over a long term, who am I to tell you no.
But to deny someone certain three-way rights isn’t taking anything away from them that others have. The only way it could be is if you can show that three ways are a form of orientation as deep seated as being gay or straight. Maybe it is, but I really doubt it.
Western Society is currently set up to reward pair bonding. Gay people are being denied those rewards, simply because the only way they can meaningfully pair-bond is with someone of the same sex.
That sounds appealing, but the fact is the law is going to be involved in marriage whether one likes it or not. There are issues of property, parental rights, taxation, and other things that married people are going to have to deal with.
After all, there is nothing right now that keeps two people from simply calling themselves married, perhaps with a ceremony performed by a friendly religious figure. It’s the legal rights of marriage that are important in the SSM debate.
Multple divorce and multiple marriages by the same person IS polygamy! 
For the record, it varies a lot, and is, in fact, more complicated than that. No, really, whatever you’re thinking, it’s more complicated than that.
There are polyfolks who have their relationships as a choice preference; there are others who consider it an orientation. Of both of these groups, there are people who are unable to wrap their minds around the notion that people differ from themselves, and who vehemently insist that the others don’t exist.
Of the people who have it as an orientation, there are a number of varieties. For example, there are the people who find that a closed relationship makes it impossible for them to have a stable relationship with anyone; it doesn’t matter if the relationship system is monogamous or a closed multiple-person system. Quite a few of these people have only one partner; they just have the option to pursue other relationships if they want to. There are people like myself, who are oriented to more than one partner (and who often, when we have that, stop being interested in other relationships just like people who are naturally monogamous do when they’re in a satisfying relationship). There are also people who, by preference or agreement, have only one marriage-type partner and other relationships are of a different, less committed type; these folks are unlikely to care about polygamy for themselves.
And of course, then there are the political groupings, which you’re certainly familiar with from their equivalents in the gay community: the “whether or not it’s innate is irrelevant to approximately everything, most especially whether we have rights” party, the “Marriage is stupid anyway” party, the “Marriage isn’t the government’s business in the first place” party, the “OMGTheyNOTICED US!” party, the “We must dissociate ourselves vigorously from anything the mainstream might find distasteful and present ourselves as perfectly normal families aside from the having more adults than is typical” group . . . .
Again, I think you are needlessly and without any evidence deciding that there are only a few important sexual orientations, and that poly isn’t one (or, in this case, perhaps dozens) of them. See Lilairen’s comment for some examples.
I’d guess that this attitude is a relatively common one, but that, given time, it will be seen as quaint and uninformed as telling a homosexual “Oh, you probably just haven’t met the right girl/boy.”
Law doesn’t need to be involved in marriage. You can solve property issue the same you’d between stranger, or use private contracts, for instance. Parental rights issues are already the same whether people are married or not, not all children are born from married parents. You don’t need to to give special tax priviledges to married people, either.
IOW, no, there’s no requirement that married people would benefit from a specific status unmarried people in the same situation wouldn’t benefit from.
If you insist to give priviledges to someone’s partner, you don’t need to reserve it to married people. For instance, at a time when I was working and living with a student, I just gave the name of my partner to my company and we enjoyed the same advantages married people did. Apparently, my company didn’t need a marriage certificate to apply its policy. A name was enough.
I mentionned above the senario of two old brothers living together. For what reason exactly shouldn’t they enjoy the same benefits maried people get? At the contrary, since they don’t enjoy any special priviledge, why should married people get them?
Apparently, in the case of these two brothers, the law isn’t involved. So, why would it be necessarily involved, as you state, in the case of two married people?
[QUOTE=Larry Borgia]
That’s clever, I gotta admit, and something I should have thought of.
But clearly a gay person who marries a person of the opposite sex is going to have a miserable fake marriage, not what we hope a real marriage will be, with love expressed in all its forms, including the physical.
[quote]
First, I already mentionned the schizophrenic perception of marriage. It’s perceived as what you describe, while actually mariage revolves essentially about material issues (inheritance, property, etc…). Your romantic marriage, with love, intercourses, etc…doesn’t need to be blessed by the state. So, gay people aren’t deprived from this. They can have a lovely ceremony and live happily ever after…
What they are deprived from is the marriage official stamps, and all the benefits that come with it.
Besides, there’s absolutely no requirment to be in love to be married, nore to have sex. Someone mentionned that you could get a divorve if you don’t have have sex in some places, but it’s not required to be married, either, even in this case. It only allows to end it if one of the partners wants to
Finally, if we admit that for some reason gay couples need the stamp to be happy, then it’s logically the same for polyamorous people.
And similarily, you could express your sexuality in with either one person or several.
It is. It’s denying them the right to marry a person they love (and get the official stamp apparently required to be happy)
Why so? Suppose I’m polyamorous. We’re deeply in love, and feel we can’t be happy with the two others (and without the stamp). Why is the existence (or lack thereof ) of a deep seated “threesome oriention” relevant, exactly?
Let’s assume that gays actually choose to be gay. They can stop being gay when they want, and become heterosexual…In this hypothetical, should same-sex marriage be banned?
Let’s take bisexual people. They don’t have a “deep seated orientation”. Should they not be, as a consequence, allowed to marry a person of the same sex they’re in love with? After all, they don’t have a “deep seated orientation”. They just happen to be in love with a person of the same sex.
In what way is it different from a member of our trio that doesn’t have a “threesome gene” but still is only happy with both his partners?
More exactly, it’s set up to reward heterosexual pair-bonding. And apparently, you agree to change the current set-up . But for some reason, you don’t like the heterosexual part, but are fine with the “pair” part as mentionned previously in the thread.
Then, what about my bisexual guy? He can meaningfully pair-bond with someone of the other sex. Should his marriage with a person of the same sex he’s in love with be denied on this basis?
First, I already mentionned the schizophrenic perception of marriage. It’s perceived as what you describe, while actually mariage revolves essentially about material issues (inheritance, property, etc…). Your romantic marriage, with love, intercourses, etc…doesn’t need to be blessed by the state. So, gay people aren’t deprived from this. They can have a lovely ceremony and live happily ever after…
What they are deprived from is the marriage official stamps, and all the benefits that come with it.
Besides, there’s absolutely no requirment to be in love to be married, nore to have sex. Someone mentionned that you could get a divorve if you don’t have have sex in some places, but it’s not required to be married, either, even in this case. It only allows to end it if one of the partners wants to
Finally, if we admit that for some reason gay couples need the stamp to be happy, then it’s logically the same for polyamorous people.
And similarily, you could express your sexuality in with either one person or several.
It is. It’s denying them the right to marry a person they love (and get the official stamp apparently required to be happy)
Why so? Suppose I’m polyamorous. We’re deeply in love, and feel we can’t be happy with the two others (and without the stamp). Why is the existence (or lack thereof ) of a deep seated “threesome oriention” relevant, exactly?
Let’s assume that gays actually choose to be gay. They can stop being gay when they want, and become heterosexual…In this hypothetical, should same-sex marriage be banned?
Let’s take bisexual people. They don’t have a “deep seated orientation”. Should they not be, as a consequence, allowed to marry a person of the same sex they’re in love with? After all, they don’t have a “deep seated orientation”. They just happen to be in love with a person of the same sex.
In what way is it different from a member of our trio that doesn’t have a “threesome gene” but still is only happy with both his partners?
More exactly, it’s set up to reward heterosexual pair-bonding. And apparently, you agree to change the current set-up . But for some reason, you don’t like the heterosexual part, but are fine with the “pair” part as mentionned previously in the thread.
Then, what about my bisexual guy? He can meaningfully pair-bond with someone of the other sex. Should his marriage with a person of the same sex he’s in love with be denied on this basis?
Sorry for the messed-up coding of the previous post. Could a moderator delete it?
Sorry also for the content of the post. I hope you’ll be able to make sense of my messed-up sentences…
Look, it’s right here in the Gay Agenda:
Step 1: Gay marriage
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Polyamorous marriage
See?
Seriously, though, I don’t think that gay marriage will lead to polyamory, if for no other reason than there aren’t enough people who practice polyamory to successfully push for legislation legalizing it. But, hey, if they can get a bill out there for a vote, I’ll support it. What the hell, it’s no skin off my back. Actually, that’s how I feel for just about all of the supposed “horrible outcomes of gay marriage” the religious right keeps babbling about. Polyamory? Sure. Beastiality? Ick, but is buggering a sheep worse than skinning and eating it? Incest? Serious ick, but if it’s consenting adults, (and if I don’t ever have to meet any of them) then it’s no one elses business but the sickos who want to do it. Marrying inanimate objects? Look, if a guy really wants to marry a tractor, or a barstool, or whatever-the-fuck, let him. It’s entirely meaningless, anyway, since inanimate objects (or animals, for that matter) can’t own property or make medical decisions or receive social security or need citizenship or pay taxes or any of the other thousands of benefits that accrue to spouses. So if some guy out there wants to marry his toaster, I say we humor the poor freak. I just hope he unplugs her before the honeymoon, y’know what I mean?
Thanks for the respones. I’m very drunk and will respond to you all later.
If enough rich and influential conservative christian Republicans decide they want to be polygamous, then I suppose we’d see some public movement to legalize it. It’s not likely, but it’s possible, I suppose.
I remember a few years ago there was an N.P.R. story about a millionaire Russian parliamentarian who was effectively living as a polygamist (three “fiancees”) and was pushing for a law to legalise polygamy in Russia.
Jesus, did I post that? :o Well, at least it’s not the most embarrassing drunk post ever made on these boards.
Anyway, I see your point clairobscur. I guess for me the question revolves around the idea of homosexuality forming a class of persons, in the same way race or gender do. Laws that discriminate against a certain class should be looked at with great suspicion, a principle the U.S. supreme court enunciated in some famous case that slips my mind. (I don’t know if there is a similar principle in French constitutional law.) If rights are granted to one class but not another, this is fundamentally unjust.
Now the question is, what forms a class? To return to my speed limit metaphor, a law that instates different speed limits for men and women is clearly discriminatory against women, and would strike almost all of us as unjust. However a speed limit for everyone also discriminates against people who like to drive really fast. Yet somehow this does not strike most of us as unjust. Why? Because sexual differences are innate and deep, while a desire to drive fast is not. Now this seems arbitrary. What is “innate and deep” and what is not? But the law is stuck making distinctions like this. One legal historian opined that “the law is a series of failed attempts to categorize life.” We are stuck making distinctions that can–at bottom–only be justified by appeals to intuition and common sense.
Now to me, sexual orientation is one of those innate and deep things that should be covered under the suspect class idea. I can recall when I first started noticing women. It certainly wasn’t something that I decided to do, in the way I decided I liked comic books or hard rock. I’m certain gay people had the same experience toward members of their own sex. The current marriage laws mean that the legal benefits of marriage are being granted to one class and denied to others, a situation that strikes me as fundamentally unjust.
Now the question is do polyamorous people form a class in the same way that gay people do? Is polyamory like being gay or straight, or is it a lifestyle choice like being a hippie or a Biker? Are there people out there who would be just as unfullfilled in a two person relationship as a gay person would be married to a member of the opposite sex? If polyamory is a sexual orientation like gayness or straightness then my arguments are invalid, and the same legal theory that invalidates gay marriage bans would also invalidate bans against polygamy. But I’d like to hear some evidence–some personal experiences from polyamorous dopers maybe–that indicates that this is the case. Frankly, I don’t think it is.
Let me be clear about one thing. I have nothing against polyamory, or any other relationship involving consenting adults. I have my own kinks, too many to judge other people without being the worst sort of hypocrite. I don’t have any objection to polygamy becoming legal either. I’m simply answering the OP narrowly. The OP asked if the legal arguments against gay marriage bans would necessarily lead to the legalization of polygamy. I’m arguing that they don’t.
My point is precisely that it’s not relevant. If gay marriage is allowed, nobody will prevent you from marying another man (assuming you’re male), even if you’re bisexual, even if you’re straight, even if you are disguted by any kind of sex. You’ll just be allowed to marry whoever you want to. Whether or not you have a deep-seated orientation, could or not have a satisfying marriage with a woman, etc…
Polyamorous people, on the other hand won’t be able to do so, even if they deeply love this person, can’t conceive living without him/her, etc…
And this right is denied on what basis? Custom and religion (at best lazyness, if the best argument you can come up with is : we’d have to rewrite some laws). And the usual “eek” and “you can’t be allowed live in a way I don’t like” factors. the rest, including arguments used to show that it’s “not the same thing as same-sex marriage” are, IMO, pure rationalizations to reject a lifestyle that people don’t like, while homosexuality has come to be accepted by a significant part of the population.
The mere fact that opponents to same-sex marriage are using scare tactics like “if we allow gay marriage, then we’ll soon allow polygamy” and that these arguments are actually adressed instead of stating “So?” shows that there’s general a-priori assumption that polygamy is a bad thing. Both side fully expect it, the anti-gay side hoping it will scare the fence-sitters, the pro-gay side trying to deflect the attack by stating “it’s not the same thing, we’re not like them polygamous people, but just like you normal and moral people, no way we’re going to accept them to marry just because we’re allowed to, etc…”
I dislike this attitude. I dislike the reassuring comments made by the same-sex marriage apologists basically along the line “don’t worry. There’s no slipery slope here. It’s not because gays will be allowed to marry people they love that we’re going to extend this priviledge to other categories”. The correct answer should be “I didn’t think about it. Indeed, you’re right, we should allow polygamy too. Nobody’s harmed by same-sex marriages, nobody is harmed by polygamous marriage either. Who people wants to marry is nobody else’s business”
That, once again, assuming marriage should actually be sanctionned by the state.
To sum up, my anwer would be :
“Yes, there’s definitely a slippery slope here. Let’s slide!”.
Fair enough. 
BTW, how is this issue being handled in France?
I mean the gay marriage issue, not neccesarily polygamy.
The immediate kneejerk answer is, of course, “Nobody’s family is a ‘lifestyle choice’. Treating families as being of the same type of thing as how often one goes out to dinner and a movie is pretty degrading.”
Even for those people who aren’t family-focused, treating their relationships as a “lifestyle” is treating them pretty much like people who want to have a blond partner to go with their outfit. There are people who treat their relationships like disposable commodities – both among monogamous and polyfolks, for that matter – but it’s not what I’d consider the default for any type of relationship.
Yes. See previous post for some of the manifestations of this.
There are also people who just prefer it that way. And people for whom it’s where they are at the moment. (My husband, who rarely reads GD, is one of those.)
There’s a civil union contract, but it doesn’t grant all the rights a marriage do. For instance, the “death taxes” are higher, in case of adoption the child is adopted by only one of the patners not both, there’s a longer delay before a foreign partner can get french citizenship, etc…
The issue of same-sex mariage is debatted from time to time (for instance last year, when a mayor who also is a well-known politician married two men. The marriage as cancelled by a court, btw), but it’s not a “current hot topic” (I mean in the society at large, in the medias, etc…for homosexuals of course, it is).
Is that true, that kids in the US are allowed to have alcohol if their parents say it’s OK? I knew it was that way with films, but didn’t know about alcohol. It’s not an international standard though; in Europe for example, if there’s a minimum age limit on something it generally doesn’t matter whether the parent agrees or not. So in those countries paedophilia is banned in a similar manner to other acts denied minors.
But they are, technically. Hence annulments.
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Parental rights issues are already the same whether people are married or not, not all children are born from married parents.
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This doesn’t apply to same-sex couples where one is not the biological parent. There being married would make all the difference with regard to parental rights.
You’ve made me think quite a bit though, clairobscur, and it’ll take a while for my thoughts to be processed, so what I’m posting now is basically my starting POV.
I’m with Miller - people should be able to marry whoever or whatever they want to. Hell, they can now, in a non-legal sense. However, when it comes to legal rights, it should at the moment only be extended to two people of whatever gender. It would be much more complicated to legislate for poly unions, and it’s not laziness to point that out. I want the right for gay people to be married. Anything else is a separate issue.
Some people are identified at birth as male but identify as female, and also identify as lesbian. The gender and the sexuality are separate. Similarly, the wish/need to have more than one partner is separate to sexuality and gender. Polygamy isn’t on a slippery slope from gay marriage - it’s on a whole different slide. Thus it should be dealt with separately.
FTR: I am an occasionally-polygamous lesbian.