Indeed, why not.
Bullshit; parents are called upon to provide clarity solely in the grey area that exists between the black-and-white legal definitions of ‘child’ and ‘adult’.
Do pets grow up into creatures capable of informed consent? If so, then there would be a need for their keepers to provide a similar service of clarity in the gre area that would exist between ‘dumb pet’ and [something else]. They don’t, so there isn’t.
This is an invalid argument as well, though. There is only one thing that straight couples can do in bed that gay couples cannot, and that is putting a real penis into a real vagina. That’s it. Period. Anything else is completely possible and quite common.
Anyway, Michael Medved is an ass and an idiot, in ways and places well outside his opposition to gay marriage, so I’d consider his opinion about as valid as Anne Coulter’s.
Hi there, Otto!
Lilairen,
My apologies for not responding to your lengthy post, after you graciously posted that much info. It’s just been a lot to wrap my mind around, and I haven’t had time to absorb it all, let alone respond.
I think you might want to consider another “Ask the …” thread, but pending that, I wonder if I could trouble you for a bit more here. What is the attraction of these types of relationships? Because the suspicion - and this is what I was hinting at in my first post - is that it is primarily a sex thing. (My apologies is this is taken as insulting). If not, what is it? I would imagine that you might find that being married to two people gives more opportunity for more strengths of character than you might have in one person. But this would seem to depend on the people involved. In particular, I wonder about the people involved in what I believe you called a “V” relationship, in which one person is married to two people, who are themselves unconnected to each other. In this case, the two people are essentially sharing a spouse - what is in it for them? Is it just that they want this particular spouse and the best they could get is a time share, or is it some sort of fetish or what else?
Also, are there ever “cliques” in these group marriages, in several partners might gradually edge one partner out? And is there competition for the affections of the partners (and if so, how much does the legally married status of the one partner provide an advantage)? Conversely, do you have situations in which one wife (or husband) is the more favored one in the marriage?
It is possible that the attraction of men to women and women to men is also more than sex. It would seem that in the case of men to women (and men to men etc.) the gender of the opposite party is fundamental to the attraction, and is part of the basis of the bond. By contrast, in the case of race, the race may be a strong qualification (or disqualification) but it is not part of the inherent attraction. Seems like a valid difference to me. (I believe this also addresses the subsequent post by Homebrew).
I’m not Lilairen, but I am married to her, so I’ll take a stab at these. 
This is a tough question, because the answer is different for every person. You’re essentially asking the same question as “What is the attraction in having more than one child?” A simple answer is love (which isn’t really a simple answer at all).
Yes, it’s a lot of work. Every relationship is. A monogamous marriage is a lot of work. Why do people get into those? Because they find the benefits worth the cost. Same answer for why people get into polyamorous relationships.
I love Lilairen. I love her because of her humor, her personality, her wit, her smile, the way she walks down the street, the way her hair looks after she’s dyed it, the way she gets aggravated at idiots, and a host of other reasons that would be near impossible to write down. I happen to love another woman, also for a host of reasons that would be near impossible to write down. The benefits of a poly relationship for me is that I get to love both of these women, and they get to love me, without hurting any of us because of lies, secrets, broken promises, divorce, etc.
I happen to find both of them physically attractive as well. Bonus.
Of course it depends on the people involved. All love does. What each person gets out of a relationship, whatever that relationship might be, depends on the person.
Sorry, I see this stumbling block a lot, and it always amuses me. I mean, would you say that of someone married to an on-call surgeon? Or someone in the military who gets stationed overseas? Or a cop who works 12 hour shifts? Or an entrepreneur who has to work 12 hour days to keep their business afloat? Is that “best they could get”? I think you’ll find that most poly people don’t rank their relationships like that. In large part, because they don’t have to.
No one ever gets access to 100% of another person’s time. So every relationship is a time-share. Most poly relationships fully acknowledge this, and work hard at making sure that everyone gets what they need out of the relationship. In a working poly relationship, this means that schedules get worked out, times are negotiated and agreed upon. Just like a monogamous relationship, just a bit more complicated.
As for “What’s in it for them?”, speaking of the two people “sharing” the third, the answer is that they each get to love the person they want to love. And they get their love requited, rather than one or more of them having to sit and sigh over “what might have been”.
Of course. Come on, you’re dealing with people here. No one is perfect, and often things happen that ideally wouldn’t. Poly relationships have their own share of problems, just like monogamous relationships. Jealousy, deceit, mis-communications, etc. can all cause problems.
The major difference that I’ve seen with most poly relationships I have experience with is that all of these issues are acknowledged as possibilities, and active steps are taken to deal with them or prevent them from occurring. Negotiation is a way of life in a healthy poly relationship, just like it is in a healthy monogamous relationship. Everyone has to be willing to get involved in working out issues.
No worries. I might, someday. Or someone else might. I’m going to go take care of my father post-surgery for a week soon, though, so it’s not gonna be imminent. :}
Seriously, the answer to this for me is always to quote Dickens.
I know people who say, when they have one relationship, aren’t interested in any others. I’m entirely willing to believe them because I’m pretty similar when I have two.
But honestly, I think it’s a really horrible thing to treat some people as less worthy of love because I didn’t meet them first. And these days, I find it genuinely painful to try to keep a relationship from settling at whatever level it wants to get to naturally; I’m not going to stifle, squelch, or destroy love just to fit some arbitrary declaration that some sorts of relationship I “should” only have one of.
There are people who are willing to give each other a gift of exclusivity; I think that when chosen consciously and with great intent, this can be a remarkable, beautiful thing. I think the value of that gift is degraded by people who give it grudgingly, who claim to give it and then cheat, who don’t realise that that sort of promise is a gift. I would love to see people who choose to be monogamous to do with conscious awareness of what a large thing that sort of commitment is, to do so with intent rather than by some sort of accident, giving away diamonds because they look like glass.
Well, amusing. It would be hard for anything to be primarily a sex thing for me, given that I’ve got the libido of a potted plant.
Yes, there are people who have multiple relationships because they want sexual variety, or more sex, or who swing, or whatever. Those aren’t people who are looking to marry those other folks, though. They call those relationships secondary, tertiary, fuckbuddies, ummmfriends (as in “This is Ash, my, . . . um, friend.”), or what have you, but they’re not looking for marriage with them.
And again back to “So why did you get married?”
You can get into particulars for particular people – I could point out that I’m basically psychologically stable with two partnerships, which I’m not with one, I could talk about orientation, I could talk about all kinds of things. It doesn’t matter.
“Because I fell in love.”
Because I fell in love, and I love my husband and my mate both as spouses, much as I love my brothers (both bloodkin and chosen) as brothers, as I love others as whatever suits those interactions best – I will call those relationships what they are. I will not break agreements, I will not cheat; that’s just how I am. (But I know people who find deceiving one’s partner, betraying them, and becoming oathbreaker more acceptable than having two partners honestly – only because it’s still pretending that one’s playing monogamy.)
Do you think people are interchangeable? Would you say to someone who lost a partner, a child, “Well, you can get another one?” If you’re married or partnered, would you accept a swap?
I presume that you wouldn’t do any of those things. You love who you love, yes? If you can form a relationship that satisfies you with someone you love without breaking agreements or otherwise behaving unethically, you do it, right? You form friendships, you love your new relatives as they’re born, you found your partner if you have one and formed that relationship?
I’m guessing that in your relationship history you’ve made promises of monogamy that you have honored. The only difference is that not everyone makes a promise of a monogamy, and thus they don’t have to honor them. Many people make promises to keep relationships healthy or preserve them in a particular situation; some make promises to put a particular relationship or relationships first.
I don’t care what my partners do with their time so long as our relationship is healthy and our agreements kept. I’m not “sharing” anything – that time was always my partner’s, and some of it is something he chose to give to me.
Oh, probably. People can be like that sometimes.
Personally, I suspect that a competetive situation would feel unhealthy to me. On the other hand, I’ve seen people cite competition as a reason for continued health in their relationships, because they’re not taking each other for granted. (There is also, amongst polyfolk, a great deal of experience with the sort of people referred to as “cowboys” – people who form relationships with the expectation of getting that person to be monogamous with them. “Cowboy” in the sense of “cutting out of the herd” here. I tend to consider them to be acting in bad faith, at best.)
I find myself very uncomfortable when levels of commitment get too far out of balance. For example, early in my relationship with my mate, he and his now-wife were engaged, Teine and I were engaged. They got married, then Teine and I got married. And I found myself with one marriage and one relationship that was sort of without any specifically articulated commitment. A few months later, partly in response to that, my mate and I handfasted (a limited-term commitment, in this case), and I felt better; the gap from “no articulated commitment” to “marriage” was too large, but “specifically defined short-term commitment” to marriage" was enough for me not to feel like one relationship was getting way more weight than the other.
I expect most people’s response to that, poly or not, is that I’m cracked. (I’m hypersensitive to some forms of hierarchy, which leads to that sort of thing.) I don’t know of anyone else who functions like that, though by Ugol’s Law they have to exist.
I wouldn’t be surprised by favoritism; I wouldn’t consider it healthy. I wonder if it’s more likely to happen in some sort of situation where there is only one relationship. I have two relationships, so asking me who my favorite is in the relationship leads me to asking “Which relationship?” and the obvious answer after that is “The one the relationship is with, there aren’t exactly other options, people.”
I talk about different things with my partners; in specific subjects, one might say that one or another is a “favorite”, because they have more data. In terms of my work, for example, Teine most often gets involved in the background and consistency issues and my mate most often in the final product results. That’s just how it works out. They’re different people and different relationships; of course there will be differences.
Many people have attraction patterns such that sex is not a particularly relevant factor in determining things, or may be a strong qualification/disqualification but is not part of the inherent attraction. Others have different types of attraction, depending on the sex of the target.
As far as I can tell, my primary inherent attraction is to engineers and MIT students.
My best theory is that for any possible point of attraction, some people will find it essential, some people will find it influential, and some people won’t be able to figure out why anyone cares about it.
Believe me, I have. I’m Jewish. We had quite the neo-Nazi/klan presence here in the early '90s. And it’s creepy as fuck to know that people want you dead 'cause of how you were born.
I agree, but there are …hell: I don’t know a better word “specific bigots” as opposed to “general bigots”. IE: Someone can hate, say, blacks, but be just fine with gays and Asians. The guy I was echoing (Michael MedVed) is a very specific bigot (not that he’d admit it :rolleyes: ) He can’t stand gays but he’s fine with blacks, hence his argument.
I agree that this argument deserves a medium sized :rolleyes: * but that is his argument.
Fenris
*because we need to reserve the biggest :rolleyes: for his #1 argument “You gay people haaaave equal rights: I can marry any adult non-married woman I want if she consents. And so can you gay people.” :rolleyes:
FTR: I realize that, but apparently Michael Medved believes that unless one has penis/vagina sex, it’s not a “real” marriage.
I repeat (just in case) that I do not support or advocate this argument.
: blink :
I’m completly lost Izzy. Let me rephrase what I think happened, and maybe you can clarify what I’m missing.
Medved (as paraphrased by Fenris): What opposite sex couples do in bed is (roughly) the same thing, regardless of race. What gay people do in bed isn’t the same thing. Thus marriage is protected under “equal protection” for all races, thus "equal protection only covers vagina/penis sex.
Me: Um. That’s a load of dingo’s kidneys. Equal protection covers much more than penis/vagina sex, and thus, not only should all races be covered, so should same sex partners.
You: (correct me if I’m wrong)–Not only the “sex” part is covered but the “feelings” stuff is too, and the opposite sex feeling of attraction to each other is different from the same-sex feeling of attraction to each other, so the same-sex stuff isn’t covered.
Am I misunderstanding? 'Cause I’d be willing to bet that the stuff two guys or two girls feel (emotionally) is exactly the same as what a guy and a girl feel.
Fenris
Oh, I know that! I was responding to the Medved attitude and not to you personally.
Eh, due to various reasons, I wasn’t able to post till now, so I’m probably going to retread a lot of stuff, skip a lot more, and hopefully talk about something that hasn’t been mentioned yet:
Noone seems to have mentioned the fact that, at least in the US society, the government has some sort of investment in marriage. They’re very touchy here in the US about handing out money, so when it comes to marriages to foriegners and the like, the government does take some steps to insure that a marriage is for the “right reason” (i.e. love) and not simply so someone who’s not a citizen can reap the “benefits” of being one.
The same would go for polygomous relationships, I would think (I’m just a cameraman, so I don’t know everything). I know taxes are a big deal, and there is a bit of break when it comes to married vs. single (I got royally fucked in 2002 because the gov. thought I was married when I wasn’t). How much of a tax break would someone get if they had four spouses and twelve children? What would prevent people from marriages of convenience just to help get a break on their taxes and whatever other benefits come from being married? I don’t know how much insurrance policies are controled by government legislation, but if polygimy is allowed, what’s to prevent me from going to my buddy Fred and saying “Hey, I’m unemployed and uninsured, wanna get married so I can have life insurrance till I get another job?” Heh, seems like a feable excuse, and I’m sure I’m not making a good argument out of it, but basically, by allowing anyone to marry any number of people, it makes it much easier for people to take advantage of the government (something they don’t really like).
Sounds silly and hypothetical, I know, but hey, people are already bringing little girls over from Russia using the promise of American citizenship as a bargaining tool, so it’s not that far fetched.
And the same could be said for dog-fuckers as well. A dog gives nothing back to the government (well, maybe police dogs). They make no contributions to the government, and as far as the government is concerned, they have no rights (aside from the basic “you can’t kill them indescriminately” laws most living things seem to have). Why, then, would the government give a man and his dog a tax break simply because the man feels everytime Woofles comes licking the peanutbutter off his testicles, they’re in a commited and consensual relationship? They wouldn’t. That’s just as stupid as naming your dog Woofles.
Same thing goes with robots and dead people. Unless you make an actual contribution to the government in the form of money (working, paying taxes, that sort of thing), or by voting, you don’t really have any real rights as far as they’re concerned, and therefor, they’re not going to grant any extra benefits if they can do anything to help.
Now when it comes to SSM, the government can’t use this argument. Assuming they’re both US citizens, over the age of 18, and at least one is working, what’s the difference in how their household would opperate from a heterosexual household? Outside of the way they have sex with one another, there isn’t any, therefore the governments limitation/restriction of it is rather ridiculous.
Plus, socially, fucking your dog, VCR, or twelve year old sister is just wrong. Until society changes their views on that, the government’s not going to touch it with a ten foot pole (I’d even extend it to thirty, personally).