Again, I don’t think people believed that the bond between white and black mates was different than the bond between two whites or two blacks. It’s just that they thought this bond was a terrible idea and should be discouraged. Which is different, as above.
In what way is a raven different than a writing desk?
Suffrage is not a sociological institution that exists independently of government. It is a privilege granted by the government, to perform some act relating to governance. I’m afraid you’ve lost me here.
Lilairen, I’m afraid you’ve misgauged the extent of my ignorance regarding polyamorous relationships. I mean things like: how many people are in it, how do new people get in, what is involved in getting out, how long do these tend to last, how open are you about your relationship to people, how do the financial arrangements work, what manner of other shared responsibilities are there, how do you relate to each others’ relatives etc.
God damn but you’re stupid. By your reasoning "…legislators are capable of drafting and voting up laws that say, “Opposite sex marriage is legal, but same-sex marriages are not legal.” "
Congratulations, you just set the same-sex marriage cause back three squares (and lost a turn).
Walks, talks, quacks, dude. My but you’re a hateful bigot.
Clairobscur, as someone who’s arguing that SSM doesn’t lead to polygamous marriage, lemme elaborate.
Basically, marriage (or what I’d prefer: civil unions) should constitute a package of rights that can be obtained all at once from the government. This includes tax rights, visitation rights, property rights in cases of separation, inheritance rights, and so forth.
ALL THESE RIGHTS SHOULD BE AVAILABLE TO ALL CONSENTING ADULTS. And currently, most of them are, with the exception of tax rights: SS couples can draw up complicated contracts for all the remaining rights, as near as I know.
The injustice comes from the fact that it’d be just as easy for the government to allow them to get the package of rights, and the government currently forbids it.
Polygamous relationships are qualitatively different. They’re not better or worse, they’re just different. As you’ve pointed out yourself, they’ve got many different models, work in many different ways; there’s not, to my knowledge, the same kind of one-size-fits-all contract that would cover most or even the plurality of polygamous marriages.
Rather than having the government draw up five hundred different types of polygamous relationship contracts, I think it’s easiest to have them be handled through private contracts.
As for taxes, there’s a strong argument to be made that polygamous relationships ought not be excluded from the tax benefits that accrue to marriages (or civil unions). However, designing analogous tax benefits would be far more complicated than simply extending current marriage tax benefits to SS couples, and should therefore be addressed separately.
I’m all in favor of allowing polygamous relationships to thrive; however, qualitative differences between them and SS relationships mean that the two issues need to be addressed separately.
Of COURSE they are. Whether they’re capable of it, and whether that’s just, are two different questions entirely.
Izzy, I asked for relevant dissimilarities between suffrage and marriage. I’m not sure why the fact that suffrage is necessarily tied up in government (another social institution), whereas marriage could theoretically exist in an anarchic state, is relevant.
Could you at least acknowledge that the matter of consent sets apart relationships between humans and those involving humans and animals? Until you admit that Zoophiles and human-only relationships are fundamentally different then you aren’t going to make any progress in convincing us you’re not an idiot.
So, your argument is that we should continue to exclude rights from some people who deserve them because we can’t come up with a perfect, one-size-fits-all solution that would prevent any future injustice from happening again, ever?
Rather, my guess is that you don’t think gays should be allowed to marry, but are too cowardly to say so directly, and instead are trying to cast your opinion as concern for justice for all. While I’m at it, I would also guess that you’re ugly and stupid.
Because it illustrates the fact that marriage is a sociological concept. Voting is an act of participation in government.
I think this is beyond obvious, and if I haven’t been able to communicate this to this point I am unlikely to do so. I am going to let the voting analogy issue drop here.
I’ll ask again. This is a question which may be answered with either a “yes” or a “no.”
Do you make no allowance for the idea that government should do something because doing it is the right thing to do, even if vast segments of the population disagree with it?
Please answer either by saying “Yes, I allow for government to do things which are right but not popular” or “No, I do not allow for government to do things which are right but not popular.”
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but what you seem to be saying here is that government should not recognize SSM because there are so many people who don’t like the idea. What percentage of people whould have to think that SSM is acceptable and that same-sex families are families before it’s all right for government to bestow legal recognition? 90%? 75%? 50%+1? What other rights should be either withheld or revoked on the basis of some percentage of people not liking them?
Oh, poor you.
Wait a minute.
No. What the buggery fuck have your delicate sensibilities got to do with what should be legal or not? Sweden got the right idea on this; the government should not try to regulate ‘morality’, just ethics.
I am unsure as to whether you are being disingenuous or dense. Either way, I’m not playing. The answer to the question is sometimes yes sometimes no. I refer you to the first paragraph of my first response to you. Second two sentences. Also, the final paragraph of post #61 above. But I am not going to keep doing this.
I don’t know, but I would think above 50% would be a good baseline.
I just came in to ask a question. The OP claims that allowing SSM would put us on a slippery slope. Are we or are we not on that slope already by the virtues of one man / one woman marriages?
Homebrew, you’re absolutely right. Which is why I composed this:
Consent, and the lack of ability to grant same.
Please consider this and reply –
In may states there in a minimum age at which a person can consent to marry, for this example I’ll use 16 years of age (your state may vary). However, a person less than 16 can get married at a younger age, let’s say 14, if their parent/legal guardian gives consent. See where I’m going with this?
Example: two 15 year olds are having sex (with each other, just to make that clear) and the girl gets knocked up. Both sets of (legal guardians/parents) agree that the kids are going to “do the right thing”, and promptly march them down to the Justice of the Peace and have them married. The kids do not want to get married, but defer to their (legal guardians’/parents’) guidance.
(Caveat: is the above example necessarily a good idea? No. Are the (legal guardians/parents) “forcing” the children to do something the (legal guardians/parents) believe to be in the children’s best interest? Yes. Do the children agree? In this case, probably not. Does this happen all the time anyway, “forcing” the child to do something just because the (legal guardians/parents) believe it to be in the child’s best interest (e.g. staying in school, not getting a tattoo, participating in a particular religion, etc.)? Yes, it does.)
So… we have a case where an individual who is unable to consent to marriage is married nonetheless because their (legal guardians/parents) do give the consent.
I contend the human has the status of “legal guardian” to the dog. Thus, I see no reason why the human would be unable to give consent for the dog to marry, even though the dog itself is unable to.
(Caveat: is the above example necessarily a good idea? No. Are the (legal guardians/parents) “forcing” the dog to do something the (legal guardians/parents) believe to be in the dog’s best interest? Yes. Does the dog agree? In this case, probably not. Does this happen all the time anyway, “forcing” the dog to do something just because the (legal guardians/parents) believe it to be in the dog’s best interest (e.g. getting neutered, getting a bath, wearing silly Halloween costumes, etc.)? Yes, it does.)
While I realize “legal guardian” carries certain strict legal implications and may or may not apply to animals, since we’re talking about changing up the laws here anyway I don’t see why we can’t consider a change to this law.
Isn’t the parental consent for under age marriage thing actually to permit the parents (who, after all, know the children well, or should do) to make a decision that the children are sufficiently mature and responsible that an override of the normal legal age of consent is justifiable? That’s what I thought it was about. How does this fit against your dog analogy?
This very much depends on the relationship situation and the individual people involved. Let me yatter a bit – I’ll try to give a solid overview of what I’ve seen, and illuminate it a bit with interactions from my family and other families I know a fair amount about.
How many people are in it?
There are a couple of ways of looking at this question, and they all tend to have different answers. I tend to point out that I have multiple relationships, not one relationship with multiple people. (I’m attracted to men, not mobs.) Other people look at it differently. Nitpicking flamewars over this sort of fiddly terminology issue are not uncommon. :}
Most folks I know who have single, multiple adult family systems have three or four members of those families; some are larger. My family has four – myself, Teine, my mate, and the naiad (my mate’s legal spouse / Teine’s partner). Triads (either all involved with each other or V relationships in which two family members are involved with the third, but not with each other) are not uncommon at all – I believe the board’s best-known example of these would be lee and KellyM’s family. The OLQ people I linked to above are also a four-person family, though unlike my own they consider themselves a “group marriage” and the women are partnered in addition to the heterosexual bonds.
I also know a family where the four adults include one monogamous person (partnered only with Person A), one polyfidelitous person (partnered with the monogamous person and Person B, both of them in marriagelike relationships, not open to more relationships), one person with two marriage-like partnerships and a number of other relationships (Person B, partnered with A and C), and C, with one marriage and a number of others. B and C held a marriage ceremony a couple of years ago, though they could not have it legally recognised. (They asked me for permission to quote something I wrote to a newsgroup for it, actually.)
There are also a number of polyfolks who aren’t in the marriage reevaluation business for personal reasons, but rather on principle; a fairly common structure is one bonded couple who have other, less committed relationships. Obviously, they don’t need multiple marriage, as they don’t have additional familial bonds to have recognised.
How do new people get in?
Again, this depends on the people.
Some people are polyfidelitous (as I made peripheral reference to above); they have formed a closed relationship system and are not interested in new relationships. (Either by personal inclination or agreement, much like a monogamous pairing makes exclusivity agreements.) Some polyfi arrangements are closed closed closed; others are potentially willing to include new spouses with group consensus.
Some people have what’s referred to as “veto” power – the ability to say, “No, I don’t want you getting involved with people.” A fair number of them have that veto only declarable before the relationship is established; some have it so that they can torpedo an existing relationship. (The latter group tend to give the usage of veto in general a really bad name, as those people who have their established relationships torpedoed in this way feel quite justifiably ill-done-by.)
There are folks who have no agreements about whether or not other people are able to form relationships, but do tend to have agreements about maintenance of existing ones. This may include as far as going up to spousal arrangements, though as a general rule additions to households if any have to go through everyone already in the household. (I’m distinguishing ‘marriage’ from ‘addition to household’ here in a way that may not be intuitive – however, I also know monogamous couples that don’t live together.)
I personally wouldn’t expect my family to add members; we work well as a family as we are. I have relationships that aren’t part of the family; so does Teine. None of my other relationships are marriage-like; he doesn’t make the sort of distinction that I do between marriage-like and other relationships.
What is involved in getting out?
Again, this depends on the legal and other commitments that people have in place, but that’s the case with any sort of relationship.
Teine and I have been together for nine and a half years or so. In that time, I’ve had several other serious relationships. When they ended, it was basically the same as any other serious relationship breakup, with the relevant sturm und drang and occasional locking up of important pieces of jewelry. My mate and I have been together for four (and our family established for about three at this point), and if, gods forbid, we were to break up, it would probably be about the same as that. We haven’t gotten to the point of significant quantities of shared property, though he does have a great deal of involvement in my work which would require significant adjusting to.
A family like OLQ has a great deal of legal documentation and contracts that they’ve been through – they own property and have done a good deal of work to establish as solid a legal standing for their family as can be managed under current law. (Including moving several hundred miles to a location where there were no laws, even unenforced ones, about cohabitation.) Thus, they would have to go through whatever the out clauses of their legal contracts are, probably re-file health care proxies and the like, in addition to the sturm und drang and locking up of important jewelry.
How long do these tend to last?
Distribution seems fairly typical for any sort of relationships. Two factors are important in compiling statistics, though: many polyfolk will have more relationships going at a time than other people, so will have “more frequent breakups”, even if their five, ten, fifteen year old relationships are still puttering happily along. The other is that the standard response to any multiple-adult system breaking up in any way is to blame the polyamory, where very few monogamous breakups are laid at the feet of monogamy.
Some people will do better and have more stable relationships when they’re poly – I’m one of them. Some people will do better and have more stable relationships when they’re monogamous. Some people can do either – Teine is one of those. That’s also a factor.
How open are you about your relationship to people?
I’m personally pretty out of the closet. Not in an in-your-face sort of way, but I talk freely about Teine and my mate and put no effort into hiding the relationships. (I take serious sanity damage from closets.) This occasionally leads people to asking me, “Okay, you have a husband and boyfriend?” and I say, “Yup,” and they say, “Do they know about each other,” and I say “Yup,” and then conversation putters along normally afterwards. (Except when it gets derailed into, “So, how does that work?”)
Teine is significantly more private, though he does talk about such things occasionally on places like the board. The naiad has been out at work in the past. My mate is (finally) out to his mother, but not at work.
In general, anyone who I consider a friend either knows or is terminally oblivious.
How do the financial arrangements work?
At this point, we don’t have pooled finances. We do try to trade off on financing visits so as not to put an excessive burden on the other half of the family. I do Teine’s and my taxes; I’ve done theirs in the past, but when I’m not visiting them between January and April they do 'em themselves.
When I was working in the lawroffice (receptionist/paralegal job) I did a fair amount of research into structures of trusts and similar financial documents, in the event that that became relevant. (I was in another four-person relationship at the time, which ended because the other man involved was abusive.)
OLQ has done some research, I believe, into incorporating families or setting them up as partnership organisations.
What manner of other shared responsibilities are there?
Very much depends on the situation. We’re all responsible for emotional support, of course. The naiad and I hope to share parental duties somewhat when we have children – we’re sort of leaning towards something roughly like father-role towards each other’s offspring, but we both feel kinda strongly about I’m The Mommy for our hypothetical biological children at this point. I feel strongly about wanting both of my partners acting as father to my children.
When we’re shorter-distance to each other, I intend to do the legal documentation authorising both my partners to make medical decisions for me if I’m incapacitated. (And I know that it can be done, I’ve written them.) When I’m visiting them, I occasionally clean things.
The OLQ folks, the borgamists (you will be assimilated!), and one of the other families I know share childrearing responsibilities and such. Such situations as one parent taking care of the kids so that a subset of other parents can have a weekend away alone aren’t uncommon.
How do you relate to each others’ relatives?
Of their side of the family’s kin, I’ve only met my mate’s brother; I gave him a bagful of bottles of homebrewed mead. (He’s a wine snob.) Of the mothers, one is entirely certain that our family will be the ruination of her son’s marriage, the other is dubious but willing to see how it goes. Part of why I haven’t met them is that I flatly refused to meet them if they didn’t know about the relationships; it would feel too much to me like I would be required to lie to them, and that would be way too hard on me. Not to mention being a bad way of starting a relationship with one’s potential out-laws.
We’re out to Teine’s mother, who is not certain how to deal, but at least isn’t surprised by us; she’s met them, but it was before we came out. We’re all completely out to my father, and stay with him around Christmastime as a family, hanging out and talking literature – he and the naiad have had lengthy dissections of the Lord of the Rings films the past few years. I’m sort of vaguely out to my mother, but she hasn’t made any readable responses yet. My brother’s always known I’m poly, as far as I can judge (he’s four years younger than I); we talk relationship stuff occasionally. He hasn’t met the rest of the family in much detail. I came out to my sister-in-law recently while commiserating with her about some of mother-in-law’s reactions.
Some people have very strained relationships with their blood-kin about polyamory; others don’t. I know some folks who don’t come out to their kin because they want to avoid the potential trouble, and other folks who sort of cringe when one or more of their partners feel that way.
Er, yeah, that was wicked long.
Um… no. the “any future injustice … ever” was a little more than I was shooting for. I’m sticking to the here and now and the current topic at hand. I’ll solve the rest of the world’s problems later. :rolleyes:
Wrong again. Actually, I do think gays should be allowed to marry, it’s the dog-fuckers that I think should be excluded. The problem I see is that one can’t be allowed without the other. That is the entire gist of my many arguments.
How can we let gays marry without letting dog-fuckers marry? The only way I see of accomplishing this is to specifically exclude the dog-fuckers. But… that’s what we’re doing right now to the gays. If we’re NOT allowed to do it to the gays, why SHOULD we be allowed to do it to the dog-fuckers?
Really now, answer me that.
Nope! Third strike, you’re out! Damn… you didn’t get anything right on this attempt. Want to try again?
Upon preview I see that you did choose to try again:
Well, again you’re wrong. I don’t fuck my dog. But… whoa! You broke your streak! You actually got something right!
You are correct, you 18 inch prehensile freak, we do have to draw the line somewhere!
Where, exactly? And why there?
Giraffe, in all seriousness I ask you to explicitly state where you think the line should be drawn. Then, explain why. I think you are the coward, not willing to commit to anything specific but rather taking the cowards approach of simply attacking whatever I offer up.
I tend to point out that I have multiple relationships, not one relationship with multiple people. (I’m attracted to men, not mobs.) Other people look at it differently. Nitpicking flamewars over this sort of fiddly terminology issue are not uncommon. :}