Use of the word “right” throws me a little. It may be semantics or the fact that words can have multiple meanings depending on the context. I don’t think anyone has a right to get married. Marriage is something that religions and governments define, allow and recognize. Discrimination occurs when an entity arbitrarily decides which marriages they will recognize.
The question isn’t whether the government recognizes marriages between three or more people but should they. From my perspective it is essentially a contract between individuals. If three individuals can legally enter into a contract (generally adults of sound mind) they should be able to enter into a polygamous marriage. It would require some adjusting of current law but those laws are frequently changed. Most could probably be resolved by designating a primary spouse for benefits. A company could decide whether they want to cover the employee, the primary spouse, the second or third spouse.
With divorce we just need to look at what happens if three people are in a business as co-owners. If one wants out, the other two have to decide if they want to buy him/her out and continue or if they want to just dissolve the whole thing.
This is why I maintain that the road to legalizing polygamous marriage goes through existing legal partnership law rather than existing marriage law. Who cares who’s having sex with who? The critical issues will be control over (and potential division of) assets and liabilities.
Why would child custody be a nightmare? There would only be one biological father and one biological mother just as in non-polygamous marriage. I don’t see a problem here.
Do you like the taste of liver? I can’t stand it personally though I know some who love it. Some people might be able to acquire a taste for it, but I suspect the ones who can do not outright hate it. Sexual preference could be understood in the same fashion. Some intrinsically have feelings one way or another and some have middling feelings. We wouldn’t think it right to limit what foods you eat, we don’t consider how you came to those preferences to consider them valid.
Most of us here are not appalled at the idea of poly marriage, we’re just saying that it’s not an easy step to adjust our laws for couple marriage, to accommodate poly. It’s quite simple to remove the requirement that the TWO people be opposite sex, but if we’re talking about expanding marriage to three or more, there are all kinds of issues that will have to be resolved.
I’m perfectly OK with society doing that, but it will require drastic changes in laws from top to bottom.
Incestuous couple marriage seems icky to me, but I’d be OK with allowing that as well.
Gays being ‘born this way’ has nothing to do with it. There are no gay marriage laws in this country, they are same sex marriage laws and they discriminate against any two people who want to be married if they are the same sex. Three or more people marrying has never been legal no matter what there sex. If someone wants to make a further mess of the legal system by allowing polygamy they’ll need a better argument.
There are plenty of countries which have legal systems allowing this. Whether they are good systems or not is another matter - for much of our history the laws controlling traditional marriage were not that great.
There are plenty of other reasons to oppose polygamy besides it being too tough for legislators to handle. The biggest I can see would be rich men accumulating lots of wives (and vice versa, perhaps.) If income inequality is bad, how would partner inequality? Might stir up a revolution real soon.
I’m attracted to both brown-haired women and to red-haired women. Does that mean that I should be allowed to marry one of each? No, of course not: One might argue that I should be allowed to marry multiple women, but my preferences as to hair color have nothing whatsoever to do with that argument, and under the current law, I have to pick one woman (of whatever hair color) and stick with her.
In the exact same way, under current law, a bisexual person can marry one person (of any sex) and stick with them, and just because they’re attracted to either, doesn’t mean they can or should marry both.
I, for one, don’t oppose poly marriages, and I understand the OP’s point that not allowing consenting adults would feel like discrimination to them.
Its odd to see such lack of understanding (not the same as being for it) from a community that is generally progressive as is the Straight Dope. Is it because you think the OP is somehow anti-same sex marriage and is using the question to logically push the concept that if poly marriage isn’t allowed, than same sex marriage shouldn’t be allowed? THat’s what I first thought when I read his post…just wondering if others thought the same way.
List of countries that allow polygamy.
I will hazard a guess that in most, if not almost all countries listed, polygamy applies to one man with multiple wives and the wives having few if any rights.
Where are you seeing this lack of understanding? Plenty of people have noted the difficulty from a legal sense, but I’m not seeing a lot of people having issues with it being allowed, if that is solved.
Although it doesn’t float my boat I don’t see a problem in theory with polygamous marriage, much like Czarcasm said the issue would be to hammer out the legal aspects of such a relationship: divorce, child support, taxes, I could see how that could become quite complicated.
Which is pretty much the point. Polyagamous marriage is fundamentally different from the existing legally-recognised model of marriage, which is a mutually exclusive relationship, whereas polygamous marriage is not. Hence anyone campaigning for legal recognition of polygamous marriage is looking for something that, currently, nobody has. There may be good arguments in support of their campaign, but “I’m being discriminated against” is not one of them. By contrast, campaigners for same-sex marriage were looking for access to an already-existing and already-legally-recognised relationship.
Unless you’re a conservative playing a gotcha-game with your liberal friends, in which case there is no colorable difference, and recognizing complications in something is the same thing as being morally opposed to it.
Hey, it beats having a similar “misunderstanding” about the difference between same-sex marriage and bestiality.
There is a very clear difference between same sex marriage and bestiality: consent. The distinction between incestuous marriage and polyamory does not involve that problem. And all of the arguments for gay marriage apply equally to other nontraditional consensual arrangements.
Before we worry about the legal aspects of recognizing such marriages, why don’t we start out by agreeing that people shouldn’t be jailed for these marriages? I suspect that for the forseeable future, most people in such arrangements would just be happy not to worry about being persecuted for their decisions. In other words, decriminalization.
No its not. And I’m speaking as a family law practitioner practising in a jurisdiction where polygamous (one male multiple females) is recognised for a significant segment of the population. (South Africa) In the SA context, your questions answered in order:
Yes
No. Each one subject to judicial approval before registration to ensure interests of all parties protected.
Not at all. Same rules apply as to monogamous marriages. People with an interest in the well being of a child (such as grandparents and in this case, other wives) do have an enforceable right of contact with the child.
There are good reasons to be opposed to polygamous marriage - but “its too complicated” isn’t one of them.