A friend of mine used to say the penalty for bigamy is two wives.
Says who? The definition of the word isn’t wrtten in stone somewhere.
Why not indeed? As far as I know, though, legal partnerships have some features that make them slightly closer to marriage (as it is now defined) than LLCs, especially in that a partner cannot casually and unilaterally sell his/her equity to some third party.
To expand on this - in Tibet and elsewhere where polyandry occurs in traditional societies, it is usually in the context of societies where tasks are highly gender-related (women make clothes, men herd yaks sort of thing) and where both “male” and “female” tasks are necessary to survive.
Well it is actually, but we’re currently in the process of the debate about how to alter it. A marriage as it currently stands is between a man and a woman making a commitment for life in order to bind themselves and raise a family. That is how it is practiced by the overwhelming majority of the people on the planet. Whether or not that can or should be modified is the crux of the debate. Arguing that there doesn’t currently exist a normative standard is arguing contrary to the facts and doesn’t advance the argument terribly well.
What you describe doesn’t even resemble the modern conception of marriage. Being able to pick up and leave at any moment as if it were a job, is pretty much the anti-thesis of marriage.
So I’ll establish that in my mind, commitment, is the central theme to a marriage. If there is no commitment there is no marriage.
Right, well you can put in the charter that members do not have the freedom to sell their stock. You can arrange a corporation pretty much any way you want.
Huh. And here I thought I was helping your argument by pointing out that statements like “That’s not marriage” were useless.
Polygamy doesn’t resemble it either (or at least not to the vast majority of people living in western liberal democracies)
Well, not any moment. It takes six weeks in Reno.
As I (at best vaguely) understand partnership law, there is a commitment from the individual partners toward each other and the partnership as a whole. Creating a marriage-ish partnership where the commitment is stronger and better-detrailed is going to be easer than trying to modify existing marriage laws.
My point is that I’m not opposed to group marriage, or people calling their group arrangements a marriage - I’m solely attempting to propose a feasible way to deal with the considerable legal issues that will arise. Modifying existing marriage law to extend it beyond two people is hard. Modifying existing partnership law (which already has structores for group particpation) is relatively easy.
If all seems banal and legalistic and unromantic… too bad. There are practical issues that must be addressed. Feel free to get some spiritual person to mumble whatever new-age catchphrases necessary to get Gaia’s approval for your group marriage, but when the spouses start arguing about property, a nice banal boring unromantic legalistic partnership/marriage structure at least gives the courts something to work with.
Well it does in that people can recognize people as married. There is a definite marriage component that is recognizable in the Henricksons on Big Love that is not recognizable in a harem that can have a revolving door membership.
Heh, fair enough.
Right, there is a commitment, but it’s a commitment within a particular context. “While I am a member of this company I commit to furthering it’s interests and helping it be profitable.” That’s a far sight different from, “Til death do us part.”
Well I mainly agree with you, but there is a point where if it becomes too easy it’s not marriage and marriage serves no purpose.
I agree. As far as the government is concerned it should be a matter of contract law.
Isn’t that just a matter of phrasing? Heck, “Til death do us part” only has significance to the priest/rabbi/whatever and, I guess, God or something. It means nothing to the courts, in venues where divorce is perfectly legal. When a marriage/partnership is cermonially formed, the partners/spouses can say “And I really mean it, forever and ever and ever,” if they want or even sing And IIIIiiiiIIIIIIIIiiiii will always love all of youououoooooooooouuuu…
Well, arguably it doesn’t, but it is a legal status that third parties are required by law to recognize. That isn’t really the case with privately-drawn contracts and such, but it can apply to legal partnerships.
Sure. I’m just weighing the difficulting of modifying existing two-person marriage law versus modifying existing partnership law, and the latter seems like a better bet for polygamists for issues of taxation, inheritance, expansion and (unfortunate but quite likely) dissolution, and these difficulty considerations are inescapable. And if they want to call their partnership a marriage, let 'em.
Odd, our wedding said nothing about til death do us part, nor obey. We did to the sickness and health, and cherish bits though.
Well I guess it all depends on how seriously you take the vows. In sickness and in health implies a whole lot more than, ‘until I get bored.’
I don’t see how the vows (or how seriously they are taken) are at all relevant to a discussion of a potential legal framework for group marriage.
Or, for that matter, the legal framework of any marriage.
Well it depends on whether or not you setup the legal framework to be very easy to absolve yourself from the terms of the contract doesn’t it?
Yeah, but most any contract can be casually dissolved with the consent of all the parties. There are a number of legal barriers to dissolving a marriage varying by venue (i.e. at least one of the partners must have committed a “fault” like adultery or abuse, and/or there must be a period of separation of at least one year) but I can’t find a venue (in North America, at least) where the ceremonial vows taken at the wedding have any relevance. Even so-called “Covenant Marriages”, currently recognized as a distinct marriage category only in Louisiana, Arkansas and Arizona, are defined by law, not by whatever occurs at the marriage ceremony.
As it stands, a couple could conceivably and perfectly legally marry in Nevada with each vowing endless and undying mutual love and cherishing and all that, file for divorce the next day, wait six weeks, and then go their separate ways. That the marriage is relatively easy to dissolve in no way invalidates its legality. Similarly, that a partnership can be dissolved doesn’t invalidate its legality, either.
This whole vow discussion is a tangent and I won’t be chasing it further.
I haven’t read all of these, but I’ll interject this and then come back with more time:
Most, if not all, of the legal and financial preferences given to married couples under US can be traced to attempts at Social engineering. Legislators in “The Land of the Free” can’t legislate their morality, but they CAN make it more convenient, or fiscally appealing.
Most, if not all, of these preferences are sold to the American Public as being “for the benefit of Families” (i.e. Family=children.)
I say, let’s wipe ALL the marital preferences, and re-write the benefits so that they support the care of minors, and/or adult dependents. That way, the Government can remove itself entirely from the marriage process, and leave it up to the various religions to impose those restrictions they see fit.
The governmental overseeing of marriages was based on the supposition that women were incapable of caring for themselves. (Also, that taking her virginity greatly lessened her value to other mates.) In today’s society, I just can’t see how it’s rational. Let’s vigorously track PARENTS, registering them as responsible for the care of their children, and provide whatever benefits we need to as a society to promote their welfare.
It’s not just about the children, though. Marriage has long represented a unification of property, and this carries a whole whack of thorny issues whether the marriage involves children or not. Already, two people that have enough money and enough hatred can drag a divorce settlement through the courts for years. God only know what’ll happen when a group marriage breaks into factions, hence my proposed “legal partnership” approach.
Religion should have absolutely nothing to say about the institution of marriage, no more than atheism should. It should be between willing people and whichever deity they believe in.
As for law, it should be organized in the exact same way any law should be; equal rights for all, and the state should not impose restrictions upon people which is none of the state’s business.
In other words, just like gay marriage is a civic matter, so is polygamy. It’s not a matter of whether one’s particular belief system accommodates it or not. I’m an atheist and I still never intend to marry but one person, but if willing, adult people somewhere else wish to conduct polygamy, what business is it of mine? It’s really that simple, which business is it of mine?
Oh, and anyone who wants to back up their complete lack of arguments, evidence and reasoning by pointing to children and saying “oogabooga”, please don’t tell me about it, because this has nothing to do with the children. As human beings we accept the reality to which we are presented. The idea of polygamy or homosexual marriage having some dubious effect on children is mere superstition. The only negative effect from polygamy and homosexual marriage, is the impact the children receive from bigoted and prejudiced people because of their way of life. It’s not the polygamy or homosexuality themselves that cause the problems, but other people’s reactions to it.
Since the state has no right to interfere with the private matters of the family, the state shouldn’t even have a say in whether polygamy is okay or not. Under the law, marriage should be a strictly legal institution with no religious implications whatsoever.
It’s not a matter of religion, it’s a matter of civics.
Pardon my cognitive dissonance, but how is it that “marriage should be a strictly legal institution” and yet still “the state should not impose restrictions”? The whole point of having laws is the making of restrictions, defining what is legal and what is not, who has certain rights and who does not, and so forth. I can’t wrap my head around how you want marriage to be a “strictly legal institution” and yet there shouldn’t be any laws governing it.
As far as “think of the children!”: I’m about as far as you can get from Helen Lovejoy, but children still need to be considered here. Let’s say A marries B, and then A marries C. A has children with both B and C. What is C’s relationship to the children of A and B? Are they “stepkids”, “half-kids”, what? Let’s suppose C has a medical plan like mine, where all your kids are covered, whether you have one or ten, for a flat $150 a month. Could the family have the children of A and B put on C’s medical insurance? Could A marry C solely for that purpose? Let’s suppose they do that, and later A and C get divorced. Does C now have an obligation to provide medical care for the children of A and B? And before the divorce, as the provider of medical insurance for A and B’s children, does C, who has no blood relation to the children, get any say in the medical care they receive, choosing doctors, courses of treatment, and so on? How about after the divorce?
You see, in order to legalize multiple marriage, we’d have to think about all those contingencies and a whole lot more, because the law is supposed to cover all of those eventualities in the event that people don’t have legal agreements to cover them. That’s why we have probate codes: to provide a clear set of rules about what happens to a person’s property if they die without a will. For multiple marriage to be workable, hundreds of statutes would need to be rewritten to cover every possible contingency, because most people aren’t smart enough to write the contracts themselves or wealthy enough to have an attorney do it for them. Seriously, it’s amazing how thoroughly people can screw up their own lives if there aren’t clear rules in place. I just don’t see a way that the law can ever cover all the bases.
Yes, but as the arguments presented upthread have shown, we already have a complex legal code in place that tries to predict what “rules” a marriage should follow regarding property and disposition after death. In the U.S., some states differ slightly but on the whole, the default rule is that spouses are primary successor to each other’s intestate estate and share ownership in marital property. These rights can almost all be waived or changed using contracts, and in this sense marriage as a partnership does look a lot like a business entity. I agree that there isn’t any reason the laws can’t be slightly modified to say that marriage can be between a man and a woman, a man and a man, or a woman and a woman. Polygamy just looks too complicated to work, since all the default rules would not apply, and I seriously don’t know how our state legislatures would even begin to deal with it.
But the whole point it to make it the state’s business when someone wants a third party to recognize the marriage. Can you get an insurance company to cover your spouse, if the government doesn’t require it by law? Can you get a hospital to follow your orders regarding the health care of your injured spouse? Can you and your spouse file joint taxes if the government doesn’t allow it?
Draw up whatever contracts you like, make them as thick as phone books if you want, and that’s fine as long as the marriage only exists (and only matters) for you and your spouse(s). As soon as you want some third party to play along, though, you’re going to need to state to back you up, and that makes it their business.
I want to be in favor of group marriages…but there are issues. I know…just because something is hard and/or fuzzy is no excuse to not allow it.
However…there are just so MANY issues!
If male A married Female B…can Female B marry Male C without A’s permission? I don’t see why…A should have veto rights. So B can have an affair with C or divorce A and marry C…so how is that different from what we have now?
Can Female B ‘date’ without A’s permission. I would assume so…but it seems a bit strange.
Now these above 2 are probably just my ‘culture’ talking. Someone entering into this type of union is different from me and will not have this issues, I could see that.
However…let’s continue.
Male A marries Female B…Female B marries Male C (with A’s permission). Male A wants to marry Female D…and B agrees but C does not. Does Male A need to divorce Male C? How does he do that if he really loves and wants to stay married to Female B?
Ok…culture again…maybe they need to have a powwow and Female B has to make a choice…to support Male A or Male C and, if necessary divorce one.
Ok…possibly…I can see this.
However, let’s continue.
Male A marries Female B who then later Marries Male C (With A permission) Male C then marries Female D (With A & B’s permission)…what is the relationship between A and D? Do they have sex? If no…than how is that ‘married’? A and D are ‘not as married’ as A and B are.
Ok…duck…culture again…maybe this isn’t as bad as I think.
Ok…we continue…
A marries B marries C marries D as above. Male A then Marries Female E. They then proceed to pump out 10 babies (just between A and E). 
What is the relationship between Male C and Female E’s children? Is C the father? Does C have responsibilities to E’s children? If not, why not? He is the father or he is not the father. What if he divorces the group…does he have to pay child support? If not, and the remaining group can’t afford it without welfare…why shouldn’t he be liable?
If he isn’t liable…then what the freakin hell does ‘marriage’ mean???
Now change Male C above with Female B…
This is just a taste…
Why would being unmarried cause men to be more prone to poverty and violence?