Why the hell does everything in life have to be fair ? Why not just, or right, or beautiful ? Fairness is frivolity, and frivolity will be America’s downfall.
How would children work out? Does every person in the house have rights as a “parent”. Ex. in taking kids to the doctors and such?
Fair enough, but traditional polygamy fails any of the other tests you’ve proposed.
I’m polyamorous.
I haven’t spend much time thinking about marriage for poly folks. I don’t value the institution and I’m not beating my fists against the doors of it trying to get in. I think poly people should make their own separate standalone legal arrangements — incorporate or whatever, customize the terms to fit their situation, etc. I do think any barriers to setting up your own home-rolled legal arrangements and having them be binding on social institutions (hospitals, schools, state governments, etc) should be brought down, but in all honesty I haven’t researched what those barriers would happen to be.
Do I also think poly people ought to be able to marry if we want to, even though I personally have no interest? I suppose. I’m awfully leery of a preformed legal covenant being dropped down over poly people in general and perhaps regulating us in ways I wouldn’t much appreciate.
Here’s a study that suggests at one point patriarchal polygamy was taken to an extreme: that a surprisingly small percentage of men were the ancestors of most Europeans. It’s actually possible that there were societies consisting solely of warriors, their harems, and their eunuch slaves*. :eek:
*not dissimilar to high school. 
I know cases today where the biological father and husband are different people; in those “right” usually follows the gene pool. Another example would be surrogacy where “right” follows the womb and to some extent the sperm. So there really doesn’t need to be much new law written. As for care and nurturing such as your example, it would be the same crap shoot it is with two parents. Again, no big change from the idea of “marriage” I grew up with.
I don’t know. Are the majority of posters against it? This thread is hardly a scientific sampling of the members here. But note that many of the folks against it are taking the “liberal” position that polygamy is a way for men to exploit women. I reject that premise. It can be true, but it needn’t be. It’s similar a certain type of “liberal” position against pornography and prostitution. Surely you’re familiar with that, no?
No, they don’t. Just to take one example, corporations don’t get survivor social security benefits. Should all parties to a polygamous marriage be entitled to survivor social security benefits?
Legal guardians don’t have to be parents. A friend of mine in high school had divorced parents. His mother remarried, then divorced again, and his step-father kept custody. The mother remarried (she was on number five in high school), the step-father remarried, the original father remarried. So he’s got two biological parents, two step-parents of biological parents and two guardians who are not parents (the ones he actually lived with).
I doubt any of the schools or doctors found this impossible to deal with.
Of course. Why not. Split equally.
That was not monumental, now was it?
Is anyone in this thread taking the position that polyamory is ONLY a way for men to exploit women?
My position, which I don’t feel is too far from the general consensus of most posters in this thread (granted it’s always dangerous to make assumptions like that and implicitly claim to be speaking for others) is that I’m concerned by the fact that fundamentalist-mormon-style-polygamy is something that has been alive and well and least quite recently, and is arguably exploitative and destructive. It is certainly very distinct from three-consenting-adults-in-Berkeley-all-love-each-other style polyamory.
Which doesn’t mean that my position is “there are some arguably exploitative poly relationships, therefore of course we can’t legalize it”. Rather, my position is that there are various non-trivial issues that need to be addressed. That’s why the issue is so different from gay marriage. There are basically literally ZERO meaningful arguments against gay marriage. It’s a total slam dunk. There are multiple substantive things that make legalizing poly marriage difficult. If someone proposes ways to alleviate or overcome them, I’m perfectly happy to listen to a specific proposal and form an opinion.
In addition, if there is a general outcry from poly folk talking about much they resent being treated as second class citizens, etc., and horror stories about hospital visitation rights being denied and so forth, they have escaped my notice entirely.
Bolding is mine
I’m sorry but as I’ve said in other related threads I don’t see much of a difference. The same basic arguments against pluralistic marriages closely mimic the arguments I remember being used against Same Sex. What about the children? What about the legal and financial ramifications? What about abuse with a dominant partner using marriage to entrap a more submissive partner? What about people using it fraudulently just for benefits? Maybe its just me but from the beginning of the debate I have always seen both SSM and pluralistic as equal slam-dunks.
The solution to the problems is easy; remember that in the end marriage is just a form of contract law. Just as any contract can involve multiple partners, so can marriage. And when it comes to abuses we’ve always had those even in old-fashioned straight relationships - phony marriages and abused children/spouses. Treat them as they should be treated for ALL people; swiftly and justly through the court system already in place.
As for the second-class thing – it’s very real and why some of the people I know in this situation are hoping they can be recognized as well; to be legally recognized as married. In other words, the horror stories do indeed happen. They don’t get the press or recognition they deserve because pluralistic is where SSM was 40 years ago; what is reported and dwelled on is the negative examples (some of the abusive “religious” examples) rather than the average non-nuclear family. Those are still forced into the closet the gays started moving out of in the 70s and beyond. I just hope we don’t make these people go through the years, fight and Hell that we forced same-sex partners to go through before we give them the recognition they deserve.
OK, so up until recently, only straight marriages were allowed. Then gay people wanted to get married. Well, what were the legal difficulties? None. Literally none. OK, they had scratch out “wife” and “husband” on the paperwork and replace them with “spouse” and “spouse”, but all the laws that govern everything were just unchanged. Even with children there was no difficulty. Any possible combination of “one person has joint custody of a biological child, then that person gets remarried” or “two people want to adopt a child together” or “there are two people who want a child, one gets pregnant via surrogacy” were already possible with a straight couple, and already had precedent and case law and so forth.
You say that a marriage is just a contract. Sure. But the thing is, all 2-person marriages are the SAME contract. Does every group of 5 people who want to enter a 5-person plural marriage want the same contract? Is there any reason to think that a fundamentalist Mormon with four wives wants the same contract with the same legal rights and responsibilities as a MF couple and a preexisting MMF threesome who all love each other very much and want to merge into a MMMFF household?
I firmly believe that consenting adults should be free to live however they like, and enter whatever contracts they like. But your claim that there are no obstacles at all to extending current 2-person marriage laws to n-person is just balderdash.
Max, I don’t think you understand marriage contracts very well. Even ignoring prenups, which give enormous latitude in redefining how the marriage works, every state in the nation has a slightly different definition of the marriage contract, with the biggest divide being separate vs community property.
First of all, not all two person marriages are the same contract. Laws differ from state to state and each marriage can easily differ from the norm of the state/society its made in. That is why we have prenups and like documents signed both before and sometimes after marriage. Many are financial but not all; some are more about the expectations each party brings into the relationship. Clearly even when we are talking 2 people, what “these” two people want and expect can differ from what “those” two people want and expect and current law recognizes and respects it. Why should five people being married be any different? Just change a couple words around and the problem is solved.
As for children; in a pluralistic divorce the standard should be the same as it should be in any case involving children; what is in the best interest of the child. See how easy it is?
No offense intended but your argument that there are huge differences or insurmountable problems is equally balderdash. Like SSM all pluralism requires is an open mind.
Any other objections you want to raise so I can shoot them down? I’ll be sure to check back here once I get home from work. 
Clearly you are the faster/better typist. 
Right, but those vary between states. When my wife and I got married, we just said “give us a marriage contract”. We didn’t choose between bunches of different options. We didn’t have to specify how the contractual obligations would work for our particular number of participants and the relationships between them.
Look, I’m not saying that these problems are unsolvable. But I’m saying that they exist, in a way that they didn’t for gay marriage. Marriage, and the assumption that any one person has either zero or one spouses, not more, touches enormous number of institutions all over society. For gay marriage, maybe all those institutions had to be accepting of change, but they didn’t actually need to make any different accommodations or change any rules. For plural marriage to become legal, all sorts of things all over the place need to change.
Do you want those changes to happen? Great, I have no problem with that. Honestly, I don’t. I’m all for freedom and love. But to pretend that the changes would not exist, or that we should just kind of DO them without even knowing what they are or how they work (and in particular, without addressing the fact that different poly relationships might want them to work differently) is just silly.
You mean a straight marriage between a man and a woman of the same “color.” Interracial marriage was regarded with the same suspicions that same sex marriage is regarded today. Indeed, I’d bet people against it would say “Next thing you know, they’ll allow two MEN to get married.”
But, no, we should keep marriage between two consenting adults.
Spousal survivor benefits aren’t that simple.
The surviving spouse gets the greater of two amounts–the spousal benefit or the survivor’s own Social Security benefit. The two are not additive.
So today, Spouse A may work full time and earn a lot of money, while Spouse B works occasionally and earns less. Then Spouse A dies. Spouse B is entitled to the greater of their own Social Security (say, $100 per month) or a survivor benefit as the deceased spouse of A. (say, $500 per month). Of course, they always choose the greater amount.
So now we have A married to both B and C. Say B is entitled to $100 per month on their own, and C $300. How do we “equally share” the survivor benefit? Do we say that each party gets half of the top-up to $500, so B gets $300 and C gets $400? Or do we halve the survivor benefit to $250, so A gets $250 and B continues to draw $300 based on their own employment?
The important thing isn’t how you answer this question, it’s that the question exists. It would need to be debated and legislated. With no change to current law, both B and C would get full survivor benefits of $500, which as a taxpayer and Social Security contributor I would find objectionable.
The difference is that with gay marriage there was:[ul]
[li]Little proof that gay marriage had higher rates of abuse than straight marriage[/li][li]A lot of proof that a lot of people were buying harmed by not being able to have gay marriages[/li][/ul]
While with polygamist marriages:
[ul]
[li]Lots of instances of people being harmed by polygamist marriages[/li][li]Not as much proof of people being harmed by not being able to have polygamist marriages[/li][/ul]
Of course, the polygamist marriages that have instances of abuse are those from polygamist cults, so you can’t just say that the polygamist marriages are causing the abuse, it’s obviously tied into the cult behavior.
I’ve said this before in another thread here, but gay marriage became law because gay people were fighting for it, and more straight people got to know gay people and see what their relationships were like and supported the fight. But almost every single time I see legalization of polygamist marriages brought up, it’s either conservatives talking about slippery slopes or people trying to play gotcha to gay marriage supporters.
I’m not totally against polygamist marriages, I just think it’s mostly a non-issue. Now that gay marriage is legal, it doesn’t mean that polygamist marriages are the next issue, there are still plenty of other LGBT issues that need to be worked on, as well as other human rights issues.
I know that there are some in the polygamist cults/religious groups who want it legalized or at least further decriminalized, but I don’t know in those cases what would help the community the best. I don’t know if legal plural marriages would make it easier for the young women and men of their communities to choose what they want to do with their lives and education, or if it would make it harder for them to disentangle their lives if they choose to leave.