Okay, so the answer to that one is easy: . . . because its benefits to society are precisely the same as heterosexual marriage, and to deny the same arrangement to gays is discriminatory.
You and jeevmon are quite correct in pointing out that the same argument is not nearly so cut and dried with plural marriages.
The de facto state of illegal or unsanctioned plural marriage in splinter Mormon groups, for example, is quite unsavory from an economic point of view, because it often involves a monthly bundle of welfare checks delivered to the “unmarried” women and their children.
The rights of multiple spouses in terms of tax breaks, job benefits, child custody, etc. . . . Well, they’d be pretty intersting to try to work out, to say the least.
Xtisme: Actually, I pretty much agree with your first post, so I think we’re more or less in sync on this. I meant to add that to my first post, but forgot.
The way I see it, if polygamy were legal in a country like the US, only a tiny, tiny minority would avail themselves of this option. Let’s be serious. Almost no men would join a polygynous marriage, and precious few women would opt for a polyandrous one.
Polygamy (especially of the polyandrous type) can only be common in societies where women have few rights or privilages and men control the resources. Or perhaps in fringe religious groups like fundamentalist Mormons.
From the blurb on Amazon, I’m guessing that the book “Under the Banner of Heaven” has to do with Mormons. Fundementalist Mormons at that. From what I’ve heard, the fringe Mormon’s idea of polygamy makes me cringe. It doesn’t really seem like a true form of a relationship to me, considering that many (most?) of the women are underage or coherced into it.
So… I think we can all agree that polygamy as defined by the fringe Mormons is a bad idea and should be actively opposed. Now… What about my polyamorous relationship? The one with three consenting adults who truely wish to support and love one another? What is so wrong with this relationship that it needs to be stamped out? Why shouldn’t there be some type of civil union available to take care of the legal speedbumps for inheritance, healthcare, child custody and the like?
I see it as a good idea to have civil unions available for gay and polyamorous relationships. It would automatically clear up the question of who gets what when one partner dies. No courts, no questions, no disapproving relatives dragging things out. It would automatically clear up who will raise any childern from the union (the remaining member(s)). It would provide for healthcare of the union partners through the option that is already available (your employers higher priced “family” option). Fewer uninsured adults and their childern is a good thing.
In my instance, it makes one stable, productive, tax paying household out of three seperate entities. One of which would have been stable even if single, one who would be a charity case at the hospital due to medical problems (thank God for domestic partnership med ins), and one who would probably be wondering from town to town sleeping on whose ever couch was convenent at the time. I think society is better off having us together as one.
Yes, I know we can accomplish many of these things under current law with the help of a savy lawyer. But it can still be contested and overturned by family members. It would be nice to get all these things settled simply by signing a marriage license like everyone else. I could give a damn about the supposed tax breaks.
Because the cost of providing those benefits greatly exceeds the societal benefits of providing them. And how would you decide who gets to make medical decisions? Does the decision to turn off life support go to the first spouse? The most recent spouse?
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Except for those providing the insurance. Remember, insurance costs somebody money, usually several people. Which is precisely the point I made above. Domestic monogamous homosexual partner benefits don’t impose a cost on an employer that is any greater than monogamous heterosexual partner benefits. Polygamous partnerships do. Indeed, opening things up to polyamory would probably end up increasing the cost of insurance for everyone. Take a simple example - a monogamous man and woman can produce a reasonably predictable number of children in a given span, given that while the woman is pregnant with one child, she can’t get pregnant with another, the fact that most births are single rather than multiple, and that there is usually some delay between the birth of one child and the conception of another. In a relationship with one male and multiple females, the family can potentially produce a greater number of children in the same time. As a result, the insurance company is going to have to account for potentially greater expenses in prenatal costs and early childcare costs than it might otherwise have to account for. And premiums will go up for more people than are actually in polyamourous relationships.
I also don’t see a legislatively mandated “one size fits all” policy adequately governing the issue of decisionmaking in the event of one spouse’s incapacitation. A mandate that, for example, the oldest or most senior spouse automatically gets decisionmaking power may not be a good fit for some households. While the issue could, of course, be taken care of with medical powers of attorney, one of the legal benefits of civil unions/ marriages/ whatever is that it provides a default position. For monogamous households, this is easy. For polyamourous households, it is not as easy because there are more people involved, making a single legislatively mandated solution more complicated.
Well, obviously as someone in a polyamorous relationship, you would benefit. But that’s not really the point. The point is that extending the legal benefits of marriage to your arrangement imposes costs on the rest of society, and the appropriate question is whether those costs exceed the benefits of recognition. In the case of monogamous homosexual relationships, there is no meaningful cost difference in granting those relationships the same legal rights that would accrue to heterosexual spouses. So the only reason for denying gays the right to form civil unions is homilies about “man and woman complimenting each other” and so forth. But granting legal sanction to polyamorous relationships imposes greater costs and creates issues that cannot be resolved simply by legislation.
I’m not denying the right of people to live in polyamorous relationships, assuming no coercion, but I don’t think that the value of extending the benefits of marriage to polyamorous relationships as an aggregate exceeds the aggregate cost, personal anecdotes aside.
I think jeevmon has made the best points so far. My original purpose for posing this question was to see if anyone had any logical refutation for polygamy or could defend or refute it from a moral point of view. As I said in the intial post, and as seems to be the case so far with just about everyone else, there doesn’t seem to be much argument against in from those angles.
The second part of the question was what legal hurdles it would involve, and jeevmon illustrates some very straighforward ones that would require serious thought. They seem to provide a significant reasoning for refusing polygamous marriages (at least in your average Western democracy), but perhaps they could be overcome.
As for ethics, my reference to them earlier is in the sense that a legal marriage is considered binding, wherein the parties involved agree to commit to each other exclusively, and in the sense of polygamous marriage, the same agreement would apply to all parties. Thus, relations outside the marriage would be considered unethical/immoral in the general abstract sense, though there may well be individuals who don’t think so. That doesn’t change the general perspective, though.
I’m not trying to be clever here, I really want to know. While I suspect there is some, I have yet to see any actual analysis and data that suggests this to be true.
Frankly, for some things, this is manifestly not true. For example, promoting heterosexual marriage is perceived a social benefit because it encourages a more stable home life for children. Kids raised in stable two-parent families, for example, are less likely to be poor.
And don’t give me that tired canard about how some two-parent families are made up of gay couples. Yes, they are, but so what.? The majority of married straights will have children, the majority of gay couples will not. Remember, we’re making social policy here so counter-examples are useless. We’re taking about how some particular policy will effect society in the aggregate and whether that effect is worth the costs necessary to achieve it.
For those arguing that insurance costs would increase, you are making that assumption that the law requires companies to offer insurance coverage to spouses. It doesn’t. That is done at the employer’s option, and the amount of coverage varies from employer to employer. We could have legalized polygamy and companies could simply opt to continue medical coverage of the “primary” wife, or whatever.
You’re making one big false assumption here: that gay people, on the whole, don’t want to have kids. Right now a lot of gay people don’t have kids, but thats not the same thing. In multiple states of the USA, gay adoption is insanely difficult or just flat-out illegal. In the places were it is legal, it is often insanely expensive. The government and society encourages straight people to have kids, and discourages gay people from having or adoptiong them. I, for example, would be absolutely thrilled to adopt a child down the road (I’m 19 now and single, so not exactly the best idea). If two person same-sex adoption were much less expensive, I think you’d find quite a few gay people who want to nurture young life.
I live in Utah (though I rarely admit it) And I guess polygamy is often a big issue here. Well not really that big, but it is one of those topics that exists just below the surface and everybody tends to know everything (or thinks they know everything) about it.
The thing is, I don’t care if a person is in a plural marrage or not. That is there own personal business, and I don’t see anything immoral about it.
Of course in my not so humble opinion they should not involve young girls or leach of the government (via welfare checks and social security), and thus we should keep a firm eye on some of the communities for those.
(Though it is the case of the vicious circle - some of these polygamist communities wouldn’t marry such young girls if they where allowed to be more open in society - though I admit there is still a bunch of fuckers that get their jollys off on them so those people I say lock up).
But still, if they are constenting adults, then I believe it is not my business - or the governments. And I don’t buy into any of this slippery slop argument - heck I say allow gay marriage. I support that 100%
Nope, guess not. I guess it follows that the U.S. government has no interest in encouraging gay marriage and shouldn’t do so. So no joint tax filing for gays, no tax breaks on inheritance, etc. After all, as far as government social policy is concerned it is a matter of complete indifference whether gay couples stay together or not. Right?
** Priam it is a matter of undisputable fact that gay marriage is going to produce far fewer offspring than heterosexual marriage. To make the case for fully-recognized gay marriage, you have to come up some argument demonostrating that it is worth the cost it will impose on society. These costs are not trivial. I haven’t time to work out an actual estimate just now, but my back-of-the-envelope WAG is that just allowing gay couples to file joint tax returns would mean lost tax revenues across the U.S. in the billions of dollars.
If you really want to make the case based on married gays wanting to adopt children, your going to have a tough time of it. I’m not saying that it is impossible, just that it is difficult. Keep in mind that actual orphans aren’t very thick on the ground in the U.S… There are a fair number of older children with difficult pasts and often with special needs. Unfortunately, hardly anyone gay or straight wants to adopt them.
I need to make the case for the government so generously extending me some or all of the rights given to my heterosexual counterparts? Do heterosexual couples wishing to marry past the age of menopause somehow have to provide their justifications? We’re probably talking roughly (need to investigate) the same percentages of marriages, going on the figures in Vermont and countries which have granted same-sex marriage rights (around 3%). Indeed, the median age of first marriage is rising, so probably the number of those getting married around or after menopause is also on the rise.
Gay couples, though we may never reproduce, still desperately need many of the rights freely extended to straight couples who never reproduce. We’re talking about things beyond tax breaks which can not be provided through any other legal document. I hadn’t realized the allegiance of this country had changed from “…One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” to “Whats in it for me?”.
I thought the OP was about polygamy, and this sidetrack is very odd considering that you’ve already acknowledged that your belief that the societal benefits probably do exist for gay marriage in a way that do not exist for polyamorous relationships. But if you need evidence of types of benefits:
Couples tend to have greater financial resources than single people. In fact, I would be curious to see if there is a study as to the average household income of gay households, where both partners are probably working, as compared to heterosexual households, where one spouse is more likely to be a stay-at-home parent. As a simple example, two people may have the resources to purchase a home where one of them alone would not, especially in high priced areas like the Bay Area, New York, Chicago, etc. Two people also may have a greater ability to purchase more costly durable goods (e.g. cars) than single people. The economy as a whole benefits when more people buy things, particularly expensive things like homes and durable goods. And the availability of the marital estate tax exemption is one incentive (albeit among many) that encourages people to make these kinds of purchases. If we assume that home ownership by anyone is a positive societal good, and that the marital estate tax deduction encourages home ownership by providing tax free treatment to marital property (including the marital home), why should this benefit be denied to homosexual partners?
Couples tend to be more rooted and settled than single people. After all, if you have committed to spending your life with someone, you can’t just up and leave as easily. It can be done, obviously, but on the whole, you move around less. People who are rooted and settled will invest in their communities. They will patronize local small businesses, participate in community events, pay taxes to support local schools and services, etc. Society encourages people to get married to create families (with or without children), which in turn form communities, which we view as a benefit. That benefit is not dependent on the gender of the participants.
Medical decisionmaking is another societal benefit because we believe that the quality of healthcare is improved when doctors treat patients according to the wishes of those who are most intimately and directly involved with them, and who therefore are presumed to have the patient’s best interests at heart. Denying this benefit to gay partners can cloud medical decisionmaking (because then it may not be clear who has the final say), or, worse, subject decisions about the patient’s care to those who may not be as closely connected to them as the person with whom they have had an intimate relationship for X months, and who therefore might not be as closely attuned to their interests. Yes, this can be taken care of with medical powers of attorney, but the institution of marriage or civil union provides a “default” position in these issues in case there is no such instrument.
Intestacy. Yes, we encourage people to draft wills, and they should, but intestacy statutes are designed to protect the property of the decedent in the event there is no will, in other words, to provide a default position absent the contrarily expressed intent of the decedent. In most intestacy statutes, the surviving spouse gets the full estate, which helps encourage marriage because even those who have not yet drafted a will or who cannot afford to draft a will are ensured that their spouses will get everything by default. Intestacy statutes serve the function of promoting orderly transfers of intestate estates and providing those closest to the decedent with the economic resources to support themselves (which we also support in order to reduce dependency on the state).
Child rearing. Some gay partners have children. If a gay partner who has a child dies, their partner, who has only the status of a “live in boyfriend” or “live in girlfriend,” would not automatically get custody or visitation rights, despite whatever bond may have formed between the partner and the child. Again, heterosexual spouses don’t even have to think about this aspect of things. Society has an interest in encouraging uncontested and orderly transfers of custody when custody has to be transferred.
I’m sure others could contribute other benefits. While child-rearing is one thing that recognition of heterosexual marriages supposedly encourages, the benefits of marriage for heterosexual couples exist even if they cannot or choose not to have children. So there is an interest in promoting stable monogamous relationships that extends beyond the issue of child-rearing.
And, as a final note, there is something quite odious about conditioning the availability of a legal benefit on the gender of the proposed beneficiary. Which is precisely what denying recognition to gay marriages does.
Please note, polygamy can work either way. Too many unmarried women? (On account of warlike society, or whatever.) Multiple wives, and if they’re of childbearing age, quick replenishment of the population. Preponderance of unmarried men? (On account of societal preference for sons, perhaps?) Multiple husbands. And big slowing of population growth (even without polygamy).
And I guess polygamy is often a big issue here. Well not really that big, but it is one of those topics that exists just below the surface and everybody tends to know everything (or thinks they know everything) about it.