What does “polyamourous” mean? What is it other than behavior? What is innate about it? What makes it a “class?”
Federal marriage benefits are not a fundamental right.
The same arguments were made for anti-gay marriage. I mean, “Adam & Steve want to get married — what about the children!!!”
If two (or more) consenting adults enter into a contract, seriously? Who are we to say that’s ‘not right’? How about we go and legislate against misogyny? Shall we ban religion?
Tell that to the Human Rights Campaign.
Where do you believe the US Constitution says that federal marriage benefits are a right?
The rights in question have to do with equal protection and due proces, not marriage per se.
That’s the major requirement.
No, but they decide what they want to do about it. And have we not decided for all teens that monogamy is how they’ll live their lives?
All divorce results in some harm. This premise is silly.
This is the exact same shit I hear from people who want to make it harder for people to get divorced!!
All the legally recognized polygamy I know of is polygyny of the specific type that one single man may enter into multiple distinct marriages with different women. The women have no direct relationship to each other, just to their husband. Each wife is part of separate marriage. The husband also has extremely disproportionate power over the relationships. Both of these simplify the legal aspects dramatically.
Technically, it discriminates against married people.
Thank you for echoing the Conservative Right.
Unfortunately for you, the law is making it clear that marriage is a civil right, and the government has the duty to not interfere in such things.
As you pointed out in another thread, Loving v. Virginia said that the right to marry is indeed a civil right, as it is essential to the ‘pursuit of happiness’. This extends to the mentally retarded as well.
edit: What I cited was part of the 14th Amendment.
That doesn’t mean it has to happen here. Proponents are talking about a marriage in which ALL partners are in agreement. That is the fundamental difference between proposed polygamy here and the kind practiced in inherently misogynist societies.
Somehow we manage with two-person marriages, even though men are favored and women disadvantaged in the same arrangement elsewhere. India comes to mind.
I have no strong views on polygamy one way or the other.
The US is in the business of offering a 2 person marriages. Excluding people from being able to participate in that offer based on their sex is discriminatory. I think it is the correct role of the Judiciary to demand we be non-discriminatory in how those contracts are issued. If people want gay marriages to be excluded I feel they need to pass a constitutional amendment specifying that kind of discrimination will be allowed. I’d oppose such a law.
The US does not offer marriages for multiple people. No one is being excluded from polygamous marriages because they do not exist. I think the courts can fairly determine no discrimination is taking place. If people want the state to offer polygamous marriages I feel the Judiciary is the wrong place. I feel the legislature needs to pass a law to create a polygamous marriage category. I’m not opposed to them doing so.
What about the children? We already deal with custody in two-parent marriages all the time.
If a woman leaves a polygamous relationship and wants to take her two kids can the rest of the family gang up on her to fight her? Say she should not take the kids from their brothers and sisters (or half-brothers and sisters)? Also, the woman almost certainly cannot get half the marital assets. If there are three women and one man she gets 25% and in many cases that is not enough to live. What about child support? Since there are eight kids staying the woman gets a fraction of what ordinarily would be possible again making it difficult to impossible for her.
Yes kids in divorce are hurt. Here you are adding a whole new raft of problems and, frankly, arranging things such that the woman choosing to leave becomes much more difficult. She is more stuck than she would be in a two-person marriage. Back in the 50’s women were stuck in bad marriages because they could be kicked-to-the-curb easily without sufficient portions of the marital assets. This is a good thing in your view? I thought a return to those days would be a bad thing.
(And yes it can be one woman and multiple men but let’s face it…the majority will be one man with multiple women.)
We do legislate against misogyny. Discrimination on the basis of sex is rarely allowed. A man may personally hate women but he cannot discriminate on that basis legally.
I disagree. It’s a civil right not to be discriminated against on the basis of sex. That alone should be sufficient to allow same sex marriages since there are benefits to being married. The government provides benefits to heterosexual couples that it does not to homosexual couples, thereby discriminating against the members of the homosexual couple.
If the state just decided to say “Screw it, there’s no such thing as marriage any more in the eyes of the government.”, then same sex couples and heterosexual couples would be treated equally by the law and we’d be having different arguments. Everyone could call themselves married to whomever they wanted. Churches and social organizations and random strangers could hold marriage ceremonies for whatever group makeups they so desired. It wouldn’t matter. There’s no civil right to be married. There’s a civil right to not be denied benefits based on your sex.
People who love more than one person at a time.
This is exactly what people said about homosexuality (and some still do).
Any objective anthropologist will tell you that there is nothing innate about monogamy. That polyamorous relationships are just as “natural”. In fact, most societies that have existed have been polygamous. Monogamy is a recent invention in the history of our species.
In theory I agree with you. But it will make things much more complicated. In those other countries divorce is easy because the man can just tell any of his wives they are divorced, give her the mandated payment, and decide who gets the kids. He doesn’t even need a court, just say it publicly three times.
Suppose here we do it so anybody can marry and consensual adult in any arrangement. You could end up with a five person group (gender doesn’t matter) with A married to B and C, B married to A, C, D, and E, D married to B and C, and E married only to B. Now what happens to assets when D wants to divorce B and marry F? What happens if E gets sued? Can the court take assets that A brought into the marriage, even though A is not married to E? After all, if E is married to B than their assets are joint, and so are A and B’s.
Egypt is still secular (as of this writing) and allows polygamy, though of the one man many women variety. Divorce is legal and not hard to get. However, if the man initiates the divorce the wife get some of the assets, while if the woman does she gets nothing. In this model polygamy is bad for women since husband get the benefits of marriage from the other wife or wives, and thus a now undesired wife is frozen out. However it would not be hard to make this more equitable here.
The only good argument against I can come up with is an economic one. Relatively rich people (men and women) would accumulate spouses, freezing out relatively less wealthy people. If men and women had equal wealth this might not be a problem, but we know that isn’t true. (And I’m talking wealth, not just income.) We have an age problem also, in that older men would accumulate many young wives. Today there is serial polygamy, but the abandoned spouses (many of them named Gingrich 
) are back on the market.
Writing this, I’m surprised Republicans are not in favor - it is in the Bible and and it is good for the rich.
I don’t really care one way or the other. If they are consenting adults, then so be it.
How the “rights” would work is another headache entirely. With 1138 rights, I’m not sure how such a marriage could be constructed.
If a bunch of people want to try to figure it out, I say go for it, make it legal.
They could couple it with support for flogging (see the recent thread) and make it a two-fer!
Same sex marriages also don’t exist in most states. Are you saying that those people aren’t being discriminated against? 
No, you could have it in such a way that person A and B get married, but B can’t get married to another without A’s consent. That’s the fundamental difference that (most) Western polygamists want to see.
It’s a marriage in which all partners are equal.
Well, that’s no different than a dowry. Arguably, rich man have an easier time finding a wife. Who cares? If you can afford 'em, marry 'em.