For something on the order of 50+ years, many hick towns in GA made their money via speed traps.
Jimmy Carter, as Governor, set up trailers on State-owner property near the courthouses in these burgs and staffed them with lawyers to challenge the tickets.
It worked.
I can see Feds-in-a-Box coming to a Recorder’s Office near Sen. Cruz. The boxes would have a direct line to the local Federal District Justices.
Let’s see how many of those “pro-bono” lawyers have the guts for a Fed case.
Yep, much of the power in the right to marry is its exclusivity, and many of the benefits that accrue have been able to accrue only because we can only marry one person at a time. To use a simple example: Here in California, if I go rent a car, I can get my husband included as an authorized driver with no extra charge. If someone could go in with a dozen husbands, this little perk would probably be done away with. (I think it’s statutory.)
Things like spousal immunity, joint filing for taxes, avoidance of transfer tax, certain legal rights, etc. would be eradicated if I could marry as many people as I wished. Some things are tenable only because their universe is limited. Start changing the rights of existing marriages in order to add polygamous marriage and you’ll really be dealing with “their marriage is hurting mine!”
Seen any poly pride parades lately?
I don’t think you seriously want to try to argue that no poly people want government or societal sanction.
[Hijack]
I just wanted to point out that one of the attorneys who took their case(s) to the Supreme Court, Dan Canon, is a good friend of mine. We used to play in a band together.
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I don’t think AB’s point was “we shouldn’t do it because it’s complicated”; what I got, at least, was “there are differences between same-sex marriage and poly marriage that make the former a weak argument for permitting the latter.” Poly marriage is more different from dyadic marriage than SSM is from DSM.
And you’ve spoken to each and every person so situated, have you?
I mean, that used to be said about – and occasionally by – people in same-sex relationships*. Turned out a certain amount of that was making a virtue of necessity.
I’m sure there are some people in poly relationships pour epater les bourgeoisies, but I suspect a majority lover their partners.
*Even as the struggle for marriage equality has been going on for about four decades.
Right. The reason there are bright line ages is that it’s too hard to make a case-by-case determination, even though it unfairly deprives people of rights they could otherwise have.
We have gone round this poly marriage vs. SSM comparison before. Removing laws against it? Easy and should be done, IMO. Bring it up to the legal status of current state sanctioned marriage? Complex, and I would need to see specifics and hear from the poly community before supporting it. I don’t want things like immortal marriages where every time one spouse dies a new spouse is added keeping wealth locked up forever.
It is far from impossible, and I don’t think it is inherently immoral or coercive, but I also don’t think legislatures need to spend a lot of time and money figuring out how it should work. If you want a it to be legal, make a suggestion for how it should work and then get shop it around to the poly community. Same sex marriage was simple and straight forward to enact, and it had vocal group pushing for it. Neither of those things can be said for poly marriages.
And that can’t be done with monogamous marriages?
So, something needs a “vocal group” pushing for it in order to be right? Funny, I thought all it took was a single group challenging the law. Anyway, this is all probably a hijack, so I’ll let it go at that.
Not really. The marriage ends when someone dies. Then a new marriage is entered into. And, yes it would be possible to keep transferring a fortune down the line that way, but it would be unlikely and difficult. It would be much simpler and more likely in a multi-spouse arrangement. There was a specific example outlined in Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress that had a marriage that kept adding people down the line, until in the book the daughter or grand daughter (can’t remember which) of the original, now dead, founders joined. I doubt this will be common, but it is one of the many reasons I would want to see details.
How about start with a proposal? Posters who ask this question always seem to expect a lot of work and changes to federal and state law without evening defining how they want it to work. That was not the case with SSM. Change a few phrases and swap a few pronouns and job done. Poly marriages would require not just an entire rewrite of major portions of marriage law, but also revisions to the many other aspects of laws and regulations that marriage impacts. And it has to be done in a way that doesn’t change the way the law treats the vast majority of existing and future marriages between two people.
Doing that without creating a legal framework for polyamorous marriages would be the worst of both worlds.
I believe that the US Supreme Court issuing decisions other than on Monday and occasionally Thursday is rare. Any chance that the Friday release was to get it out ahead of the Gay Pride celebrations on the weekend?
Not really. Right now, in many places you can get fined, go to jail, or lose custody of your children if your neighbors report you are living in a house of ill-repute. Decriminalizing just means that it isn’t a crime to live like that. You can’t get a license, but nobody is going to bust down your door and haul you away. Utah’s law against multiple partners cohabiting and fornicating was struck down in 2013 Cite
It puts poly folks in a status similar to gays and lesbians after Lawrence v. Texas. They didn’t have the rights and privileges of marriage, but they didn’t have to hide in fear of prosecution.
Sorry to distract the polyamory fans (who really need to clean up those nasty old Renegade Mormons before they start their Pride Movement), I’ve got an update from Texas. As seen on KHOU this morning:
Our Republican County Clerk said he shares those religious scruples. (He had to be “cajoled” by our County Attorney into offering licenses to all.) Shouldn’t the objecting clerks wear special outfits?
It’s an inconvenience in Texas’s largest county; I wonder about the more rural counties with smaller staffs. And I wonder how most of the employees feel about their shirking co-workers.
Time to sue!
Don’t worry, you’re ahead of Louisiana, which still isn’t issuing any licenses to same-sex couples at all.
Pink triangle lapel pins.
Alternatively, we could be civil about the whole thing and give people time to adjust. Clerks: You need to issue marriage licenses to everyone or find another job. If you choose to not issue licenses to same-sex couples, we will accommodate you for X number of of months while you find other employment.
Why should they be accommodated at all? They are performing a purely clerical function. Should we accommodate clerks whose religious beliefs prohibit remarriage?
Was remarriage suddenly made legal today when it wasn’t yesterday?
Anyone applying for the job now knows that he or she (or whatever) has to offer licenses to same sex couples. Those on the job now didn’t know that when they signed up.
They knew they would be offering licenses to couples whose marriages might be inconsistent with their personal views.
