why would legal polygamy be such a problem?

Great Debates
41

Just as bad? No… I can’t get on board with that, and I have no moral objection (or even opinion, really) on bisexuality or open marriages or flexible group-sex arrangements, nor do I care about traditions or the effects on children or other bullshit arguments trotted out in anti-SSM screeds.

There’s an existing and well-established right for two persons to form a legal bond, which comes with numerous privileges. I don’t care in the least if the couple is in love (and wouldn’t want a government agent to have to evaluate the extent of said love); their emotional bond, if any, is of no legal relevance. Until quite recently, it was assumed that the couple would be of differing genders, but this left out people who wanted to pair-bond with someone of the same gender. Since legal distinctions based on gender have pretty much fallen away, there is no purpose in extending to one couple the right to legally bond (and gain the aforementioned privileges) while another couple is denied.

I don’t see how this does or should have a bearing on arrangements involving three (or more) people, regardless of their individual genders or orientations. It’s not like some three-person marriages of a particular configuration are permitted, while other configurations are not.

This is no way implies that I think two is some magical or perfect number ordained by God or whatever. It’s just that existing marriage law is written with two people in mind. Anyone who wants to advocate for polygamy at the very least should have some ideas on how it would be legally applied. This is a serious and critical step, not to be glossed over. So there’s a man in a marriage with multiple women (a configuration that is certain to be among the most common in a polygamy-legal society). The man dies. Do the women have any continuing legal obligation to each other? Suppose two of the women are bisexual (and thus in addition to being conjugal with the man, they were also with each other) but the third women is heterosexual (and had sex only with the man). Is there (or should there be) any legal significance to the third woman not consummating the marriage with the other two? Can the two bisexual women annul the marriage to the third woman, or was the marriage dissolved when the man died?

And this is just one scenario. Are distinctions to be made for group marriages where anybody can have sex with anybody versus ones where the pairings are more limited?

I don’t care in the least what arrangements the spouses make among themselves. My concern stems from instances where the spouses end up dealing with government agencies. Does spousal privilege exist and thus none of the spouses can testify about the others? Do they file their taxes as one big legal entity? If one of the spouses is a veteran, do his or her benefits extend to all the other spouses?

These are not issues where the courts or legislatures can just make up stuff as they go on a case-by-case basis.

42

While that’s true, if we establish that it is a legal right, then the law has to change to cover more complex arrangements. Is not surrogate motherhood a legal right, despite the very complex legal issues involved? A surrogate mother recently found she was carrying a baby with a cleft lip. The parents of the baby wanted her to get an abortion. She refused, now she has custody. And same sex marriages that produce children can also produce complexity. Many lesbian couples informally acquire sperm, which legally means the father is the father and the mother is the mother and the other lesbian partner has no legal rights despite marriage or civil union.

Since family law still only recognizes mothers and fathers, that law will have to be changed to accomodate gay marriage.

Lots of social changes and technological issues create complex legal problems that legislatures often fail to keep up with. That does not mean we ban the practices until legislatures can figure out how to handle them or just throw up our hands and ban it for the sake of simplicity.

43

I honestly don’t know what the current legal status is regarding surrogate motherhood - it was my lay understanding that the surrogate signed a contract to gestate genetic material supplied by donors and thus did not have a genetic relationship with the child. Whether or not any of this is a “legal right” (beyond the legal rights to form contracts in general)… I dunno.

Anyway, I’m aware there were numerous high-profile legal battles early on, most famously the Baby M case (I remember it in the news at the time - even then it looked like a ridiculously fucked-up situation), which was complicated by the fact that the surrogate mother was also the biological mother, and possibly that she was nuts.

Anyway, that’s a whole other can o’ worms. I’m not arguing that polygamy must be banned because it is complex, I’m arguing that the people advocating polygamy have to address that complexity. The transition from heterosexual-only marriage to orientation-nonspecific marriage is a pretty gentle one, even on issues of parentage, because of existing laws about adoption and fertility treatments and such where one (or both) spouses can be established as a legal parent despite no genetic connection to the child.

This is quite different from saying “okay, marriages can now be formed of three or more people.” Where’s the existing case-law on that? What does divorce mean for such arrangements, for example? In the example I gave earlier with a dead male spouse and three surviving female spouses, does the marriage legally persist? What if the women individually only ever had sex with the man and never with each other? What if they did? Is it or should it be relevant?

These are not flippant questions, thrown up to stall for time. They represent legitimate concerns that an acrimonious ten-person marriage can tie up a courtroom for years, especially if there is insufficient legal precedent on the books.

Don’t try to suggest I’m being unfair. You’re calling for a major game change. It is perfectly justifiable for me to ask you to describe the new rules you have in mind and not be satisfied if you don’t have any.

44

I don’t think you’re being unfair, I just don’t think the issues would be THAT complex. The real complexity would be in defining what plural marriages would be legal. My own idea would be that all parties would be married to each other.

Another issue brought up by the gay marriage debate is consensual incest. Gay marriage pretty much destroys the procreation basis of marriage, so there’s no longer any reason to bar close relatives from marriage.

You say that marriage doesn’t really need to be about love, and the history of marriage backs you up. But the modern definition of marriage and the emotional case for allowing gay marriage is based on mutual love. Logically, we don’t decide who we want to allow to be married and then define it narrowly to fit the definition of who we approve of pairing up. Rather, we must define what marriage is and allow all pairings or even groups that fit that agreed upon definition. And if the definition is consenting adults being in love, then that allows for plural marriage as well as incest.

45

Sure, which is why I suggested adapting the existing framework of partnership rather than marriage. Just like a law firm, a new partner can be brought in (presumably by majority vote of the current partners) and a current partner can leave (taking with them their fair share of the firm’s equity) and the partnership can continue on. Over time, the original members might all be replaced. The legal mechanisms through which partners can come and go (and presumably be tossed out) and how to manage the collective assets is already on the books. Just don’t expect to get the same set of rights and privileges as married couples currently do, because the structure being created is significantly different than marriage as currently practiced.

I guess not, for what it’s worth.

I don’t really care about the emotional case, truth be told. I favour the concept of equal treatment under the law as a general rule, and permitting hetero marriage while banning homosexual marriage struck me as contradictory to this concept, especially since nobody could ever explain to me why such a distinction should exist.

I suppose… but my current working definition is limited to two people. Not because I have some mystical reverence for the number two or a limited imagination, but because of the practical objections I’ve already described.

And in any case, this isn’t physics where an unresolved contradiction can destroy an entire theory. We can have two-person marriage while denying three-person marriage and the legal system will not crumble as a result. We don’t have to allow every possible case, even if it seems by our accepted definitions that we must.

Well, that’s not a definition I’d be comfortable trying to write into law, but no matter.

46

Oh, marriage law can definitely survive contradiction, used to be you couldn’t get married to a person of another race. However, when marriage has an accepted definition, and people wanting to get married meet that definition, then their chance of winning a legal challenge is pretty high. Thus, Loving vs. Virginia and the current cases before SCOTUS.

As for equal treatment, again, it depends on what marriage is for. If it is for procreative purposes, then there’s no violation of equal treatment to bar gays. traditionally, marriage has been a framework for raising children in a stable situation. It has long been considered superior to raising kids any other way.

I believe gay marriage should be allowed because we’ve moved away from that definition. But those who stick to that old definition or who want to move it back in that direction might have a different view.

Personally, I think marriage is so devalued as a concept it’s not even worth defending. Gays didn’t ruin traditional marriage, Henry VIII did.

47

Polygamy often leads to the abuse of young women who are, young and vulnerable, drawn into polygamous marriages in which they are never true equals with their spouse and often dominated by older wives. Even if they are at the age of consent, they usually don’t realize what they are getting into and end up trapped in a situation they would not have chosen had they been more mature and aware. Polygamists tend totarget younger and younger women, so it can even be that women below the age of consent are exploited, sometimes with parental consent: i.e., parents giving consent for young daughters to enter into a multiple marriage.

48

LOL Right.:dubious:

49

And only opposite genders can marry each other. If we change that law, why can’t we change the common law and allow contracts between people and animals or furniture?

I’m not saying I agree with the slippery slope in this case, but the guffaws and eye rolls when people say that marriage to dogs are next in line are not warranted because in both cases we are talking about changing the law.

Of course there is no capacity to contract now, but that could be changed by law.

50

Two fucking mothers in law.

51

Well…yeah, kinda. I will admit that it was the gay marriage fight that raised the question in my mind. Marriage is the legally and socially recognized bond of one man and one woman, we were told in the press. If “man” and “woman” are arbitrary and can be changed, why can’t “one”?

Agreed. Yet:

…you seem well fixated on *sex *as a defining characteristic of marriage. Who’s fucking who is not my business, in anyone’s marriage but mine! Do we really want a government agent to have to evaluate the extent of said sex? “Honey, this nice man from the government says you can’t have a headache tonight!” :smiley:

Seriously, though…not everyone is having sex in monogamous marriages, either. We don’t require sex for marriage to be legal anymore, although we do tend to assume it will happen at some point.

And yes, like you, I think the model should be corporate law, not current marriage law. The only real reason to press for calling it marriage is for social recognition and acceptance, and we’re at least 30 years away from that. (I think. But I was wrong in my prediction of the timeline for gay marriage, so what do I know?)

I think one thing we should consider in these decisions (and yes, I agree there would be many, and not all easy) is what we allow for sequential spouses now. Many Americans are not truly monogamous, but serially monogamist. This enters law whenever a divorced person remarries. Some of their spousal benefits are reserved for only their current spouse. In those cases, we need to look at the benefit and see if it needs to be assigned or shared in a poly marriage. Other benefits are applied to current and former spouses, and then a strong case is made for making them applicable to multiple spouses within a single marriage.

I think sometimes people make this more complicated in their own heads than it would be in reality. Real life sultans with harems are exceedingly rare. My experiences with polyamorous USAans in long term relationships - the ones we’d most likely see taking advantage of legal polygamy - we’re talking three or four people. Five is unusually large for a long term stable configuration. Six and you start getting into weird semicults that don’t much give a fig for government regulation anyhow, and would probably rather not be on record at the County Clerk as it’s too “on the grid”.

Three or four people is how many parents and stepparents many of us grew up with. It’s how many ex and current wives many “monogamous” men have. We’ve figured out how to make this stuff work with people who despise each other; we can figure it out for people who are actually motivated to work together. :slight_smile:

52

A few people have said that a marriage is just a contract between two (or possibly more) people. Well, it’s not - it’s also a contract with the rest of society and herein lies the rub: everything that is interpersonal could possibly be worked out, but what about questions of insurance, pensions or benefits? Inheritance issues and emergency rights have also been adressed, but there’s a whole lot of things that apply to married couples that would be very messy to implement with three or more people. The whole way the system works would probably have to be reworked, and as has been pointed out there is so far not a significant enough number of people with a workable idea.

To clarify: I’m in no way against a polyamorous lifestyle, but to claim that the legal question of poly marriage is as easy to fix as SSM is very disingenious.

53

And has anyone claimed that?

54

Maybe not, but you always say: “We’ll work it out!” I’d really (no snark!) like to hear some concrete ideas to address the issues raised.

55

That’s entirely reasonable. But I think you should hear them from someone more educated than me, 'cause my interest in the issue is fairly shallow and unrefined. http://news.wustl.edu/news/pages/22447.aspx

56

Thank you for the link. It was interesting, but it didn’t really answer anything either. The article poses pretty much the same questions we are talking about and says: “It works in the business world.” I also disagree (as the article says) that a man fathering children with multiple wives is even close to a polyamorous relationship with possibly children being created (in a, say, two men, two women scenario) by as many as four distinct couples in an existing legal entity. (Say C wants to leave the ABCD family. He fathered a child with A and B, who both also have children from D. How would you work out that custody nightmare?) That doesn’t even begin to talk about people bringing in children from previous relationships. Issues like pensions are also not touched upon in the article.

Thank you for being so understanding, too.

57

Well, the Netherlands and I believe Brazil have already allowed plural civil unions with three members. We’ll learn from what they do about it.

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/301

Meanwhile in the Netherlands polygamy has been legalised in all but name. Last Friday the first civil union of three partners was registered. Victor de Bruijn (46) from Roosendaal “married” both Bianca (31) and Mirjam (35) in a ceremony before a notary who duly registered their civil union.

“I love both Bianca and Mirjam, so I am marrying them both,” Victor said. He had previously been married to Bianca. Two and a half years ago they met Mirjam Geven through an internet chatbox. Eight weeks later Mirjam deserted her husband and came to live with Victor and Bianca. After Mirjam’s divorce the threesome decided to marry.

Victor: “A marriage between three persons is not possible in the Netherlands, but a civil union is. We went to the notary in our marriage costume and exchanged rings. We consider this to be just an ordinary marriage.”

Asked by journalists to tell the secret of their peculiar relationship, Victor explained that there is no jealousy between them. “But this is because Mirjam and Bianca are bisexual. I think that with two heterosexual women it would be more difficult.” Victor stressed, however, that he is “a one hundred per cent heterosexual” and that a fourth person will not be allowed into the “marriage.” They want to take their marriage obligations seriously: “to be honest and open with each other and not philander.”

58

What does a civil union in the Netherlands entail? Are there any rights bestowed upon the unionees in terms of government benefits and the like? Or is it basically just a piece of paper? I’d be really curious to learn how they deal with some of the issues that may arise if this gets more common.

59

I don’t see how the bisexual has a stonger claim to society’s validation than the guy with three wives, especially since polygyny is way more prevalent. We’ll stipulate that the man in question really loves them all, plus his religion and his culture encourage the practice and he’s just “being who he is.” Are you prepared to argue on his behalf too?

60

It gives some ideas. That’s the stage we’re at, really. Ideas. I don’t think we’ll be at “answers” for some time yet.