So here is a thing that needs to be worked out. And it is important legally and financially. My assets and debts are my wife’s, and her’s are mine. If she had a husband that I was not married to, would I be responsible for his debts? Would his income affect my taxes? These are things that need to be resolved and it is not the responsibility of the disinterested to work it out.
SSM proponents really only had to say make the language sex neutral and remove the laws specifically disadvantaging same sex couples (banning adoption etc.). But for multiple spouses you either need a whole different structure (or more than one) or to scrap the construct entirely and go individual ad hoc arrangements for all.
The second option is a non-starter, so if you are pro-poly marriage I highly recommend that you get to work on defining how it should work. I have no direct stake in how it should work, but there are some things I would insist on to support it:
[ol]
[li]It needs to be fair to all parties.[/li][li]It needs to be gender symmetrical or neutral.[/li][li]It needs to address the needs of children.[/li][li]It can not affect the legal responsibilities, rights, or privileges of current marriages.[/li][li]If it give the legal rights and protections of marriage it must also confer the responsibilities.[/li][/ol]
If you think you can accomplish that, get to work, get it on the ballot and I will vote for it. But all of that is non-trivial. Marriage law was not created in a day. The changes needed will take some serious effort by knowledgeable people.
As I’ve said before, give me a digital copy of the laws and a search-and-replace function, and in ninety seconds I’ve fixed all the laws so that same-sex marriage is the law of the land.
But polygamous relationships can’t be done that way.
I absolutely support the legalization of polygamous marriages, and I find the arguments against them specious at best (for example, the argument that polygamous marriages are traditionally sexist implies that monogamous marriages are traditionally models of egalitarianism, which is absurd). However, I don’t support tying SSM to polygamous marriages right now, because of the logistical concerns. Let’s finish SSM, and then tackle the much trickier issue of polygamy.
It can be done; it’ll just take some more time and some more thinking through all the ramifications.
Well, is it still legally possible to annul a marriage on the basis that it had not been consummated? I admit it’s possible my information on this is out of date.
Yes. Please. I can easily picture a group marriage breaking up where one or more of the spouses seeks an annulment of the association with another specific spouse, claiming non-consummation. If it exists as a legal strategy, I figure inevitably someone will try to use it if they see an advantage in doing so.
Only if at least one spouse is in the military and the marriage took place by proxy. In addition to no consummation, there has to be no cohabitation and no treatment of the parties as husband and wife after the proxy marriage ceremony.
Other than military marriage by proxy, consummation isn’t considered for legal annulments. Religious annulments, of course, may have different rules.
The difference is that two adult men or two adult women have always been legally able to make all sorts of other contracts. They have merely been forbidden from making a particular kind of contract, i.e. marriage. Animals and furniture have never been considered capable of making any kind of contract at all.
In that case, I have to wonder about a group marriage in which some of the spouses live in different houses or even different cities, i.e. where a male spouse alternately visits the various female spouses - a configuration I think quite likely in a polygamy-legal society.
Really? Then who did? On mine it was me, my wife, two witnesses, and an officiant authorized by the state of California via the San Mateo County Registrars office. And mine is on file with said office as a public document. Any two people can agree to live as a married couple/trio/group, but if you don’t get the government (aka the duly appointed representatives of the whole of society) to sign off on it, you don’t get all those benefits and responsibilities.
Yes it is. But that is because children have a legally defined relationship that has been worked out in common law, legislation, and the courts for centuries which is different than a spouse’s. And it is still changing. Only recently has the law been changed to require insurance to cover children until 24. And children have no rights to your assets, just support until age 18. Spouses on the other hand share assets. For pensions, your children only get a piece of it if you die and you designate them beneficiaries (which could be any one), but a spouse can get a portion of it in a divorce. But what if you have two spouses and only divorce one? What if your spouse has another spouse? Since you share assets (including pensions) with your spouse and he/she shares assets with her/his other spouse, how much of your pension is that person entitled to?
And no matter how you do it, some group will be left out.
As said repeatedly, if you(or anyone)want polygamy recognized, then either show how not recognizing it violates the Constitution or draft some model statutes and get to lobbying. I won’t do it because I have no stake in the outcome. The poly people need to come up with something that meets their needs that the rest of us can accept.
What are the laws concerning the rights and responsibilities of a business partnership? If B and C have a falling out in an A/B/C equal partnership but want to remain partners with A, does the law have any say in what happens beyond the dissolution of the original partnership?
Just saw a stat that there are 500,000 polyamorous families in the US. If that’s true, then that’s a lot of people being denied equality.
Here’s a viewpoint I hadn’t heard before from a lesbian activist:
The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don’t think it should exist. And I don’t like taking part in creating fictions about my life. That’s sort of not what I had in mind when I came out thirty years ago.
I have three kids who have five parents, more or less, and I don’t see why they shouldn’t have five parents legally… I met my new partner, and she had just had a baby, and that baby’s biological father is my brother, and my daughter’s biological father is a man who lives in Russia, and my adopted son also considers him his father. So the five parents break down into two groups of three… And really, I would like to live in a legal system that is capable of reflecting that reality, and I don’t think that’s compatible with the institution of marriage.”
I’m a bit confused by the point she’s trying to make here, it seems like she wants some kind of institution that recognizes even more unconventional situations than what we currently think of when we think of marriage. Or maybe she’s arguing something different entirely, I’m not sure.
I’d be very interested in tracking down the source of that statistic and the method used to determine it. So far, I see claims on both pro- and anti- polyamory websites that it was mentioned on CNN, ABC, in Newsweek, but I can’t trace it further than this mention in a Newsweek article:
It’s not exactly clear how many gay people there are either. One study I saw said 2%, another said 5%, and a gay friend insists it’s closer to 10% of the population.
But we do know that there are a lot of them, and also a lot of polyamorous households. And I’d bet anything that upon study most of these would involve bisexuals rather than the traditional polygamist structure.
Because given enough time or pressure or some combination of both, people will defend what they’ve been instructed to believe no matter what. This kind of behavior is called ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ when it’s present to a large enough degree. But all people have the tendency, in one form or another, and to some degree.
Well, I was talking about the sort’ve people who think it’s sin and the work of the devil, or something like that, and for no reason.
But to be clear, even if that were true absolutely (about gay men), and few things are true absolutely, I’d still think it’s better to give people the most freedom to do the most things. (not to say you disagree)
I googled “partnership dissolution” and you can get the forms online from, like, everywhere, man.
Anyway, since my expertise in business partnerships stems from watching numerous episodes of L.A. Law, I gather the easiest way to resolve the conflict you describe would be for A to fall down an elevator shaft.
