This is a splinter thread from the SCOTUS thread for discussing various aspects, both social and legal, about polyamorous/polygamous (not necessarily the same thing here) marriages. Discussion bounced around a fair amount before settling into the following quote tree:
Polygamy should be illegal because it causes harm and because multi person legal unions break the intent and structure of unifying assets and simplifying legal agency and inheritance and so forth. Marriage is a set of benefits which do not function beyond 2 people
Causes harm in some cases.
Currently doesn't function beyond 2 people.
These are not unsolvable problems.
I would like polyamory to become more mainsteam acceptable though. I feel that would be a nice first step.
What if...
stick with me here...
the marriage became a corporation
This has been happening quietly for years now. I know of several poly groups that incorporated as LLCs (I think, I know they formed some manner of corporation) in order to handle communal property. Custody of children in those cases was spelled out in writing well in advance, provisions for property in case of death, etc, etc, etc. Basically they formed contracts to handle the property, much like marriage does for a couple. They were heavily tailored to the individuals involved. The legalities for this stuff can already be done, it just isn't legally called marriage.
this whole fiasco had better not be over the ownership of a single word
There is almost nothing unique about marriage that you can't accomplish with other legal means, in terms of property. In terms of social acceptance, that word has huge power. Look at the difference between civil unions and
gay marriage. People want their unions to be recognized by society, not just the legal rights that go along with the term.
Personally, even speaking as a polyamorous person, I am super leary of how you would do poly marriage as a universal, anyone can get it done easily and cheaply, right. Mostly due to the historic abuses done by polygamous societies in the past. "Big man" groups are super super gross to me, and while I can't speak for all poly folk, those I have talked to hate the idea of those kind of controlling, coercive relationships. If poly people ever wanted to push for marriage rights, we have a long, LONG way to go to convince the world that we are talking about consenting, unpressured relationships between adults, and aren't hidden patriarchs trying to ensure a supply of young women for personal supply.
I'm pro gay marriage (so good on you guys for getting that), but I'm against polyamory.
If the ratio of majority male poly-marriages to majority female poly-marriages was equal, then it would be OK. But all evidence I've seen indicates the vast majority are two (or more) wives for one husband.
If this type of marriage is widespread, that leaves a vast underclass of low-status un-marriagable men who have no wives/girlfriends and no (or very limited) prospects of getting one.
I can't see that ending well.
This problem can solve itself via changing social norms (so that two wives/one husband marriages are as common as one wife/two husbands marriages), but until such happens (if it ever does), I'm not comfortable with the societal implications.
The full spectrum of poly arrangements are beyond the scope of this thread, but I have never seen a harem style arrangement in reality, only ever heard of them from old Mormon days. The most common arrangement I have seen/been a part of is a couple (A &
, usually where one or both partner is dating, either casually or long term (person C). Person C may also be a part of a primary relationship, which may have offshoots as well.
The Big Man (Tm) is a boogeyman that gets brought out a lot, but in the poly dating world, something predicated on the idea of options, the idea of being stuck with one person against your will is mostly a non starter. Where I am leery of poly marriage is within conservative religious groups, where that kind of social control is much easier to enforce, and I am hesitant to hand more tools of legal control to those kinds of folk.
The current legal landscape: Poly marriage of all stripes is illegal, and carries a hard stigma against itself, even from many in progressive communities. This stigma seems well earned, what with abuses from some Mormon polygamous communities still shining bright in the public consciousness (as well it should, coercive relationships are a Bad Thing). Contrast that with the current polyamorous ideal (enshired in books such as The Ethical Slut), ones that function heavily on feminist ideals of consent, non-ownership of partners, and the free will and expression from all partners. Those groups don't always live up to those ideals, as people can and do get jealous, petty and childish, problems that plague all relationships, regardless of number of people involved.
The current social landscape: Highly variable, but mostly stigmatized. There are poly people all over the place, some are out but most people I have met and talked to online are generally doing their own thing quietly, both legally and socially. This is not a highly homogeneous group, relationship models (who is dating/married to who, who has say over which parts of a relationship, etc, etc) vary wildly. One thing that came up multiple times in the SCOTUS threads is the idea that men are the main drivers of this, hoarding partners to themselves (The harem model). My experience (so anecdotal, please share data if you have it) is that harems rarely exist, and the few groups that come close had a central woman at the core.
Which leads to new material from you, loyal readers. What do you think? Should marriage be expanded further? If so, in what ways? How will those ways interact with current property laws, and can/should those laws be changed? As I have tried to indicate in the last thread, I am very uncertain of how, or if, the idea of legal multi-party marriages would work at all.
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I mean, off the top of my head, complication in the event of a divorce would not just be linearly correlated with number of wives; it would be exponential.
A lot of polyamorous people seem to be happy with extending their sexual relationships beyond their one spouse. How many people are really clamoring for poly marriage? I'm honestly asking.
Which makes a strong case for a lot of those benefits to be provided to everyone or removed from others. But within the current entitlements of marriage right now I don't see poly marriage being workable.
The difference here is the word "historically". Yes, by today's standards, monogamous heterosexual marriage has historically been misused and even abusive towards woman. But today the situation is different. Of course abusive heterosexual marriages still exist today, but they are the exception (and one we try to stamp out with laws and social services as much as we can), and by and large the rule is that a modern monogamous heterosexual marriage is a union of equals that is beneficial to both. The same holds true for modern homosexual monogamous marriages. Polyamourous marriages, however, are not just historically abusive to women, they are abusive to woman as a rule today. That's why they should stay banned today - not because of any historical wrong, but because of the harm they still cause now.
pleasepaypreacher.net
The way I see it, there are basically two ways to treat plural marriages.
The first way would be a group marriage: the marriage is an independent entity of any particular participant, and spouses can enter and leave the marriage. Think about a corporation and you'd be on the right track.
The second way would be interconnected marriages: marriage is an arrangement between two people, but we eliminate the restriction that you can only engage in one marriage at a time.
Neither of these structures are a logistic/bureaucratic slam dunk the way gay marriage is (or should be, if it weren't for the social & religious resistance to it). Literally the only thing that needs to change in the law to legalize gay marriage is you metaphorically CTRL+F and do a find a replace for "husband" and "wife" to "spouse." Literally everything else - child custody, divorce, property inheritance, power of attorney, etc. - work exactly the same way.
Plural marriage structures, regardless of which one you choose, run into some pretty big logistic and bureaucratic problems. Alice and Bob and Christina and Diane get married. Alice and Bob have a baby, but then they die in a car accident. Do Christina and Diane get the baby, or does it go to Alice and Bob's closest blood relatives? How about the house?
Maybe Bob didn't die in the car accident. He's on life support. Who gets to make the primary medical decisions: Alice or Christina or Diane?
I'm pretty sure that insurance companies and employers aren't going to be terribly happy extending spousal benefits to {n} people with no upper limit.
This gets extra hilarious when you think about abuses of spousal privilege in court. Imagine an organized crime group all getting married to each other. Or if that's too outlandish, think about the Manson family.
That isn't to say that all of these problems are insurmountable. But they shouldn't be treated as trivial. And the answers are going to be different based on the different models of nonmonogamous relationship out in the wild. What I would want out of child custody, being an Ethical-Slut-west-coast-style poly, might be totally different from what somebody in a Big-Love-style polygamy would want. But I don't know for sure. We'd have to ask them, because otherwise we're just sterotyping based on how we imagine they operate.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
"That's obviously not going to happen for this" isn't really apparent.
The same thing was said about gay marriage ten years back. I don't see any reason for it to become more and more acceptable for people to be in poly relationships and for those relationships to even colloquially be called marriage. I'm only very doubtful that there will be an equivalent legal construct for it.
Adjusting marital assets upon death/divorce, ensuring that each member of the current marriage properly signs off on adding new members (because they would essentially be reducing their portion of the marital estate every time someone is added to the marriage), determining who has what say for end of life/custody/etc. It's a legal clusterfuck. Not to say it couldn't be done, but man, it would require a weird combination of family law and business law with a focus on partnerships (note, I say partnerships and not corporations or LLCs because let's be honest, if someone's going to sue the family unit, the entire family unit is going to be financially responsible and not a LLC/corporation, just like two-party marriages).
I mean in the american southwest right now there are still religious cults that "marry" young women to a man of moderate means and he treats them as his personal sex slaves. That still happens in modern america!
Its not fair it gets lumped in with loving poly relationships, but if the law changes these icky relationships would be just as legal as the actual loving ones and I can't see an easy way of outlawing them without some ridiculous rules lawyering.
pleasepaypreacher.net
LLCs simply do not cover things like custody and inheritance.
There is an extremely strong undercurrent in the nonmonogamous circles in which I frequent - which has a lot of overlap with queer and feminist and kink communities - that marriage itself is an oppressive arrangement.
It isn't a universal view by any stretch - I know many poly people who want to get married to their primary partners while continuing extramarital relationships.
Personally, I don't give a whole lot of shits about marriage. Probably negative shits, really.
I support gay marriage because marriage is a vehicle by which our society offers rights and responsibilities, and denying those rights to gay people is unjust.
But for myself? Meh.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I'm not sure how this is different than shitty monogamous relationships.
In the 1960s, people would have said the same thing about gay marriage. From Dan Rather's brilliant Facebook post yesterday.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Less people effected? I mean with a sister wife, harem situation. You have a well off guy buying up young women from other older pervs in the area (and selling his own young daughters to the same thing), which cuts down on romantic partners for young men and we have seen in other places what happens when young men don't have a lot of shit to do.
I know this was the argument that Posner made that had people all "OMG THATS BAD REASONING!" But we have literally seen this exact thing happening in modern countries in this world, specifically in africa and the middle east.
pleasepaypreacher.net
It's similar to the difference between a lever-action rifle and a bomb. Either one in the hands of a sufficiently fucked-up person will ruin your life, but one of them is particularly efficient at ruining multiple peoples' lives at once.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Poly people are going to love who they love, and there's not a damned thing anyone can do about it unless you want to start building forced re-education camps. Making laws against consenting adults in a poly relationship is just punishing people for loving in a way you don't personally practice. While obviously legally-recognized polyamory requires some changes in the legal system, and some expense, "it's expensive" is kind of a disturbing excuse to screw people out of the legal rights and standards that everyone else has.
Divorces get messier, as people pointed out earlier. The burden of dealing with that would fall mostly on the shoulders of the people who agreed to a poly marriage in the first place, that and their lawyers. And I doubt the lawyers will complain about more billable hours.
It does kinda remind me of Set Packing problems
* because really divorce is the hard part. Everything else is so trivial in comparison its hardly worth talking about.
Nor should they for extremely confusing and problematic legal reasons. The same reasons that such things shouldn't be granted to poly groups due to the problematic power dynamics.
if it was just Mormons being abusive about polygamy that would be one thing.
but the fact is that it's just about every single example of polygamy found throughout human history across cultures and throughout the world
And the same way people used to say all gays were pedophiles and couldn't be trusted children, they say that polygamous marriages are all about old men marrying very young girls before they are of age or just taking advantage of women in general. And the same way people said marriage should only be between a man and a woman they say marriage should only be between one person and one other person.
It's really interesting that people don't recognize these parallels as they talk about it. Anyone else had a similar experience?
I have no doubt that one day polygamous marriage will be a thing. There are plenty of countries that allow it already. If you think it's unusual and doesn't work, you need to get out more. Out of the nation.
pleasepaypreacher.net
indeed there is. just probably not the ones you are thinking of.
But we let people engage in other kinds of legal relationships that often have problematic power dynamics, and no one talks about getting rid of those. Most of the issues that I see brought also happen in mono marriages, as other posters have brought up. Part of being an adult is getting to choose what you want, and sometimes those choices have negative consequences.
One thing that I would love to see go away is parents being able to ok their minor getting married, either mono OR poly. Marriage should be between consenting adults, it is much easier to force a child into a bad harem arrangement than it is to force an adult into one.
What the fuck, have you just ignored all the stories about gay old men touching little boys? Or have those already been whitewashed out of history.
Pedophilia is not homosexuality you goose.
I'm pretty sure most of the gay panic shit was/is made up. Where again the actual reasons against polygamy are actual facts of law that have happened in america, and currently happen in the world. The Warren Jeffs of the world are not some kind of conservative boogey man, they are very real, very awful people who exploit lower income less educated areas.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Which countries practice it now?
What does it look like?
I have some issues with the gender norms that are often (but not always!) associated with plural marriage. But I have no issue with the idea in general, nor any animosity towards poly peeps.
I imagine most here are similar.
Feminist poly ideals are not comparable with marriage rights either. The ideal that people are not tied down by relationships cannot mesh with a social institution which makes relationships semi-permanent and enforces third party obligations to treat those peoples as if they were in such a bond.
Feminist Poly ideals suggest that the "third wheel" in a relationship is not tied to the relationship but a request for marriage rights implies that the third wheel is both tied and exclusive to that relationship in such a way as to bind society to treat them as a single unit. Well you don't get it both ways. You cannot be a single unit in multiple units.
So i fail to see what an "ethical slut" would get out of established poly marriage. I understand what mormons would get out of it. And what "big men" would get out of it. But I don't see what the feminists get out of it.
Custody no, because and LLC cannot have custody of a person. But inheritance yes. Because inheritance is simply a capital allocation problem and an LLC can hold property and can decide to divvy that property up with a contract between its parties given that the LLC is dissolved for any reason[such as the death of one of the owners]
Custody can be handled by contracts. Between the parties specifically by allocating specific rights to each party to the potential custody suit.
Indeed, for every poly marriage these things would have to be structured specifically for the marriage and for partial dissolution etc etc etc. There is already a framework for doing those things if you wish to have that type of arrangement. [Contracts and corporations essentially]
None of these can be achieved in a boilerplate agreement with the government. "Pick and choose" does not work for marriage rights. Third party obligations fail when the number of parties involved is no longer fixed.
And no, just saying "well it will all work out" does not make it so.
Gay =/= molestation
Pedophiles = molestation
Well, that's one way this thread could go to shit in page 1.