Karr, Jeffs

Same-sex marriage is consistent with our current legal construction. Two people who make legal decisions, inherit wealth, own property. It is a marriage of two equals.

Polgyamy is never a marriage of three equals. It is a relationship of one man with significant power and control and multiple wives. There's nothing "equal" about it, either legally or emotionally. It also violates the basic legal construct of marriage. Who makes legal decisions when there are three (or more) people involved? Who inherits property and wealth? Who makes health care decisions?

From a legal standpoint (and marriage is a legal construct which provides rights), SSM is only one-step removed. Polygamy is about 25 steps removed.>

That's begging the question, Susan. You're saying that a two-person marriage of any sort is legal because it is legal. Hardly persuasive. And it is also unpersuasive to claim that a polygamist arrangement is inherently unequal, whereas a two-person arrangement is. Says who?>

I'm saying that same-sex marriage, which involves two people in an intimate, loving, committed relationship, is only one step removed from traditional marriage legally. That relationship is different from two friends, or two roommates, or a mother and adult child because of the basis of the commitment and intimacy of the relationship.

Polygamy, as practiced worldwide, is almost always of the Fundamentalist religious kind and almost always involves one man with multiple wives. Unless we assume a communal setting where all decisions are shared, everyone is allowed to have romantic relationships with each other, and all the partners have veto power over the additional of more wives, there is going to be inequity.

You are correct, however, that there are giant religious liberties problems if Fundamentalists continue to push for polygamy. Would the ACLJ or Becket Fund begin to cry "religous rights" if there was an active push? Would Maggie Gallagher and her friends at the National Review and Weekly Standard have to rethink their "religious liberties crisis" if we had Fundamenalists arguing polgyamy was a religious right?>

Franklin, if "informed consent" is the only issue, should people have the legal right to sell themselves into slavery?>

I'm saying that same-sex marriage, which involves two people in an intimate, loving, committed relationship, is only one step removed from traditional marriage legally.

And polygamy is also only one step removed, legally. You're just expressing a contemporary prejudice. Get with the times.

Yes, all homosexual "marriage" does is remove one criterion of eligibility (an opposite-sex spouse). And all plural marriage does is remove one criterion of eligibility (a previously-unmarried spouse).

What does "commitment" and "intimacy" mean, and why are they (a) restricted to two people; and (b) not present in the other love relationships you cite? There is no "commitment" between friends?? No "intimacy" between "mother" and "child"??? What the colorful? You either haven't thought this through, or are using circular or extremely-eccentric definitions of these terms.

If "opposite-sex" is just an accidental or historically-conditioned preference for a particular arrangement (and all gay "marriage" advocates have to say that), why isn't "two" just as accidental and historically conditioned? In fact, it works the contrary -- there is plenty of historical precedent for plural marriage; there is none for homosexual marriage.

Why can't three people love each other? Why aren't their marriages "intimate and committed"? Who are you to say?, etc.


Polygamy, as practiced worldwide, is almost always of the Fundamentalist religious kind

Something tells me this is really what is bugging you.>

David, if you can describe to me a situation where the person can be proven to understand exactly what the arrangement entails, including the total loss of any civil or moral rights and the right of the "owner" to re-sell the slave without prior consent, and that person can also be proven to be of right mind, then I have no trouble saying yes to your question. Personally, I doubt such would ever obtain. Even so, there are fetishists who swear by this arrangement as a temporary diversion. I cannot dismiss the possibility.

Not meaning to be sarcastic, but there are already forms of legally sanctioned slavery of one degree or another, and if you go back far enough in the US's legal history, "traditional" marriage would be one of those forms.

I think it's safe to say that informed consent is not the only issue, but it's absence sure makes the other issues pale by comparison, at least in my mind.>

Oh, I forgot this:

Unless we assume a communal setting where all decisions are shared, everyone is allowed to have romantic relationships with each other, and all the partners have veto power over the additional of more wives, there is going to be inequity.

So .. you DON'T have an objection to plural marriage, then. Just to sex inequality in how it has been practiced in the past. Don't worry, once the Massachusetts Supreme Court has created the right to polygamy, some other court will apply the sex-discrimination laws and allow a woman to have multiple husbands also.

And frankly, the bold-faced part makes me wonder: why not just abolish marriage out right. Everyone should have romantic relationships with anyone.

Sheeeesh.>

Victor,

Everyone should have romantic relationships with anyone.

Respectfully, this is already happening. The only thing missing is legal sanction. Actually, it's not the only thing (religions have things to say about it, too), but it's the main thing.

The real question, for me, is can we accept the plural marriage (which I'm defining as three or more people, gender mix irrelevant) as a legal entity? Insurance and title searches notwithstanding, lawyers, legislators and judges will not have much difficulty in creating the legal framework. We already have corporate arrangements like limited partnerships and mutual companies, and they permit quite a bit more than two people to be involved. If you can view marriage as a business arrangement (leaving aside the emotional relationship for a moment), then I truly don't see what the shouting is about.

As for the emotional side, we have a growing movement that calls itself polyamory, for "many loves". There's plenty of info available online about that.>

Franklin,

Marriage was historically slavery?

Don't think so. Yes, women were oppressed and had fewer rights. I think calling them "slaves" is a bit over the top, however.

There have been various forms of slavery/servanthood in our history, including the practice of "indentured servants" to buy passage from Europe to North America. Some call current low-wage laborers "slaves," though I disagree with this usage myself.

As always, I welcome your response.>

Same-sex marriage is NOT about extending all the legal rights of marriage to same-sex couples. If it was, the "civil union" path would be proceeding fairly smoothly, since they could just be drawn up so as to grant identical rights as legal marriage. The issue is one of societal sanction (this is related to the "physician-assisted suicide" thread from last week). Do we as a society say that the relationship between same-sex couples is identical to marriage? Large majorities of voters say definitely not.

And that issue is all about Authority, and the old standard line "What right do YOU have to judge ME?" And if we as a society shrug our shoulders and agree that there is no possibly conceivable basis for maintaining marriage as it has always been, then there will be similarly no such basis for casting "polyamorists" into the shadows. Are we going to sic the cops on groups of three or more adults who live together and have consensual sex? Of course not. So why not grant them some legal protections? So the argument will go. Our society has long since disarmed itself of any effective riposte.>

CS,

Perhaps it is mostly a usage thing, and we'll have to be careful with context and ask for clarification, but wife as chattel is a bona fide legal concept that was in force in the US for a period of time. A woman could die at her husband's hand and the man would not even be arrested, let alone prosecuted. A woman could accumulate property by her efforts, but it was always in her husband's name.

The list goes on, and with due respect I suggest you talk to the women about whether those conditions constituted slavery in the strict sense. I think some of them would not consider my usage to be over the top.>

Susan, you mean you'd hesitate to give lawyers something to do that actually requires them to work hard enough to justify their high salaries?

8)>

So, logically, then polygamy is just fine; is that correct?>

Actually, divorce isn't that complex legally when you have two people. It's based on the law of equity, which doesn't exist in polygamy. Throw in a few more wives and it becomes impossible.>

Prenuptial agreements still have to be enforced and prenups are still based on our ideas that originate from two-person marriage and divorce. Even when same-sex couples create such agreements, they rely on the legal constructs that already exist.

Sure, things could be changed. My point is that nothing has to change in the current marriage and divorce laws when same-sex couples are allowed to marry. Everything would have to be revised to accommodate polygamous couples.>

jttoye,

Please don't take this personally, because your just the one "setting" me off, but it really irks me to see apple-orange comparisons as if anything is equivalent to everything.

Until you see an explicit statement that what people are believing and promoting includes incest and the deliberate injury of another person, please refrain from referring to those things. Respectfully, it makes you look stupid.

If you want to complain that what people are believing and promoting might open the doors to incest and the deliberate injury of another person, then please say so. That makes you look smart, as I'm sure you are. Be prepared to back up your assertions, though.

Sorry, still not enough coffee.

:(>

Allow me to clarify - my point was (and still is) that the assertion that same sex marriage should be OK because it (mostly) fits in the current framework of marriage law, whereas other forms such as polygamy do not, is not much of an argument.

As someone pointed out earlier, there are many different contractual agreements in existence which include more than 2 parties. My example may have been uncomfortable for you, but really, once the door is open to anything goes marriage, what is to keep two consenting relatives from marrying?>

Tom, nice post. Just one point of dissent:

The Bush Doctrine could have led to the invasion of Iran and North Korea. It didn't.

So far.>

Child brides should be prohibited, no matter whether monogamous or polygamous.

But why does the state have an interest in prohibiting consenting adults from having more than one wife? Historically and biblically there was polygamy. Better to regulate age and the consent of prior wives to the agreement. I don't see that serial monogamy with broken homes is better.

I have read accounts from co-wives married to one man, and they were intelligent and independent women who would rather share a good man, and enjoy the sisterhood of the co-wives than live in isolation with a man they might find less desirable. And often one wife would take care of children while the others worked or went on to higher education.

The Jeffers model is indefensible on a variety of levels. But it isn't the polygamy so much as the pedophilia and dictatorial ways.>

Who decides? You ask the most difficult question we face, and you expect me to answer? (smiling here)

It's the conundrum of the ages, for sure. The best anyone can do is make the attempt; all I ask is that we allow for mistakes and remaking the attempt as needed.

My humble approach, begging many questions because of its simplicitity, is this: so long as SSM cannot be demonstrated to either deliberately injure a person, or to suppress the legal rights of others, there should be no bar to its existence. I like the idea of separating ritual from legal standing. Let anyone who wishes it become a legal domestic arrangement, with all the other legal ramifications involved, and let the individual religious institutions make their own determinations about whether they wish to solemnize the union within their traditions and customs.

Actually, I think the distinction we need is this: the views of a society are not to be imposed on the individual members of that society with the force of law. The interests of a society are a different matter, and require closer scrutiny and in many cases direct control. Call it the difference between desire and need. Desires are not subject to "official sanction". Needs are.>

Jumping right in here with another one of my book recommendations, I suggest that everyone who is interested in how modern polygamy works out in practice ought to read Jon Krakauer's book, "Under the Banner of Heaven."

Krakauer, who also wrote "Into Thin Air" (he likes stories about people living on the edge, I gather) tells a tale of violence, incest, coercion, forced marriage, and David Koresh-like fundamentalist polygamist compounds and communities run by repressive alpha males/cult leaders. Not to mention such abuses of the public trust as welfare fraud.

There are several of these communities that are tolerated in Utah, and also in other countries, including Canada. It seems to me that as polygamy nearly always turns out in practice to be subject to abuse and violence, American society may have a pretty good rationale for keeping it against the law.>

I'd love to hear that debate, too. Not that the news networks would probably have it or if they did that they'd do it right, but it'd be interesting. I have on many occasions said that marriage should be a religious thing and that the govenment should not have usurped the religious institution (although, technically, religions usurped it from governments in ancient times so it seems to get passed around a lot). I mean, when religions hold the institutions of marriage they simply provide recognition to whom they marry and whatever benefits, if any, that the religious organization provides is then given to those in the contract of marriage. With government it is just a contract that confers benefits and all kinds of legal standings and it gets more and more complicated the more government has it. I am reading a book currently that is discussing the history of the idea of marriage in eastern and western cultures. For a long time it was the individual communities, towns, neighborhoods, churches, religious organizations, and families that defined who was and was not married. As modernity came about the government increased it's hold on marriage...something it barely did early on. This, of course, caused a lot of problems. Not only were religious traditions that held marriage to be something different than the government defined it now forced to either accept the government's new defination or have their "marriages" now termed 'illegal', but at the same time other traditions within the family, culture, and so on that were also defined as marriage also got taken away as well when they didn't "conform". Sadly, I don't think we'd even be having these debates if government didn't not bother defining marriage, but instead left that to the religious institutions or to the communities and families. I know it'd be a vague law, to be sure, but then why does the government have to make such lengthy contracts...I mean, shouldn't the individuals write the contracts and decide the nature of the contract and so on.

Again, though, I'd love to see such a debate be had. I am not sure any one group could sit by and argue this without getting upset or irritated at each other and something tells me it'd all break down with everyone getting all offended with each other.

I'm gay and while I'd love to legally marry my beloved, I'm just as happy being religiously/spiritually married to him and knowing that even though our union of love and contract of commitment and companionship may not be accepted by others, it was witnessed and accepted by God (as defined by our religious beliefs and ancient traditions).>

Franklin, I'm not sure I understand the distinction you are making. If by ritual polygamy you mean that which has a religious justification, then perhaps I understand.

But, it seems to me that you are holding up an idealized form of polygamy, sort of polygamy as free love between consenting adults. In history, how often has this form of polygamy actually been in effect? It seems to me that societies have come to see polygamy as a form of state-sanctioned marriage as undesirable.

There is nothing to prevent several unmarried adults from cohabiting and being sexually involved, at least in most states. However, in practice, as Jon Krakauer points out in his book, most polygamists not the idealists whose lifestyle you seem to be sanctioning.>

Let's put a spin on it, how come you never here about a women having several men as her husbands? It's probably because a selfish and carnal man thought up the idea. Plus there are a lot of other factors not good that go into this polygamy stuff.
Plus where did fashions from Little house on the prarie come into fashion again.>

It turns out I've decided to postpone my theater attendance. Sigh.

Alicia, the reason that polygamy has the history you describe is because patriarchy has dominated that history. I suggest that the prevalence of male privilege needs no further explanation than that.

Polyamory as I've described it is a product of the 20th century, in terms of how widespread it is and how much it has surfaced in the public eye. I respectfully ask everyone to avoid the longevity-as-worthy-of-acceptance argument. I don't think I'd have to go very far to show that for the fallacy it is.

And I must correct you on one factual error: if Will and Ariel were to appear before a magistrate where the female, parental-permission age of consent is 15 or less, then their marriage would be legally recognized in every state of the Union. Any law enforcement official who put Will in jail would be in for a very expensive wrongful incarceration suit.>

Polygamy was banned in the United States as part of an overall religious "Pogrom" against the Mormons tat drove them out of New York, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and even off the Oregon Trail.

The laws passed by congress in the 1850s deprived the Mormons of the right to practice religion freely if that religion included polygamy. The same laws deprived practicing polygamists, and the religion they practiced, of their property. When the Supreme Court came down on the side of the law, the Mormons put obedience to the law of the land over "eternal principles" in an effort to end religious persecution.

Putting aside the laws, which I feel are in violation of the 1st Amendment, Polygamy deserves the same legal consideration as does Monagamy. The only difference between the two is the ratio of men to women. Women enter into Monogamous relationships for many of the same reason that they enter inot Polygamous relationships. Counselling is needed in either case to strongly discourage abuse.>

Traditional marriage is about family. Traditional marriage is a lifetime commitment between one man and one woman. The product of such a union is children and a family. It's not surprising that a minority today are seeking to change the definition to legitimize what they do. I believe it's a mistake to change the definition of marriage. Families have always been the bedrock of a healthy society because the care and protection of children was at the forefront. As traditional family values have eroded (through divorce on demand, remarriage, extended families, etc.), we are seeing far more child abuse, sex crimes, and the like. At least that's how I see it.>