“[P]eople usually assume that the two men are a married gay couple.”
March 19, 2021 5:50 PM Subscribe
[W]hen the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges established same-sex marriage as a constitutional right, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a dissent arguing that… existing marriage restrictions must similarly “disrespect and subordinate people who find fulfillment in polyamorous relationships.”
Andrew Solomon has a long piece in The New Yorker profiling a number of poly- individuals, and reviewing the state of the law for non-monogamous and non-nuclear family groups in America: “How Polyamorists and Polygamists Are Challenging Family Norms”
Within, please find a list of people Solomon interviews or mentions in the piece.
- the Austins, a polygamous family that has changed its make-up over time but generally remained as a core of one man and two wives.
- Activist Evan Wolfson, the founder of Freedom To Marry and one of many advocates of marriage equality for gays and lesbians who doesn’t see it as a gateway for poly- relationships. (Wolfson is only mentioned in passing; he isn’t interviewed.)
- Law professor Douglas NeJaime, who helped draft a new Uniform Parenting Act (text) in 2017 that has been used as a basis for parenting laws in multiple states and, in some, has been interpreted as supporting the idea of children having more than two parents.
- Law Professor Courtney Joslin, who drafted most of the above-mentioned Uniform Parenting Act
- Gender Studies Professor Joseph J. Fischel, one of many who interpret Obergefell v. Hodges as a starting point.
- Relationship therapist Esther Perel
- Andy Izenson, Roo Khan, Cal T., and Aida Manduley, the founders/members of The Rêve, a multicultural, queer, and trans intentional community.
- The Dargers, a fundamentalist Mormon polygamous family that inspired some of the storylines on HBO’s Big Love, published Love Times Three, have been featured in a variety of TV specials, and were instrumental in causing Utah to decriminalize polygamy. (In January, The New Yorker published a short documentary film about the Dargers and their role in the decriminalization: “How One Polygamous Family Changed the Law”
- Donia Jessop, who fled Warren Jeffs’s [FLDS Church] in the Short Creek Community, Utah, only to eventually return after the church’s fall and be elected mayor of Hildale. (Hildale is a portion of what used to be Short Creek.)
- Shirlee Draper, who also fled Warren Jeffs’s FLDS Church and return to the Short Creek area. She is not polygamous but is the president of Cherish Families and an advocate for those who choose a polygamous lifestyle.
- Utah Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson, mentioned in passing as someone approached early in her state senate career by Joe Darger and would eventually sponsor Utah's polygamy decriminalization bill.
- Connor Boyack, President of the Libertas Institute and another early ally of the effort to decriminalize polygamy.
- Derek Kitchen, the only openly gay member of the Utah statehouse, a supporter of the decriminalization bill, and one of the plaintiffs of Kitchen v. Utah, which decriminalized same-sex marriage in Utah.
- Tamara Pincus, a sex-positive psychotherapist in Washington, DC who is in an open/poly marriage with her husband, Eric.
- Diana Adams, founder of The Chosen Family Law Center, poly. (Andy Izenson is a VP at CFLC)
- Activist David Jay, the founder of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) and a member of a plural relationship w/ Avary Kent and Zeke Hausfather. (The trio have also been interviewed about their relationship for New Hampshire Public Radio: “Why One Married Couple And Their Friend Formed A 3-Parent Family”
Do we really believe that John Roberts wanted to stand up for the right to polyamory?
Well, no. I mean, the dissent was more that if you open marriage to the gays you’ll start letting the polygamous in as well. And, honestly, it seems like Roberts was right.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:11 PM on March 19, 2021 [7 favorites]
Well, no. I mean, the dissent was more that if you open marriage to the gays you’ll start letting the polygamous in as well. And, honestly, it seems like Roberts was right.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:11 PM on March 19, 2021 [7 favorites]
Yeah, fair enough. The libertarian take argued it differently, that giving rights to some was unfair to others, so we shouldn't move forward unless it was some fantasy scenario that didn't make any sense. (I.e. Replace marriage law with "contract law," etc.)
posted by anhedonic at 6:16 PM on March 19, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by anhedonic at 6:16 PM on March 19, 2021 [5 favorites]
the Austins, a polygamous family that has changed its make-up over time but generally remained as a core of one man and two wives.
The relationship of theseus
posted by condour75 at 6:16 PM on March 19, 2021 [79 favorites]
The relationship of theseus
posted by condour75 at 6:16 PM on March 19, 2021 [79 favorites]
If poly marriage is to become a thing, the absolute non-waivable right to community property, some sort of maximum gender ratio (in mixed gender marriages), and probably also the abolition of prenuptial agreements will have to come along with it. Otherwise I foresee most poly marriages not being the meeting of multiple equals, but something more like the FLDS world.
posted by tclark at 6:50 PM on March 19, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by tclark at 6:50 PM on March 19, 2021 [2 favorites]
Surely the biggest challenge is determining kinship, which is fairly simple with only two partners.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:56 PM on March 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:56 PM on March 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
the absolute non-waivable right to community property, some sort of maximum gender ratio (in mixed gender marriages), and probably also the abolition of prenuptial agreements will have to come along with it
Most of the legal framework exists, maybe. Mr. and Mrs. and Mr. et Fils, LLC, Ltd., Inc. Offspring get some fraction of shares in the limited liability company, upon death of a parental entity. If corporations are people, why not people become corporations?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:12 PM on March 19, 2021 [7 favorites]
Most of the legal framework exists, maybe. Mr. and Mrs. and Mr. et Fils, LLC, Ltd., Inc. Offspring get some fraction of shares in the limited liability company, upon death of a parental entity. If corporations are people, why not people become corporations?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:12 PM on March 19, 2021 [7 favorites]
If corporations are people, and polyamorous marriages are legalized, how soon before you are required to marry the company you work for?
No, wait, marrying corporations will be limited to the CEO & Board level, who will do it for the tax benefits.
posted by fings at 7:17 PM on March 19, 2021 [14 favorites]
No, wait, marrying corporations will be limited to the CEO & Board level, who will do it for the tax benefits.
posted by fings at 7:17 PM on March 19, 2021 [14 favorites]
he absolute non-waivable right to community property, some sort of maximum gender ratio (in mixed gender marriages), and probably also the abolition of prenuptial agreements will have to come along with it
Most of the legal framework exists, maybe. Mr. and Mrs. and Mr. et Fils, LLC, Ltd., Inc. Offspring get some fraction of shares in the limited liability company, upon death of a parental entity. If corporations are people, why not people become corporations?
This is the current solution used by Diane Adams in some cases, as it can resolve a number of problems. On the other hand, it hardly solves Andy Izenson’s complaint that he can’t get a family discount at a national park (although it’s a bit more ambiguous if he wants the discount or just doesn’t want to deal with yet another way that two-person marriages are favored.)
posted by Going To Maine at 7:23 PM on March 19, 2021
Most of the legal framework exists, maybe. Mr. and Mrs. and Mr. et Fils, LLC, Ltd., Inc. Offspring get some fraction of shares in the limited liability company, upon death of a parental entity. If corporations are people, why not people become corporations?
This is the current solution used by Diane Adams in some cases, as it can resolve a number of problems. On the other hand, it hardly solves Andy Izenson’s complaint that he can’t get a family discount at a national park (although it’s a bit more ambiguous if he wants the discount or just doesn’t want to deal with yet another way that two-person marriages are favored.)
posted by Going To Maine at 7:23 PM on March 19, 2021
some sort of maximum gender ratio (in mixed gender marriages)
This seems really unworkable in terms of administrative enforcement. Presumably acceptance of polygamous marriages would come alongside greater acceptance of being transgender, bi, queer, nonbinary, whatever. It's hard to imagine polygamy being more accepted while the rest of the non-cis, non-heteronormative identities become less. As a practical matter, the only sane administrative way to handle it would seem to be dealing with simple participants in a marriage; increasing acceptance seems totally at odds with categorization and quotas. What if someone transitioning crossed a quota line? A right to exit a polygamous marriage by divorce would seem to be essential, but what becomes of the marriage if a recent divorce puts the remaining participants on the wrong side of a quota balance?
So how would one distinguish an FLDS situation from a circumstantially, apparently "lopsided" balance? I'm not sure that marriage law enforcement is the best avenue to address that, and trying to seems laden with pitfalls.
If corporations are people, and polyamorous marriages are legalized, how soon before you are required to marry the company you work for?
This seems snarky, but I think the more relevant question is: what happens when your partners asks you to marry their shell corporation for the tax advantages, and your group marriage becomes an Enron style debt-unloading scheme?
posted by fatbird at 7:44 PM on March 19, 2021 [18 favorites]
This seems really unworkable in terms of administrative enforcement. Presumably acceptance of polygamous marriages would come alongside greater acceptance of being transgender, bi, queer, nonbinary, whatever. It's hard to imagine polygamy being more accepted while the rest of the non-cis, non-heteronormative identities become less. As a practical matter, the only sane administrative way to handle it would seem to be dealing with simple participants in a marriage; increasing acceptance seems totally at odds with categorization and quotas. What if someone transitioning crossed a quota line? A right to exit a polygamous marriage by divorce would seem to be essential, but what becomes of the marriage if a recent divorce puts the remaining participants on the wrong side of a quota balance?
So how would one distinguish an FLDS situation from a circumstantially, apparently "lopsided" balance? I'm not sure that marriage law enforcement is the best avenue to address that, and trying to seems laden with pitfalls.
If corporations are people, and polyamorous marriages are legalized, how soon before you are required to marry the company you work for?
This seems snarky, but I think the more relevant question is: what happens when your partners asks you to marry their shell corporation for the tax advantages, and your group marriage becomes an Enron style debt-unloading scheme?
posted by fatbird at 7:44 PM on March 19, 2021 [18 favorites]
what happens when your partners asks you to marry their shell corporation for the tax advantages, and your group marriage becomes an Enron style debt-unloading scheme?
The IRS brings you up for tax evasion and you do time. Pay off your lobbyists, kids!
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:01 PM on March 19, 2021 [6 favorites]
The IRS brings you up for tax evasion and you do time. Pay off your lobbyists, kids!
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:01 PM on March 19, 2021 [6 favorites]
The FLDS problem was not polygamy per se, it was abuse (of kids and adults), violations of basic rights, and child marriage.
If 8 women want to marry one dude, I may roll my eyes at the idea that any guy is that desirable, but so long as everyone is of age, consenting, and free to leave (big ifs with your patriarchal types) I wouldn't ban it.
However, I think it's absolutely important that any compound, commune, estate, or what have you, have regular interactions with outside entities to ensure that those that aren't happy there can leave and that abuse is harder to hide. Because of the history of those setups being used by cults and others. And there have been "liberal" groups that absolutely had that same problem, so it's not just your fundamentalist Mormons.
posted by emjaybee at 8:22 PM on March 19, 2021 [43 favorites]
If 8 women want to marry one dude, I may roll my eyes at the idea that any guy is that desirable, but so long as everyone is of age, consenting, and free to leave (big ifs with your patriarchal types) I wouldn't ban it.
However, I think it's absolutely important that any compound, commune, estate, or what have you, have regular interactions with outside entities to ensure that those that aren't happy there can leave and that abuse is harder to hide. Because of the history of those setups being used by cults and others. And there have been "liberal" groups that absolutely had that same problem, so it's not just your fundamentalist Mormons.
posted by emjaybee at 8:22 PM on March 19, 2021 [43 favorites]
Otherwise I foresee most poly marriages not being the meeting of multiple equals, but something more like the FLDS world.I am really tired of this arguement against poly marriage , mostly because there's plenty of marriage between two people where partners aren't equal, and nobody is calling for the abolishment of marriage on that grounds.
There is plenty of examples of poly marriages that work, just like there is plenty of examples of heterosexual marriages that work and gay marriages that work. But you don't have to go far too see the problems in all those configurations of relationships, but it's not a reason to outlaw them. Prosecution of domestic violence and providing adequate protection and support to all people trying to leave dangerous relationships would go alot farther than just saying that poly relationships have the potential for abuse.
posted by AlexiaSky at 8:22 PM on March 19, 2021 [38 favorites]
Metafilter: some sort of maximum gender ratio.
posted by transitional procedures at 8:27 PM on March 19, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by transitional procedures at 8:27 PM on March 19, 2021 [4 favorites]
I am really tired of this arguement against poly marriage
There's stuff relevant to this before the "Otherwise," which I guess you missed.
posted by tclark at 8:34 PM on March 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
There's stuff relevant to this before the "Otherwise," which I guess you missed.
posted by tclark at 8:34 PM on March 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
Mtf trans poly, rated 70% F by the government, + 1 95% F looking for ltr with 65%+ F type. Childfree preferred, vegan ok.
posted by Jacen at 9:15 PM on March 19, 2021 [13 favorites]
posted by Jacen at 9:15 PM on March 19, 2021 [13 favorites]
There's stuff relevant to this before the "Otherwise," which I guess you missed.
"Everything before the word 'otherwise' is horseshit." - Ned Stark, paraphrased.
posted by explosion at 9:20 PM on March 19, 2021 [2 favorites]
"Everything before the word 'otherwise' is horseshit." - Ned Stark, paraphrased.
posted by explosion at 9:20 PM on March 19, 2021 [2 favorites]
Everything before the word "otherwise" was the point. I guess contemplating what sort of novel legal regulation might be called for to protect the parties in a novel legal arrangement is horseshit.
posted by tclark at 10:07 PM on March 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by tclark at 10:07 PM on March 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
I can hear the database contractor firms salivating already...
posted by kaibutsu at 10:45 PM on March 19, 2021 [12 favorites]
posted by kaibutsu at 10:45 PM on March 19, 2021 [12 favorites]
Everything before the word “otherwise” was the point. I guess contemplating what sort of novel legal regulation might be called for to protect the parties in a novel legal arrangement is horseshit.
I think part of the difficulty here is that this really isn’t an abstract problem for the (estimated in the article as a lowball) 60,000 people who are living in some sort of poly relationship -many of whom already consider themselves to be meetings of equals (at least based on the anecdata in the piece). Framing hypothetical legal wrangling around things that people must do in order to guarantee that they can enter into the arrangements in which they are already living and happy is a bit cold blooded. (“Oh, your poly group is one woman and seven men? Sorry, the government won’t recognize you because 1/7 is less than 20%.”) Meanwhile, pre-nups of some sort or another have been around for thousands of years - framing them as an obstacle to poly relationships ever being recognized and not something that could be modified to provide additional protections to those interested in some form of plural connection is a mistake. These relationships exist! The challenge is for us to figure out how to acknowledge them so that their members can better thrive. (Our job is to help make these relationships possible, not put up roadblocks for them.)
To me, reading the article felt like a broader of what actually matters in a marriage of two folks: what is the state’s interest in protecting my marriage? What incentives should it provide me to get married, plurally or otherwise? If creating marriage equality for same-sex couples forced straight couples to acknowledge some (obvious but often ignored) truths about marriage as not just being about having kids, what truths do plural relationships force us to acknowledge, and how do those truths force us to change how the state itself understands marriage?
posted by Going To Maine at 10:56 PM on March 19, 2021 [24 favorites]
I think part of the difficulty here is that this really isn’t an abstract problem for the (estimated in the article as a lowball) 60,000 people who are living in some sort of poly relationship -many of whom already consider themselves to be meetings of equals (at least based on the anecdata in the piece). Framing hypothetical legal wrangling around things that people must do in order to guarantee that they can enter into the arrangements in which they are already living and happy is a bit cold blooded. (“Oh, your poly group is one woman and seven men? Sorry, the government won’t recognize you because 1/7 is less than 20%.”) Meanwhile, pre-nups of some sort or another have been around for thousands of years - framing them as an obstacle to poly relationships ever being recognized and not something that could be modified to provide additional protections to those interested in some form of plural connection is a mistake. These relationships exist! The challenge is for us to figure out how to acknowledge them so that their members can better thrive. (Our job is to help make these relationships possible, not put up roadblocks for them.)
To me, reading the article felt like a broader of what actually matters in a marriage of two folks: what is the state’s interest in protecting my marriage? What incentives should it provide me to get married, plurally or otherwise? If creating marriage equality for same-sex couples forced straight couples to acknowledge some (obvious but often ignored) truths about marriage as not just being about having kids, what truths do plural relationships force us to acknowledge, and how do those truths force us to change how the state itself understands marriage?
posted by Going To Maine at 10:56 PM on March 19, 2021 [24 favorites]
I can hear the database contractor firms salivating already
Flashes me back to the big database I had to update every year at work. I had more than one person start crying on the phone because they’d only recently started using their pre-marriage surname again during or immediately after a painful divorce.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:33 PM on March 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
Flashes me back to the big database I had to update every year at work. I had more than one person start crying on the phone because they’d only recently started using their pre-marriage surname again during or immediately after a painful divorce.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:33 PM on March 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
I think simply calling poly marriage a "broader" view of what actually matters in a marriage of two folks glosses over a considerable challenge of how to apply what the state does to encourage some level of stability in protecting the rights of partners in the marriage, disposal of assets in a dissolution, powers of attorney when one partner is unable to make legal decisions (how do you contend with a 3-person marriage when one person is at death's door and the other two disagree on life or death decisions?), kinship and inheritance, protection of the property rights of a partner who voluntarily leaves or is "expelled" from the poly group (including things such as child support, child visitation, and other rights and responsibilities). Does a full legal divorce proceeding have to take place for every exit from the poly marriage? Does a full legal marriage proceeding have to take place for a person to enter one?
Family and marriage law is fiendishly complex and subtle as it is even in 2-person marriages. Mutli-person marriages would be geometrically more complex. Multi-party contracts (effectively what the legal basis of marriage is) isn't just a special case of 2-party contracts, but almost an entire legal subdiscipline in itself.
I'm not talking about the abstract issues, I'm talking about the nuts and bolts, and brushing these issues under the rug of "it's just a broader case of 2-person marriage" or "let's solve it with incorporation" seems a serious disservice to the pitfalls, to me.
posted by tclark at 11:37 PM on March 19, 2021 [28 favorites]
Family and marriage law is fiendishly complex and subtle as it is even in 2-person marriages. Mutli-person marriages would be geometrically more complex. Multi-party contracts (effectively what the legal basis of marriage is) isn't just a special case of 2-party contracts, but almost an entire legal subdiscipline in itself.
I'm not talking about the abstract issues, I'm talking about the nuts and bolts, and brushing these issues under the rug of "it's just a broader case of 2-person marriage" or "let's solve it with incorporation" seems a serious disservice to the pitfalls, to me.
posted by tclark at 11:37 PM on March 19, 2021 [28 favorites]
I’m certain the legal issues are complicated, and were I a lawyer I’d try to think of them. Plural relationships are absolutely an order of magnitude more complicated to deal with, and that work is going to have to be done piecemeal before there can be whole cloth steps (as we might consider “civil unions” to be a piecemeal step on the way to marriage equality). But the nuts and bolts of legally making whatever a “marriage” is work under the law are, at some level, abstract issues when what we have at the immediate present is people in these relationships already, and it seems prudent to approach them by acknowledging that effective forms of these relationships exist and thus these problems should be solved.
The approach to these nuts and bolts issues will have to be not “how can we make these plural arrangements conform to what a two-person marriage is” under the law but “how can we make the law extend the desired protections to the plural relationships that exist”, just as decriminalizing polygamy provided a modicum of protection to the Dargers and the couples that they know. It’s absolutely a hard problem to address, and good luck to the lawyers who will do it.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:50 PM on March 19, 2021 [8 favorites]
The approach to these nuts and bolts issues will have to be not “how can we make these plural arrangements conform to what a two-person marriage is” under the law but “how can we make the law extend the desired protections to the plural relationships that exist”, just as decriminalizing polygamy provided a modicum of protection to the Dargers and the couples that they know. It’s absolutely a hard problem to address, and good luck to the lawyers who will do it.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:50 PM on March 19, 2021 [8 favorites]
“how can we make the law extend the desired protections to the plural relationships that exist”
If you read my initial comment as anything other than considering ways the laws should be extended so that plural relationships can exist and the members have fair protection of their rights, I honestly don't know how to make it clearer.
I said exactly this: "If poly marriage is to become a thing, the absolute non-waivable right to community property, some sort of maximum gender ratio (in mixed gender marriages), and probably also the abolition of prenuptial agreements will have to come along with it."
If my contemplated ideas aren't good ones, let's talk about that. But I think we can give it a rest already that I or really anyone here is making arguments against poly marriages. The willfully selective reading of people's comments in the most negative possible lights is metafilter's most tiresome habit.
posted by tclark at 11:57 PM on March 19, 2021 [7 favorites]
If you read my initial comment as anything other than considering ways the laws should be extended so that plural relationships can exist and the members have fair protection of their rights, I honestly don't know how to make it clearer.
I said exactly this: "If poly marriage is to become a thing, the absolute non-waivable right to community property, some sort of maximum gender ratio (in mixed gender marriages), and probably also the abolition of prenuptial agreements will have to come along with it."
If my contemplated ideas aren't good ones, let's talk about that. But I think we can give it a rest already that I or really anyone here is making arguments against poly marriages. The willfully selective reading of people's comments in the most negative possible lights is metafilter's most tiresome habit.
posted by tclark at 11:57 PM on March 19, 2021 [7 favorites]
Both of my grandparents on one side grew up in very, very large (Mormon) polygamous households, and both those and the grandparents on the other side have a bunch of very close relatives who joined FLDS and similar modern polygamous groups.
So I have something of a revulsion to polygamy as something I personally never, ever, ever, ever, ever want to be involved in, and simultaneously a great deal of sympathy for people who have chosen to live in those types of relationships.
The simple fact is that fairly large numbers of people are choosing to live in these types of relationships, and there is absolutely no reason at all to criminalize this type of activity. Doing so inevitably drives the behavior underground and that leads to all sorts of abuse and serious problems.
Make it legal, put it in the light of day, regulate it reasonably (ie, no 63 year olds marrying 14 year olds) and let people live how they want--and how they're going to live anyway, the law be damned.
There are legal difficulties, yes. People are already living those legal difficulties--and have been, in different ways, throughout all of human history--but with no official recognition or regulation or rulemaking or legal precedents to help smooth the way.
It's just dumb and dysfunctional.
posted by flug at 1:52 AM on March 20, 2021 [7 favorites]
So I have something of a revulsion to polygamy as something I personally never, ever, ever, ever, ever want to be involved in, and simultaneously a great deal of sympathy for people who have chosen to live in those types of relationships.
The simple fact is that fairly large numbers of people are choosing to live in these types of relationships, and there is absolutely no reason at all to criminalize this type of activity. Doing so inevitably drives the behavior underground and that leads to all sorts of abuse and serious problems.
Make it legal, put it in the light of day, regulate it reasonably (ie, no 63 year olds marrying 14 year olds) and let people live how they want--and how they're going to live anyway, the law be damned.
There are legal difficulties, yes. People are already living those legal difficulties--and have been, in different ways, throughout all of human history--but with no official recognition or regulation or rulemaking or legal precedents to help smooth the way.
It's just dumb and dysfunctional.
posted by flug at 1:52 AM on March 20, 2021 [7 favorites]
I get where you're coming from but most of what I've heard on this topic in polyam circles is fully the opposite.
The thing about marriage as it exists today is that it's fundamentally a reciprocal legal relationship. Adding more people the naive option is to just expand that so all three people in the group have the same legal relationship to each other person in the group, but in real life this is a minority of how multiple relationships exist. The relationships aren't transitive. So what kind of relationship exists between me and my metamour if my partner has married both of us? and how does this scale as embedded in a larger network of relationships?
Most discussion I've seen - and I'll note here that I haven't read any of the links above - is that when we talk about marriage there's really a lot of different things that are involved. These things are traditionally tightly bound in marriage, but they don't necessarily have to be that way, and polyam relationships fundamentally do not work in the context of that kind of marriage most of the time.
So it's better to talk about relationship recognition, and building legal support for other forms of relationships between people than just the one-size-fits-all marriage. In this, the needs of polyamorous people overlap with the needs of unmarried people more generally. Legal tools that help define the relationship between people on an individual basis: powers of attorney, ways to designate next of kin, who gets to be on your health insurance, who gets to visit you in the hospital and make medical decisions. Not always all going to be the same person or set of people!
What polyamorous people need is not marriage per se but to be able to have their legal relationships reflect the nature of their personal relationships. It's going to be intensely individual and complicated, basically bespoke for every person. But this is the same stuff that all queer people needed before they could legally get married, that people who decide not to get married need, that adult siblings who live together need, that single people need to get legal recognition of their relationships with friends and neighbors, etc, etc
So the kind of things you put forward there, about making the relationships that the government will recognize *less* flexible in the name of avoiding abuse, well, that sort of marriage just isn't relevant to most polyam people, and I can't see most people in these sorts of relationships signing up to participate in that system.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 1:53 AM on March 20, 2021 [33 favorites]
The thing about marriage as it exists today is that it's fundamentally a reciprocal legal relationship. Adding more people the naive option is to just expand that so all three people in the group have the same legal relationship to each other person in the group, but in real life this is a minority of how multiple relationships exist. The relationships aren't transitive. So what kind of relationship exists between me and my metamour if my partner has married both of us? and how does this scale as embedded in a larger network of relationships?
Most discussion I've seen - and I'll note here that I haven't read any of the links above - is that when we talk about marriage there's really a lot of different things that are involved. These things are traditionally tightly bound in marriage, but they don't necessarily have to be that way, and polyam relationships fundamentally do not work in the context of that kind of marriage most of the time.
So it's better to talk about relationship recognition, and building legal support for other forms of relationships between people than just the one-size-fits-all marriage. In this, the needs of polyamorous people overlap with the needs of unmarried people more generally. Legal tools that help define the relationship between people on an individual basis: powers of attorney, ways to designate next of kin, who gets to be on your health insurance, who gets to visit you in the hospital and make medical decisions. Not always all going to be the same person or set of people!
What polyamorous people need is not marriage per se but to be able to have their legal relationships reflect the nature of their personal relationships. It's going to be intensely individual and complicated, basically bespoke for every person. But this is the same stuff that all queer people needed before they could legally get married, that people who decide not to get married need, that adult siblings who live together need, that single people need to get legal recognition of their relationships with friends and neighbors, etc, etc
So the kind of things you put forward there, about making the relationships that the government will recognize *less* flexible in the name of avoiding abuse, well, that sort of marriage just isn't relevant to most polyam people, and I can't see most people in these sorts of relationships signing up to participate in that system.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 1:53 AM on March 20, 2021 [33 favorites]
I'll make one suggestion for how this should be approached and regulated, though.
In Mormon-style polygamy--both the Brigham Young/LDS Church kind that was abolished around the turn of the 1900s and the polygamous Mormon groups that still exist today--there can be two or more wives to one husband.
Each of the wives is married to the husband. But between the wives is no official or designated relationship at all. There is really no "polygamous marriage" per se, but simply a series of individual marriages of one man to several different women.
Let's say the man dies. Now the various remaining wives have no marriage and no official relationship together. With the death of just one participant, the whole set of relationships is dissolved.
This is a serious flaw and results in considerable inequity and difficulty. (Though it cuts through many of the difficulties outlined above, because each marriage consists of just two people. So you just apply regular 2-person marriage law several times and there you go.)
IMHO when it comes to recognizing multiple relationships in the law, this type of unequal relationship should not be allowed.
The legal form should be a group of people all joining into a relationship with each other--each one of them joined together with ALL the others in the marriage relationship, not just with one particular individual.
If, say, one of them dies or chooses to leave the relationship, the marital group still exists and all of the remaining members are still part of it. Of course, any participant can choose to leave the marital relationship when they choose, or all members together can mutually agree to dissolve it. But the whole thing isn't dissolved just because one person (the man, in the Mormon polygamy scheme) decides to leave or dies.
posted by flug at 2:10 AM on March 20, 2021 [10 favorites]
In Mormon-style polygamy--both the Brigham Young/LDS Church kind that was abolished around the turn of the 1900s and the polygamous Mormon groups that still exist today--there can be two or more wives to one husband.
Each of the wives is married to the husband. But between the wives is no official or designated relationship at all. There is really no "polygamous marriage" per se, but simply a series of individual marriages of one man to several different women.
Let's say the man dies. Now the various remaining wives have no marriage and no official relationship together. With the death of just one participant, the whole set of relationships is dissolved.
This is a serious flaw and results in considerable inequity and difficulty. (Though it cuts through many of the difficulties outlined above, because each marriage consists of just two people. So you just apply regular 2-person marriage law several times and there you go.)
IMHO when it comes to recognizing multiple relationships in the law, this type of unequal relationship should not be allowed.
The legal form should be a group of people all joining into a relationship with each other--each one of them joined together with ALL the others in the marriage relationship, not just with one particular individual.
If, say, one of them dies or chooses to leave the relationship, the marital group still exists and all of the remaining members are still part of it. Of course, any participant can choose to leave the marital relationship when they choose, or all members together can mutually agree to dissolve it. But the whole thing isn't dissolved just because one person (the man, in the Mormon polygamy scheme) decides to leave or dies.
posted by flug at 2:10 AM on March 20, 2021 [10 favorites]
What polyamorous people need is not marriage per se but to be able to have their legal relationships reflect the nature of their personal relationships.
Very much this! I've spent the last 13 years in a polyamorous relationship but can't legally marry my partner because she's already married to her husband. The three of us live together, own our house together, and have collectively parented our two children - biologically my partner's and her husband's - since they were born.
But if my partner and her husband were to die, for example, I wouldn't automatically become the guardian of our children. And, it turns out, there's basically nothing we can do to "fix" that. Sure, we could probably work around it if it ever came up: so long as their parents and siblings saw sense and consented, I'd probably be able to adopt them. But on the other hand, if their families didn't consent I could be thrown out of my children's lives. And again, I'll stress: there's no legally-binding way we can work around that.
If I could marry my partner (or her husband) we could name me as a step parent and the problem would be fixed. In fact, we even talked about the possibility of them divorcing, one of them marrying me, waiting the statutory two years, is divorcing and then remarrying as a way to return to the status quo but assign me parental responsibility! What a legal mess!
So yes, very much this. I want the legal benefits of marriage, or, better yet, I want those legal benefits separated from the institution of marriage so that they can be applied piecemeal to other kinds of relationships. The latter of which supports not only the small minority of folks who, like me, are in polyamorous relationships that "look like" marriage, but also the larger minority of people who represent the wider diversity of modern relationships and for whom traditional marriage isn't always a good fit.
[footnote for anybody wanting to weigh in with legal advice for my specific situation: I'm in the UK]
posted by avapoet at 2:16 AM on March 20, 2021 [30 favorites]
Very much this! I've spent the last 13 years in a polyamorous relationship but can't legally marry my partner because she's already married to her husband. The three of us live together, own our house together, and have collectively parented our two children - biologically my partner's and her husband's - since they were born.
But if my partner and her husband were to die, for example, I wouldn't automatically become the guardian of our children. And, it turns out, there's basically nothing we can do to "fix" that. Sure, we could probably work around it if it ever came up: so long as their parents and siblings saw sense and consented, I'd probably be able to adopt them. But on the other hand, if their families didn't consent I could be thrown out of my children's lives. And again, I'll stress: there's no legally-binding way we can work around that.
If I could marry my partner (or her husband) we could name me as a step parent and the problem would be fixed. In fact, we even talked about the possibility of them divorcing, one of them marrying me, waiting the statutory two years, is divorcing and then remarrying as a way to return to the status quo but assign me parental responsibility! What a legal mess!
So yes, very much this. I want the legal benefits of marriage, or, better yet, I want those legal benefits separated from the institution of marriage so that they can be applied piecemeal to other kinds of relationships. The latter of which supports not only the small minority of folks who, like me, are in polyamorous relationships that "look like" marriage, but also the larger minority of people who represent the wider diversity of modern relationships and for whom traditional marriage isn't always a good fit.
[footnote for anybody wanting to weigh in with legal advice for my specific situation: I'm in the UK]
posted by avapoet at 2:16 AM on March 20, 2021 [30 favorites]
> that sort of marriage just isn't relevant to most polyam people
And now exactly contradicting everything I just said above, I will say that back in the day when there was some serious discussion about making domestic partnerships a legal thing in the U.S., I got rather excited about the idea.
In my mind, the government's interest in the whole marriage/relationship thing is that they want people to form stable bonds and social units where people agree to form some kind of economic unit and to care for and look after each other for a length of time.
What gender the participants are, exactly how many have agreed to join together in the arrangement, the details of how it is set up, exactly who is or isn't zoinking which of the others, and so on, are all things the government is much better off just keeping their big fat nose out of.
This allows our current two-person marriage but also polygamous relationships, polyamorous relationships, etc etc, to be set up and arranged as the participants wish them to be.
And also, it would allow and encourage and sanction things like two cousins or just two friends or just two (or more) of whatever setting up a household and living together and agreeing to take care of each other (sharing insurance, medical decision-making, making joint purchases if they wish, etc etc etc) and having the same type of legal protections for practical matters like end-of-life decisions, inheritance, etc, as married couples now have.
Of course there is nothing stopping two cousins, or three friends, etc, from moving in together and setting up a household together, however they wish to do it, right now. But then they have the same type of problems once faced by people living together in gay relationships (and currently by polygamous, polyamorous, etc relationships)--no formal recognition, no household insurance, no right to medical visits or decision-making, property ownership and inheritance problems, lots of trouble in case of the death of one partner, etc.
Now as near as I can tell, every single person I have ever mentioned this to previously has hated it with the flaming intensity of a thousand suns. So feel free to hate it with the heat of as many suns as you would like and let me know all about it.
But it seems to me that getting the government out of the business of regulating the sexual relationship (or lack thereof) between consenting adults, and simultaneously encouraging the formation of strong, stable, mutually beneficial social bonds and household units--even beyond the types we typically have now--would be a win/win situation on all sides.
posted by flug at 2:37 AM on March 20, 2021 [8 favorites]
And now exactly contradicting everything I just said above, I will say that back in the day when there was some serious discussion about making domestic partnerships a legal thing in the U.S., I got rather excited about the idea.
In my mind, the government's interest in the whole marriage/relationship thing is that they want people to form stable bonds and social units where people agree to form some kind of economic unit and to care for and look after each other for a length of time.
What gender the participants are, exactly how many have agreed to join together in the arrangement, the details of how it is set up, exactly who is or isn't zoinking which of the others, and so on, are all things the government is much better off just keeping their big fat nose out of.
This allows our current two-person marriage but also polygamous relationships, polyamorous relationships, etc etc, to be set up and arranged as the participants wish them to be.
And also, it would allow and encourage and sanction things like two cousins or just two friends or just two (or more) of whatever setting up a household and living together and agreeing to take care of each other (sharing insurance, medical decision-making, making joint purchases if they wish, etc etc etc) and having the same type of legal protections for practical matters like end-of-life decisions, inheritance, etc, as married couples now have.
Of course there is nothing stopping two cousins, or three friends, etc, from moving in together and setting up a household together, however they wish to do it, right now. But then they have the same type of problems once faced by people living together in gay relationships (and currently by polygamous, polyamorous, etc relationships)--no formal recognition, no household insurance, no right to medical visits or decision-making, property ownership and inheritance problems, lots of trouble in case of the death of one partner, etc.
Now as near as I can tell, every single person I have ever mentioned this to previously has hated it with the flaming intensity of a thousand suns. So feel free to hate it with the heat of as many suns as you would like and let me know all about it.
But it seems to me that getting the government out of the business of regulating the sexual relationship (or lack thereof) between consenting adults, and simultaneously encouraging the formation of strong, stable, mutually beneficial social bonds and household units--even beyond the types we typically have now--would be a win/win situation on all sides.
posted by flug at 2:37 AM on March 20, 2021 [8 favorites]
>the abolition of prenuptial agreements
The more complex the relationship, and the more different parties involved, the more it seems that agreements along the lines of prenups would be helpful or perhaps even essential in helping to sort out all the details.
posted by flug at 2:45 AM on March 20, 2021 [3 favorites]
The more complex the relationship, and the more different parties involved, the more it seems that agreements along the lines of prenups would be helpful or perhaps even essential in helping to sort out all the details.
posted by flug at 2:45 AM on March 20, 2021 [3 favorites]
> But it seems to me that getting the government out of the business of regulating the sexual relationship (or lack thereof) between consenting adults, and simultaneously encouraging the formation of strong, stable, mutually beneficial social bonds and household units--even beyond the types we typically have now--would be a win/win situation on all sides.
yeah - one logical endpoint of this line of thinking is to make "marriage" no longer a term with any particular legal meaning. Leave that to the churches and the individuals involved. But the state's interest in promoting stable relationships remains, and can be more general without the baggage of "marriage" language.
For the concerns around polygyny specifically, regulating the relationship isn't the only avenue available to address them. The broader leftist agenda does as well. For example, if the problem is abusive use of prenuptial agreements leaving women without power in their relationship but unable to leave for financial and/or social reasons, building the kind of society that fixes the second part of that for *everyone* isn't a bad way to go about it. This kind of work also has the benefit that the lack of legal relationship recognition matters less overall, so it fits together on both ends.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 3:46 AM on March 20, 2021 [2 favorites]
yeah - one logical endpoint of this line of thinking is to make "marriage" no longer a term with any particular legal meaning. Leave that to the churches and the individuals involved. But the state's interest in promoting stable relationships remains, and can be more general without the baggage of "marriage" language.
For the concerns around polygyny specifically, regulating the relationship isn't the only avenue available to address them. The broader leftist agenda does as well. For example, if the problem is abusive use of prenuptial agreements leaving women without power in their relationship but unable to leave for financial and/or social reasons, building the kind of society that fixes the second part of that for *everyone* isn't a bad way to go about it. This kind of work also has the benefit that the lack of legal relationship recognition matters less overall, so it fits together on both ends.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 3:46 AM on March 20, 2021 [2 favorites]
> I will say that back in the day when there was some serious discussion about making domestic partnerships a legal thing in the U.S., I got rather excited about the idea. [...]
Now as near as I can tell, every single person I have ever mentioned this to previously has hated it with the flaming intensity of a thousand suns.
In the US, domestic partnerships were opposed at the time because it was getting traction as a separate-but-unequal alternative to marriage rather than a replacement, allowing married people their existing entitlements and granting domestic partners close-to-nothing.
Activists, very reasonably, did not want a second-class version of legal marriage, and getting same-sex couples access to marriage was an easier fight than converting all marriage to domestic partnerships would have been, since the latter would sharpen a currently blurry distinction between church and state and that's a hill the religious right is willing to die on.
posted by at by at 5:48 AM on March 20, 2021 [3 favorites]
Now as near as I can tell, every single person I have ever mentioned this to previously has hated it with the flaming intensity of a thousand suns.
In the US, domestic partnerships were opposed at the time because it was getting traction as a separate-but-unequal alternative to marriage rather than a replacement, allowing married people their existing entitlements and granting domestic partners close-to-nothing.
Activists, very reasonably, did not want a second-class version of legal marriage, and getting same-sex couples access to marriage was an easier fight than converting all marriage to domestic partnerships would have been, since the latter would sharpen a currently blurry distinction between church and state and that's a hill the religious right is willing to die on.
posted by at by at 5:48 AM on March 20, 2021 [3 favorites]
I can hear the database contractor firms salivating already...
And the database programmers curling up in the fetal position under their desks with bottles of whisky and funnels.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 6:16 AM on March 20, 2021
And the database programmers curling up in the fetal position under their desks with bottles of whisky and funnels.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 6:16 AM on March 20, 2021
Mtf trans poly, rated 70% F by the government
At first blush, this is a joke, but I find it terrifyingly believable, and one of the reasons I'm stealth whenever possible.
There's a scary story about government records of trans identity at this level written by Rachel Zall called "Control".
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 6:47 AM on March 20, 2021 [3 favorites]
At first blush, this is a joke, but I find it terrifyingly believable, and one of the reasons I'm stealth whenever possible.
There's a scary story about government records of trans identity at this level written by Rachel Zall called "Control".
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 6:47 AM on March 20, 2021 [3 favorites]
one logical endpoint of this line of thinking is to make "marriage" no longer a term with any particular legal meaning.
If you ignore the church, isn't marriage just a set of implied contracts regarding property and offspring. Why can't those contracts be drawn up independantly? Prenups and wills can already modify those terms, and divorce often sets up custody rules. It seems like we're nearly there already, we just need the state to recognize a few other forms of contract.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:31 AM on March 20, 2021
If you ignore the church, isn't marriage just a set of implied contracts regarding property and offspring. Why can't those contracts be drawn up independantly? Prenups and wills can already modify those terms, and divorce often sets up custody rules. It seems like we're nearly there already, we just need the state to recognize a few other forms of contract.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:31 AM on March 20, 2021
Somerville, MA (where I live) began to recognize poly relationships last year. It's largely symbolic as it's a single city and overridden by state and federal law, but it was nice to see.
posted by fader at 8:51 AM on March 20, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by fader at 8:51 AM on March 20, 2021 [5 favorites]
From what I gathered living in an area heavily populated by flds groups that even if polygamous marriage were legal it would likely not be utilized as being classified as single parents allows more access to government benefits and extracting as much resources as possible from the federal or state government is encouraged. Wrt legal rights this group is kind of a red herring.
posted by Ferreous at 9:06 AM on March 20, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by Ferreous at 9:06 AM on March 20, 2021 [6 favorites]
I think honestly the problem here is less the issue of people’s sexual/romantic relationships, but rather their financial and legal interests.
So: looking at existing poly relationships, there are competing interests, for example, and not everyone is actually interested in equal-rights-relationships for all parties in the relationship. This is a matter of frustration often for a lot of people already - who gets to veto what? Who gets to make certain decisions?
Currently, two-person marriage creates inheritance rights and joint ownership. Adding a third person means reduced inheritance rights and reduced ownership. Does that mean that you need all parties’ consent before adding another legal marital relationship? Or would the person only be subdividing their own share of the property? It’s a complicated mess even if you do believe it’s ultimately a good thing to do.
posted by corb at 10:01 AM on March 20, 2021 [3 favorites]
So: looking at existing poly relationships, there are competing interests, for example, and not everyone is actually interested in equal-rights-relationships for all parties in the relationship. This is a matter of frustration often for a lot of people already - who gets to veto what? Who gets to make certain decisions?
Currently, two-person marriage creates inheritance rights and joint ownership. Adding a third person means reduced inheritance rights and reduced ownership. Does that mean that you need all parties’ consent before adding another legal marital relationship? Or would the person only be subdividing their own share of the property? It’s a complicated mess even if you do believe it’s ultimately a good thing to do.
posted by corb at 10:01 AM on March 20, 2021 [3 favorites]
If you ignore the church, isn’t marriage just a set of implied contracts regarding property and offspring. Why can't those contracts be drawn up independently?
Not a lawyer, but if I remember correctly one of the big arguments for marriage equality was that “marriage” is a concept that influences many aspects of society, not just the church - hence the whole dismissal of civil unions as “separate but equal”. In the article, I believe it’s members of the Rêve who are mournful that queer folk effectively bought into the straight franchise instead of pushing for their own thing. (That argument itself predates same-sex marriage, and I remember reading various think pieces about how the queer community had fought over which way to go and this approach won out.) This is one of many challenges for us to address: how do we create social equality for loving relationships that don’t really have an acknowledged existence in modern society?
posted by Going To Maine at 10:04 AM on March 20, 2021 [3 favorites]
Not a lawyer, but if I remember correctly one of the big arguments for marriage equality was that “marriage” is a concept that influences many aspects of society, not just the church - hence the whole dismissal of civil unions as “separate but equal”. In the article, I believe it’s members of the Rêve who are mournful that queer folk effectively bought into the straight franchise instead of pushing for their own thing. (That argument itself predates same-sex marriage, and I remember reading various think pieces about how the queer community had fought over which way to go and this approach won out.) This is one of many challenges for us to address: how do we create social equality for loving relationships that don’t really have an acknowledged existence in modern society?
posted by Going To Maine at 10:04 AM on March 20, 2021 [3 favorites]
And all that is before you get to immigration rights! It's a nightmare for those of us trying to navigate polyamory, and I don't have any solutions.
posted by Braeburn at 10:07 AM on March 20, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Braeburn at 10:07 AM on March 20, 2021 [3 favorites]
I think what a lot of people want and what would be simplest in polyamorous relationships is to allow partners to opt in and structure their relationships legally the way they want them, as couples can do with a relationship agreement (pre-nuptial agreement) that the courts will enforce in a different way than a normal contract.
The more complicated proposition is the 'automatic' parts of family law that apply to any relationship that meets certain criteria. Where I live, common law couples are treated almost exactly the same as married couples for property division and some other matters automatically on living together for two years. The point of this is to try to protect people and institute a fair regime especially in situations of inequality or vulnerability. It makes some sense not to apply these automatic property division rules to polyamorous couples since situations may be too variable and complex to come up with rules that accord with people's expectations and notions of fairness.
The other difficult issue is children, since a lot of family law is also about protecting children's rights to financial support and to contact with their parents. It makes sense conceptually to separate the parenting and child support aspects of family law from the rest since different considerations and principles apply. Allowing more than two parents to be recognized as parents on a birth certificate as can be done where I live in British Columbia is a good start and is also important to other situations like where couples use a surrogate or donor and intend for all three people to have a role in the child's life.
Another aspect is external recognition and privileges afforded to couples like tax status, which also has to be sorted out.
Obviously it will take a lot of work and involve lots of debates and compromises, but there are certainly smaller incremental steps that can be taken without figuring out the whole thing.
posted by lookoutbelow at 10:21 AM on March 20, 2021 [2 favorites]
The more complicated proposition is the 'automatic' parts of family law that apply to any relationship that meets certain criteria. Where I live, common law couples are treated almost exactly the same as married couples for property division and some other matters automatically on living together for two years. The point of this is to try to protect people and institute a fair regime especially in situations of inequality or vulnerability. It makes some sense not to apply these automatic property division rules to polyamorous couples since situations may be too variable and complex to come up with rules that accord with people's expectations and notions of fairness.
The other difficult issue is children, since a lot of family law is also about protecting children's rights to financial support and to contact with their parents. It makes sense conceptually to separate the parenting and child support aspects of family law from the rest since different considerations and principles apply. Allowing more than two parents to be recognized as parents on a birth certificate as can be done where I live in British Columbia is a good start and is also important to other situations like where couples use a surrogate or donor and intend for all three people to have a role in the child's life.
Another aspect is external recognition and privileges afforded to couples like tax status, which also has to be sorted out.
Obviously it will take a lot of work and involve lots of debates and compromises, but there are certainly smaller incremental steps that can be taken without figuring out the whole thing.
posted by lookoutbelow at 10:21 AM on March 20, 2021 [2 favorites]
Currently, two-person marriage creates inheritance rights and joint ownership. Adding a third person means reduced inheritance rights and reduced ownership. Does that mean that you need all parties’ consent before adding another legal marital relationship? Or would the person only be subdividing their own share of the property? It’s a complicated mess even if you do believe it’s ultimately a good thing to do.
Is it really?
I mean all of this is really a sideshow in that:
a) Monogamous marriage gets tax benefits
b) Monogamous marriage gets next of kin
Are we going to be able to create a perfect and equitable legal framework for poly marriages, and their possible dissolution? Probably not the first try. Should it stand in the way of getting the more important rights to poly people? Hell no.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 10:22 AM on March 20, 2021 [2 favorites]
Is it really?
I mean all of this is really a sideshow in that:
a) Monogamous marriage gets tax benefits
b) Monogamous marriage gets next of kin
Are we going to be able to create a perfect and equitable legal framework for poly marriages, and their possible dissolution? Probably not the first try. Should it stand in the way of getting the more important rights to poly people? Hell no.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 10:22 AM on March 20, 2021 [2 favorites]
I am poly, I have been married, and I have been single; and I want the government out of the regulation-of-relationships business. I don't want it to make assumptions about the obligations and benefits people should receive if they happened to visit a courthouse one day. I don't want to pay more taxes when I'm single, I don't want it to be harder to qualify for certain benefits like Medicaid if I'm married, I don't want it to automatically allow an abusive partner to make medical decisions for the other. There's no legitimate reason for it and there are lots of reasons to end it.
posted by metasarah at 10:34 AM on March 20, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by metasarah at 10:34 AM on March 20, 2021 [9 favorites]
If you ignore the church, isn't marriage just a set of implied contracts regarding property and offspring. Why can't those contracts be drawn up independantly? Prenups and wills can already modify those terms, and divorce often sets up custody rules. It seems like we're nearly there already, we just need the state to recognize a few other forms of contract.
Negotiating contract law can be pretty expensive though, so this could create a significant economic barrier to marriage.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:51 AM on March 20, 2021
Negotiating contract law can be pretty expensive though, so this could create a significant economic barrier to marriage.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:51 AM on March 20, 2021
Otherwise I foresee most poly marriages not being the meeting of multiple equals, but something more like the FLDS world.
The big issue will be around consent. Does a proposed change to the law include only a group marriage (requiring consent of all parties), or does it recognize bigamy (or trigamy, etc.), that is, the marriage of one person to multiple others with no consent required from their other partners? Or both?
I can see situations for the latter which are equal partnerships, but it is also very ripe for abuse. I don't want to see FLDS become legal, not because they are polygamous, but because they are sexist and their required polygamy lead to the abuse of both girls (married off under age) and boys (kicked out of the community) alike.
posted by jb at 12:34 PM on March 20, 2021
The big issue will be around consent. Does a proposed change to the law include only a group marriage (requiring consent of all parties), or does it recognize bigamy (or trigamy, etc.), that is, the marriage of one person to multiple others with no consent required from their other partners? Or both?
I can see situations for the latter which are equal partnerships, but it is also very ripe for abuse. I don't want to see FLDS become legal, not because they are polygamous, but because they are sexist and their required polygamy lead to the abuse of both girls (married off under age) and boys (kicked out of the community) alike.
posted by jb at 12:34 PM on March 20, 2021
I want the government out of the regulation-of-relationships business.
What about if your partner secretly spirits away your assets into a separate account? If they put everything in their name? If they agree that one partner will sacrifice their career to care for children and then separate and leave one partner with little ability to support themselves? Sure we can reform family law and stop giving married couples additional privileges, but doing away with it altogether means leaving some people very vulnerable.
posted by lookoutbelow at 12:51 PM on March 20, 2021 [11 favorites]
What about if your partner secretly spirits away your assets into a separate account? If they put everything in their name? If they agree that one partner will sacrifice their career to care for children and then separate and leave one partner with little ability to support themselves? Sure we can reform family law and stop giving married couples additional privileges, but doing away with it altogether means leaving some people very vulnerable.
posted by lookoutbelow at 12:51 PM on March 20, 2021 [11 favorites]
If you ignore the church, isn't marriage just a set of implied contracts regarding property and offspring.
One of the things the law does (*) is prevent people making certain sorts of contract. Not all jurisdictions even allow pre–nuptial contracts, specifically because the weaker party is almost always forced to sign away some of their rights. And the glacial pace of the law in dealing with children born via donor sperm/eggs/host mothers/etc. is at least partially because a contract between adults (e.g., a sperm donor and recipients) to void the rights if a child. This is still a live issue today!
In my jurisdiction we recognise what we call de–facto marriages, where people live in a relationship resembling a marriage but without formal registration. We don't do it because of an implied contract, but to protect the parties. In fact, IIUC, a de–facto marriage would supersede an explicit contract between the parties, just because we don't want people to be able to contract their way out of their responsibilities.
So no, at least in my jurisdiction you can't treat marriage as a system of contracts. You could possibly set up contracts to replicate marriage for a relationship the law didn't otherwise recognise, but they wouldn't operate the same way when things break down, or children are involved, or circumstances otherwise change radically. This isn't because contract law is inherently inadequate but because people can have non-contractual (e.g., parental) duties to each other; people in marriage –like relationships are especially vulnerable to imposition; and we want the protection of vulnerable people to take priority over contracts.
(*) IANAL, “the law” here is very likely different in your jurisdiction.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:46 PM on March 20, 2021 [6 favorites]
One of the things the law does (*) is prevent people making certain sorts of contract. Not all jurisdictions even allow pre–nuptial contracts, specifically because the weaker party is almost always forced to sign away some of their rights. And the glacial pace of the law in dealing with children born via donor sperm/eggs/host mothers/etc. is at least partially because a contract between adults (e.g., a sperm donor and recipients) to void the rights if a child. This is still a live issue today!
In my jurisdiction we recognise what we call de–facto marriages, where people live in a relationship resembling a marriage but without formal registration. We don't do it because of an implied contract, but to protect the parties. In fact, IIUC, a de–facto marriage would supersede an explicit contract between the parties, just because we don't want people to be able to contract their way out of their responsibilities.
So no, at least in my jurisdiction you can't treat marriage as a system of contracts. You could possibly set up contracts to replicate marriage for a relationship the law didn't otherwise recognise, but they wouldn't operate the same way when things break down, or children are involved, or circumstances otherwise change radically. This isn't because contract law is inherently inadequate but because people can have non-contractual (e.g., parental) duties to each other; people in marriage –like relationships are especially vulnerable to imposition; and we want the protection of vulnerable people to take priority over contracts.
(*) IANAL, “the law” here is very likely different in your jurisdiction.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:46 PM on March 20, 2021 [6 favorites]
If you ignore the church, isn’t marriage just a set of implied contracts regarding property and offspring. Why can't those contracts be drawn up independently?
Next up: Poly families as a Limited Liability Corporation.
And the database programmers curling up in the fetal position under their desks with bottles of whisky and funnels.
Oh, look. One entry in the "Company Name" field.
posted by mikelieman at 3:06 PM on March 20, 2021 [1 favorite]
Next up: Poly families as a Limited Liability Corporation.
And the database programmers curling up in the fetal position under their desks with bottles of whisky and funnels.
Oh, look. One entry in the "Company Name" field.
posted by mikelieman at 3:06 PM on March 20, 2021 [1 favorite]
If you ignore the church, isn't marriage just a set of implied contracts regarding property and offspring
Well, there’s also kinship, which is pretty important.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:31 PM on March 20, 2021
Well, there’s also kinship, which is pretty important.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:31 PM on March 20, 2021
Is there an argument in favor of legal polyamory that couldn't also be made for polygamy? Especially if we base it on a right to have your legal life reflect your personal life?
Not trying to make a statement about polyamory, just curious if anyone has thought of a good argument for legally allowing one but not the other. This is far outside my cis-het expertise.
The closest I can think of is that polygamy has a history of abuse and coercion, but "traditional marriage" doesn't really have a leg to stand on from that lens either.
posted by lock robster at 12:16 AM on March 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
Not trying to make a statement about polyamory, just curious if anyone has thought of a good argument for legally allowing one but not the other. This is far outside my cis-het expertise.
The closest I can think of is that polygamy has a history of abuse and coercion, but "traditional marriage" doesn't really have a leg to stand on from that lens either.
posted by lock robster at 12:16 AM on March 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
Lookoutbelow, those things happen now with legal marriage, and legal marriage makes it EASIER to commit a number of abuses. The protections of spouses via family law are pretty darn theoretical for most people; the system generally does not protect the people who need it most. I don't have any friends who managed to receive alimony, for example, even though a number DID make significant career sacrifices for their families.
How about instead we change the norms around partnership, so it's not considered normal to have joint bank accounts, and household earnings are split in half as they come in?
posted by metasarah at 4:34 AM on March 21, 2021 [2 favorites]
How about instead we change the norms around partnership, so it's not considered normal to have joint bank accounts, and household earnings are split in half as they come in?
posted by metasarah at 4:34 AM on March 21, 2021 [2 favorites]
Is there an argument in favor of legal polyamory that couldn't also be made for polygamy?
Polygamy is just multiple spouses; it's what happens when you allow polyamorous relationships to be legally recognized with marriage. From the text of your question, are you thinking of one-man-many-women setups (polygynous marriage would be the term I guess) and most especially traditional patriarchal ones?
I don't imagine anyone is thinking you could allow for legal polyamorous marriages but outlaw polygynous ones. There is discussion here about how to avoid the abuses (and certainly not protect any patriarchal element with the power of the state), but legally you are going to have both.
posted by mark k at 9:53 AM on March 22, 2021
Polygamy is just multiple spouses; it's what happens when you allow polyamorous relationships to be legally recognized with marriage. From the text of your question, are you thinking of one-man-many-women setups (polygynous marriage would be the term I guess) and most especially traditional patriarchal ones?
I don't imagine anyone is thinking you could allow for legal polyamorous marriages but outlaw polygynous ones. There is discussion here about how to avoid the abuses (and certainly not protect any patriarchal element with the power of the state), but legally you are going to have both.
posted by mark k at 9:53 AM on March 22, 2021
It is an odd unchallenged assumption that the reason we have secular marriage is that the state has an interest in promoting stable family units. It's not like marriage was a policy that got implemented in the 50s to combat communism. The state recognizes marriages because marriage is one of the things people do, just as it recognizes parent-child relationships, because to do otherwise would essentially be a crime against humanity. While they are not equivalent, the failure of the state to recognize interracial marriages, same sex marriages, indigenous parental rights, and other relationships involving minority groups, are all frequently defended on the basis of this flawed assumption, that the state has an interest in promoting certain types of relationships. The truth is that the state is made of people, and people make institutions that protect the things they do, but they often do not extend those protections to people who are different or who do things differently, and that is not protecting any valid interest, it is bigotry at best.
posted by Nothing at 2:15 PM on March 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Nothing at 2:15 PM on March 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
If you ignore the church, isn't marriage just a set of implied contracts regarding property and offspring.
Very much not, how can people have had parents and think this? I'm sorry if your family sucked. It does happen. But this sounds like an If statement that could only be uttered in the ruin of the U.S. Empire, as the boomer generation fades.
Marriage is the knitting together of a family. You get new grandmas and great great-grandpas in a marriage. People who are not yet born and people long dead are part of the agreement. It s the creation of a new network of mutual aid needed to feed and raise children in the same loving embrace of shared kinship.
I think this is part of why extending marriage to queer love was difficult, and why equal access to raising children is such an important part of that struggle, which is not over.
contracts are hostile by default, and set a war of all against all, which seems to be the opposite of how families work. Capitalism already barely runs on the fumes of the gift economy, turning families into contracts turns all of society into family court. Which sounds much more exhausting than even polyamory.
That's what might be most confusing to me about polyamorous marriage, do you inherit a metamours' grandsires? Those interrelationships are pretty complex for two people. Whose aunt gets to be told about the wedding first?
I suppose this is happening in the context of a lot of queer familial relationships, where the parents have disowned or are estranged from, children, and kinship is broken; although I think that is changing in the United states.
How will you envision what the family looks like seven generations after you pass? How will a metamours' grandparents refer to one another? How will your grandchildren relate to the grandchildren of the person at the other end of your "N"? Who is on the family tree?
You can say that culture doesn't matter, but then you are leaving open a cultural vacuum for cults and authoritarians, or merely cheaters and ambitious assholes, to answer these questions for you. I think that polygamous culture is rapidly evolving such terms, and discussions like these can help.
posted by eustatic at 3:49 AM on March 30, 2021
Very much not, how can people have had parents and think this? I'm sorry if your family sucked. It does happen. But this sounds like an If statement that could only be uttered in the ruin of the U.S. Empire, as the boomer generation fades.
Marriage is the knitting together of a family. You get new grandmas and great great-grandpas in a marriage. People who are not yet born and people long dead are part of the agreement. It s the creation of a new network of mutual aid needed to feed and raise children in the same loving embrace of shared kinship.
I think this is part of why extending marriage to queer love was difficult, and why equal access to raising children is such an important part of that struggle, which is not over.
contracts are hostile by default, and set a war of all against all, which seems to be the opposite of how families work. Capitalism already barely runs on the fumes of the gift economy, turning families into contracts turns all of society into family court. Which sounds much more exhausting than even polyamory.
That's what might be most confusing to me about polyamorous marriage, do you inherit a metamours' grandsires? Those interrelationships are pretty complex for two people. Whose aunt gets to be told about the wedding first?
I suppose this is happening in the context of a lot of queer familial relationships, where the parents have disowned or are estranged from, children, and kinship is broken; although I think that is changing in the United states.
How will you envision what the family looks like seven generations after you pass? How will a metamours' grandparents refer to one another? How will your grandchildren relate to the grandchildren of the person at the other end of your "N"? Who is on the family tree?
You can say that culture doesn't matter, but then you are leaving open a cultural vacuum for cults and authoritarians, or merely cheaters and ambitious assholes, to answer these questions for you. I think that polygamous culture is rapidly evolving such terms, and discussions like these can help.
posted by eustatic at 3:49 AM on March 30, 2021
I think, at some point, it will be useful for polyamory to adopt the tradition of "affairs," but right now, that probably sounds like an invitation to delegitimization of the project of making love abundant.
posted by eustatic at 4:01 AM on March 30, 2021
posted by eustatic at 4:01 AM on March 30, 2021
Eustatic: a perhaps relevant historical note is that the first English statutes regarding marriage were meant to make marriage harder. E.g., the Clandestine Marriages Act 1753, which was meant to address the perceived problem of wards and heirs being “seduced” and the concomitant disruption to family financial arrangements.
In fact IIRC there were no laws encouraging marriage until it became desirable to recognise de-facto/common law marriages in order to protect the weaker party in what any reasonable person would acknowledge was an existing (albeit informal) marriage. As far as the law has been concerned, marriage is a messy and disruptive thing that, if it is to be allowed at all, ought to be treated with the greatest suspicion. The sole exception is when at least one of the parties seems to be evading marriage: then it is to be made compulsory.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:07 AM on March 30, 2021
In fact IIRC there were no laws encouraging marriage until it became desirable to recognise de-facto/common law marriages in order to protect the weaker party in what any reasonable person would acknowledge was an existing (albeit informal) marriage. As far as the law has been concerned, marriage is a messy and disruptive thing that, if it is to be allowed at all, ought to be treated with the greatest suspicion. The sole exception is when at least one of the parties seems to be evading marriage: then it is to be made compulsory.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:07 AM on March 30, 2021
Maybe we need to just get rid of marriage.
What's so hard about coming up with a framework that consists of more specific forms of avowed partnership. These could be ones that people celebrate publicly, but they don't have to be. The goal is to give specific forms of legal protection to all our various intimacies. I'm thinking of forms of agreement that provide for procreation, parenting, estate dispersal, bereavement, insurance coverage, all the stuff that marriage bestows but in more modular, customizable forms. And of course, Freedom to Marry Our Pets.
posted by Morpeth at 5:37 AM on April 3, 2021
What's so hard about coming up with a framework that consists of more specific forms of avowed partnership. These could be ones that people celebrate publicly, but they don't have to be. The goal is to give specific forms of legal protection to all our various intimacies. I'm thinking of forms of agreement that provide for procreation, parenting, estate dispersal, bereavement, insurance coverage, all the stuff that marriage bestows but in more modular, customizable forms. And of course, Freedom to Marry Our Pets.
posted by Morpeth at 5:37 AM on April 3, 2021
What's so hard about coming up with a framework that consists of more specific forms of avowed partnership.
It's called a Limited Liability Company, where the LLC owns the assets. IN THEORY a "family" could qualify for group health insurance rates.
posted by mikelieman at 5:46 AM on April 3, 2021
It's called a Limited Liability Company, where the LLC owns the assets. IN THEORY a "family" could qualify for group health insurance rates.
posted by mikelieman at 5:46 AM on April 3, 2021
What's so hard about coming up with a framework that consists of more specific forms of avowed partnership.
No innovative form of union is going to have the historical global significance that makes marriage desirable even to people who could negotiate better terms.
Marriage persists because it's a socially–privileged relationship that comes with a whole set of default arrangements about the things ("procreation, parenting, estate dispersal, bereavement, insurance coverage") you mention. It often happens that one partner is significantly more powerful — wealthier, better educated, or otherwise advantaged — and if they were free to impose their own terms it would be oppressive. Then, too, people at the start of a relationship often don't consider how things will change, but marriage ensures that there's some barrier to ending the relationship. Marriage's privileged status makes it attractive to those partners who otherwise wouldn't accept those terms, and it therefore protects the less powerful partner in the relationship. This protection is by no means perfect, and the burdens often fall on the weaker partner as well, but historical experience shows that the party seeking to avoid marriage or negotiate different terms is almost always the more powerful one.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:48 PM on April 4, 2021 [2 favorites]
No innovative form of union is going to have the historical global significance that makes marriage desirable even to people who could negotiate better terms.
Marriage persists because it's a socially–privileged relationship that comes with a whole set of default arrangements about the things ("procreation, parenting, estate dispersal, bereavement, insurance coverage") you mention. It often happens that one partner is significantly more powerful — wealthier, better educated, or otherwise advantaged — and if they were free to impose their own terms it would be oppressive. Then, too, people at the start of a relationship often don't consider how things will change, but marriage ensures that there's some barrier to ending the relationship. Marriage's privileged status makes it attractive to those partners who otherwise wouldn't accept those terms, and it therefore protects the less powerful partner in the relationship. This protection is by no means perfect, and the burdens often fall on the weaker partner as well, but historical experience shows that the party seeking to avoid marriage or negotiate different terms is almost always the more powerful one.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:48 PM on April 4, 2021 [2 favorites]
> an odd unchallenged assumption that the reason we have secular marriage is that the state has an interest in promoting stable family units
I would call them "stable household units" rather than "stable family units". And, in light of the discussion above, I would add that the state has an interest in promoting family-type relationships like uncle, cousin, grandmother, grandchild, etc.
The reason is, that people in these types of relationships--most especially the household unit--work together, take care of each other, support one another, etc etc etc.
When you set up a (or more precisely, support an existing) system of this type, then people's needs are better met, people are happier, people are healthier, people are more productive economically, etc etc etc without the state having to step in and pick up the slack.
If a whole sector of society wants to get together and set up a bunch of nice, helpful households and extended relations, why in the world would the government want to get in the way of them doing that?
The same type of thinking extends to gay marriage but also polyamorous relationships, polygamous families, and really any small group of people who wants to get together and work together on living their lives instead of each going it alone.
It seems to me we should be encouraging this type of thing wherever possible and I can think of some reasons to regulate it (to prevent inequity etc) but I can't think of any reasons to put a stop to it among any group that wants to do it.
posted by flug at 11:19 PM on April 5, 2021
I would call them "stable household units" rather than "stable family units". And, in light of the discussion above, I would add that the state has an interest in promoting family-type relationships like uncle, cousin, grandmother, grandchild, etc.
The reason is, that people in these types of relationships--most especially the household unit--work together, take care of each other, support one another, etc etc etc.
When you set up a (or more precisely, support an existing) system of this type, then people's needs are better met, people are happier, people are healthier, people are more productive economically, etc etc etc without the state having to step in and pick up the slack.
If a whole sector of society wants to get together and set up a bunch of nice, helpful households and extended relations, why in the world would the government want to get in the way of them doing that?
The same type of thinking extends to gay marriage but also polyamorous relationships, polygamous families, and really any small group of people who wants to get together and work together on living their lives instead of each going it alone.
It seems to me we should be encouraging this type of thing wherever possible and I can think of some reasons to regulate it (to prevent inequity etc) but I can't think of any reasons to put a stop to it among any group that wants to do it.
posted by flug at 11:19 PM on April 5, 2021
>in an area heavily populated by flds groups that even if polygamous marriage were legal it would likely not be utilized as being classified as single parents allows more access to government benefits and extracting as much resources as possible from the federal or state government is encouraged
That is under the current system, though. Typically there is one official/legally recognized marriage and then the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc wives are married in a religious ceremony but not legally. So under the law they are single adult households. When they have children they are single mothers, etc.
But . . . under a system where such marriages could be legally recognized, there would be some recognition among the government benefit regulations that the husband's income is now split 4 ways, or 9, or 27, or whatever the number is. Or maybe you have a "married filing jointly" tax return with 5 adult partners, 10, 28, or whatever.
Point is, pretty much the same benefits that might accrue to a "single mother" would also accrue to the same household if they have to divide the aggregate income among all partners in the polygamous marriage.
Also--though I believe this would happen only slowly over time--people who are married usually want to be legally married if they can. Not everyone, sure. But why break the law when there are concrete advantages to complying with it?
I believe that kind of positive pressure would change the field from where it is now, where all FLDS-style polygamous marriages are illegal/unrecognized, to the point where the vast majority would be legal and officially recognized.
Not immediately, but say over 25 or 50 or 75 years.
posted by flug at 11:29 PM on April 5, 2021
That is under the current system, though. Typically there is one official/legally recognized marriage and then the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc wives are married in a religious ceremony but not legally. So under the law they are single adult households. When they have children they are single mothers, etc.
But . . . under a system where such marriages could be legally recognized, there would be some recognition among the government benefit regulations that the husband's income is now split 4 ways, or 9, or 27, or whatever the number is. Or maybe you have a "married filing jointly" tax return with 5 adult partners, 10, 28, or whatever.
Point is, pretty much the same benefits that might accrue to a "single mother" would also accrue to the same household if they have to divide the aggregate income among all partners in the polygamous marriage.
Also--though I believe this would happen only slowly over time--people who are married usually want to be legally married if they can. Not everyone, sure. But why break the law when there are concrete advantages to complying with it?
I believe that kind of positive pressure would change the field from where it is now, where all FLDS-style polygamous marriages are illegal/unrecognized, to the point where the vast majority would be legal and officially recognized.
Not immediately, but say over 25 or 50 or 75 years.
posted by flug at 11:29 PM on April 5, 2021
Just to give some idea of the scope of this issue (info is via 5 seconds of googling):
* There are maybe 50,000-100,000 people participating in Mormon or Muslim-style polygamous marriages in the U.S.
* And maybe 4-5% of the U.S. population is participating in a polyamorous relationship at any given time.
So this isn't a majority of the population by any means, but 15-ish million people, say (again, just in the U.S.). A good number of people.
For perspective: As of 2020, there were about 62 million married couples in the U.S.
posted by flug at 11:39 PM on April 5, 2021
* There are maybe 50,000-100,000 people participating in Mormon or Muslim-style polygamous marriages in the U.S.
* And maybe 4-5% of the U.S. population is participating in a polyamorous relationship at any given time.
So this isn't a majority of the population by any means, but 15-ish million people, say (again, just in the U.S.). A good number of people.
For perspective: As of 2020, there were about 62 million married couples in the U.S.
posted by flug at 11:39 PM on April 5, 2021
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This was a popular argument in the same-sex marriage debate, that if you were for gay and lesbian marriage that somehow meant you were opposed to the rights of the polyamorous (as well as some other, wholly made-up cases that people would throw in there.) It was...not my favorite take. Because (1) we can make incremental progress, that's good, actually (2) the structure of polyamorous marriage would need to be somewhat different than existing two-person marriage, and (3) it seemed wholly disingenuous. Do we really believe that John Roberts wanted to stand up for the right to polyamory?
posted by anhedonic at 6:07 PM on March 19, 2021 [14 favorites]