Apparently, according to the yahoos at the American Family Association, if gays are allowed to marry, that literally opens the door for polyamory right then and there. Those of you in polyamorous relationships need only fight for gay marriage, I guess! It’s awesome that the bar for polyamory was that low, that we could fix two sets of injustices by fixing one of them! Should be seriously heartening news to everyone presently unable to celebrate their love officially, and obtain legal protections for their loved ones.
As far as I’m concerned, entering into a legally binding contract of any sort with another entity is a matter of informed consent. Marriage is simply a predefined contract that confers certain legal rights and obligations to go with your pair-bonding — there are no religious connotations on this side of the reality divide. And if the only real issue is consent, that legally binding contracts like marriage could be entered into by informed, consenting adults of any number, then I seriously doubt people will be able to prove that buildings or cars or dogs are capable of informed consent. These fuckwits and their slippery slope arguments always take it just one step too far to make their point, even if the point they have to make is invalid on its face. No, you can’t marry the Eiffel Tower if the Eiffel Tower can’t consent, so STFU.
What should it matter if gays are allowed to engage in pair bonding rituals like straights, and have the same legal rights and obligations that the rest of us have? If you don’t like gay marriage, don’t fucking get one. End of discussion.
Next it’ll be cats and dogs living together. TOTAL CHAOS.
Hat tip to Right Wing Watch.
But you don’t understand. If gays are allowed to get married then you and I and every other heterosexual married person would immediately have to get divorced and marry someone of the same sex. And if polyamory became legal then we’d have to marry several people of the same sex. :-þ
Seriously, the three reasons I’ve heard for being against same-sex marriage are:
1. It’ll destroy conventional marriage. How this will happen is apparently left as an exercise for the student.
B. God thinks what gays do in bed is icky. According to the propaganda the Abrahamist god has an unhealthy obsession with sex.
iii. The purpose of marriage is to have children, same-sex couples cannot procreate. My wife is past menopause, so according to this idea she and I should get divorced because we can’t procreate. Or if I die she should not be allowed to remarry.
The real reason for opposing same-sex marriage is pure bigotry. But the homophobes will go out of their way to pretend they’re not bigots.
The only downside to Gay marriage is this…
If gay people get married then gay people can divorced… Thus the number of people who fit into the bitter divorced stereotype will increase…
And do we want that? Do we?! Good god! Think of the divorces! We don’t let them get married lest they get divorced!
Okay… I got nothing. Wait… if you marry a building, then are you allowed to get a shared account? I mean technically, I could marry a famous building such as the Louvre and then divorce her (It’s a straight building marriage) and then since she earns more than me she would have to pay alimony (and if I hire a really crooked lawyer, child support).
This plan is stellar.
Well done, Avicenna. TEN POINTS TO GRYFFINDOR.
They do seem a little desperate, don’t they?
Polyamorous marriages, at the moment, would cause all sorts of legal issues.
What if person A wants to divorce person B, but B and C want to remain married? What happens to jointly owned property?
Child custody?
Inheritance rights?
Please note that I am not arguing against polyamourous marriages. Go ahead and marry whomever you like, of whatever gender and number. But a bunch of new legislation will need to be passed, or in the absence of that, court decisions will need to be made.
I’m not really sure, keith. I’d suspect the correct answer would be to build an appropriate contract tailored to what you want out of your polyamorous relationship — e.g. if one pair has children, they’re the ones who have to negotiate child custody, but if one divorces out of the relationship the choice is between one biological parent or the other (with third party). Yeah, it’d get hairy. Yeah, it’d be a lot of work legalistically. Probably not an impossible amount, and probably entirely dependant on how you wrote up the contracts to begin with.
Jason,
You are assuming that each poly marriage would require a contract. That can certainly be done, but standard marriages comes with a certain set of legal assumptions. In order to avoid separate-but-equal, there would need to be some sort of codification.
There are myriad issues that would inevitably come up. Let’s look at child custody. In a triad marriage, let’s assume 2 of the triad are biological parents. The 3 rd will still likely desire custody of some sort in the case of a divorce, in the same way that adoptive parents do currently. After all, we are capable of loving children that are not our biological offspring.
How about medical decisions? Assume one party is in the hospital, and needs some decision to be made. The remaining spouses cannot agree on a course of action, and there has been no living will or similar document to address the situation. Who gets to make this decision?
What about inheritance? It is entirely plausible that two people in a poly marriage have children, then die. Assets are left to the remaining spouse, who then remarries several more people. And dies. By current marriage law, the surviving spouse is the default inheritor. But the child of the orignal
Continued…
The child of the originally two, deceased partners may have a valid objection to having the assets of the original triad going to an entirely new set of people.
Inevitably situations like this will arise, and as we currently have little applicable precedent, and no current legislation, things wilthis will have to be resolved in court
<iii. The purpose of marriage is to have children, same-sex couples cannot procreate. My wife is past menopause, so according to this idea she and I should get divorced because we can’t procreate. Or if I die she should not be allowed to remarry.<
–For some reason I've decided to torture myself on a regular basis by listening to AM Catholic Radio. A few nights ago, during a radio show with a priest, a caller asked the "purpose of marriage" question, framed in the context of those marriages where children aren't possible or women are post menopausal. I was truly interested in how the priest would weasel out of the question. Imagine my utter shock when I realized it was 7:58 when the caller asked his question, and the show ended at 8:00. Let's just say, most of the priests' answer wasn't broadcast.
Tony
Yeah, so? (And I speak as someone who is inherently monogamous. I had trouble dating more than one person at once, never mind an involved relationship. Not for me, but that’s certainly not a rationale to block it)
My only objections are along the lines of Keith’s, but I’m sure those could be ironed out.
The whole gay marriage issue shouldn’t be an issue at all. For one, who am I, a free man (or so I think) to tell another free person what he or she can or cannot do? Why should we be allowed to use the government gun to do it for us?
Christians operate under the false premise that the government validates marriage when, according to our faith, only God could validate marriage.
I say, get rid of government marriage licenses and allow people to create their own private contracts and call it what they want.
As a Christian, this is the best way to approach it.