
It’s Time to Legalize Polygamy - dudul
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/gay-marriage-decision-polygamy-119469.html
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marssaxman
Three friends of mine are married; each one has an emotional, sexual, and
financial bond with the other two. They have jobs and a house and two kids;
they're basically a model family if you ignore the novelty of the bit where
the kids have three parents.

The law only recognizes part of this relationship as a marriage, even though
it is clear to everyone who knows them that all three are equal partners; it's
not a couple-plus-another, it's three people who have chosen to bind
themselves together as a family.

I see nothing to be lost by allowing their triad to gain the same legal status
currently afforded to pairs, and much to be lost by continuing to prevent it.

~~~
zaroth
A friend of mine grew up in a commune-like household. Several couples and sets
of children in a large house pooling resources, sharing responsibilities,
collectively caring for each other like a single family. The impression I got
was this was a collective emotional and financial bond with a more traditional
sexual coupling, but I see that as besides the point.

The question is, what regulatory framework would you impose here? How would
you want this to work in terms of taxes, inheritance, divorce, etc. I think
when you dig into it, the reality is it's hard enough to build a workable
framework around two people forming and breaking these bonds, to make an
'n-way' coupling that actually functioned properly (from a legal and fair-
taxes perspective) would probably be impossible.

To the extent that you want to tie in a 3rd (or more) people to a union with
children that could be biologically descendant from any two of the set...
these would have to be one-off contracts in the form of LLCs / partnerships
holding the assets, and estate / inheritance plans with appointed god-parents,
etc. I just don't see how the state could make a one-size-fits all framework
for n-way couplings, but also I don't really see what's stopping a motivated
group from making it work on their own.

~~~
marssaxman
It is a hard problem and I don't have an answer to propose.

I know my friends have set up a number of legal arrangements with powers of
attorney and such in order to work around their lack of marriage, just as gay
and lesbian couples had to do for many years.

The problem for them is the same problem homosexual pairs faced up until
yesterday: checking the "marriage" box grants you a long list of goodies, from
the mundane to the critical, and many of them simply can't be acquired any
other way.

It may be that the solution is not to continue fixing the legal institution of
marriage at all, but to abandon it. If people could sign up for the rights and
responsibilities of marriage a la carte, in whatever combinations suit their
relationships, we could solve not just the gay-marriage problem but all the
other forms of inequity currently baked into our traditional framework, many
of which we may not even be aware of yet.

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fsk
People should be allowed to make any sort of private contract they want (as
long as they don't hurt anyone else). Why are marriage contracts any of the
government's business?

~~~
throw_away
At very least to determine what happens to your property when you die (and,
perhaps more importantly to the state, how it is taxed). And also what happens
to children if you die before they are of age.

Hospital visitation is a tricky one. I suppose you could have people register
who gets to visit, but it would be unfair unless you required everyone to do
this. I would be pissed if I a family member got in an accident and died alone
while I pleaded with the hospital staff while people in traditional
relationships are allowed in without the same registration.

~~~
gizmo686
Couldn't we, in theory, set it up so that those issues (excluding taxation)
are dealt with in a standard polygamy contract.

Of course there is still the issue of determining what the correct resolution
of those issues is, so we will likely have a situation of multiple 'standard'
contracts, and people picking one without actually researching the
differences.

~~~
throw_away
I'm sure most things probably could (though still unfair if some have to
explicitly acquire these rights by contract while others get it by default).
The government's obligation at death is the sticking point.

This case was about getting a spouse's name on a death certificate. The DOMA
case was about taxation at death
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Windsor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Windsor)
).

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jqm
While possibly polygamy should be as legal as same sex marriage (I don't see
why not) it is unlikely to become legal any time soon. It just doesn't have
the same number of adherents to push it forward. And most people don't know
someone or have someone in their family that is a polygamist. It's also hard
to make an argument for innate tendency.

~~~
rbanffy
OTOH, it's in the Bible. That may help a little bit.

~~~
nn3
I was recently in a hotel room and as there was nothing else to do I looked up
who Gideon was in the Gideon bible. It turns out he was a major polygamist
(Judges 8.29)

~~~
rbanffy
Now I see their organization under a completely different light... Promoting
polygamy by distribution of bibles...

[http://www.gideons.org](http://www.gideons.org)

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daodedickinson
Banning polygamy is in part about equality in marriage opportunity; the risk
in some societies is a surplus male population that engages in insurrection
and other "crime" or violent behavior. This sexual frustration and social
inequality can end up going in many different directions.

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paulhauggis
Isn't this the 'slippery slope' argument that gay marriage advocates said
would never happen?

Well, it happened.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
If you actually read the article, you'll notice that it's on your side of
'what won't those hippies do next.'

~~~
ewzimm
That's definitely the tone, but it's pretty funny since it's talking about the
erosion of traditional marriage. Polygamy is almost certainly the most
traditional marriage there is. Groups of people dedicated to each other who
shared the responsibility of raising children definitely came before people
decided to partner-up. For an example, I'm not saying you have to believe the
Bible literally, but most of the men in the early parts of it had multiple
wives. Now, maybe it's a radical idea for the majority of the population to
consider Biblical marriage traditional, but even if you don't believe in that
particular religious text, it's at least evidence that plural marriages were
pretty common thousands of years ago. I'm not saying they're better or worse,
but they're definitely traditional.

~~~
yeahdude
If most men had many wives, there must have been a lot less men than women,
and/or a lot of men with no wife at all. Or perhaps wife sharing would account
for it.

~~~
ewzimm
Or, like a lot of books, most of the stories were about rich men who had
things others didn't. That part isn't glossed over at all. But that's just
about the Bible stories. If you're talking about my comments on early humans,
I think it's likely that sharing partners was more common.

