4 ms·

Trying to rally a mob against someone in the hope of getting them fired is _absolutely_ a use of force. It was being justified as an act of self-defence (my wo

Trying to rally a mob against someone in the hope of getting them fired is _absolutely_ a use of force. It was being justified as an act of self-defence (my words) because the OP felt they were being harmed. As for poly marriage, yes, there's no attempts to make it even more illegal because it's taboo to the point that nobody brings it up except when conservatives make slippery slope arguments (which gives you an idea of how unpopular it is). Kind of like there was no DOMA in the 1970's; gay marriage was unthinkable.

foldr 6y ago
I don't see how that is a use of force. We must use different dictionaries. I feel that you're sidestepping the main question about poly marriage. How would it work in detail? Do you support a specific version of it? In fact, do you actually support it at all, in a real non-rhetorical way?
- thaneross 6y ago
  Yes, I do support it. I don't see the issue of changing the definition and legal framework to include multiple partners, which may be added or divorced over time.
  - foldr 6y ago
    How would this work?
    - thaneross 6y ago
      I obviously can't summarize the all changes to family law and I'm not a lawyer, but here are a few ideas: - When 2 or more people get married, a new legal entity of the marriage is created. It has members, property and an estate. It pays taxes - Divorce is from the perspective of a person leaving the marriage and leaves with 1/n of the marital property - Reform child legitimacy laws (legitimacy doesn't matter, the state advocates for the well-being of the child) - Rights normally reserved for a spouse are extended to all spouses (such as hospital visitation) - Mandate that policies that extend to a spouse (such as life insurance) get changed to cover all spouses And a bunch more stuff I'm sure I haven't thought about. Here's the thing though; I know I'm so incredibly unlikely to see it happen in my lifetime that it feels like a waste of time to get into the details of changing the law. Instead I spend my time on is making my relationships work and giving support to others about how to have happy and healthy non-monogamous relationships.
      - foldr 6y ago
        Right, what I'm asking for is an existing proposal with broad support in the poly community that could plausibly be implemented given public support. If no such thing exists, then I don't think you can really claim just now that anyone's fundamental rights are being violated. You have to at least be clear about what you are asking for. If the poly community can put forward a concrete proposal and get some kind of a consensus behind it then great - you have my support.
        thaneross 6y ago
        That's a lousy standard. It's fine for me to be denied equality if there isn't a unified movement advocating for a particular solution? https://polyadvocacy.ca/ https://polyadvocacy.ca/
        foldr 6y ago
        Well, yeah, kinda? Otherwise what are we supposed to do to fix it? Indeed, it took the gay rights movement some time to converge on gay marriage as a goal. (Although they don't see it this way, gay marriage is actually a huge policy win for social conservatives! The traditional nuclear family survives with a minor modification.) I'm not saying all this just to be difficult. There are genuinely so many ways poly relationships could be legally recognized. For example, would merely removing the prohibition on bigamy be sufficient? Or do we need group marriages rather than some combination of pairwise marriages between members of the group? How does divorce work? If A, B, C and D are in a poly marriage and A and B want to remove C, but D doesn't, how is that resolved? I'm not in any way saying that there could not be answers to these questions, or that no-one has yet suggested answers. I just expect any serious advocacy for poly marriage to demonstrate a consensus across a wide range of the community on what the correct answers are. In the case of gay marriage this was much easier to achieve. Once gay rights advocates agreed on gay marriage as a goal, it was almost immediately clear how gay marriage would work. This simply isn't the case for poly marriage.
        skissane 6y ago
- skissane 6y ago
  As I mentioned before, Australian law treats married couples and unmarried couples in long-term/serious relationships (de facto couples) mostly identically, including in matters like tax, social security, property division and child custody upon relationship breakdown, deceased estates, etc. And while Australian law bans polygamy for married couples, it accepts a person can be in multiple concurrent de facto relationships at once [1]. A (rather small) minority of the Australian Muslim community actively practices polygamy; at most the first wife is recognised as a legal marriage (sometimes even the first marriage is not legally recognised – you can religiously marry without legally marrying, by choosing not to register the religious marriage with the government) – but second and subsequent wives are legally recognised as de facto relationships, and hence have the vast majority (if not all) of the legal rights that they'd have if they were legally married. It also sometimes happens that a wealthy businessman dies leaving behind a wife and one or more mistresses, and the mistresses then claim in court that they were his de factos, and hence are each entitled to a portion of his estate [2]. This all has the potential to make various legal proceedings more complex than they would have been in the monogamous/monoamorous case. But the complexity is something that Australia's courts and government agencies are already dealing with. I don't think allowing polygamous/polyamorous relationships to have the legal status of "marriage", as opposed to de facto, would actually make any great difference in practice. [1] https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/FlagPost/2016/December/Polygamy_and_welfare https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Depart... [2] http://web.archive.org/web/20200323020828/https://www.hocw.com.au/blog-news/2010/july/when-a-fling-can-be-very-costly/ http://web.archive.org/web/20200323020828/https://www.hocw.c...
  - foldr 6y ago
    It may not. I am not opposed to the legalisation of poly marriage, but I'm struck by the fact that no-one who claims to support it ever points to detailed proposals. There are rather obviously many different ways it would work.
    - skissane 6y ago
      Well, here is my proposal for how polygamous marriage should work in Australia: 1) Multiple concurrent legal marriages should be treated in exactly the same way that Australian law currently treats multiple concurrent de facto relationships 2) If you are married under Australian law (and that marriage is legally undissolved), you will be able to concurrently validly marry a subsequent person, provided that (a) you have the written consent of all the people to whom you already have undissolved marriages (b) the person you are marrying has seen those written consents and acknowledges in writing having seen them 3) Foreign polygamous legal marriages will be legally recognised as marriages in Australia (provided they meet all the other legal requirements, like consent, not being incestuous, minimum age requirements, etc); however, if the foreign legal system does not impose consent to polygamy requirements equivalent to (2) above, and an existing spouse did not consent (or a new spouse was unaware of the polygamous nature of the marriage), then they will have the right to void the marriage. (This would represent a reintroduction into the Australian legal system of the concept of a "voidable marriage" – that concept used to exist in Australian law until 1975; it was inherited from English law, and still exists in English law until this day.) Is there any problem with the above proposal? What is it missing? I think most of the meat is actually in (1); the only non-obvious element in (2) is requiring informed consent from both the existing spouse(s) and the new spouse for a polygamous marriage. Multiple concurrent de facto relationships don't require such informed consent – a man with a legal wife can have a concurrent de facto girlfriend, and keep the wife and the girlfriend secret from each other – that's morally quite reprehensible, but doesn't make the de facto relationship legally any less a valid de facto relationship. I think morally, legally recognised polygamy shouldn't be possible without informed consent of everyone involved; and politically, it would be impossible to legalise it without giving such a guarantee. The complexity in (3) is how to deal with the fact that some foreign legal systems allow polygamy without knowledge and/or consent – for example, some Islamic countries allow a man to take a second wife without his first wife's permission. I think the best solution, is if a person did not consent to a foreign polygamous marriage, they have the right to annul it under Australian law (but, if they are happy/accepting of it, they don't have to use that right, and it can remain valid.) I wouldn’t make it automatically invalid, because there may be cases where everyone involved knew about and consented to the polygamy, even if that consent wasn’t legally required under that foreign country’s laws, but the lack of a formal requirement for consent means there are no written records to prove it exists even when it actually does

foldr 6y ago

I don't see how that is a use of force. We must use different dictionaries. I feel that you're sidestepping the main question about poly marriage. How would it work in detail? Do you support a specific version of it? In fact, do you actually support it at all, in a real non-rhetorical way?

thaneross 6y ago
Yes, I do support it. I don't see the issue of changing the definition and legal framework to include multiple partners, which may be added or divorced over time.
- foldr 6y ago
  How would this work?
  - thaneross 6y ago
    I obviously can't summarize the all changes to family law and I'm not a lawyer, but here are a few ideas: - When 2 or more people get married, a new legal entity of the marriage is created. It has members, property and an estate. It pays taxes - Divorce is from the perspective of a person leaving the marriage and leaves with 1/n of the marital property - Reform child legitimacy laws (legitimacy doesn't matter, the state advocates for the well-being of the child) - Rights normally reserved for a spouse are extended to all spouses (such as hospital visitation) - Mandate that policies that extend to a spouse (such as life insurance) get changed to cover all spouses And a bunch more stuff I'm sure I haven't thought about. Here's the thing though; I know I'm so incredibly unlikely to see it happen in my lifetime that it feels like a waste of time to get into the details of changing the law. Instead I spend my time on is making my relationships work and giving support to others about how to have happy and healthy non-monogamous relationships.
    - foldr 6y ago
      Right, what I'm asking for is an existing proposal with broad support in the poly community that could plausibly be implemented given public support. If no such thing exists, then I don't think you can really claim just now that anyone's fundamental rights are being violated. You have to at least be clear about what you are asking for. If the poly community can put forward a concrete proposal and get some kind of a consensus behind it then great - you have my support.
      - thaneross 6y ago
        That's a lousy standard. It's fine for me to be denied equality if there isn't a unified movement advocating for a particular solution? https://polyadvocacy.ca/ https://polyadvocacy.ca/
        foldr 6y ago
        Well, yeah, kinda? Otherwise what are we supposed to do to fix it? Indeed, it took the gay rights movement some time to converge on gay marriage as a goal. (Although they don't see it this way, gay marriage is actually a huge policy win for social conservatives! The traditional nuclear family survives with a minor modification.) I'm not saying all this just to be difficult. There are genuinely so many ways poly relationships could be legally recognized. For example, would merely removing the prohibition on bigamy be sufficient? Or do we need group marriages rather than some combination of pairwise marriages between members of the group? How does divorce work? If A, B, C and D are in a poly marriage and A and B want to remove C, but D doesn't, how is that resolved? I'm not in any way saying that there could not be answers to these questions, or that no-one has yet suggested answers. I just expect any serious advocacy for poly marriage to demonstrate a consensus across a wide range of the community on what the correct answers are. In the case of gay marriage this was much easier to achieve. Once gay rights advocates agreed on gay marriage as a goal, it was almost immediately clear how gay marriage would work. This simply isn't the case for poly marriage.
        skissane 6y ago
skissane 6y ago
As I mentioned before, Australian law treats married couples and unmarried couples in long-term/serious relationships (de facto couples) mostly identically, including in matters like tax, social security, property division and child custody upon relationship breakdown, deceased estates, etc. And while Australian law bans polygamy for married couples, it accepts a person can be in multiple concurrent de facto relationships at once [1]. A (rather small) minority of the Australian Muslim community actively practices polygamy; at most the first wife is recognised as a legal marriage (sometimes even the first marriage is not legally recognised – you can religiously marry without legally marrying, by choosing not to register the religious marriage with the government) – but second and subsequent wives are legally recognised as de facto relationships, and hence have the vast majority (if not all) of the legal rights that they'd have if they were legally married. It also sometimes happens that a wealthy businessman dies leaving behind a wife and one or more mistresses, and the mistresses then claim in court that they were his de factos, and hence are each entitled to a portion of his estate [2]. This all has the potential to make various legal proceedings more complex than they would have been in the monogamous/monoamorous case. But the complexity is something that Australia's courts and government agencies are already dealing with. I don't think allowing polygamous/polyamorous relationships to have the legal status of "marriage", as opposed to de facto, would actually make any great difference in practice. [1] https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/FlagPost/2016/December/Polygamy_and_welfare https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Depart... [2] http://web.archive.org/web/20200323020828/https://www.hocw.com.au/blog-news/2010/july/when-a-fling-can-be-very-costly/ http://web.archive.org/web/20200323020828/https://www.hocw.c...
- foldr 6y ago
  It may not. I am not opposed to the legalisation of poly marriage, but I'm struck by the fact that no-one who claims to support it ever points to detailed proposals. There are rather obviously many different ways it would work.
  - skissane 6y ago
    Well, here is my proposal for how polygamous marriage should work in Australia: 1) Multiple concurrent legal marriages should be treated in exactly the same way that Australian law currently treats multiple concurrent de facto relationships 2) If you are married under Australian law (and that marriage is legally undissolved), you will be able to concurrently validly marry a subsequent person, provided that (a) you have the written consent of all the people to whom you already have undissolved marriages (b) the person you are marrying has seen those written consents and acknowledges in writing having seen them 3) Foreign polygamous legal marriages will be legally recognised as marriages in Australia (provided they meet all the other legal requirements, like consent, not being incestuous, minimum age requirements, etc); however, if the foreign legal system does not impose consent to polygamy requirements equivalent to (2) above, and an existing spouse did not consent (or a new spouse was unaware of the polygamous nature of the marriage), then they will have the right to void the marriage. (This would represent a reintroduction into the Australian legal system of the concept of a "voidable marriage" – that concept used to exist in Australian law until 1975; it was inherited from English law, and still exists in English law until this day.) Is there any problem with the above proposal? What is it missing? I think most of the meat is actually in (1); the only non-obvious element in (2) is requiring informed consent from both the existing spouse(s) and the new spouse for a polygamous marriage. Multiple concurrent de facto relationships don't require such informed consent – a man with a legal wife can have a concurrent de facto girlfriend, and keep the wife and the girlfriend secret from each other – that's morally quite reprehensible, but doesn't make the de facto relationship legally any less a valid de facto relationship. I think morally, legally recognised polygamy shouldn't be possible without informed consent of everyone involved; and politically, it would be impossible to legalise it without giving such a guarantee. The complexity in (3) is how to deal with the fact that some foreign legal systems allow polygamy without knowledge and/or consent – for example, some Islamic countries allow a man to take a second wife without his first wife's permission. I think the best solution, is if a person did not consent to a foreign polygamous marriage, they have the right to annul it under Australian law (but, if they are happy/accepting of it, they don't have to use that right, and it can remain valid.) I wouldn’t make it automatically invalid, because there may be cases where everyone involved knew about and consented to the polygamy, even if that consent wasn’t legally required under that foreign country’s laws, but the lack of a formal requirement for consent means there are no written records to prove it exists even when it actually does