6 ms·

> Asking gay people to wait for a unicorn is bullshit. Please don't be That Guy. Ideological purity is so often the enemy of making the world better. But, why

by kefka 11y ago

> Asking gay people to wait for a unicorn is bullshit. Please don't be That Guy. Ideological purity is so often the enemy of making the world better. But, why not? I'm a male. And I'm bisexual and polyamorus. I understand, and accept if a family wants to have 3 adults. Or 4 adults. I'm even OK if children are raised in that atmosphere. Right now, there are rules and restrictions on polygamy (which is a subset of polyamory) mainly created for the Mormons in the 18 and early 1900s. Doing as the GP said would have these archaic rules also overturned.

estel 11y ago
> Doing as the GP said would have these archaic rules also overturned. But at the expense of meaning that some couples wouldn't be able to marry, for, what - the next decade? Fifty years? And it's not as if a broader change to the meaning of marriage is off of the cards as a result of this - let's take the wins as they come.
eropple 11y ago
> I understand, and accept if a family wants to have 3 adults. Or 4 adults. I'm even OK if children are raised in that atmosphere. I'm with you here. But expecting same-sex couples to suffer for poly folks is not copacetic. The cat's out of the bag, and the line will continue to move. And that's a good thing. > Doing as the GP said would have these archaic rules also overturned. Doing as the GGP said would have nothing be done, in hopes that something was eventually done. Politics is the art of the possible. Don't pass up victories that are on the table.
nathan_long 11y ago
> I understand, and accept if a family wants to have 3 adults. Or 4 adults. I'm even OK if children are raised in that atmosphere. Do you think that it serves the interests of the rest of society to offer special benefits and protections to 3-4 person unions? If so, what? Is there a size limit on such unions? And under what conditions do they begin/end? If one person leaves the union, is the entire union abolished? What if two leave together? Can you have a divorce that turns one union into two or more? What happens with property and/or child custody in that case?
- ScottBurson 11y ago
  Yes: questions like these need to be asked, and at least tentatively answered, before legally sanctioned poly marriage can even be put on the table for discussion. In particular, there needs to be a clear idea of what happens to the children under the various possible scenarios. I don't think just letting people make whatever agreements they want is going to fly, at least not once any children at all are involved. These things could get very very complicated. There needs to be at least a framework, a sense of what structures can work, as borne out by experience. I have a suspicion that in the end, it will turn out to be best not to make any special legal provision for poly marriages. The law will recognize couples, and those couples will be free, as indeed they are today, to make whatever informal arrangements with other parties they wish. In a few areas -- hospital visitation rights are a good example -- I think it would work to detach the right from legal marriage altogether, and just let people declare who may visit them, etc. But the legal system has to know who is legally responsible for each child, and I don't think it can be more than two people -- even two is often problematic, as we know from long experience.
- mahyarm 11y ago
  You make a corporate charter, issue shares and have vesting schedules! Joking aside, you'll notice a lot of parallels between a business partnership structure and marriages in general. Including the liability parts! "Personal liability is a major concern if you use a general partnership to structure your business. Like sole proprietors, general partners are personally liable for the partnership's obligations and debts. Each general partner can act on behalf of the partnership, take out loans and make decisions that will affect and be binding on all the partners"
honestcoyote 11y ago
I've often wondered if polyamorus families could make an end run around the old anti-polygamy laws by creating a corporation. It would give legal protection for shared property and money. Would also provide a mechanism for divorce by allowing the remaining people to buy out the shares of the person leaving. It wouldn't be perfect but it would be a start. I'm personally not poly in any way, but it's a fun thought experiment about how one could make it work in the current legal climate.
- airza 11y ago
  The answer is yes, as someone does this already! See: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/02/up-for-polyamory-creating-alternatives-to-marriage/283920/ http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/02/up-for-pol...
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  You probably don't need to be polyamorous to do this. But it's an expensive option given all the paperwork (and taxes) you'd have to file at least once a year. In the UK, you'd probably be better off incorporating as a trust - perhaps even a charitable trust, if you can find a good enough cover story. And you may think you're joking, but a lot of families set up financial trusts for their assets for exactly these reasons. It would be unusual for a trust to include non-married partners, but I don't see why it would be impossible.
  - honestcoyote 11y ago
    I honestly wasn't joking at all. It's something I've thought of off-and-on over the years. I could see how a trust would be better, though, in the US at least, I think a corp / LLC might be more flexible. And here, especially if the corp is formed in a few rules state like Nevada or Delaware, the paperwork isn't too terrible for small organizations.
    - mirimir 11y ago
      How about a mix of marriage and adoption? Just assemble a cross-linked family. Write powers of attorney, medical directives, wills, and so on.
analog31 11y ago
How's polygamous divorce work? Majority vote? A lot of what constitutes "marriage law" has to do with what happens when marriages fail in one way or another.
- kazinator 11y ago
  Polygamous divorce doesn't necessarily mean that everyone goes their separate ways. Rather, it could be that one person leaves (and generalize it from there). One or more people want out, and so execute some exit clause in the contract. What, if anything, they take away is settled at that time. Just like a partner leaving a three or four partner company. It's not a majority vote under monogamy, by the way, so why would it be under polygamy.
  - analog31 11y ago
    It could mean that one spouse gets voted off the island, as it were. Note that I'm not arguing against polygamy, but am only curious about this issue.
- comex 11y ago
  Some of it. But there are quite a lot of other effects of marriage that have nothing to do with that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_and_responsibilities_of_marriages_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_and_responsibilities_of...
vehementi 11y ago
> But, why not? Because gays not being able to marry is an injustice, an unfairness, oppression, etc. Priority #1 is to stop doing harm to those people however it can be implemented. We didn't* say "Oh black people should have rights, but let's postpone that until we can come up with the best possible way to write it in legislature" *racist people did in fact use that argument
- ElComradio 11y ago
  We should have, because what we ended up with is the concept of protected classes, which plays favorites with a specific set of personal attributes and is generally a massive injustice and is now normalized.
- csallen 11y ago
  > We didn't say "Oh black people should have rights, but let's postpone that until we can come up with the best possible way to write it in legislature" Yes we did. Black people were legally discriminated against for almost 100 years until the Civil Rights Act. And before that, we were slaves until the 14th Amendment. Similarly, women weren't allowed to vote until the 19th Amendment. I'm all for civil disobedience in the face of injustice. And I'm 100% for gay rights. And I'm ecstatic about the court's decision today. I think it was undeniably right from a moral perspective. But it was probably wrong from a legal perspective, and that's worrisome.
  - DonHopkins 11y ago
    No, it's not worrisome that gay marriage is wrong from a legal perspective, it's worrisome that the laws are wrong from an equality perspective.
    - vehementi 11y ago
      Well said - and the non-understanding of this point betrays people's thoughts that this is an addition rather than a critical fix of something broken.
SomeStupidPoint 11y ago
Extending the law that provides special rules for pairing, because society deemed pairing useful, to all pairs is fundamentally different than discussing whether we should be arranging groups larger than pairs. I'm not saying the second question isn't important, I'm just saying that it's a little unfair to make people wait while we already have a law about pairings in place while we have an unrelated conversation.

by kefka 11y ago

estel 11y ago

> Doing as the GP said would have these archaic rules also overturned. But at the expense of meaning that some couples wouldn't be able to marry, for, what - the next decade? Fifty years? And it's not as if a broader change to the meaning of marriage is off of the cards as a result of this - let's take the wins as they come.

eropple 11y ago

> I understand, and accept if a family wants to have 3 adults. Or 4 adults. I'm even OK if children are raised in that atmosphere. I'm with you here. But expecting same-sex couples to suffer for poly folks is not copacetic. The cat's out of the bag, and the line will continue to move. And that's a good thing. > Doing as the GP said would have these archaic rules also overturned. Doing as the GGP said would have nothing be done, in hopes that something was eventually done. Politics is the art of the possible. Don't pass up victories that are on the table.

nathan_long 11y ago

> I understand, and accept if a family wants to have 3 adults. Or 4 adults. I'm even OK if children are raised in that atmosphere. Do you think that it serves the interests of the rest of society to offer special benefits and protections to 3-4 person unions? If so, what? Is there a size limit on such unions? And under what conditions do they begin/end? If one person leaves the union, is the entire union abolished? What if two leave together? Can you have a divorce that turns one union into two or more? What happens with property and/or child custody in that case?

ScottBurson 11y ago
Yes: questions like these need to be asked, and at least tentatively answered, before legally sanctioned poly marriage can even be put on the table for discussion. In particular, there needs to be a clear idea of what happens to the children under the various possible scenarios. I don't think just letting people make whatever agreements they want is going to fly, at least not once any children at all are involved. These things could get very very complicated. There needs to be at least a framework, a sense of what structures can work, as borne out by experience. I have a suspicion that in the end, it will turn out to be best not to make any special legal provision for poly marriages. The law will recognize couples, and those couples will be free, as indeed they are today, to make whatever informal arrangements with other parties they wish. In a few areas -- hospital visitation rights are a good example -- I think it would work to detach the right from legal marriage altogether, and just let people declare who may visit them, etc. But the legal system has to know who is legally responsible for each child, and I don't think it can be more than two people -- even two is often problematic, as we know from long experience.
mahyarm 11y ago
You make a corporate charter, issue shares and have vesting schedules! Joking aside, you'll notice a lot of parallels between a business partnership structure and marriages in general. Including the liability parts! "Personal liability is a major concern if you use a general partnership to structure your business. Like sole proprietors, general partners are personally liable for the partnership's obligations and debts. Each general partner can act on behalf of the partnership, take out loans and make decisions that will affect and be binding on all the partners"

honestcoyote 11y ago

I've often wondered if polyamorus families could make an end run around the old anti-polygamy laws by creating a corporation. It would give legal protection for shared property and money. Would also provide a mechanism for divorce by allowing the remaining people to buy out the shares of the person leaving. It wouldn't be perfect but it would be a start. I'm personally not poly in any way, but it's a fun thought experiment about how one could make it work in the current legal climate.

airza 11y ago
The answer is yes, as someone does this already! See: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/02/up-for-polyamory-creating-alternatives-to-marriage/283920/ http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/02/up-for-pol...
TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
You probably don't need to be polyamorous to do this. But it's an expensive option given all the paperwork (and taxes) you'd have to file at least once a year. In the UK, you'd probably be better off incorporating as a trust - perhaps even a charitable trust, if you can find a good enough cover story. And you may think you're joking, but a lot of families set up financial trusts for their assets for exactly these reasons. It would be unusual for a trust to include non-married partners, but I don't see why it would be impossible.
- honestcoyote 11y ago
  I honestly wasn't joking at all. It's something I've thought of off-and-on over the years. I could see how a trust would be better, though, in the US at least, I think a corp / LLC might be more flexible. And here, especially if the corp is formed in a few rules state like Nevada or Delaware, the paperwork isn't too terrible for small organizations.
  - mirimir 11y ago
    How about a mix of marriage and adoption? Just assemble a cross-linked family. Write powers of attorney, medical directives, wills, and so on.

analog31 11y ago

How's polygamous divorce work? Majority vote? A lot of what constitutes "marriage law" has to do with what happens when marriages fail in one way or another.

kazinator 11y ago
Polygamous divorce doesn't necessarily mean that everyone goes their separate ways. Rather, it could be that one person leaves (and generalize it from there). One or more people want out, and so execute some exit clause in the contract. What, if anything, they take away is settled at that time. Just like a partner leaving a three or four partner company. It's not a majority vote under monogamy, by the way, so why would it be under polygamy.
- analog31 11y ago
  It could mean that one spouse gets voted off the island, as it were. Note that I'm not arguing against polygamy, but am only curious about this issue.
comex 11y ago
Some of it. But there are quite a lot of other effects of marriage that have nothing to do with that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_and_responsibilities_of_marriages_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_and_responsibilities_of...

vehementi 11y ago

> But, why not? Because gays not being able to marry is an injustice, an unfairness, oppression, etc. Priority #1 is to stop doing harm to those people however it can be implemented. We didn't* say "Oh black people should have rights, but let's postpone that until we can come up with the best possible way to write it in legislature" *racist people did in fact use that argument

ElComradio 11y ago
We should have, because what we ended up with is the concept of protected classes, which plays favorites with a specific set of personal attributes and is generally a massive injustice and is now normalized.
csallen 11y ago
> We didn't say "Oh black people should have rights, but let's postpone that until we can come up with the best possible way to write it in legislature" Yes we did. Black people were legally discriminated against for almost 100 years until the Civil Rights Act. And before that, we were slaves until the 14th Amendment. Similarly, women weren't allowed to vote until the 19th Amendment. I'm all for civil disobedience in the face of injustice. And I'm 100% for gay rights. And I'm ecstatic about the court's decision today. I think it was undeniably right from a moral perspective. But it was probably wrong from a legal perspective, and that's worrisome.
- DonHopkins 11y ago
  No, it's not worrisome that gay marriage is wrong from a legal perspective, it's worrisome that the laws are wrong from an equality perspective.
  - vehementi 11y ago
    Well said - and the non-understanding of this point betrays people's thoughts that this is an addition rather than a critical fix of something broken.

SomeStupidPoint 11y ago

Extending the law that provides special rules for pairing, because society deemed pairing useful, to all pairs is fundamentally different than discussing whether we should be arranging groups larger than pairs. I'm not saying the second question isn't important, I'm just saying that it's a little unfair to make people wait while we already have a law about pairings in place while we have an unrelated conversation.