Time to Allow Polyamorous Marraiges

Meadmaker said:
Meanwhile, in the real world, youth and beauty really do fade away, and while this is true for both men and women, it doesn't affect us identically, and, due to this and other differencs between men and women, what happens is that people enter middle age, and a man dumps his wife, who then has limited financial support, few prospects of finding a mate, and, possibly, still has a great deal of responsibility for raising children. Of course, the now absent father will still have to help financially on that account by sending his child support payments, but the presence of children will hinder the woman's efforts both to become financially secure, and to seek a mate.
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This does not seem to be particularly relevant to the topic at hand though. Why is serial marriage better than poly marriage?

In my opinion, any view of marriage that fails to take into account this basic reality is a lousy view of marriage. Skeptic's point was that polygamy, in practice, could allow a man to dump his wife without really dumping his wife. He's right, and anyone who thinks this won't happen hasn't been watching real world human beings long enough.
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And why doesn't she seek a divorce before or after the second marriage? Why did she agree to it?

Protecting people from decisions that they voluntarily make does not generally seem to be something that society needs to worry about.
 
Rasmus said:
Yes, this could happen.

How this should be dealt with is a question that needs to be answered by the proponents of polygamous marriages, regardless of their specific form.

But I don't see this as much of an argument against it - the woman would not be worse off, would she? Her husband could just leaver her now, too. Why is it worse for her if he stays technicially married to her? (And, if so, what's stopping her from getting a divorce?)
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True. The real problem started with no-fault divorce, and the general erosion of protection from abandonment that came from traditional marriage law and custom. Polygamy doesn't necessarily make it any worse.

On the other hand, it strikes me that these questions that need to be answered by proponents of polygamous marriages generally aren't answered.

I think Skeptic's concern, which I share, is that the various forms of suggested liberalization of marriage all tend to give credence to the view of marriage that it is a convenience created for the benefits of two (or more) adults who want to get state recognition, and perhaps some sort of benefits, for their relationship, so long as it lasts, and without any imposition of societal standards on the nature of that relationship. I believe that in doing so, the proposed reforms tend to weaken further the ability of the institution of marriage to provide protection to those who need it.
 
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Meadmaker said:
True. The real problem started with no-fault divorce, and the general erosion of protection from abandonment that came from traditional marriage law and custom. Polygamy doesn't necessarily make it any worse.
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Should have nevr stopped treating women as property .... :duck:

On the other hand, it strikes me that these questions that need to be answered by proponents of polygamous marriages generally aren't answered.
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Indeed.

I am not a proponent of polygamous marriages. As soon as a proper case in favour of it can be made I'll be all for it. But I think the case hasn't been made, much less so in a way that's analogous to same-sex-marriages.
 
Meadmaker said:
On the other hand, it strikes me that these questions that need to be answered by proponents of polygamous marriages generally aren't answered.
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I have to agree with this, but this is not one of the issues that polygamy raises in any real fashion. It is an issue with divorce law.
 
Rasmus said:
I am not a proponent of polygamous marriages. As soon as a proper case in favour of it can be made I'll be all for it. But I think the case hasn't been made, much less so in a way that's analogous to same-sex-marriages.
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The thing with same sex marriage is that the legal changes are so simple. You just let them marry. Polygamous marriage you need to redefine what married means so that more than two people can be in one marriage, or one person can have multiple marriages.
 
Meadmaker said:
One of my biggest problems with proposed marriage liberalizations is that the proponents seem to be nearly oblivious to certan basic traits of human nature.
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Without some kind of traditions/restrictions compelling most women to settle for guys they don't really want, what would happen is that they'd all naturally cluster themselves into harems (even if smaller ones than that word might make them sound; it's just the word wildlife biologists use when other critters like horses do this) around relatively few men, leaving a substantial fraction of the male population with nothing. That's bad for society overall because unattached men are significantly more likely to behave destructively than attached ones. And as long as women's natural inclinations are what they currently are, the only ways to avoid generating more unattached males without a 1:1 pairing system are to either kill a lot of boys at or before puberty, or else engineer a significantly higher girl:boy birth ratio.
 
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ponderingturtle said:
The thing with same sex marriage is that the legal changes are so simple. You just let them marry. Polygamous marriage you need to redefine what married means so that more than two people can be in one marriage, or one person can have multiple marriages.
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That's true enough. Homosexual marriage isn't very difficult to accomplish, after all. Polygamous/polyamorous/polywhatever marriages would definitely be very complicated to handle legally.
 
ponderingturtle said:
Protecting people from decisions that they voluntarily make does not generally seem to be something that society needs to worry about.
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I know it sounds harsh, but I disagree, at least partially.

On a philosophical level, the problem comes down to a question of informed consent. Consider this. We don't allow children to make legal decisions. The reason for this is rather simple. When they are small, their minds are not fully developed. As teenagers, their intellectual capacity may be complete, but they do not have the life experience to truly understand the impact of their decisions.

Such wisdom doesn't magically occur on their 18th, or 21st, birthday. Trying to convince a 25 year old that he won't be 25 forever is a tough sell. Sure, you can get him to mouth the words, but true comprehension is much more difficult. Given an opportunity, many people will make truly awful decisions, and do so in predictable patterns. For example, young lovers will assume that they have found true love that will last forever, unlike what appears to be the case for almost everyone in the generation that preceded them. This time, these young people will not make the mistakes that their ancestors have made for millenia.

Marriage law should take in the reality of what really happens to real people, not some idealistic view of everyone as perfect decision makers who are fully capable of looking out for their own interests, now and for the rest of their lives. One of the reasons I waffle on this, and gay marriage, and other proposals that affect marriage law, is that I have a hard time balancing the right of people to choose their own path, with the knowledge that letting people choose their own path will inevitably lead to the strong taking advantage of the weak. It is true in every other area of human endeavor. I can't see how it cannot be true for sex and marriage as well.
 
Having acquired my current BF in a previously poly relationship, I speak from personal experience when I say the divorce can be messy. His then wife had allowed him to date at will, as did she. I came into the picture. His ideal was to share a household, which we did for a few months (horror story ensues, but I'll leave it at the fact that wife was a cognitively delayed schizophrenic hoarder). When I'd had enough, I moved out, with his daughter and him in tow. Two year divorce/custody battle ensues, with me branded as an adulterer (Va) even though I set the judge straight with e-mails of wife granting me full access to him and testimony that I had slept with both consenting parties. Whatever.

Now, bf is looking for a man to include in our relationship. I've personally found it difficult enough to handle work, kids (one gimpy, the other with significant LD/ED issues), cooking and cleaning, and care of BF (who is a gimp like me, but unlike me needs part-time assistance with daily living activities). Criminy, who has TIME for a third person?

How do people do it? I mean, the idea is sound, but...
 
martu said:
Can I see a cite for this please? My bold.
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Pick up the most recent issues of "Maxim" and "Cosmopolitan".

In all seriousness, before looking for a cite, can I ask what you are looking for? Is it that you have never seen the scientific evidence that backs up this common sense view of things, or are you asking for evidence that backs up something you consider a suspect claim?

If you can elaborate, I can provide something more relevant than just random citations of differences in male and female behavior.
 
Meadmaker said:
I know it sounds harsh, but I disagree, at least partially.

On a philosophical level, the problem comes down to a question of informed consent.
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If they are not capable or informed consent they shouldn't be married in the first place.

Marriage law should take in the reality of what really happens to real people, not some idealistic view of everyone as perfect decision makers who are fully capable of looking out for their own interests, now and for the rest of their lives.
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And the same applies to any kind of law, financial law and so on.

One of the reasons I waffle on this, and gay marriage, and other proposals that affect marriage law,
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Gay marriage does not effect marriage law, only who can be married.
 
Meadmaker said:
Pick up the most recent issues of "Maxim" and "Cosmopolitan".

In all seriousness, before looking for a cite, can I ask what you are looking for? Is it that you have never seen the scientific evidence that backs up this common sense view of things, or are you asking for evidence that backs up something you consider a suspect claim?

If you can elaborate, I can provide something more relevant than just random citations of differences in male and female behavior.
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Heh I'd rather not.

Yes the scientific evidence that women choose mates differently to men. Common sense is often wrong after all.
 
Delvo said:
Without some kind of traditions/restrictions compelling most women to settle for guys they don't really want, what would happen is that they'd all naturally cluster themselves into harems (even if smaller ones than that word might make them sound; it's just the word wildlife biologists use when other critters like horses do this) around relatively few men, leaving a substantial fraction of the male population with nothing. That's bad for society overall because unattached men are significantly more likely to behave destructively than attached ones. And as long as women's natural inclinations are what they currently are, the only ways to avoid generating more unattached males without a 1:1 pairing system are to either kill a lot of boys at or before puberty, or else engineer a significantly higher girl:boy birth ratio.
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Erm no.

Or rather cite?
 
siddhigyrl said:
Now, bf is looking for a man to include in our relationship. I've personally found it difficult enough to handle work, kids (one gimpy, the other with significant LD/ED issues), cooking and cleaning, and care of BF (who is a gimp like me, but unlike me needs part-time assistance with daily living activities). Criminy, who has TIME for a third person?

How do people do it? I mean, the idea is sound, but...
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Ideally, the third person would reduce the workload rather than add to it.
 
Delvo said:
Without some kind of traditions/restrictions compelling most women to settle for guys they don't really want, what would happen is that they'd all naturally cluster themselves into harems
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I have to ask for evidence here, too.

Not all animals do that, after all. And I can't say I see a tendency like that within humans, either. (Admittedly, most societies have a tradition for 1-1-bondings, but it is getting increasingly easy to not follow these traditions and there should be an increasing trends of males with harems, right?)
 
Meadmaker said:
Certainly not. And yet, I think there might be a closely related point that might be worth discussing.

One of my biggest problems with proposed marriage liberalizations is that the proponents seem to be nearly oblivious to certan basic traits of human nature. One of those traits is that men and women behave differently, including choosing mates differently.

In the idealistic fantasyland where some people seem to dwell, men and women approach the marriage process by contemplating what would be in their best interests in forming a long term partnership, and seeking out appropriate partners and/or situations in which the needs of they and their partners will be met. By contrast, in the real world, men often seek mates with nice hooters.

It's not something to be proud of, but it is the way real people really behave. There are plenty of exceptions, to be sure, but people really do behave that way.

Meanwhile, in the real world, youth and beauty really do fade away, and while this is true for both men and women, it doesn't affect us identically, and, due to this and other differencs between men and women, what happens is that people enter middle age, and a man dumps his wife, who then has limited financial support, few prospects of finding a mate, and, possibly, still has a great deal of responsibility for raising children. Of course, the now absent father will still have to help financially on that account by sending his child support payments, but the presence of children will hinder the woman's efforts both to become financially secure, and to seek a mate.

In my opinion, any view of marriage that fails to take into account this basic reality is a lousy view of marriage. Skeptic's point was that polygamy, in practice, could allow a man to dump his wife without really dumping his wife. He's right, and anyone who thinks this won't happen hasn't been watching real world human beings long enough.
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Good post, and to elaborate on my stance a little bit (since I haven't really taken one), I can't say that I favor making the status of married include more than two people. However, I think, taking the real world into consideration, there definitely has to be some kind of change made with regards to the word "family". We choose our marital partner, after all. We don't get that same luxury when it comes to "family", and there are certain instances where this gets in the way of someone's legal rights.

For example...when my mother was ill, she had nothing in place in terms of medical surrogates or Power of Attorney. I am the second daughter, therefore, legally, my sisters had to approve me as her medical surrogate. All well and good in a family on good terms, but real people in real life know that it sometimes doesn't work out that way. And it didn't, and there had to be a fight for what was best for my mother.

Considering what happens in the real world is exactly why many, many people are having to fight for the same legal rights as blood or marital relatives have.

If adults want to share a household and be a family, even though they are not related by blood or marriage, there should be some kind of construct that allows them to be treated as a family. Many of us do our best to work out potential problems through wills and power of attorneys and such...but if there were something simple, that could be recognized legally, in place to protect our decisions and wishes from being sideswiped later on by blood relatives, I think it would be a good thing.

To be honest, I think that everyone should be held equally accountable for the decisions they make in life. I think the easiest solution would be to require all people to have household contracts if the household involves more than one adult, and get the government out of the business of marriage altogether. If you live together under one roof, you've obviously decided to be a family, unless you're only doing so temporarily (such as through college) or for convenience (such as sharing expenses). Why should you not be treated as such? Tax wise? Adopt the head of household as the standard, instead of single or married. In fact, eliminate those categories altogether...they're discriminatory. Should single people be penalized simply because they chose to not marry? Should married people be rewarded for their personal choice? If we're aiming for "fair", the current structure ain't it. Allow a set number of deductions for everyone...say, five, including one's self. Then claim a spouse and three children, or a spouse, another adult, and two children, however you wish to do it. Or eliminate deductions altogether. We're already rewarding people for having children or being married. Take that reward away, or expand it for others, and "level the playing field", for everyone.

Health insurance, same thing. We already pay more for family policies. If we want more people in our family, then simply increase the premium in the same way. Like our premium will go up if we later have a child to add to our policy. Insure household, which is family. Let individuals decide what they wish "family" to include.

To me, this isn't really an issue of "marriage", although it's framed as such. It's more an issue of building families, which, really, we're in pretty desperate need of in this country, as far as I can tell.

Marriage doesn't need to be redefined. It's really quite simple. But family has been in the process of being redefined for a very long time, and I really don't see anything wrong with that. The laws need to catch up to the real world. It really doesn't always work out best for people when the laws only allow relatives by blood or marriage to make crucial decisions for them, or when relatives by blood or marriage can legally make their final wishes null and void.
 
martu said:
Heh I'd rather not.

Yes the scientific evidence that women choose mates differently to men. Common sense is often wrong after all.
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I had to ask because I wondered if anyone seriously doubted this. Of course, I know that they do. I find it a bit stunning, but if I think back to my youth in the early '80s I can recall conversations with intelligent people about sex differences and discrimination, and these intelligent people insisted that all behavioral differences between men and women are actually conformance to societal expectations.

Having lived a lot longer now, I am extraordinarily confident that that is not the case.

In addtion to first hand observation, over the years, though, I have also heard a variety of reports from scientific studies. One of the most interesting involved simply asking men and women to look at pictures of the opposite sex, with short descriptions of the people, and asked people to rate which ones they found sexiest. The interesting thing is that of course the researchers didn't show the same descriptions to all the subjects. Among the information included in the short descriptions was annual income. Women consistently rated high earners as sexier. (i.e. they mixed up descriptions and pictures. When a man was paired with a "high income" biography, women rated the same picture sexier than with a "low income" biography.) It made no difference to men. Men liked women who were young and pretty.

Without a link, though, I suppose that's anecdotal evidence.

Here's a book on the subject. The "search inside" feature will allow plenty of browsing for those interested.

http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Desire-Strategies-Human-Mating/dp/0465021433#
 
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