How do we feel now that polygamy battles have begun?

[Prism]

Really, whether we want to be or not, we'll be involved. We have paved a road forward on state recognition of consensual relationships. I was wondering how people felt about it.

Personally, I'm ambivalent. At this point in time, I'm against polygamous marriage. I laid out some of my thinking here.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6933577

However, I'm definitely having a hard time reconciling where we've just come from to this future issue. Part of the difficulties our community faced was that some people felt we were wrong to build on the Civil Rights accomplishments of those who came before us. I remember some epic DU battles whenever an LGBTer tried to invoke MLK or Baynard Rustin, being told it was not our place to use that era in our own fight forward. I didn't care for that hostility. With polyamory, there will be people who use the gay marriage struggle to push forward. Given my own experiences, am I really in a position to tell them, "How dare you?" It doesn't feel right.

In opposing polygamy, there's definitely a small piece of me that feels as if I'm pulling up a ladder behind me. Anyone else feeling that way?

Either way, even though I'm currently against polygamous marriage, I'm not going to be very vocal or strident about it. After moving to San Francisco as a fairly straight-laced Midwestern type, my ideas of relationships among adults have definitely expanded. It feels like most of my friends are in open or polyamorous relationships to various degrees (though some monogamous folks are hanging in there!). So that probably also feeds a little into the sense that I'd be risking hypocrisy or being selfishly self-interested in telling people who come after our victory, "No, this is ours. You can't build on it."

I'm not comparing polygamy to gay marriage. I just wanted to express that ambivalence and see where others in the community were on this.

[4now]

1. I don't get it decide who someone else loves

[Bjorn Against]

2. Polygamy is far more complicated than same sex marriage

Marriage laws have been written as a contract between two people and all the tax laws were written around that two person contract. With same sex marriage it was easy to change the law so that same sex couples had the exact same benefits as heterosexual couples, but with polygamy they would actually have to rewrite the tax code in significant ways.

There would also be complications with consent and divorce laws as well, what happens if one person in the relationship wants a divorce but the other partners want to stay together?

I don't think polygamy is anything like same sex marriage, there are huge legal complications that would exist with polygamy and same sex marriage does not have those same complications.

[Nobel_Twaddle_III]

4. corporations do this every day and they are people according to SCOTUS.

Anyway that would be their problem.

[SusanCalvin]

12. Excellent point. nt

[Prism]

16. And that is precisely my main objection

That they're not really synonymous things in the way gay/straight marriage are.

[Nobel_Twaddle_III]

3. I fully support polygamy for other people. Most of us saw this coming.

Yes, some right wing nuts are using this to rant about same sex marriage. That is okay, they will settle down eventually. For now they can be ignored same as the "my pet or live stock" people. But for the truly in love and wanting a permanent relationship. Who am I to say no.

Yes, they can build on "our victory", but they need to do the work. My guess is it will be all most as hard to get done. I think polygamist are fewer in number, so there would be fewer to divide the work among.

We should be open to other people definitions of their love. I do not buy the argument that because it is bad for women in Africa and the middle east, that it could not work somewhere else. Life is hard for women in Africa and the middle east with or without polygamy.

[Bagsgroove]

5. Yeah, I'm with you

I like the points you make in your other post, particularly #2. For all the ranting about how gay marriage will change the "definition of marriage," it really does no such thing. Nothing at all in the way marriage is defined legally in terms of civil responsibilities and rights is changed. Trying to apply those legal mechanisms to multiple-partner marriages would be chaos.

If I die without a will, my spouse inherits the house we live in automatically. If I have 3 spouses...who gets the house?
If I have kids my spouse is automatically their sole guardian if I die. Who among multiple spouses gets the kids?
If I'm in a hospital in a coma, my spouse has the ultimate word on my treatment. Who makes the decision when multiple spouses disagree?
Can I divorce one of my many spouses? And if I do, what is that person's relationship to the other spouses all joined in marriage? There are literally hundreds of similar questions to ask.

I get the impulse to be inclusive, I just don't see how multiple-partner marriages would work without creating 20 million new lawyers and thousands of new laws. I'ts not a matter of being judgmental or "how dare you-ing" anyone's choice in how to live their lives. I've actually known some folks in multiple-partner relationships that have been pretty impressive. I just don't see how it would work as a legal status.

[dbackjon]

22. Yup - say a woman has two husbands

Does the state force a paternity test if the mother dies?

[Fearless]

6. I don't really care what people do so long as it doesn't harm others.

[SusanCalvin]

10. Yep. nt

[Bluenorthwest]

7. Do you know a bunch of such multiple marriages? I really don't. I've known one or two that sort of

lasted for a while but did not hold up long enough to call marriages. It's mostly religious communities that do the many wives thing we are talking about. Those communities were opposed to LGBT rights.
Plus, marriage equality was called that for a reason. Multiple partner marriages have entirely different legal complexities with custody of children and ownership of property, all sorts of things.

I've lived in liberal places my whole life and worked in show business. I've known male and female gay couples since I was a child. I sure can't say the same about multiple spouse relationships. Hard for me to imagine it's a big thing outside wildly conservative and male dominated religious circles.

[Prism]

17. Not marriages, but enough polyamorous relationships

Granted, I think I'm wearing some geographical-colored glasses here. I live around San Francisco, and open/poly relationships are not uncommon things. In fact, anecdotally, I'd say more of my gay male coupled friends are open than not. It isn't unusual for someone to say, "Oh, this is our third." But open/poly relationships aren't the same thing as saying, "Oh, these are my two husbands," which I can honestly say I think I've only heard once.

Now, whether those poly couples would actually want a legal marriage, I couldn't say.

And I'm very aware San Francisco is probably unusual in this regard and not much like most places in the country. Maybe. I don't have enough experience to say definitively.

[dbackjon]

23. I know of a number of long-term gay triads

Three men, together, for 20+ years.


I know of at least 4 of them.


Actually works easier with gays or lesbians

[PoliticAverse]

28. Interesting. Are any of them married? Are they concerned about their lack of legal-status?

[dbackjon]

29. One is. And yes, there is some concern about legal status.

What has happened in a couple of the triads is it starts with a couple, then down the road the third joins the family.

One of the guys that I play softball with has been with one partner for 30+ years, with the other joining about 20 years ago.

[enough]

8. I have no problem with polygamy or any other form of marriage that people wish to enter into,

as long as no one is harmed.

Perhaps some of us feel that polygamy is sexist or patriarchal. How is this different from people thinking that same-sex marriage is perverted or against nature?

[Heddi]

9. My husband and I are in an open relationship and know several poly couples

triads, quads, etc etc.

Several of the groupings we know have been together for decades...one is a group of 2 couples, each of the husbands/wives married to each other like a traditional 2-person marriage. The 2 men and 2 women were then coupled in a "coupling ceremony", an informal thing without any legal bearing whatsoever. Another group is a triad of husband/wife/third. They did not do any kind of ceremonial joining with the third that i know of. They refer to themselves as "partners" not spouses, and it's worked for them for the...oh, 17ish years i've known them.

Like all relationships, i've known poly groups that have split up amicably and others that have had quite contentious partings. Some that were open to all kinds of relationships and some that were quite strict as far as "monogamy" within the group.

Knowing that the things that make my husband and I happy are far outside the norm, I can't really judge another person/group of people for what they do and how they want to do it.

My feeling is that being adult and giving consent are all that are needed for "marriage." I don't see that there will be this huge shift should a man and a woman and a woman want to be married. The key is that unlike fundamentalist polygamy, the groups I know aren't a man who wants to dominate Xnumber of women for spiritual fulfillment and procreation. These are groups who ALL want to be joined. Man married to woman who's married to woman who's married to man whos' married to man. A full equality in the relationship.

Like you, though, I think this is a battle that the polyamorous community needs to fight, and we can lend our support. I don't see this as something that will become approved in my life, honestly. I think that this is a HUGE mindfuck for people -- gay is hard enough to accept, but people who ARE OKAY WITH THEIR SPOUSES FUCKING OTHER PEOPLE??? talk about wacky!!!

[dsc]

11. If we could seperate the bad form of polygamy from the more concentual kind

then I wouldn't have a big problem with it. But polygamy always seems to lead to excess boys and young girls marrying much older men against their will. I don't see how we can separate that out.

[closeupready]

13. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then

I think it's interesting to watch other marginalized groups mimicking the gay community's successful strategies in pursuit of its emancipation.

Be that as it may, on the topic at hand I am an observer, and I have no strong opinions about polygamy/polyamory/whatever, but I support 100% democracy, and feel people have the right to express their views, and to pursue their claims in court, if they wish.

So basically, it's not my battle to fight, nor do I feel the gay community is obligated to assume the burden of defending the interests of those who seek to legitimize polygamy.

[Betty Karlson]

14. You can be ambivalent, if you want.

I'm going to stick to my opinion that the marriage we have opened for LGBT should not then be redefined to mean less than it used to do.

And as a Christian, I have an abhorrence for those Old-Testament marriage situations that infer the position of women in general (polygamy always does that).

[Joe Magarac]

15. Polygamy has a much bigger potential constituency than same sex marriage.

For one thing, all those Muslims.

[eridani]

18. For one thing, we should quit saying polygamy and use the term polyamory instead

Polygamy is patriarchal--a man accumulating as many wives and concubines as he can afford. Polyamory can refer to any combination of genders, and no traditional notions of ownership are involved. Most stable poly groups that I personally know have three people involved, and if two are married, that puts the third person in a position of less power. Not fair at all, IMO, and I suppose we'll deal with it somewhere down the line.

[Culver Shuttle]

24. Polygamy, or more precisely polygyny. As you say a patriarchal institution ...

That is the one that will be pushed by various religious screwballs attempting to piggyback on same sex marriage equality.

Muslims, Mormon sectarians, etc.

Polyamory as you describe may benefit as a side effect, but that's not how it will play.

[joeybee12]

19. No, from a legal standpoint there is no similarity whatsoever...

Anyone who did any research would know that, but there are certainly many people here who want to overlook the obvious. And there really are no battles brewing, just fires of intolerance stoked by right-wing lunatics and repeated ad nauseaum by people here for God only knows what reasons.

Thanks for posting, though, and equating civil rights and discrimination with a lifestyle choice...Rock Sanscrotum and Mike Huckabee would be proud.

Ignore.

[Prism]

20. You clearly didn't read my post

And certainly not the link in it, where I explain why they're profoundly different things.

[marginlized]

21. Polygamy is a scare tactic

Polygamy has a bad historical rep: patriarchal, etc. It’s a typical scare tactic used by conservatives, and it doesn’t surprise me that it’s being raised again.

Because, the sky is gonna fall! And cats and dogs living together!

When actually, there is no slope slippery or otherwise that connects marriage equality and complex or compound marriage of any sort, involving any gender.

Marriage enjoys a huge body of settled, accepted law, the parties to which have become more gender neutral or equal over time due to a couple of generations of feminists working towards women’s equality. So it wasn’t that big a step to allow same sex marriage. Didn’t change how you get married or divorced or much of anything really because the number of parties is the same: 2.

Polyamory has no such existing law, and the two party contract we think of as marriage, doesn’t really lend itself to the issue.

[backscatter712]

25. Why is it so hard to draw the line at consent?

If five men and six women, all informed, consenting adults, want to have a polyamorous relationship together, and they want to formalize that relationship in an eleven-person marriage, why should it be illegal?

I don't give a fuck what the right wing thinks about it. Let them shriek.

[marginlized]

30. Exactly, but

what does an eleven person organization with attendant legal contracts stipulating financial arrangements look like? Less a marriage than a type of cooperative, or partnership?

[pnwmom]

35. So given the system we have now, how would that work, exactly? For example,

with regards to Social Security benefits? Or job benefits for spouses?

Does each person get an unlimited number of spouses then? Or if there is a limit, how would that be justified?

[longship]

26. It's all traditional -- aka Biblical -- marriage.

Let Deven Green -- AKA Mrs. Betty Bowers -- explain it to y'all.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

27. +1. nt

[Culver Shuttle]

34. Look what I found :)

No need to get cute and talk about the doings of mythological characters or the only too real Biblical polygamy, minor betrothal, marriage by capture etc.

Let's stick to the Christian Era, and furthermore just look at what marriage was in 1776. You know. Founder's original intent, right?

The Myth of 'Traditional Marriage'
http://reason.com/archives/2014/02/10/the-myth-of-traditional-marriage/print

The 18th-century English jurist William Blackstone explained, "By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in the law; that is, the very being or legal existence of a woman is suspended, or at least incorporated or consolidated into that of the husband, under whose wing, protection, or cover she performs everything."

[LostOne4Ever]

31. I think there is a discussion on Group marriage to be had

[font style="font-family:'Georgia','Baskerville Old Face','Helvetica',fantasy;" size=4 color=teal]But I feel that many of the people bringing this up are not doing so in good faith.

It is like the threads we had a while back on trangender and transracial, the purpose was not to discuss transgenderism and transsexualism, but to shield themselves while denigrating trans people. Here the purpose is to undermine the recent ruling and push the slippery slope argument.

If these threads really did care I think there would be more discussion on the differences between polygyny, polyandry, and group marriage, why the former two are bad and the latter one is good, and a deeper discussion on the changes needed to be made to the law to make group marriage work.

In particular, laws to prevent the abuses of groups like the FLDS and to keep the family law system from imploding from the weight of group marriage. As things are now, the system is barely able to handle two people much less 3 or 4 or more.

As an asexual, I think the issue of group marriage is definitely one that has a lot of intersectionality with the asexuality community. There are asexual-sexual mixed couples who have open or poly-amorous relationships to deal with how one partner has an emotional need that the other partner may not be able to fulfill. This is especially true in cases where the asexual partner might be sex aversed or sex repulsed and unable to "compromise."

I think a legal form of group marriage could help people in this situation especially if the sexual partner starts developing deeper feelings for their paramour. Further, I feel that the government shouldn't be policing the actions of consenting adults and that if something doesn't hurt or endangers others directly, it should be legal. But I am finding it hard to get past my cynicism and distrust of those pushing the issue at this time.[/font]

[Behind the Aegis]

32. And once again, you nail it!

You bring up many good points as well as what is the "real" motivation of many people who seem to be on the "polygamy boat." Just like the transgender/transracial non-sense, I too am finding the motivations of some to be less than wholesome and using the DU search function has confirmed such suspicions for a number of people. Also like the aforementioned nonsense, there seems to be a casual, if not purposeful, misuse of the terms "polygamy", "polyandry" and "polyamorous".

For some, I really am convinced this is nothing more than sour grapes at the well-deserved civil rights victory the LGB people just won.

[Capt. Obvious]

33. Your level headedness has no place on DU

I shouldn't be but I'm horrified by some of the comments I'm reading about poly families here.

Poly families described as orgies.
Poly people called pervs and perverts.
Comparing their relationships to marrying toasters. And when offense was stated to this description it was changed to marrying a vacuum with LOL tossed in for good measure.

[closeupready]

36. Further to my above remark, a muslim friend of mine

is a child conceived from a polygamous home. That is, he is the child of his father and his father's second wife.

There are probably people on DU who have similar acquaintances, but don't know it - my friend hesitated to tell me this. I had to kind of pry it out of him.

More generally, the point has always been, for me, discrimination against gay people. In every matter, I oppose discrimination against gay people; thus, if government eventually 'gets out of the business of marriage' altogether, fine with me.

What will NEVER be fine with me is watching my own government penalize gay people for being gay.

[marginlized]

37. Who is asking?

“In opposing polygamy, there’s definitely a small piece of me that feels as if I’m pulling a ladder up behind me.”

Polygamy, that is one man marrying several women, is a heterosexual issue. I’m not sure why it’s being presented for discussion in a LGBT forum? It’s curious that people feel we have to answer for this. Why is that? And who is asking?

Divisive wedge-like issues need a lot of popular support before they gain traction. On marriage the Judiciary follows cultural evolution, not the other way around. Cultural expressions like “Big Love” seem more a play for transgressive shock than sympathetic appeal.

I would like to think that the LGBT community in America was so large that it could sway popular votes. But I don‘t think that‘s the case, given the history of marriage equality and it’s reliance on legislative and judicial interventions - yes we did win one recent popular vote - what was an exception. So, again, why are we being asked about polygamy?

If one were seriously discussing polyamory possibilities, I would think you’d be talking about the definition of “Family” when defining Family (of Choice) Corporations, for example. Or how sharing assets through a cooperative could spread insurance costs, etc. Or the limitations of adoptions as a way of declaring someone a legal dependent, or those of income sharing and its legal requirements for tax purposes.

[Prism]

38. Polyamory if you prefer

I'm a gay male and have many LGBT friends in poly or open relationships. I was just curious how people felt about the issue since I figured it would come up (and DU certainly seems to be taking it up for some reason).

My more direct question was how people in the community felt about gay marriage being used by the poly community to press forward. I think the many threads on the subject have provided the full spectra of answers from many different LGBTers.

(I haven't responded much in thread because I'm on vacation and phone typing is the worst).

[marginlized]

39. My question "who's asking"

I wan't referring to you. Sorry if I was confusing.
But more at the participants in that other thread you referenced in your OB.
And the way it's usually brought up: "Now that we have gay marriage ... how about polygyny?"
implying a link that isn't there. When they could (and sometimes do) follow up with " ... how about intergalactic alien sex?"

When I'm a gay man with good experiences of an open LTR and simply not jealous. So poly works for me personally in multiple ways. But even in the bigger picture, America is going through a massive downsizing, rightsizing, outsourcing. offshoring. Capitol, business, corporations have all the advantages, moving jobs offshore, hiding wealth overseas, etc. If we're really in a race to the bottom, how is the average citizen supposed to cut expenses to compete with foreign labor? And living cooperatively, sharing resources and/or income may be a partial answer, at least its a possible option. When we have a contract like marriage that gives people economic advantages for the mere cost of a License ($50?), it seems the Government ought to be offering similar alternatives that allow people to organize for mutual benefit to get through difficult economic times.

[Prism]

40. Ohh, I understand your point now.

I did misunderstand.

Yeah, those threads are . . . off-putting.

The triads I do know (all gay men) are all doing precisely that. Three incomes to afford a decent place and achieve a certain standard of living in the Bay Area.

Because, God knows, around here you need every cent.

[I_Like_Hammers]

41. Gays and lesbians can't have ANYTHING, it seems

We're not allowed to celebrate, not allowed to have something good happen.

[backscatter712]

42. Looks like the troll's been whacked.

GD's been mercifully free of polygamy flamefests, after a certain user and his or her collection of sockpuppets got banhammered.

[Prism]

43. That was a really weird week

Fortunately, I was on vacation for most of it. But I did feel bad seeing all those threads pop up and the distress they were causing my fellow LGBTers. If I'd known that was in the troll docket, I'm not sure I would have posted this thread ;/

[Amimnoch]

44. Where have these polygamy battles begun? Who's running it? Supporting it?

I haven't seen anything in news sources on any battle to legalize polygamy gaining any traction at all. If it's composed of allies that supported us in gaining equality.. I'll support them. If it's religious groups with Polygamous tenets, and they supported us in our fight for equality.. they'll have my support (although I don't know of a single religious group that does, or has historical support of Polygamy that ever supported us, it's not impossible that they exist). Otherwise, I will likely reciprocate appropriately.

Do you have links to this battle that begun? The only link I saw in the OP was to a post on your thoughts on it.