Kaffis Mark V wrote:
[I don't see any really viable arguments in here. I just see a bunch of preconceptions and flawed assumptions.
The only flawed assumption I see is your thinking that everything will just be hunky-dory if we "get the government out".
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Costs a taxpayer more to probate the mess? I just said (in the quote I had to snip because it was nested too deeply for the board to handle) that private contracts and non-marriage legal statuses would replace them. In the polygamy probate court example, there are two things I would say apply. First off, the purely-legal status that would replace marriage would probably be limited to 2 individuals, and would allow private contracts (such as wills and pre-nups) to supercede it. Much like the law already treats marriage, only now it's not linked to all the baggage that surrounds marriage (nor the freedom of religion issue that polygamists could argue discrimination against their 1st Amendment protected practice under our current system). Secondly, a polygamist would then supercede the legal status that he may or may not bother to share with one of his wives (or her husbands, lest I be gender-discriminatory; I'll omit non-heterosexual permutations for the sake of expediency, but would apply all these statements to polyamorous homosexuals and bisexuals, as well) with a pre-nup and will. So no probate cost increases for the taxpayer.
I don't see how any of this avoids cost to the taxpayer, once lawyers get hold of it. I'm also not seeing how your limiting it to 2 people is actually changing anything or what "baggage" you're talking about.
Diamondeye wrote:
Life support, again -- the legal status would likely shake down to be between two individuals, and allow private contracts (such as medical power of attorney designations, or DNRs) to supercede. A polygamist could place medical power of attorney to a democratic majority rules vote among his or her spouses, or rock-paper-scissors, for all the law cares. But again, my system has not increased the the bureaucratic burden at all over our current one, and has disentangled it from religious preconceptions, puritanical biases, and any shadow of discrimination. I call that a net win.
I think your system does increase the bureaucratic load, and it does it while still essentially limiting it to a pair.
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And my point is that we don't need a legal definition of marriage AT ALL. You just conceded that you treat it as a religious institution, or else "getting married multiple times within their religion" would have no meaning and, in fact, be illegal.
I conceeded no such thing. Just because I acknowledge that people can "get married" multiple tiems within their religion does not mean that ALL marriage is somehow necessarily religious.
Diamondeye wrote:
And that's for private employers and service providers to decide on their own. They can decide to offer rates or benefit packages for polyamorous/polygamous family units if they want to, as we have already started seeing some companies (Google comes to mind, I think) offering homosexual couples such benefits and rates. There's no reason for the government to be involved and telling people what they must or can offer.
Yes there is. It is the responsibility of the government to make sure that the proper people are compensated when there is a death, allegations of fraud, etc., and a dispute arises. By allowing people to make up their own definitions of marriage, each one of these has to be hashed out in court at great expense to everyone rather than following a pre-set formula. Marriage is very common; it would certainly increase load on domestic courts.
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Okay, here you're actually offering some reasonable arguments, with the suggestion that infidelity does things like affect children and call into question responsibility for parentage, etc. This is the sort of thing that would actually be discussed and paid attention to if we started from the ground up with a new status, and I suspect, again, that the legal implications of the new status would largely reflect that of the current marriage status, and might even shift some of the responsibilities and obligations in what we, as a society, would consider a positive direction; for instance doing a better job of holding the man responsible for his bastards.
I have not yet seen any reason to start from the ground up for a new status. So far, I don't see that your ideas change things much or that they provide meaningful new benefits to justify them. I don't see any reason to change the status quo just because the current system is objectionable in some nebulous way.
We also do not need to "do a better job of holding a man accountable for his bastards"; child support is already wildly overzealous and weighted heavily against men.
Diamondeye wrote:
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Part of the problem here is the fact that the law lets a woman simply declare the parantege of her child, and gives the man only a limited time to respond whether he's notified or not, but that's a separate issue.
Besides, we already have tools like prenuptual agreements that can protect you if you want to be polyamorous.
Which is a private contract. That, surprise, is what I was talking about.
Indeed, which works fine, within the framework of a defined legal marriage. The courts do not have to wrangle out the entire thing each time, just the pre-nup.
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They're not purely social. You just acknowledged that marriage multiple times "within your religion" was something you recognize and accept. Is that legal? If it is, then marriage isn't a purely social institution, as by law, marriages are between only two people, and may not occur in the presence of outstanding marriages by either party. I also think it's pretty naive to paint our marriage laws as "similar to those in many other parts of the world with different religious histories" -- which different religious histories are you referring to? Hindu societies, perhaps, where I understand arranged marriages are still commonplace? Maybe Muslim societies, some of which allow the man to beat their wives? How about aboriginal societies? My guess is that your diverse religious histories involve words like "Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish," which I'd argue is a pretty narrow constraint.
First of all you're conflating the way a marriage comes about (arranged or not) with the marriage itself, and in any case, arranged marriages are also common through most Christian history; their departure from most of our society is not due to religious difference.
Second, when I say a "marriage within a religion" what I mean is that two people can go into any house of worship they please and have their clergyman marry them, ro whatever their faith perscribes, and call themselves married, and make an emotional, moral, committment to each other, or to as many other people as they wish.
That's fine; they have a right to do that. That doesn't, however, make it a legal marriage unless it satisfies a legal definition. That definition is there because marriage is exceedingly common, and because society needs a consistent definition so that everyone understands their legal obligations. This is especially true for people who can't afford to get lawyers involved when they want to get married, and don't have the ability to hash out an enforceable contract themselves, especially young people who may be vulnerable to manipulation, scams, etc. This happens already; my sister got married to a guy that scammed her and **** her financial situation all up; I shudder to think what it would have been like if she'd been coming up with a marriage contract with this guy. Again, there are also concerns about inheritance, continued financial obligations, children and the like; imagine trying to get corporations with health coverage and other benefits to recognize what is and isn't a valid marriage. They aren't going to want to get scammed out of money they don't have to pay, and potential lawsuits would be endless as every rejected marriage contract for nonenforceability would be a new vista of potential legal argument and income for attorneys. These have zero to do with the religious aspects of the marriage.
Diamondeye wrote:
But getting the state out of it ends these discrimination vs. trampling on my religion conflicts. That's reason enough to do it right there, in my book.
I don't see that we should get government out of anything just to end conflict. What we need is a final decision one way or the other.
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