Polyamory and Polygamy

Since we were getting far off-topic in the Gay Rights and America thread talking about Polyamory and Polygamy, and because I find this a topic that's very important as a polyamorist myself, I have decided to make a new thread to avoid future derails.

First, let me define a couple of things. Polyamory is, quite simply, the ability to love more than one person, and it is often something as fundamental to a person as a person's sexual orientation, and, similarly to sexual orientation, it is it a choice. This often leads to polyamorous relationships, which are relationships in which at least one person is involved with two of more people, and everyone is consenting to the set up. Without the consent in the relationship, it is cheating. There are multiple forms that polyamorous relationships can take.

• One form has no set name that I know about, but I like to call it a polyweb. In this set up, each person can date multiple people. To begin dating someone, the person must ask everyone he or she is with if they are ok with him or her dating the new person, and, with the consent of everyone he or she is dating, he or she begins dating the new person. In this system, a person can date anyone he or she can get his or her partners to agree on, and aren't restricted in any other way. This is the form that I practice
• Another form is sub-relationships. With sub-relationships, a person has a primary relationship which serves as a sort of home base to that person. In addition, he or she will have secondary relationships. He or she will be able to add people as with in a polyweb, but, unlike in a polyweb, the person will favor one person he or she is dating. He or she will spend more time with the primary, and will often live with him or her.
• Another form is polyfidelity. In polyfidelity, everyone in the group is dating everyone else in the group. To add someone to the group, all the members must be consenting, and the person then enters into a relationship with everyone in the group. Unlike in a polyweb, people are restricted to within the group, and people cannot date outside of the group. A form of this is a Triad, which is a three person polyfidelious relationship and a Quad, which is a four person polyfidelious relationship.
• Finally, there is a form which also has no set name that I know about, but I'll call blind polyamory. In this set up, one or more partners agrees to allow his or her partner to date multiple people, but he or she just does not want to hear about it. In this set up, the partner dating multiple people doesn't require permission to enter new relationships, but they must be separate from the partner not dating multiple people.

In addition to this, there is polygamy. Polygamy is marriage in which at least one person is involved with two of more people, and everyone is consenting to the set up. Polygamy does not necessarily require any of the participants to love the others, so it doesn't require any of the participants to be polyamorous. However, healthy polygamous relationships do include people who are polyamorous. The marriages can take any of the forms polyamorous relationships can take. In addition, there are two additional forms that polygamy takes. First is polygyny, in which only the men can have multiple spouses, and the second is polyandry, in which only the women can have multiple spouses. Both of those forms are inherently sexist. Polygamy is illegal in many countries.

Finally, there is swinging and open relationships/marriages. Both involve having sexual partners which one isn't dating. Open relationships and open marriages are relationships/marriages in which people can have sexual relations outside of those they are dating. Swinging, however, is more of a culture. In this culture, a divide is seen between sex and emotions. As such, swingers have multiple sexual partners without emotional connection with the consent of anyone they're dating. However, one does not need to be dating anyone else to be a swinger, just have consensual sexual relations without any emotional attachment.

Now, within polyamorous, polygamous, and open relationships, cheating still exists. However, unlike cheating being relations outside of one's partner, like in monogamous relationships, cheating is relations that are without the consent of those involved. So it is cheating, in a polyweb or with sub-relationships, for a person to have relations before getting the permission of everyone he or she is dating, and it is cheating, in a polyfidelious relationship, for a person to have relations outside of the group.

So, for current obstacles we have

• The legal complications of Poly-amorous Marriage vs Two-Person

• The increased ease of abuse for tax breaks

• Social Concerns

• The difficulty for advocates of polyamority to make a concrete list of demands

My view:

We should remove the whole legal shit from marriage, and let any consenting adult(s) who want to become married (But as a strictly non-governmental thing). Then, instead of Civil Unionship (Marriage in the eyes of the law), we have "Family groups" which include consenting adults who want things such as shared income, mutual dependency, allow each other to make legal decisions involving them, and possibly have responsibility/custody of children.

Note that "Family Groups" would necessarily have to be romantically involved, rather, it would be a declaration that you trust this person enough to share finances/insurgence/whatever with them.

edited 24th Jan '13 1:20:38 PM by DrTentacles

I could get behind that. But, I don't see it happening anytime soon.

We have a difficulty with that? Ok, let me give a concrete list of demands:

1. Polygamy should be legal.
2. Polyamory should gain awareness and acceptance beyond the whole "polygamy is what crazy Fundamentalist Mormons do" or "it's cheating".
3. Polyamory should not be used in courts to deny any of the following:
   1. Custody of children.
   2. Stuff after divorce.
4. A million dollars in unmarked, unsequenced, small bills delivered to us by this time tomorrow or we start killing hostages.

I could get behind that.

Abolishing the legal institution of marriage and replacing it with "family groups" is an interesting idea, but I can't imagine the majority of people in this country agreeing with it. In addition, it would be impossible to make family groups a purely private thing. If you have a contract, then breaches of that contract would have to be enforced in the courts. If there are issues of property, that also has to be resolved by legal process. If there are children involved, then the state takes an interest in their well-being.

You can't make marriage a purely private matter even if you wanted to, unless you make it no more legally binding than dating. No mutually-enforceable rights or duties at all. In which case you don't need to change the laws, you just decide not to get married, and let other people keep what they have.

And if you and five of your closest lovers decide to enter into a sort of mutual quasi-family group union using contracts, trust agreements and powers of attorney, there is absolutely nothing, to my knowledge, preventing you from doing that right now.

edited 24th Jan '13 1:29:37 PM by Lawyerdude

Something tells me that this stuff won't be happening in your lifetime if it ever happens which it probably won't.

I don't really like marriage for myself, but I think that that being able to marry multiple spouses takes away from a lot what makes marriage so special. I've always viewed marriage as you're devoting yourself to one person and only one from now on.

edited 24th Jan '13 1:44:39 PM by Babs

To clarify, I said marriage wouldn't be legally binding. It would be a church, or private affair, between you, your spouse(s), and whatever or whoever conducted the marriage.

Family groups would replace marriage in the eyes of the law, and would be the legal equivalent of marriage, with the ability to be extended to anyone you trust.

So, in addition to marriage, you'd go to Government office or whatever, and file to include someone in your "family group" (Which is probably mis-named, as it may not necessarily include people you are married or family with.)

edited 24th Jan '13 1:31:45 PM by DrTentacles

Forgive me Tentacles, but I'm confused. Either there are certain legal rights and duties extended to the family unit or there aren't. In the first instance the government of necessity must be somehow involved, in creation, dissolution and regulation. In the second it doesn't. So which is it?

edited 24th Jan '13 1:36:36 PM by Lawyerdude

I'm saying that marriage would be completely free of the government. Including all rights normally extended to marriage. It would just be a word, and probably a purely religious word at that, or, if people don't want to get married by a church, they can be married by whomever they please.

Then, if they wanted the tax shit and government oversight and bonuses, they'd go and file to be included in the same "Family Group." However, unlike marriage, this could extend to anyone you trust enough to share money/share the current benefits of "marriage" for. Like a less-restrictive civil union.

Won't that mean that same-sex marriages could no longer occur seeing as the state is the only one marrying gay people? I can't think of any other religion that allows that at least.

That sounds like a wonderful idea! :D

The Episcopalian Church.

So would this include parents, children, siblings, cousins, spouses, grandchildren, and so on? Like if your parents decide, they can just not include their children in their family group and have no responsibilities whatsoever?

I'm sure there are many churches who would be willing to conduct gay marriage. Also, I doubt many homosexual people would want to get married in a church that doesn't want to marry them.

To the best of my knowledge, there's no attempt to "force" churches to marry same-sex couples, only to make it so it's legal for gay couples to be married, and thus, legal for churches to marry them.

I'd make it so it allows anybody that you please (and who consents.) However, I'd also make it so dependents are automatically included.

edited 24th Jan '13 1:51:24 PM by DrTentacles

Well, there's also the overriding question in my mind: Why? Why should we do this?

Why should the recent European System universally dictate what's considered marriage? If we can change the system to make it better for as many as people as possible, with little to no cost to others, why SHOULDN'T we?

Who says that what you're proposing would be any better than what we have now? Change for the sake of change is no justification. You say it would be better that way? Explain how and why.

Well, more people would be happy, that's a fact. As long as less people are hurt, then it's a good change.

It would allow Polyamorous people to have both their marriages, and be able to get the benefits of maintaining the same household, raising the same kids and so on that marriage currently gives to straight people.

It would also also the rare, but not unheard of occasion of Hetrosexual Life Partners (Two people who live with each other, trust each other, and are basically married, without any Erotic love) to have the benefits of doing so. Or extended families who do the same. Again, rare, and not unheard of. From a legal perspective, can you think of flaws with the system?

(I'm doing this mostly as a thought experiment. I don't have a horse in the game, but I figure anything that causes more happiness with no cost isn't bad.)

I don't think it's been thought through enough for my satisfaction. You're not just talking about allowing two same-sex people to marry. You're talking about radically overhauling the entire institution of the family as it's existed for millennia and replacing it with something altogether new and untested.

Just off the top of my head, you'd need to account for divorce, child rearing and custody, common property, child support, alimony, inheritance and probably much more.

If you replace a conventional monogamous couple with a series of amorphous blobby networks of people, you're going to run into all sorts of problems.

Consider this alone: A person who is a member of two or more family groups has as child. Which family group is responsible for raising the child? All of them? None of them? The one with the other parent? What if the child's parent is in an altogether different family group?

edited 24th Jan '13 2:13:53 PM by Lawyerdude

edited 24th Jan '13 2:15:00 PM by Lascoden

Certain aspects of marriage have evolved over time, sure. Other parts have remained largely the same. But that's the thing, it's the result of years of testing and evolution. If you want to get rid of that and replace it with something very different cut from whole cloth, there'd better be a very good reason for it.

Hmm. I'd assume that people would only join a family group would agree to that sort of collective responsibility. This is a rough outline, if I could come up with a complete system in roughly 5 minutes of thinking, I would be doing soooo much more with my life.

I'd assume the people who would care for the child would decide on his family group. Divorce would likely lead to assets being split among the people in the group who most depended on them. I'd agree that it would be more complicated, however, people who wanted to have the traditional 2 person marriage could still have them, as a 2 person family group would have all those benefits. Meanwhile, people who wanted to have a larger group would likely have to decide and take note of that stuff ahead of time.

Really, I think the only people who would be inconvenienced. (Other than possibly the government.) would be the people who *wanted* that sort of thing. I mean, if you want a more complex relation, you're going to have to put in some work for it, but if it's not worth it, why are you doing it to begin with?

Eh, people should be allowed to do whatever they think best unless it is directly harming someone. I am not convinced that polyamory or polygamy are good ideas; but if people wish to do that, I think that they certainly should be permitted to, and should not be discriminated re custody of children and so on because of this.

There is potential for some serious abuse in polyamory or polygamy; but let's be frank, there is a lot of actual abuse going on in monogamous marriages too. When abuse is observed, that should obviously be dealt with; but if multiple people wish to form some sort of partnership for taking care of their children and living together and so on, I see no reason why they should be prevented to.

Maybe this discussion should start simpler.

Suppose you can have a family unit comprised of two or more consenting adults, with the caveat that an individual can only be part of a single family unit. The family unit exists in perpetuity unless everybody involved dies or they all agree to dissolve.

Individual self-determination as to how to live your life is fine. But the question then becomes, should the government give official recognition, rights and responsibilites to your relationship, and if so, why?

edited 24th Jan '13 2:26:40 PM by Lawyerdude

That might be an option. I don't like removing the possibility of divorce, however. That feels like it could lead to some seriously dysfunctional relationships, and undermine the system before it got started. I am interesting in hearing in any modifications that you'd like to table. I mean, I just tossed my idea out to get maybe a foundation. It would be cool if we could draft a full-fledged modified system of marriage, with a reasonable chance of working.

I do like, at least on first glance, the "Only in one unit at a time" sort of thing.