Two in a row for Dr. Science!
Wow, I just checked back to see if the old thread had died, and what
do I find! Thank you, Tony. BTW, the pronoun used for me is “she”, not
“he”.“A Walker” — Who cares if two is not equal to three? — The law. In law, there are about 1400 legal benefits to marriage, and the vast majority of those rights presume that the marriage is between two (2) persons only. As I have argued elsewhere,
our current marriage law is *barely* able to deal with the complexities
that arise when a marriage has only two partners, and that despite
hundreds of years of experience dealing with traditional
(inegalitarian) two-partner marriages. Egalitarian multipartner
marriages simply do not fit into the legal structures we have, so there
is no practical basis for making them legal as yet. I guess there would
have to be at least 50-100 years’ experience with custom-made
polyamorous contracts before legal mavens could even think of making a
standard poly marriage contract — there simply isn’t enough experience
with how these things tend to work out. So no, “Your Name”, I don’t
think there’s anything wrong *in principle* with poly marriages — but
law is all about practice, practicality, and precedent, and that
doesn’t exist yet and might not for centuries.Marriage has always been tied to sex because the act of sex for
heterosexuals is what launches the long-term project of raising
families—the enterprise being contracted.Here is where I put on my Actual Evolutionary Biologist™ hat and
disagree. Most mammals do not have any arrangment like marriage, and
yet they manage to have sex and rear offspring perfectly well.Consider the case of Jacob, in the Book of Genesis. Jacob loves only
one woman, is married to two women, and has legitimate children with
four women.What makes his relationships with Leah and Rachel “marriage”? It’s
not love, and it’s not having sex or children. What sets marriage apart
is *in-laws*, and this IMScientificO is one of the things that makes
human marriage unique. Indeed, if you look at what happens to Jacob, it
seems that his first marriage is really a contract with Laban, who is
able to swap Leah for Rachel and hold Jacob to it.Marriage is a social and economic arrangment which usually
incorporates sex and reproduction, but which is clearly necessary for
neither. For societies with property, marriage is crucial for
determining inheritance, and if you look at that list of “marriage
rights” you’ll see that most of them are about economic or medical
decisions. “Being able to have licit sex” is *not* on that list,
however psychologically or religiously important it seems. And the
same-sex couples and their allies (like me) aren’t fighting for the
right to an imaginary sex license, but for equal access to those 1400
real, legal rights of marriage.
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In an attempt to explain why poly-amorous individuals should be denied their equal rights to marriage, Dr. Science says: “In law, there are about 1400 legal benefits to marriage, and the vast majority of those rights presume that the marriage is between two (2) persons only.”
This argument from Dr. Science is saying that the status quo of “two” must be maintained simply because the presumption of *two* has been around a while. We note that this is the same argument heteros have use to defend traditional marriage being between male and female partners. (And note that gays never accept the “it’s-always-been-that-way” defense.)
The good Doctor continues this line of reasoning when he says, “Our current marriage law is *barely* able to deal with the complexities that arise when a marriage has only two partners…multipartner marriages simply do not fit into the legal structures we have.”
Here Dr. Science reasons that the bureaucratic red tape involved in managing more than two partners is a strain on the system, and for this reason three lovers should be denied equal rights to marriage. Yet it’s apparent that many contracts in modern society already involve many partners (think business contracts and partnerships), and so the legal system can certainly handle it. I conclude that SSM advocates must not seek to deprive the rights of those who want “three” or “four” parters merely because recent society has a bias in favor of “two.”
Next, in responding to my point that marriage law has always linked with sex because that act for heterosexuals launches the legally binding long-term project of raising families (the enterprise being contracted), Dr. Science says, “Most mammals do not have any arrangement like marriage, and yet they manage to have sex and rear offspring perfectly well.” The obvious reply is that humans by nature have more intensive and long-term child-rearing commitments than other mammals. Due to the physiological and educational needs of human infants, marriage has always been constructed as a long-term and legally binding society. Moreover, since society implicitly holds the biological parents responsible for providing that long-term care, marriage law stipulates that hetero adult partners can’t produce babies and subsequently place them on the next door neighbor’s doorstep and walk away. There again we see the explicit legal stipulations of marriage linked to implicit realities.
Finally, Dr. Science says that same-sex couples are fighting for the right to have equal access to 1400 real, legal rights of marriage. Of course gays want this, but they want this despite the fact that those rights relate to the fact that nature has tasked heterosexuals with the legal responsibilities related to producing and caring for the next billion citizens of the state.
In other words, the real legal implications that exist for heterosexual marriage partners do so because marriage is a mini-society of infants, dependents and spouses that have grave economic risk if one partner breaches the contract via desertion.
I must agree that the argument from momentum (that’s how it’s always been) is a weak one. For both sides of the debate.
Just because something is legally complex, does not mean that legisalative change cannot occur. Far from it, in fact reformation of marriage law might seek to simplify this “complex” contractural system at any moment.
Comment timeouts = silly idea…..