Gay Marriage, Polygamy, Group Marriage, Incest

In response to the following quote from a post last month,

I don't like the Republican line on gay marriage, and I think that the right answer is that it is an issue of contract that adults can enter (whether same sex, multiple partner, or traditional), but it is not an issue that I care much about (since I want neither same sex nor multiple marriages personally).

I had this interesting discussion involving marriage and various ways for people to choose to live:
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Anonymous said...
You apparently do not have well developed thoughts on the issue of non-traditional marriage. Gay marriage is one thing, provided that there are exactly two individuals involved in each marriage. But marriage of multiple partners is quite another.

A marriage between two individuals, same-sex or not, can be graphically represented by two points with a line segment connecting them. Since legal status (at least officially) within a marriage is not differentiated based on the sex of the individuals, there is no logical difference between same-sex and traditional marriages.

Marriages between multiple partners could take the forms of chains, rings, stars, trees, meshes or any combination thereof. This is not a moral problem, but a logical one.

Should our court systems be burdened with untangling the webs of intrigue that would result from allowing such arrangements?I think not.

At 2:50 PM, Jrudkis said...
Why should the court entanglement matter? Courts are involved in the dissolution of complex corporate arrangements all the time. If there are seven people involved in the ownership of a 7-11, the court has to sit in equity and determine what is fair for all of them, and generally short of contracts delineating who owns what split the value between the participants.

Marriages are simply partnerships that run a household rather than a business. Why can't the judge sit in equity in multiple party marriages just like he can when dissolving a 7-11 partnership? Are you saying that corporate citizens should get more service from the courts than human citizens? The parties have a prenuptial, and the dissolution goes along the way of the pre-nuptual agreement. If they do not have an agreement, then the judge in equity splits the assets, and the judge determines what is best for any children, just as he does now.

At 6:38 AM, Anonymous said...
That's sort of like saying that I shouldn't mind driving you to work every day because I have to drive myself to work already.

Are multiple-partner marriages of comparable value to our society as corporations? To anyone who thinks so, you might have a point.

At 7:27 AM, Jrudkis said...
Potentially. Why are multiple party corporations needed? Because individually the investors did not have the resources to risk in the endeavor. Why would this not also be true of a household? Certainly 5 poor people pooling resources together to live and raise children would be able to afford better arrangements for their family than two. Allowing them to contract together to run this arrangement while protecting individuals from being summarily abandoned would be a good thing. For example, one person could forego working while caring for the kids. The others could not take advantage of that person and abandon her when the kids no longer need care, and leave her without support while they enjoy the fruits of her labor.

At 8:14 AM, Anonymous said...
In your example, would each of the five people necessarily have to be married to the other four (in a mesh arrangement)? Or could this group marriage take the form of a chain or a ring? Could any of these people claim withholding of sex as grounds for divorce? Would each be expected to have sex with any of the others? What if one wanted to divorce one of the others, but not the other three? Are we really talking about marriage?

At 11:59 AM, Jrudkis said...
Under no fault divorce, there does not have to be a reason such as withholding sex. In a 7-11 partnership, can one person decide to not be a partner of one person, but remain a partner with the others? No, it is a partnership or not.

The "shape" does not matter. All are linked together in a partnership, and in order to leave, you have to leave the whole partnership.

At 1:36 PM, Anonymous said...
The "shape," as you term it, does matter as you describe group marriage. It must be a closed mesh in which each individual is necessarily joined to every other individual. Chains, rings, trees and any combination including any of these are prohibited.

Additionally, no-fault divorce may also be required to allow such an arrangement. Not all states provide for this, but that's a minor point.

Okay, I'm sold. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and contract-based communes for all. Live communally or die.

Can I marry ten or so Mexican women in their early twenties and in need of citizenship? If so, would we have immunity from testifying in eachother's court cases?
At 7:24 AM, Jrudkis said...
You should be able to marry ten women, but just like today if the marriage is a sham or a fraud you should be prosecuted for it.

How about if you are an American born in the US, raised in Saudi Arabia, and marry 4 women as is traditional and legal there. If you move back to the US with your family, should you have to choose one woman to be your wife, and leave the others behind? Spousal privilege also varies state by state, but I would venture that the privilege should go with multi-party marriages to the extent and for the same reasons it exists with traditional marriage. I don't really understand why the "shape" would matter. In traditional polygamy, it is shaped like a star, with typically the man at the center and several women tied to him, but often living completely separate lives from the other women. Other times it is a commune type of life, but the women are not necessarily lovers.

At 8:08 AM, Anonymous said...
The reason I say that the shape matters is that you made the following two quoted assertions:

"In a 7-11 partnership, can one person decide to not be a partner of one person, but remain a partner with the others? No, it is a partnership or not."and"All are linked together in a partnership, and in order to leave, you have to leave the whole partnership."

I take "All are linked together" to mean that each individual is connected directly to every other individual, regardless of the nature of their sexual relations. This is a mesh configuration.

In the first quote, you discuss "one person" in a general, arbitrary way, as though the rules apply equally to all in the partnership. This further implies that each has the same connectedness to the others as does any of the others to the rest. The only configuration in which this is true is a mesh, with each point directly connected to each and every other point. (Technically, were there only three members, it would also be a ring.)

In the case of a star, the man-in-the-center's leaving would have an entirely different effect on the marriage. I would disolve it completely, not just for him, but for all the others (if in fact he has to leave the whole partnership). If one of the women at the points were to leave, the rest would remain intact.

In a chain configuration, with one married to another, married to another, and so on; were a member in the middle of the chain to leave, two smaller, separate chains would be left. Were one of the two end points to leave, or one of the two next to those to leave, you would be left with one shorter chain.

I may be misunderstanding you, but what I thought you were describing was an "all for one and one for all" arrangement.

At 12:28 PM, Jrudkis said...
Continuing with the 7-11 analogy, partners do not have to be equal. There may be a partner with more equity, or actually owns the building, or does all the work. If that person leaves the partnership, it would leave the rest without any reason to be in a partnership, but would not necessarily dissolve the partnership. I would suggest the same would be true of a man with multiple wives. If he divorces the group, it would not mean that the women would have to dissolve as a group, though it is most likely that they would choose to. I think the key part is that multiple marriages would require consenting adults, and that would require all adults in the marriage to consent to each addition, and in effect be "married." I understand the chain idea, but I would think of a marital unit as one, so if you begin with a couple that marries another couple, this new group of four would be one single entity. If they married a third couple, they would all be marrying, not just one of their group.

But I suppose it is possible that you could have one person married to one group, and also married to another group, just like one person can be in one 7-11 partnership, but also in a WaWa partnership, without enmeshing his partners in the other respective partnership. I don't like this idea as much because I don't think in marriage you should have limitations on the assets that you bring to the marriage (in other words you bring all your assets to the marriage, not just your limited "investment.")

But I could be wrong. Perhaps that would be the role of the prenuptual agreement which indicates that I am a participant in this marriage on Mondays and Thursdays, but not on the other days. My role as a member of marriage B shall not be impacted my my role in marriage A, and the assets will not be mixed.

That seems a little bit harder, but not insurmountable for a court system that is able to unravel Blockbuster Video from its marriage to Viacom, or oversee the mergers of telecom giants with multiple subsidiaries and assets and liabilities.

I wonder if there would be a role for antitrust within marital communities, so that giant marriages could not join to such an extent that marrital competition is stifled?

At 10:29 AM, Anonymous said...

That might happen if one guy snatched up all the women. [Editor comment: Yes, how many women would be willing to be married to Brad Pitt and his equivalents simultaneously?]

It appears that we now agree that trees and chains might be problematic. I'm not sure about rings and stars.

An interesting backdrop to this discussion is that it was started in jest, in that it really has nothing to do with the main point of the original post. (What was that about Iraqi election and the Left?) But it has turned more serious and thought-provoking.

Anyway, it seems to me that, on the whole, the concept of group "marriage" that we've been discussing, while arguably worthwhile and viable, departs materially enough from traditional marriage (far more so than does gay marriage) that there may be reason not to consider it for inclusion within the existing institution of marriage.

I would suggest that any institutionalization of what could be called "domestic group partnerships" be done independently of any modifications to the existing institution of marriage, which may include inclusion of same-sex marriage.

It seems to me that the parterships we've been discussing lack the intimate, personal relationship, normally based on romantic love with a strong sexual component that is customarily the basis for traditional marriage.

There are admitted similarities between traditional marriages and the subject group partnerships. These lie primarily in the familial and asset-sharing aspects of the arrangements. I just don't think that the similarities are sufficient to warrant lumping these arrangments together within a single institution.

This would lead me to further suggest that individuals already involved in a traditional marriage should have to divorce in order enter into a domestic group partnership, just as they now do to enter into another marriage. The same would also be true for anyone involved in a domestic group partnership wishing to enter into a traditional marriage.

This means that there would be a relationship between these separate institutions, as there are between many existing separate institutions, but that they would be separate none the less.

At 11:38 AM, Jrudkis said...
Polygamy (a form of group marriage) has thousands of years of history and a billion adherents currently living in the world. Granted that history is not in the form of chains and stars, but typically one man/many women. Gay marriage, on the other hand, has essentially no history, and probably at most 120 million adherents (assuming 2% of the population is gay and want to marry).

I would say that legalizing polygamy has a greater historical precedent, current legal status in many countries, and would impact more people that legalizing gay marriage. And since traditionally marriage is about families and raising children more than romantic love, and polygamy was proudly practiced biblically and in most religious traditions, it meets those measures better than gay marriage.

I am not sure why a traditional marriage would have to divorce to enter a group marriage unless both parties were not interested in the group. But since a traditional marriage can also be construed in its very terms (of the contract) to preclude adding partners ("and forsaking all others"), I think your idea that a divorce (or at least a repudiation of the marital contract terms) would be necessary if we are to treat the marital contract the same as any other contract.

But in any event, if they are all consenting adults, they should be able to contract how they please.

It has been a great discussion. I was thinking of pulling it and posting it as a discussion on a top post. What do you think?

At 7:15 AM, Anonymous said...
To quote Rocky Balboa, "Go for it."

I don't disagree with you with regard to the historical and worldwide views on marriage and polygamy. I'm just not sure that those apply in today's America, or in an argument based on the administrative logic of institutions.

From the standpoint of legal administration, I still feel that gay marriage is virtually identical to straight marriage, and that group marriage is not.

One of the arguments put forth regarding gay marriage versus civil unions, as you are probably aware, is that the government should get out of the "marriage" business altogether and administer civil unions to all couples, gay or straight.

Leave it to the churches to marry people and decide the rules for themselves. After all, the Catholic church doesn't recognize marriages performed by the Justice of the Peace as it stands now.

I'm not sure what bearing that has on the discussion of domestic group partnerships, but it's an intersting aside regardless.

At 7:50 AM, Jrudkis said...
That is actually the point behind this whole argument. The government should not be involved in determining the contracting of consenting adults. It is generally a libertarian position.

I agree that gay marriage would be logistically easier, but I would extend it to incestual relationships between consenting adults as well. There is essentially no argument that supports gay marriage that does not support incestual relationships, and the only argument against incestual relationships (retarded progeny) is statistically irrelevant given the few who would choose this route and have children. Besides, what argument can there be against incestual same sex marriage if same sex marriage is allowed, and if that is allowed, how can the state discriminate against opposite sex incest?

At 12:32 PM, Anonymous said...
Does the government really determine the contracting of consenting adults? Legal marriage is a very convenient vehicle for obtaining a range of rights and privileges for a couple, but is it possible to obtain those same things by other legal means?I have heard it put forth; as a counter to the argument that gays, being deserving of the same rights and privileges as straights, should be allowed to marry; that gays can obtain those same rights and privileges through wills, contracts, powers of attorney, etc. (Employer benefits such as health insurance are administered based on the policies of the employer, not law, so they are not relevent to the legal argument.)

Is it really a matter of preferential treatment in allowing an easier means only for a select group of people to obtain the same rights and privileges that anyone else can obtain through a more cumbersome course of action? (What could be called the "build your own marriage" course of action.)

At 1:57 PM, Jrudkis said...
So long as the Government is giving preferential treatment to one group, it is also discriminating against other groups. Also, some states have enacted laws restricting the right of gays to "contract" a marriage (like Virginia).

Simply looking at Social Security and the survivorship rights of a spouse indicates that a contracted gay "marriage" would not have the same benefits of a government sanctioned marriage.

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Comments on this discussion are welcome below.