Re: [UUPoly-L] By the way...

["Laura Stewart" <mathlaura@gmail.com>]

On 5/31/07, Kelly Cookson <kc62301@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I've been in an open marriage with the same wonderful spouse for 23 years.
> We plan to stay happily and openly married the rest of our lives.
>
> I was an out bisexual activist in the Washington DC area for many years. I
> continue to be out to my family and friends as a bisexual. But there's not
> much activism going on in the cornfields of Illinois, where I am stuck for a
> few more years.
>
> I have lived in group situations with multiple lovers, though can't honestly
> say we all considered it a group marriage. My spouse and I would like to
> move in with an old lover of ours when we retire. So it's not that I'm
> flatly opposed to group marriage.
>
> I just think a lot of polyamorists have blinders on when it comes to how big
> a change multi-partner marriage would be for our society. In fact, it's a
> new structure that our society is just not adapted to manage. While our
> society can certainly adapt to accomodate multi-partner marriage, to do so
> with reasonable control over the human and financial costs of the change
> will require planning and hard work--politically, legally, and socially. I
> just haven't seen that kind of planning or hard work happen yet. So I don't
> take the legalization of multi-partner marriage that seriously, yet.
>
> :-)
> Kelly

I doubt that multiple-partner "marriage" (as the term is now
understood legally) will or can be the ultimate solution to equal
rights for polygamists (and homosexuals, for that matter).  I believe
the necessity will be (as someone else has phrased it) the government
getting out of the marriage business altogether and legal marriage as
it is now understood being replaced with flexible and non-uniform
binding contracts regarding communal property and child custody, and
"marriage" becoming a word purely used for a social/religious
covenant.  While this is also my ideal, and thus I'm a bit biased
towards it, I believe it will be the necessary reality.  I wouldn't be
surprised by some transitional plural marriage or plural civil union
laws.

It should be remembered that the notion of legal marriage as currently
understood is relatively new in the U.S.  (I am uncertain about its
history in other countries; that is something that I should research
further.)  Marriage licenses were first issued in many states to
prevent or regulate miscegenation.  In some states, marriage licenses
were at first only required for marriages that were "usually" illegal
(such as interracial, one partner previously divorced, etc.).  Our
current model of always registering marriages with the government is
less than 100 years old.

Of course, there were laws preventing inter-racial marriage and
polygamy prior to our current model, many of which are still on the
books.  But there is a large difference in the criminal prosecution of
more than 2 persons, or persons of the same sex, presenting themselves
as "married" and our current understanding of "polygamy is not legal"
and "same-sex marriage is not legal" which involve the fact that one
cannot register one's marriage with the government nor have the legal
protections of marriage.

Because of the relative novelty of our current legal marriage system,
I believe that its complete overturn will not be quite as
revolutionary as the idea might at first appear.  I do not, however,
believe that such a thing is likely to happen within my lifetime.

-Laura