[quote name='elprincipe']Loving v Virginia is a different matter entirely. It dealt with interracial marriage actually being illegal, not merely the government not recognizing a marriage.[/quote]
There is a substantial difference between not recognizing a marriage (i.e. the state of most law with regards to gay marriage 40 years ago) and either saying marriage is
only defined as between one man and one woman (some states now) or, more specifically, gay marriage and anything resembling
cannot be recognized in any form (other states now).
Question: Do you feel the government should not recognize polygamous marriage? If you think it shouldn't, why not?
I'd like to answer this and hopefully we can move past polygamy. I find it an interesting subject, but it's peripheral to gay marriage as it is substantially different, and the overlapping issues don't really get us very far. When the analogy leads to more differences than similarities, it's not a good one.
The problem with reducing polygamy to the question of whether or not you agree with it or it should be recognized is that it's still thoroughly unclear what polygamy
means and what legal recognition of it
entails.
Yes, yes ... multiple wives and/or husbands. As thrustbucket said, it's hard to watch
Big Love and not feel like Bill and his wives deserve some kind of legal recognition.
But
Big Love presents a high-level picture, and presents one definition of polygamy that's easy to grasp but low on details. Go back to the example I gave a few days ago:
Bill is married to Barb and Nicky. Bill dies. Are Barb and Nicky still married? If Nicky wants to marry Margie, does she have to divorce Barb first?
This is a pretty involved question. I can think of logical ways to address the question, but they may be ways that Barb and Nicky don't like. In the show, Barb and Nicky consider each other sister-wives. They would not consider themselves wives in the way that two lesbians in Massachusetts would.
So, is everyone married to each other equally? Does it require the consent of everyone in the marriage to extend the marriage to a new partner or divorce an existing partner. Consider:
Bill is married to Barb and Nicky. Bill wants to divorce Nicky, but Barb does not.
Ouch! What do you do? Does it matter what Nicky thinks?
I have no idea.
In current law, in some states divorce requires consent of both spouses. In others, either spouse can force a divorce. But how do you cope with three (or more!) people whose requests are contradictory or mutually exclusive?
Under one possible definition of polygamy, Bill could divorce Nicky while letting Barb stay married to Nicky. Messy, but possible to imagine. Under the everyone-is-married-to-each-other equally route, you'd have deadlock. Do you force everyone to divorce? Do you force them to stay married?
So, when you ask a simple question like "Do you agree or not that polygamy should have legal recognition?", I have no choice but to respond with "What am I agreeing to?"
Back to
Big Love. thrustbucket is right. Of course there's sympathy. At a minimum, I would hope that Bill's relationship to his family not be illegal. (We're then presented with the issue of having one kind of polygamous relationship that should not be discouraged (consenting adults) while protecting against the kind of relationships that are considered abusive (child brides, lost boys, etc.) That's a whole 'nother discussion.)
Where do you go from there? Until you get a working legal definition of what polygamy is and what it means for those involved, even Bill might not want legal polygamy.
With gay marriage, I know what I'm getting. My partner and I will agree to take on the rights but also the obligations of being married. This is not a slight thing. We are exchanging the freedom to define our relationship however we want through existing legal documents for the more easily understood concept of marriage. I know heterosexual couples that do not
ever want to get legally married, for either financial or legal reasons.
Bill might not want the state to define the parameters of his multiple marriages. Would his wives be explicitly married to each other? Does Bill want Barb to be legally liable for Nicky's credit card debt? How would this affect their kids, their houses, their money? Consider this:
Bill is married to Barb, Nicky, and Margie. Each wife has 10 kids. Bill, Barb, and Nicky die in an automobile accident. There's no will. Assume that Bill, Barb, Nicky, and Margie all have living parents.
Who gets custody of which kids?
Do you saddle Margie with 30 kids? Should Barb's children be placed with Barb's living relatives before being placed with Nicky's living relatives or Margie? When does blood determine the legal relation and when does marriage? Or does it matter at all?
I imagine that there are real-life polygamists who would be horrified at the idea of one
woman being able to marry multiple
men, and this alone would be a reason that they -- polygamists themselves -- would not want legal recognition.
It could be that polygamy is so friggen' complicated, with so many unforeseen consequences, that even polygamists would prefer individualized contract law and legal agreements as opposed to a government-defined arrangement.
But again --
I have no idea.
Also as I've said before, this discussion hasn't happened yet. Until those wanting plural marriage articulate exactly what it is they want, how it is to be accomplished, and what the effects will be on established law, how can
anyone say whether they're in favor or not?
Or, to put it in another way, are you in favor of a law that's fuzzily defined, whose parameters are unknown, and whose consequences to you and others are potentially far-reaching but ultimately unknowable until put into practice and hashed out by lawyers?
this "will of the people" crap - it's a faux majestic way of trying to defend the fact that some people think they should have a say over whose finger I put a ring on. That's just totally ridiculous.[/QUOTE]
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