posted
He's talking legally. Children do not have legal relationships in the same way adults do. Each additional adult in a marriage multiplies the complexity of the legal relationship. Each additional child does not.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Simple. Those aren't the only two purposes for the legal status of marriage. There's also the purpose for the couple to be enabled and protected in exchange for forming a more stable unit of society -- irrespective of childbirth.
fugu - I couldn't tell - was this directed at Mabus?
posted
Jim-me, fugu pretty much summed it up. The legal complexity created by children exists whether there is a marriage or not, so their presence is accounted for under either scheme. The presence of an additional spouse does add extra complexity between the two schemes.
Dagonee Edit: And, from one perspective, allowing homosexual civil marriages makes the whole issue less legally complex, because there's one validation that's no longer needed before marriage can occur, namely that the partners are of different sex. Not that that's normally difficult, but still.
Except for the lack of the ability to use "he" and "she" with absolutely no possibility of confusion when talking about the spouses. That will be a pain in legal memos.
posted
First off, I think even a lawyer will be forced to admit that there is much more than law involved here in terms of both risk and reward.
But also, there *IS* a legal relationship to consider when bringing stepchildren into a marriage... and just because the children are minors it doesn't mean that there isn't a complex legal relationship there...
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posted
Okay, even if children don't count towards legal complexity, I don't find your argument persuasive. You're saying that we should ban types of marriage just because they are more complicated? Isn't love worth a little legal complexity? And why should the government be setting some line as to just how complex a legal relationship people can choose to get into?
I don't find this distinction to be significant enough to warrant restricting marriage rights and the potential happiness created by them.
I also don't think any anti-polygamy or anti-gay-marriage law was created to avoid legal complexity. I think the reason for those laws is something else entirely different, and that legal complexity would just be an excuse to create them.
True about the step-children. But it's different than a marriage. I'm not proposing some general principle that all contract relationships be kept to 2 parties. I'm saying the difference in complexity is enough to treat poly-marriage differently than monogamous homosexual marriages.
And my whole personal justification for allowing homosexual civil marriages relies on the legal aspects, and pretty much nothing else. It's how I reconcile my view of marriage as a God-ordained institution and marriage as a civil construct.
So while of course children make ANYTHING more complex, the complexities aren't relvant to my particular argument here.
No, you're pretty much wrong. Children in a polygamous marriage are basically in the same situation as children in a pair marriage. Adults in a polygamous marriage are in an incredibly complex legal entanglement in a polygamous marriage and are in a relatively simple legal relationship in a pair marriage.
edit: re: step children, while its a more complex situation, the interests of non-parental figures in complex relationships, such as grandparents, aunts and uncles, et cetera, is already part of the legal tradition (usually when the parents are unable to care for the children). Adding polygamous situations won't create significantly more complexity.
The construct I've proposed is not restricting marriage rights. It's saying, "the default position of two people joining in a partnership intended to be lifelong is of great enough importance to society that we will create a legal framework to help support it. However, the benefits of that legal framework are reduced, and the costs increased, enough to justify limiting it to two people and not more."
And Xap, there is no "anti-homosexual marriage laws" per se. There are laws that define marriage as one man, one woman. Of course, the effect is anti-homosexual. But the laws were statements of the institution as it was seen to be necessary. My whole contention is that one of the restrictive terms (one man, one woman) can be changed without radical effects on how the institution serves its original goals. The other restrictive term (only two people) cannot.
Dagonee fugu: we seem to be getting postus interuptus - your last post was aimed at Xap, right? Never mind - saw your edit.
posted
I have no moral qualms with polygamy/group marriage. But I see the legal problems.
It seems you can have two types of group marriage:
1) All people entering group marriage are equally related to each other in the legal relationship. But this is problematic for when disputes arise. The nice thing about 2-person marriage is that such disputes are relatively easy to answer. One person dies, the other person inherits. One person is in medical emergency, the other person makes the decision. Parents of the incapacitated and children of the incapacitated wait their turn. There are definitely problems when the children disagree and the spouse is dead, but I think it goes by seniority or the "closest child" or somesuch. When you enter a group marriage of this type, how in the world do you make such decisions? Do you have to enter a heirarchy in the marriage license? What if one person wants to separate from the group marriage? Does it get split 50/50, or maybe 10/90 if there are 10 total members. What if they only want to split with one of the people, but not the other 8? Should they take a vote each time? Make a tie-breaker "head of the household"?
So lets try type two. 2) The marriage consists of pairs that are interconnected. Person A is connected to person B and D. Person B is connected to Person A, as well as person C. Person D and C are connected, but C and A aren't. Now you can break a single pairing, with slightly less problem. But how do you co-own things with two people, but not another? If C and D decide to split, then you only split the things that each of them own, not the ones that C owns with B? Life insurance only goes to the next associates, limited to two?
What if you can only have one male, and multiple females? Or one female and multiple males? That makes some questions easier, but not all. After all, the multiple females might want to join up with each other. Or only a few of them want to. If you can come up with a single design that works for all polygamous marriages, then tell us and work for it to be legally accepted. That's fine with me. But I think it's a much bigger legal problem than you're allowing.
And you can't really solve it by bypassing legal marriage and making a corporation. Because many federal and other benefits only kick in with the definition of "marriage." It's not like you're going to get an insurance company to agree to pay all 7 wives life insurance benefits.
What about tax benefits for # of children? Only get counted by the female? Are you going to make different tax heirarchies for the number of people in the marriage?
------ Again. I have absolutely 0 moral qualms with more than two people loving each other, living together, and raising children together. Just tell me that you know the answer for making all the legal benefits fair and easy.
Posts: 1261 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
I don't disagree about the legal complexities... but I think the legal issues are far fewer and less difficult than the other ones.
Edit to rephrase: I don't disagree that a poly-marriage is legally very complex, I think dag underestates the complexity of (for example) a second marriage between two people with children (probably because that scenario has been hashed out and has a long history of common law behind it) and I think the whole line of denying a particular civil union because it's legally complex is a weak basis to deny something.
posted
You think there are fewer legal complexities with a polygamous marriage than with a gay marriage?
Edit: Oh I see. I think you're saying that legal complexities in a polygamous marriage that concern themselves with polygamous marriage are less complex than the rest of the legal complexities associated with marriage.
Okaaay... But I don't see you trying to lay out a method. Can you do that? Answer the basic questions... Divorce, Property Rights, Medical Rights, Life Insurance, etc.
sorry for the rofl. I didn't see where you were going.
posted
I'm pretty sure that's not what he meant at all. He's been talking about the relative complexity of the relationships between adults and the relationships between children.
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