holmes responds to me:
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Yes. Because they're not checking for genetic defects but rather for venereal disease and tuberculosis.
Hallelujah! You have finally made your first credible statement toward anything I have said in a long time. And actually I found that in the links I provided.
One wonders why you brought it up not once but twice...both times behaving as if the reason for the blood tests had to do with detecting genetic defects.
It turns out you didn't even bother to consider the reason why they do blood tests but instead, you forged ahead with your assumptions, absolutely certain they were correct.
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Why? Why not them, too? You're assuming marriage is hub-and-spoke and there is no evidence to suggest that it is.
Because the people will not be idiots trying to get married in lalaland where the contracts are between many all at once.
Why? You can assert this all you want but it is worthless without justification.
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By the nature of marriage (if we do not change it) the contracts will remain binding one on one.
Yes.
One on
one. In other words, no polygamy.
Polygamy necessarily requires one on two. We therefore necessarily need to redefine what the relationships are because what used to be an exclusive contract can no longer be so.
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All we have to do is allow people to process more than one.
But what does that mean? Why the default to hub-and-spoke rather than maximal interconnectivity?
And as we have seen in a previous post, even hub-and-spoke doesn't retain exclusivity due to the nature of the marriage contract. It's called "community property" for a reason.
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This would not require a change in rights responsibilities.
Who is next-of-kin? If A is married to B and C and A gets sick and cannot make decisions for himself, who has the exclusive right to make those decisions for A: B or C?
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To wit, if a married woman has an affair and becomes pregnant, her husband is considered the legal father and is financially responsible for the child should they divorce, even though he is not the biological father.
But if you want to raise that point as some sort of point you will actually have more problems with samesex marriage than polygamy.
Why? It would be clear that there can be no presumption of parentage of the other spouse in a same-sex couple. And since all children acquired by a same-sex couple would require the involvement of at least one other third party, it would necessarily involve some sort of adoptive procedure, much like what already exists for infertile, mixed-sex couples.
I dare say, same-sex couples would be
less complicated mixed-sex because there can never be any confusion over whether or not the other spouse is the father of the baby.
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Clearly if you have a marriage contract with a person any children with that person is yours and theirs. How would polygamy change this at all?
Because in the current law, a child is in custody of all the parents. What does it mean when you have three instead of two? Do we mean just the biological parents or do we follow precedent and include the third?
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You would not be cheating on anyone with anyone, because you have the contract.
Now you've switched to adultery. I thought we were talking about children.
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However, many states do make statements regarding custody or parental rights based on the gender of the parent. Thus the husband (male) is considered the provider for any children in case of divorce. How will such laws work when parents are both of the same sex?
That's a problem of sexism, not heterosexism.
After all, what happens when the husband gets custody of the kids? Does not the wife then become the provider for the children?
In short, the problem is not connected to same-sex couples but to the presumption that only males can be a provider. Even if we never allowed same-sex marriage, this law would still have to change because it is sexist. Same-sex marriage would only bring it about quicker.
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But if you have more than one spouse, what happens then?
For each person their immediate family is the same as the marriage contract describes.
You're assuming hub-and-spoke. Why?
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Whoever they are married to is a spouse and their kids are their own.
But if they're married to more than one person, which spouse are you talking about?
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If a person is married to someone who is married to someone else, they are only related like step or -inlaws. Why would there be any other situation?
Because current marriage law is that it is not a step relationship but a direct one. If you're going to make it a step relationship, then you're changing marriage law.
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I'm simply pointing out that all of the examples of relationships among more than one person that I know of personally, every single one of them considers themselves a trio.
We are talking legal, not social relationships.
You were the one who brought up the social traditions of other countries. Now you're whining because there are other social traditions that don't fit your hub-and-spoke model?
And since we're talking about legal relationships, there is no legal relationship in the US for marrying more than one person so all the invocations of other countries legal sanctions don't mean diddly. Ergo, there is no reason to assume hub-and-spoke.
You see, were you to tell someone in the US that you were going to see a "pantomime," they would have the idea of the French concept of "pantomime": A dramatic performance performed without words and minimal set where props and set are imagined and evoked through physical gesture rather than substance.
Say that in the UK, however, and they'll have a completely different idea. There, "pantomime" is a Christmas production, usually of a fairy tale, done in a broad, bawdy style (such as having men playing women's roles) with interpolated songs with rewritten lyrics.
Now, if we're in the US, it really doesn't matter what the UK thinks. We have to use the US standard because that's where we are.
Thus it is with polygamy. In the US, there is no legal relationship of marriage that involves more than two people. But socially in the US, there are hub-and-spoke as well as maximally interconnected relationships.
Why are you only dealing with the former when the latter are just as validly described as polygamy?
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You would not have to change marriage laws in order to have polygamous marriage of the "hub and spoke" variety.
How does one deal with community property? How does one deal with the next-of-kin relationship? How does one deal with any children that are introduced?
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And there is no reason that the social polygamists could not have the relationship they want, they'd just have to secure it through multiple legal contracts.
But that doesn't solve the problem. We still don't know how to restructure the exclusive rights that are conferred upon spouses.
Under current law, if A and B are married and A gets sick, B has exclusive rights to determine treatment which trumps all other familial claims including those of parents and children. Take the recent case in Florida...the parents are not suing saying that they have the right to make medical decisions for their daughter. They're saying that the husband is violating his wife's wishes (because you have the right to determine your course of your treatment.) In short, he claims that she said she didn't want to be kept alive via machine and they're claiming he's lying.
So if A is married to B and C and A cannot make his own medical decisions, who gets the exclusive right to determine treatment, B or C?
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I might add that you are obviously not talking about the various legal polygamous marriages that exist around the world, or the semi-legal ones in the US. There are already working examples.
That's because we're in the US. What other countries do is irrelevant. There is no legal relationship for marriage involving more than two people.
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Is there a reason your friends would refuse to sign separate marriage contracts with each other?
One reason is that it could mean that one contract is not identical to the others. By your logic, a triad would require three contracts, each of which could be entered into without the consent of the third party. Instead, marriage is a single contract among all of them.
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I guess if they really can't handle doing it that way, they can start asking for whatever marriage rights that might be called, and the regular polygamists can disassociate themselves from your friends.
(*chuckle*)
"Regular" polygamists? You seem to think that hub-and-spoke is the default. Where did you get this ridiculous idea? Other countries? Who the hell cares about them? We're not talking about their laws or their cultures. We're talking about the US. Just off my personal experience (as worthless as that is), polygamy means maximally interconnected.
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You have never given a reason why if a hub and spoke arrangement is capable of handling the different social arrangements, and would not require changing law, and are THE REAL LIFE EXAMPLES OF POLYGAMOUS MARRIAGE, people would refuse to do this.
Because I'm not the one making the argument that hub-and-spoke is the default of polygamy. You are. That's your responsibility.
And as I showed already, hub-and-spoke doesn't solve the problems of how to distribute exclusive rights.
If A is married to B and C and B and C are not married to each other, who gets to make the final decision regarding medical treatment should A be incapacitated? Marriage as it currently stands confers next-of-kin status to one other person. With that status comes a number of rights over that person. There cannot be two. So which is it?
And I've already pointed out the community property problem. A's property belongs to B and B's property belongs to C, therefore C has a claim on A's property, through B, even though A and C are not married to each other.
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And when the hub dies, what rights do all the spokes have?
One wonders that with the fount of knowledge you make yourself out to be, you get hung up on the simplest questions.
(*sigh*)
You really don't get it, do you? The problem is not that I cannot answer the question. I certainly can come up with many possible solutions. The problem is that I have to come up with an answer in the first place when I never had to under two-person marriage. On top of that, the answers that I come up with in multiple-person marriage have no connection to two-person marriage.
In case you still haven't figured it out: It doesn't matter what the answer is. The problem is that we are asking the question in the first place.
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Unless something was set up different in the contracts themselves, then assets are evenly split.
Why? Each spouse has an exclusive right to all of it. That's what current law says. If we're not changing anything about current law, then we can't split the property at all because it belongs to only one person.
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So how do we handle something like the right to make medical decisions when the spouse is incapacitated? Suppose one spouse wants to go in one direction while another spouse disagrees? Who is the final authority? Under marriage as we currently understand it, it is simply the "spouse" that has that right. Well, now there are two people who have that title, so which one do we defer to?
This is almost a valid question. Only what you are doing is choosing tough agreeably tough situations that can arise anywhere.
No, not anywhere. This never happens in a two-person marriage. There is only one person who has the right to make decisions for an incapacitated person: The spouse.
What the hell do we do when there are two of them? They can't both have an exclusive right, so which one gets it and why that one?
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Let's say you become ill and are not married, and the only relatives you have are your parents. One parents wants to do one thing and the other something else. Uh oh, guess we'll have to throw away the concept of parents!
Irrelevant. Parents are not spouses. The right of the spouse to make decisions for the other is an exclusive right that trumps the rights of parents.
Ergo, if we are simply going to use current law without any modification, a scenario of A married to B and B married to C results in A and C with exclusive rights to determine treatment.
If we treat A and C in a similar way to the parents of B, then we are changing the rights and responsibilities of marriage...a polygamous marriage no longer confers the exclusive right of making decisions for one's spouse.
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Or what if you are divorced
That means you're not married anymore and all rights of that spouse that are granted due to marriage are dissolved, replaced by any rights that come through the divorce decree.
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(twice) with children and they are your only remaining relatives and you become ill... and some want to go one way, and others want to go another?
Children are not spouses. The wishes of the children are trumped by the spouse. Marriage confers an exclusive right. Mere parentage does not. In becoming a parent, no exclusive right is bestowed upon the children.
So what you're saying is that we would need to change the rights of marriage to go from exclusive to shared.
Well, that's changing the contract of marriage. That doesn't happen in same-sex marriage, ergo same-sex marriage changes marriage less than polygamous marriage does.
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Yeah, tough question. My guess is since all your spouses have the right, that they will come to a consensus, or like any other family in dispute hire a bunch of lawyers to make the claim they have a greater right due to compelling claims beyond purely contractual matters.
But how could the claim be settled when each has an exclusive right? The reason why we can adjudicate among disagreeing parents or children is because none of them have an exclusive right. Instead, it is shared. But since marriage confers an exclusive right, how do we justify one over the other? In the case of parents/children, the courts tend to side with the result that doesn't kill the person off since that is an irreversible result. But with a spouse, killing off the patient is an option and cannot be countermanded.
What you're suggesting is changing marriage law so that what was once an exclusive right is now a shared right.
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This says nothing about the marriage contract rights/responsibilities,
Incorrect. It changes an exclusive right to a shared right.
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Now, do this again and change it from "husband" and "wife" to "all spouses."
It would not say this, just as when you get multiple credit cards you don't sign one form that says "all creditors".
Why not? When you sign a limited liability partnership, it affects all the signatories.
Why are you assuming that polygamy is hub-and-spoke? From what I can tell in the US, it seems to be primarily maximally interconnected.
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And now, consider if you need to add any new legislation to tie up any loose ends that might need to be clarified given the new arrangement.
Yeah, like the current marriages laws do not constantly get tightened up because of the many possibility of situations (loose ends) that exist?
Who said they didn't? You misunderstand. The point I was making is that polygamy necessarily brings things into play that would never need to be considered in two-person marriage. For example, what is the relationship of a third spouse to children born to the other two?
And just in case you still haven't figured it out, the answer to that question is irrelevant. What is relevant is the fact that you have to ask it in the first place. You don't have to think about what the relationship is between children born to a two-person couple. There are only two, they are the parents.
But with three people, we have a decision to make. What that decision turns out to be is of no importance. That we have to make the decision in the first place means that multiple-person marriage is not the same as two-person marriage.
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If you are telling me there will be no changes to laws by gay couples going through the varieties of their own experiences, then I think you are full of it.
List one. Just one! I keep asking you for this over and over again, but you keep avoiding.
And by the way, with this statement you indicate that same-sex marriage would necessarily require changes in the contract of marriage. But you just said that same-sex marriage wouldn't.
So which is it? Does same-sex marriage change the contract of marriage or doesn't it? It can't be both.
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My guess is the polygamists will spend more of their time in court discussing division of property assets, and gays regarding parental issues.
How would a gay couple's issues be any different than those of an infertile straight couple's? A gay male couple would be akin to a straight couple where she is infertile and they conceive either through his sperm donation to a surrogate or through adoption. A gay female couple would be akin to a straight couple where he is infertile and they conceive either through sperm donation to her or through adoption.
Precedent's already been set. No need to change a thing.
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But they'll ALL end up in court for something, and change existing law, just as straights do now.
But in the case of same-sex couples, not because of anything about them being a same-sex couple. After all, you said, replacing "husband" and "wife" with "spouse" changes nothing in the marriage laws.
But wait...now you're saying it will.
Well, which is it? Does same-sex marriage change the marriage laws or doesn't it? Make up your mind.
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In other words, the constitutional claim for same-sex marriage is that marriage already exists and the rights and responsibilities that are conferred by that contract would not change by the substitution of "spouse" for "husband" and "wife."
Unless one of the partners in a polygamous marriage is same-sex there wouldn't even need to be a substitution. All rights and responsibilities would remain the same.
But as shown above, they can't be. Marriage confers exclusive rights upon the spouse. Those rights cannot be exclusive if there is more than one. Thus, polygamy necessarily changes the contract of marriage in that certain rights go from being exclusive to being shared.
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Same-sex marriage requires no change in the contract of marriage. Polygamy does.
No it doesn't.
Yes, it does.
If A is incapacitated, who gets to make the decision? B, who has an exclusive right as spouse, or C, who has an exclusive right as spouse?
Current marriage law confers exclusive rights to the spouse. What do we do when there are two people claiming the same thing?
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Other than accepting more than one at a time procedurally, what would be different about the contract?
I have given you numerous examples.
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You have yet to show your assertion is true,
Incorrect. Do you really need me to repeat the words "exclusive rights" to you?
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despite the examples of polygamous marriage across that globe and within certain areas of the US. How are the contracts they used different?
The laws of other countries are irrelevant. There is no legal relationship regarding marriage involving more than one person in the US. What other countries do is of no importance. And since it would seem that polygamy in the US is more likely to be maximally interconnected rather than hub-and-spoke, why are you assuming the minority?
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(Same-sex marriage) does not seek to change the contract.
It does where the contracts specify that those involved are of opposite sex.
How does that change the contract of marriage?
What does the printing cost of the piece of paper the marriage license is written on have to do with the contract the license signifies?
Since we are changing all instances of "husband" and "wife" to "spouse," all instances of "man" and "woman" to "person," what possible contract is left that specifies that those involved are of opposite sex?
And how does that change any of the rights and responsibilities of the marriage contract?
Be specific.
Didn't you just say that same-sex marriage won't change the contract of marriage? And yet here you are saying that same-sex marriage does change in those parts that "specify that those involved are of opposite sex."
Well, which is it? Does same-sex marriage change the contract of marriage or doesn't it? Make up your mind.
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A person who wants to marry someone of the same sex, given the current marriage laws, cannot get married at all. But a person who wants to married more than one person (assuming heterosexuality), can still get married. He can't marry everyone he wants, but there is still the availability of the marriage contract as it currently exists.
My turn... BWAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA
A gay man is robbed when the law says he can only marry one WOMAN, because he doesn't want to marry a WOMAN.
(*sigh*)
Do I really need to remind you of Anatole France? You see, the laws preventing people from sleeping under bridges affect the rich just as much as they affect the poor. Ergo, the law is perfectly equal, right?
Oh, never mind the fact that the rich person has another place to sleep legally while the poor person does not. Both rich and poor are not allowed to sleep under bridges.
A gay person, if not allowed to marry someone of the same sex, has nobody to marry. A polygamous person, if not allowed to marry two people, still has someone to marry.
Ergo, the reasons for justifying polygamy have nothing to do with the reasons for justifying same-sex marriage. Polygamy is about taking a right that is already available and extending it's scope. Same-sex marriage is about taking a right that doesn't exist and applying it equally.
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Yet a polyamorous man is not robbed when the law says he only can marry ONE woman, despite the fact that (by the definition of polygamy) he doesn't want to marry just ONE?
I didn't say he wasn't robbed. I said the scenario for polygamy is not the same as for same-sex marriage.
There is a difference between not being allowed a second helping and not being allowed to eat in the first place.
Are you seriously saying you don't understand this?
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The argument for same-sex marriage recognizes that changing the obligation set to be "two persons" rather than "one man and one woman" does not change anything about the rights and responsibilities.
You have yet to show one case of where the rights and responsibilities as detailed by law would be changed.
Incorrect. I have done nothing but do so.
Do I really need to repeat the words "exclusive rights" to you?
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They may be put into new situations (where rights become shared rather than sole because of multiple obligations)
But that's a change! What used to be an exclusive right now no longer is! How is that not changing the rights and responsibilities of marriage?
Under current law, A marrying B confers exclusive rights to A with regard to B. How can those rights be exclusive if B then goes on to marry C?
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My guess is, as I stated before, you'll have more issues of property rights for polygamists, and more parental rights for same-sex couples.
As I rebutted before, how does a gay couple's custody issues differ from a straight, infertile couple's?
Precedent has already been set. Nothing needs to change.
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Indeed. You have missed the whole point of what polygamy means. You seem to think that it only means something out of the Bible. Reality shows that it includes all methods of combining more than two people.
Wow what an ignorant bigot you are. You sure slammed lizardbreath when he said stuff of which he did not understand, and I'm calling you on this line of garbage.
(*chuckle*)
This coming from you who is whining how you don't want me to respond to you directly because it (*GASP!*) sends you a notice!
"Ignorant bigot"? I don't deny the existence of hub-and-spoke relationships. I just point out that we cannot assume that polygamy means that. All too often here in the US, which is where this discussion has any relevance, polygamy actually means maximally interconnected.
So now we need to make a decision. If we open up marriage to more than two people, how do we do it? Hub-and-spoke? Maximally interconnected? Both?
Strange how you're the one that's restricting polygamy to hub-and-spoke and yet I'm the supposed bigot for pointing out that not all polygamists follow your model.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
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I am a polyamorist. Not that I am into marriage, given my vast experience with marriage laws in general, but I have a clear field of view about what polygamy means. I even knew people from polygamist cultures (where it is allowed) which you continue to show you have NO knowledge of.
(*chuckle*)
How many polygamist relationships do I personally know of, then? Since you know so much about my personal experience, this should be a piece of cake.
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REALITY not only shows that people can combine in more than twos,
I never said otherwise.
What I said was that not all such relationships are of the hub-and-spoke variety that you are so obsessed with.
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There is already legal precedent on how they are handled,
That's other countries.
Ergo, irrelevant.
There is no legal relationship regarding marriage involving more than two people in the US. Therefore, there is no precedent. In fact, the precedent that does exist in the US regarding polygamous marriages from other countries is to deny the other spouses...only the first marriage is deemed valid.
Therefore, what other countries do doesn't mean squat.
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and the hub-and-spoke legal documentation is enough to handle any multi-party marriage
Incorrect. Marriage as it currently exists provides exclusive rights to the spouse...and those rights are reciprocal. Take a typical Arabian marriage of one husband and multiple wives and somehow those wives won't have the same rights to restrict the husband's behaviour the way he has the right to restrict theirs.
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I assume most US polygamists would be practical enough to not require changes in law, and if they want something extra special for a license, have their lawyers draw up unique pre-nups.
But polygamy necessarily requires changes in the contract of marriage.
Suddenly exclusive rights are now shared.
How is that not a change in the rights and responsibilities of marriage?
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I've asked you to spell them out and you have yet to come up with a single one.
Polygamists seek the same rights with regard to their MULTIPLE SPOUSES (and children from those spouses) as gays want with regard to their SINGULAR SAME-SEX SPOUSE.
But that is logically impossible. A singular spouse of any sex has exclusive rights.
An exclusive right cannot be shared. So how do we handle multiple spouses? We cannot grant them exclusive rights to the same thing. Therefore, you cannot have the same rights with regard to your multiple spouses that any single person wants with regard to his single spouse.
We have one apple. We cannot give it to two people without splitting it.
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People are being deprived of their rights to be with and take care of their significant partners and have that recognized by law.
Perhaps, but those rights have nothing to do with same-sex marriage and its justifications.
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The law currently says ONE MAN and ONE WOMAN. One group asks to be allowed to drop "man" and "woman" while the other asks to drop the "one".
Those are different actions.
And you didn't answer my question.
What are the rights you're talking about? Spell them out.
Be specific.
[This message has been edited by Rrhain, 02-16-2004]
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!
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