re: #239 Dr. Matt

The political thread on Justice Kennedy has de-evolved into a strawman about polygamy and none of the teatards will answer the simple question: what does gay marriage have to do with polygamy?

Well I can understand — not support, but understand — their line of reasoning. To wit: If we let people marry others of the same sex, we’re broadening the list of ‘what you can legally marry’, so what stops it there?

Their reasoning is flawed, of course, because it doesn’t take into account the legal basics of the situation. For purposes of the law, marriage is more or less a contract of sorts, hence why there’s a process you have to go through to formally recognize or de-recognize it, rather than just saying ‘we’re hitched’ and filling out ‘married’ on your tax forms. And you can’t make contracts with minors. Or non-humans. The basic test to apply is ‘consenting adult human’. Gay marriage doesn’t lead to marrying your dog because you can’t make any other sort of legal contract with your dog either. Nobody can sell a car to a dog.

Now this does get a bit interesting in the case of polygamy, but only in that case. If you can contract with another consenting adult human, why can’t several consenting adult humans form a group contract? Personally, I don’t see many good reasons why not — assuming of course that the ‘consenting adult human’ test is consistently applied. Polygamy traditionally has problems where it’s one man with many wives, several of whom didn’t actually have a full and proper choice in the matter. Polygamy is usually a feature of patriarchal societies that treat women as property and don’t give them much of a say. But I think it could work, so long as ‘consenting adult human’ was applied in every case — in other words, for a three-person polyamorous relationship, it would only be recognized and valid if each of the three consented to be involved with the other two as a unit.

This does of course lead to the remaining issues with polygamy, which would be how to handle disputes when things go wrong. Can one of the trio divorce a single person while remaining wed to the third? What happens to shared property and resources in that case? I think it’s challenging and would require a lot of serious, honest thought to come to a consensus on how to handle it.