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Time to Allow Polyamorous Marraiges

Puppycow

Penultimate Amazing
Puppycow
Joined
Jan 9, 2003
Messages
32,074
Location
Yokohama, Japan
Threesome Marriages

Less than 18 months ago, Sasha Lessin and Janet Kira Lessin gathered before their friends near their home in Maui, and proclaimed their love for one another. Nothing unusual about that—Sasha, 68, and Janet, 55—were legally married in 2000. Rather, this public commitment ceremony was designed to also bind them to Shivaya, their new 60-something "husband." Says Sasha: “I want to walk down the street hand in hand in hand in hand and live together openly and proclaim our relationship. But also to have all those survivor and visitation rights and tax breaks and everything like that.”

Maine this week became the fifth state, and the fourth in New England, to legalize gay marriage, provoking yet another national debate about same-sex unions. The Lessins' advocacy group, the Maui-based World Polyamory Association, is pushing for the next frontier of less-traditional codified relationships. This community has even come up with a name for what the rest of the world generally would call a committed threesome: the "triad."

Unlike open marriages and the swinger days of the 1960s and 1970s, these unions are not about sex with multiple outside partners. Nor are they relationships where one person is involved with two others, who are not involved with each other, a la actress Tilda Swinton. That's closer to bigamy. Instead, triads—"triangular triads," to use precise polyamorous jargon—demand that all three parties have full relationships, including sexual, with each other. In the Lessins case, that can be varying pairs but, as Sasha, a psychologist, puts it, "Janet loves it when she gets a double decker."
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Want. :D
 
If I could add another wife to the marriage so that the current one would have someone to argue with without me, I might be willing to give it a try.
 
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(Shrug)

Told you so.

Naturally, the pro-gay marriage folks first told me I'm crazy for saying gay marriage could possibly lead to this... and now they will tell me it's the most natural thing in the world and that I'm crazy for saying there's anything wrong with this.

(We've seen the same thing before, when opposition to civil unions fearing it would lead to gay marriage was first denigrated as "paranoid" and later, when just that happened, the "paranoid" conclusion was taken up as the most natural thing in the world.)

I wish they'd make up their mind.

By the way, the "slippery slope" argument is legitimate if the slope is in fact slippery. If recognizing gay marriage is likely to lead to recognizing polygamy, then it's simply a valid argument; it is only a "slippery slope" fallacy if recognition of gay marriage is not likely to lead to this. I tend to think the slope is slippery in this case. Others disagree. But that is a matter of fact. Merely making a slippery slope argument is not in itself a logical fallacy.

It is true that it is a fallacy to claim that if society recognizes gay marriage then it must ipso facto recognize polygamy. It does not logically follow that one leads to the other. It only might, under certain conditions, practically do so, which is the "slippery slope" claim. But these are two different claims. I agree with the latter, but am not claiming the former.

However, if gay marriage is recognizes, not due to the legistlature following public opinion, but because the courts decide there is a "constitutional right" to gay marriage, in that case it logically follows as a necessity, not merely as a possiblity, that the states must also recognize polygamy: if sex is no barrier to a "constitutional right" to marriage, neither is number.
 
Skeptic said:
(Shrug)

Told you so.

Naturally, the pro-gay marriage folks first told me I'm crazy for saying gay marriage could possibly lead to this... and now they will tell me it's the most natural thing in the world and that I'm crazy for saying there's anything wrong with this.
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How did gay marriage lead to this, please demonstrate.

Of course it is not surprising that some people would start advocating for this. Again you ignore actual legal considerations in the equivocation.
However, if gay marriage is recognizes, not due to the legistlature following public opinion, but because the courts decide there is a "constitutional right" to gay marriage, in that case it logically follows as a necessity, not merely as a possiblity, that the states must also recognize polygamy: if sex is no barrier to a "constitutional right" to marriage, neither is number.
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Not at all, as has been explained sex is a much more protected class than number.
 
Skeptic said:
(Shrug)

Told you so.

Naturally, the pro-gay marriage folks first told me I'm crazy for saying gay marriage could possibly lead to this... and now they will tell me it's the most natural thing in the world and that I'm crazy for saying there's anything wrong with this.

(We've seen the same thing before, when opposition to civil unions fearing it would lead to gay marriage was first denigrated as "paranoid" and later, when just that happened, the "paranoid" conclusion was taken up as the most natural thing in the world.)

I wish they'd make up their mind.

By the way, the "slippery slope" argument is legitimate if the slope is in fact slippery. If recognizing gay marriage is likely to lead to recognizing polygamy, then it's simply a valid argument; it is only a "slippery slope" fallacy if recognition of gay marriage is not likely to lead to this. I tend to think the slope is slippery in this case. Others disagree. But that is a matter of fact. Merely making a slippery slope argument is not in itself a logical fallacy.

It is true that it is a fallacy to claim that if society recognizes gay marriage then it must ipso facto recognize polygamy. It does not logically follow that one leads to the other. It only might, under certain conditions, practically do so, which is the "slippery slope" claim. But these are two different claims. I agree with the latter, but am not claiming the former.

However, if gay marriage is recognizes, not due to the legistlature following public opinion, but because the courts decide there is a "constitutional right" to gay marriage, in that case it logically follows as a necessity, not merely as a possiblity, that the states must also recognize polygamy: if sex is no barrier to a "constitutional right" to marriage, neither is number.
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In each of the threads where you have failed to explain your arguments, this has come up. More than once, posters here (myself included) have discussed the similarities and differences between gay and polygamous marriages, and the cons of the latter (because there are some, unlinke with same-sex binary marriage where there are none).

All this post proves is that you've not been reading anything anyone's said to you. At all.

ETA: I also suggest you reconsider your use of the word "logically" in your previous post. You do the word a disservice.
 
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Cainkane1 said:
Actually four people getting married would make more sense than three people getting married. Two women, two men getting married.
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Why? In a practical sense adding more people makes more relationships that need to keep working for the marriage to work.
 
Skeptic said:
(Shrug)

Told you so.

Naturally, the pro-gay marriage folks first told me I'm crazy for saying gay marriage could possibly lead to this... and now they will tell me it's the most natural thing in the world and that I'm crazy for saying there's anything wrong with this.

(We've seen the same thing before, when opposition to civil unions fearing it would lead to gay marriage was first denigrated as "paranoid" and later, when just that happened, the "paranoid" conclusion was taken up as the most natural thing in the world.)

I wish they'd make up their mind.

By the way, the "slippery slope" argument is legitimate if the slope is in fact slippery. If recognizing gay marriage is likely to lead to recognizing polygamy, then it's simply a valid argument; it is only a "slippery slope" fallacy if recognition of gay marriage is not likely to lead to this. I tend to think the slope is slippery in this case. Others disagree. But that is a matter of fact. Merely making a slippery slope argument is not in itself a logical fallacy.

It is true that it is a fallacy to claim that if society recognizes gay marriage then it must ipso facto recognize polygamy. It does not logically follow that one leads to the other. It only might, under certain conditions, practically do so, which is the "slippery slope" claim. But these are two different claims. I agree with the latter, but am not claiming the former.

However, if gay marriage is recognizes, not due to the legistlature following public opinion, but because the courts decide there is a "constitutional right" to gay marriage, in that case it logically follows as a necessity, not merely as a possiblity, that the states must also recognize polygamy: if sex is no barrier to a "constitutional right" to marriage, neither is number.
Click to expand...

Yes, social progress has been one very long slippery slope. Others may argue the point if they wish to, but I will stipulate it.

So if I concede the slippery slope, then what harm is there in letting these polyamorous people get married? Maybe there is one that I didn't think of. Maybe, for example, we should be careful to limit tax benefits so that there is no perverse incentive to get married simply for a tax break (which seems to be a flaw even with traditional monogamous hetero marriage). Other than that, however, where's the harm?
 
Puppycow said:
Other than that, however, where's the harm?
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Aside from, of course... "It's squicky and perverse and amoral and WEIRD", which strikes me as the overt sentiment of Skeptic's "arguments".

Skeptic - as you still haven't explained, could you now, at this point, take the time to explain why gay marriage is a Bad Thing and why polyamorous marriage is a Worse Thing? Otherwise we're forced to draw conclusions, like the one I make in the preceding paragraph, which may not be entirely fair on you.
 
Puppycow said:
Yes, social progress has been one very long slippery slope. Others may argue the point if they wish to, but I will stipulate it.

So if I concede the slippery slope, then what harm is there in letting these polyamorous people get married? Maybe there is one that I didn't think of. Maybe, for example, we should be careful to limit tax benefits so that there is no perverse incentive to get married simply for a tax break (which seems to be a flaw even with traditional monogamous hetero marriage). Other than that, however, where's the harm?
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I would extend that from just tax benefits to all laws and regulations.

As an example I do think that an employer shouldn't be forced to extend health coverage to all spouces someone has, just because they cover binary partnerships. You get one member of s cult and the whole cult can get coverage.

And I have not seen which models people want to use, letting multiple people into a marriage, or letting one person have multiple marriages or both.
 
It's because women will lose their rights in polygamous marriages, of course. D'uh. No woman ever has a choice to join such a marriage, and there's no such thing as multiple husbands ending up with one wife.
 
Lonewulf said:
It's because women will lose their rights in polygamous marriages, of course. D'uh. No woman ever has a choice to join such a marriage, and there's no such thing as multiple husbands ending up with one wife.
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Ignoring those freaks in the OP.
 
Puppycow said:
Other than that, however, where's the harm?
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This is where the harm is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bountiful,_British_Columbia

Some argue that the Criminal Code is sufficient to deal with the abusive (including child abuse) aspects of polygamy and that these abuses shouldn't stand in the way of a constitutional right to free marriage.

It's a harm vs. rights balancing issue. I'm not sure where I stand yet. The harm is real, but the means for dealing with it is the difficult part.

ETA: Some context:

http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/bustupinbountiful/video.html
 
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