Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder "Presumably there'll be a follow up thread about marrying goats?!!!" THNAK YOU. This goes towards the point I'm making in this thread.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer We have a fairly significant part of the population of the intermountain West that has a religious tradition of polygamy, as well as an increasing number of immigrants from cultures where polygamy is accepted. This will come up again, especially since the Supreme Court decision barring polygamy pretty much boiled down to "eww" rather than any legal precedent. As long as it is gender neutral, I don't have a problem with it. (Unfortunately, the old Mormon tradition and the Muslim/East African traditions are sexist, with only males allowed to have more than one spouse.) I do think there would be a major effect on the economic and legal benefits of marriage, though. Employers might stop providing insurance coverage to family members entirely because of cost. There would have to be some sort of ranking of the spouses when it came to making power-of-attorney related decisions - one spouse would have to have the final say. Would it be the first spouse? Would that make the additional spouses some sort of subordinate class to the first spouse? Custody and property issues could become extraordinarily complex, especially with the number of divorces we have. Whatever legal relationship a polygamy statute would entail would probably look more like a form of corporation rather than a marriage. Marriage has always been about property rights. It's a legal arrangement that defines who owns what, who has survivorship benefits, and how that property is passed on to kids. Even in Old Testament times this was the case - just look at the story of Jacob and Esau and their mothers' competing legal claims to Abraham's inheritance. Polygamy creates legal messes that are very hard to sort out, and there is very little benefit to society in having plural marriages legally enacted. I hope that the government gets out of the "marriage" business entirely and certified civil unions rather than issuing marriage certificates. That removes the religious argument from it entirely. If a reactionary LDS member wants to have several wives, he can, but the state only legally recognizes the property and custody claims of the civil union of two of those spouses. Everything else would just be a religious act and unaffected by law.
Originally Posted By utahjosh <If a reactionary LDS member wants to have several wives, he can,> He'd be excommunicated.
Originally Posted By oneyepete ^^You are right that the states might nor care. But I think Josh was just saying that you can't be LDS and have more than one wife.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer Reactionary LDS = FLDS, the fundamentalist Mormon sect that still recognizes and practices polygamy today.
Originally Posted By Labuda "There would have to be some sort of ranking of the spouses when it came to making power-of-attorney related decisions - one spouse would have to have the final say. Would it be the first spouse? Would that make the additional spouses some sort of subordinate class to the first spouse?" Well, FWIW, that's how it was on "Big Love."
Originally Posted By 182 "There would have to be some sort of ranking of the spouses" I would agree with that but I am all for it.
Originally Posted By Daannzzz "Spouse number 12...you get no insurance benefits and have to take all the children on weekends. You are also last to use the bathwater (before the babies though) and outhouse."
