Social revolution in the wrong direction

[elfs]

"If we give gays the right to marry, what's next, polygamy?" A common refrain here in the U.S. from those who are opposed to both. Interestingly, the United Nations was recently asked by several member countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands to extend employment benefits to same-sex partners recognized by those countries.

Naturally, this has prompted an explosion. Both Islamic and Vatican-inspired states have objected strenuously. But you'll never hear the polygamy refrain coming from these people.

The U.N. already recognizes polygamy.

[EDIT: It's the Washington Post, not the New York Times.]

Comments

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

I think he's arguing more along the lines of "if we have to legislate something, the status quo is less harmful than the alternative". I think. Or I'm just putting words in Elf's mouth, and he will correct me before too long.

It's worth noting that marriage, before the Church started to stick their meddlesome noses into it in the middle Middle Ages (12th-13th centuries), was purely a civil contract. You stood in front of a bunch of witnesses and swore you were married. After the advent of Christianity, then you went in and heard Mass. But the actual legal stuff took place outside of the church (although frequently at the door, since it was a convenient place to gather). [Most of this applies to the UK, other countries had different practices, but most of our law comes from English law, common or otherwise, so we're not really counting what they did in Byzantium for the purposes of this discussion.]

There are plenty of legal instances (in the aforesaid MA) where the man went off and took up with another woman, and his first partner took him to court on the grounds that he was married to her first. If she could get enough of the neighbors to testify that the couple was married--usually two non-related neighbors were enough, and all you needed to say was "I thought they were married--they acted like it" or something along those lines. You see this a lot in cases where something tangible, either money or property, is involved.

Personally, I think if the state has to be in the marryin' business at all, it should be considered another form of contract. But that's just me.

[ysabel.livejournal.com]

"if we have to legislate something, the status quo is less harmful than the alternative"

I disagree strongly with this reasoning, though. Both because it can be used to justify all sorts of Very Bad Things (if it's a general argument) and because I don't believe that the current status quo in terms of marriage is really less harmful than many possible alternatives (if it's a specific argument).

And personally, I agree, marriages should just be a civil contract. That's effectively how my spouses and I have managed it.

I will admit that I have some personal stake in the matter -- it galls me regularly that I can be denied a wide variety of privileges that other people who've put far less thought into their relationships can take for granted. Some of those things are potentially very big -- for example, my wife's mother was and is extremely abusive and is very much the sort of person who would try to steal our children, or deny us access to her if she were injured, or so forth. We've got a wide variety of paperwork to attempt to make it clear that my wife explicitly and legally does not want her mother to have any say in her life, but because she's not in a mainstream monogamous heterosexual relationship, we may not ever be able to make it all stick.

That sort of thing frustrates me regularly.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

Oh, I never said I agreed, I was merely interpreting.

I myself would love to be able to add the man who is my primary secondary to such useful things as health insurance, but because he is not my dependent or my legal husband, I can't, and when we travel overseas, I just pray that nothing happens to either of us that would involve a hospital stay.