Family Matters

[beetiger]

There's been a bunch of discussion floating around my friends' page concerning this article, relating multiparent custody cases, gay marriage, and polyfidelity (group marriage), and how this will be horrible for children.

It's amazing that I didn't really make the gay marriage -> poly marriage connection myself earlier. He may be right -- once we stop supporting boy-girl monogamy as the only appropriate family model, it opens us up to think more generally about why legal marriage even exists. Of course, I think that's a good thing.

I didn't get married for a long time after it was pretty clear that sythyry and I would be spending our lives together, in part because I felt that the fact that we happened to be more-or-less opposite-gender was as much luck as anything else.

I really don't see how supporting people by recognizing their lifetime commitments can be bad for kids. Giving people cultural support for the lives they are living anyway will make them more likely to stay in a stable situation. For kids, stability is the key thing. Kurtz feels that it is "the ethos of monogamy that keeps families together"; but given how many American divorces occur over minor infidelities, this is not a sensible postion.

But, more than anything else, I'm amused that an article in the National Review is telling people to go Google polyamory. Almost motivates me to put a page up or something.

Comments

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

The legal marriage's been convenient, given my current work situation. IBM's a moderately socially progressive company, and allows benefits to any couples who have does as much as the government allows them toward being married. That means that if Bard and I were the same gender, and registered as domestic partners, they'd cover me, but since we're not, we have to be legally married for me to be covered. Seeing as I'm a "consultant" (employee without benefits) here, and expect to have some major health expenses in the next while, this works for me.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Fair enough, I've absolutely no objections to other people getting married, I'm glad it works for you two.