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

[supersocks.livejournal.com]

The NR seems to take special offense at Canada's progressive nature. :-D The whole article is based on a slippery slope argument, and what's at the bottom of the slope isn't such a bad thing anyway. The argument he doesn't make, that widespread polyamory could make it too expensive for businesses to provide benefits for spouses, is the only one I can think of that has some merit... but it doesn't apply too much in Canada anyway, where health care is socialized.

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

Arrrrrrr.

The thing these people keep throwing around that drives me nuts is "It's the end of marriage!"

What the hell? Why? Marriage, in its historical, cross-cultural context, has been an almost purely economic contract between two or more people into a social unit called a family. This may or may not include child-rearing, but always includes some kind of economic arrangement in terms of resource sharing and control. Across cultures, there have been dozens, if not hundreds, of different kinds of traditional marriages.

As an economic contract, society can only win by recognizing gay marriage or poly-marriage. The more people able to pool their resources and therefore contribute to the local and national economy, the better, right? And many gay marriages do not include children, which means that those marriages have more disposable income with which to bolster businesses and raise consumer indices and whatnot.

The "ethos of monogamy [...] keeps families together"? My gi-normously fat ass. Monogamy isolates and silences the nuclear family, which makes abuse and other such dysfunction much more available to someone who wants to deal it out. How many marriage arguments and stressors involve money? How many family financial issues today would be solved by adding a third contributing adult?

I can't even conceive of raising children as a two-parent family.

[jenett]

And there's other ways around that (allow benefits to transfer to one designated long-term relationship, but you've got to pick one, with some limitations on when you can change that, pretty much the way health care through employers often works in the US, at least for spouses (and those places sensible enough to recognise domestic partnerships).

I can understand the cost argument, and most poly folk I've talked to have too - but that doesn't mean you couldn't do some sort of reasonable compromise.

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

...we happened to be more-or-less opposite-gender was as much luck as anything else...

*nod*nod* You're female, and Sythyry's a Zi Ri!

[paka.livejournal.com]

Not much I can add. As an exercise I notice that you can summarize this, and what I've seen of other fine NRO offerings, as sort of a formula. You can play madlibs with this;

If we let people get away with strange left wing idea that whatever group might also be worthy of human respect, arcane forces threatening our society will take over and ruin the way things had been. The way things had been is good, and challenging it will be bad for some other people.

So for grins and giggles, I fill in the blanks with a number of different nouns and verbs in summarizing this gentleman's editorial, and I find that the American right changes rather little over the years;

If we let Black people vote, then there would be a dangerous legal precedent to let women vote. There are already suffragettes lined up looking for legal opportunities to push through their views. And if women start voting, it might redefine gender roles, and like we know that just can't work in Western society.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Typical National Review nonsense. I am pleased by the case in Canada though. I also agree that gay marriage might help lead to poly marriage, and I'm all for it. If they legalize poly marriage in Canada, from my PoV it's another reason to move there. Disagreements with the idea of traditional het marriage are one of the primary reasons imester and I had a non-legally binding handfasting and never plan to get legally married.

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

Don't even get me started. :)

[cloverr.livejournal.com]

interesting stuff, more the discussion/commentary here than the article itself... (btw tho, I did forward the article link to the TnPoly list)

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

Please? I'm in the mood for some good emotional diatribe...

[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.

[quoting-mungo.livejournal.com]

Guh. I held a speech on why homoadoptions should be allowed/accepted (they're legal in Sweden, but there's no adoption agency that will verify that same-sex couples are suitable parents or distribute children to them, so that law is at the moment pretty much useless. The GLBT organisation is trying to get permits to start an adoption agency for just that purpose.) in Swedish class today. Would never have dared do so in my last class, but these people aren't as homophobic... It's sad that so many people believe that what happens to be in one's pants and what goes on in one's bedroom defines whom one is.


-Alexandra

[lediva.livejournal.com]

From the article:
It's rare that a judge openly admits what has been so obviously going on regarding gay marriage — that he is searching for a way to usurp the role of the legislature, so that he can decide the case according to his personal preferences.

Oh, I get it!

It's OK for judges to "usurp the role of the legislature, so that he can decide the case according to his personal preferences" if it's something the conservatives like, as in Dubya's election. But it's not OK if it's something the conservatives don't like.

It makes perfect sense!

[heron61.livejournal.com]

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

[chris-warrior.livejournal.com]

my response got WAY too long, so it's over on my journal.

what can i say? i'm long-winded. ;)

[perlandria.livejournal.com]

Hmm the article didn't say anything about why he has such a sterling opinion of monogamous hetrosexual partnering. It totally avoided any mention of christianity or where the author has derived their morals and ethics.
This means I can't make taunting comments about old testement patriarchs with multiple wives AND handmaidens. Drat. I am going to go pout now.

Rant...

[fenton.livejournal.com]

Much like others, it got too long, so it's now a post in my own journal, over here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/fenton/8233.html).