Right... first our idea of what marriage (or voting rights or whatever) ought to be changes, and then we change the law to reflect it. Exanding a legal definition to include more situations often means it will continue to be expanded. Nothing wrong with it whatsoever.
That being said - in the case of marriage, a change in number is a much bigger change than a change in gender. It's not just the economics... I mean yes, we need to figure out how health insurance would work and convince the actuaries to go along with it; but, based on my recent experience buying health insurance for my company, we are a lot closer to solving that then most people think... so the economics is something we can figure out.
The problem that I see is more structural. If you look at polyamory / polygamy / polyandry / polygyny, you're actually talking about a lot of different family structures. It's not clear which ones ought to be granted the right to be called a marriage... well, in some cases it is clear, but not in all of them, and you can't write a law until it's clear for a relatively large number of cases.
For example, suppose you have a family with three adults (as I do). What does it mean when one adult choses to leave and join another family, as is currently happening to me? Does the entire marriage disolve? What if, instead, we had chosen to add a new member to the family? Or if one person left to join another family, but both families chose to live together as a "tribe" or "community."
By changing the number of people in a marriage, you aren't just changing who can be in a family, but how families evolve and relate to each other. Figuring out how to do that - what works and what doesn't - is going to take a lot more thought than just changing the gender content of a marriage.
So, I think polygamy is harder - not impossible, just harder. And not inevitable either.
And you know, no one has really asked the fundamental question - what makes a marriage different than any other contract? What makes it a marriage?
no subject
That being said - in the case of marriage, a change in number is a much bigger change than a change in gender. It's not just the economics... I mean yes, we need to figure out how health insurance would work and convince the actuaries to go along with it; but, based on my recent experience buying health insurance for my company, we are a lot closer to solving that then most people think... so the economics is something we can figure out.
The problem that I see is more structural. If you look at polyamory / polygamy / polyandry / polygyny, you're actually talking about a lot of different family structures. It's not clear which ones ought to be granted the right to be called a marriage... well, in some cases it is clear, but not in all of them, and you can't write a law until it's clear for a relatively large number of cases.
For example, suppose you have a family with three adults (as I do). What does it mean when one adult choses to leave and join another family, as is currently happening to me? Does the entire marriage disolve? What if, instead, we had chosen to add a new member to the family? Or if one person left to join another family, but both families chose to live together as a "tribe" or "community."
By changing the number of people in a marriage, you aren't just changing who can be in a family, but how families evolve and relate to each other. Figuring out how to do that - what works and what doesn't - is going to take a lot more thought than just changing the gender content of a marriage.
So, I think polygamy is harder - not impossible, just harder. And not inevitable either.
And you know, no one has really asked the fundamental question - what makes a marriage different than any other contract? What makes it a marriage?
Kiralee