Meanwhile, 600-year-old legal documents and grave sites support the existence of the French institution of “affrèrement,” (roughly “enbrotherment”), wherein single men could contract before a notary and witnesses to live together henceforth, sharing “un pain, un vin, et une bourse” (One bread, one wine and one purse – that is, all of the couple’s goods became joint property.)

If you choose that marriage is not about children ‘for you’ then that’s your right, but why you want marriage is not why societies have marriage.

Every civilization has police forces to uphold the law, but any police officer can decide that being a cop is not about upholding the law. Perhaps for him it’s about looking attractive in a uniform, or about the power he’s given over citizens or about the weapon he carries. And maybe he’s racist, maybe he thinks certain classes of people don’t deserve civil rights. If that’s what he thinks, I don’t care, because if he ultimately does what a police officer is required to do, what the institution of a civilian police force was created for, he will uphold the law and protect their rights whether he wants to or not, or he will lose the right to be a police officer.

In the same way, maybe all you care about in marriage is living together forever and that’s all it is, or maybe it’s about having a right to the sexual fidelity of your partner, or to get some tax benefit, or to secure an immigration opportunity, or making sure your partner can never be forced to testify against you in court. If that’s all what you want marriage for, I don’t mind, so long as you also do what marriage was intended for, which is simply and clearly to take care of the children you choose to bring into the world, and that you do it whether you want to or not.

Marriage should not change it’s purpose to suit individual personal interests any more than the police force should change its purpose to suit every unethical police officer. Before every entitlement there is an obligation to be met. Do your duty or lose the priviledge. I don’t know why that is so hard to understand.

Here it is, why I think marriage is a common convention in so many (all?) cultures in history: children. Children are born, they’re helpless, they’re dependent, and they are the future of civilization. What do we do about it? We expect them to be cared for, protected, nurtured obviously, but by who? Of all the people on earth, who can we rely on to fulfill the duty of protector and rearer? The parents, obviously. Every child that exists will have been co-created by two specific people, ergo those two people are responsible for its welfare.

The purpose of marriage was to recognize this joint responsibility: mother and father to child, it was the cornerstone of what we called family. That was why it was permanent, to ensure that parents remained responsible to their families (the weakest members, the children and the elderly particularly) during difficult times, and I think traditional marriage’s enduring presence throughout history makes a good case for it’s usefulness.

Today, children are not required for marriage, marriage is not required for parenting, we don’t require a child to have both a mother and father, or to have two parents at all, or to have full-time parents, and we seem to be increasingly arguing that children don’t require even one parent.

If this is what marriage is now, just an accessory to an adult relationship, then I support gay marriage, why not? But if that’s what we want marriage to be, what says that we are required to stick to our dependents and take care of them? It looks we have nothing of the kind. Because of the changes being enacted in the institution of marriage, sure homosexuals can call themselves married, wear a ring and have a ceremony and certificate, but I also see the men and women of the future being at increasingly greater risk of being born through acts of carelessness to irresponsible caregivers, with a potential for harm to them that outweighs anything the institution marriage offers. I fear greater harm than good is being done.

I agree. I just don’t think that many of the social conservatives pretending that SSM would lead inexorably to polygamy understand what ‘polygamy’ means in a modern society.

Mythago, as I said, the law might be gender-neutral, but the practice could (would, imo) still tilt towards predominantly polygynous situations that are exploitative and abusive of women and girls. This is because we are still quite far from the gender equality that is needed for the practice to not be so.

Charles, I absolutely agree that institutional support should be provided for committed relationships other than dyads, including non-sexual relationships. But legal recognition of polyamorous living arrangements as marriages is not necessary for that, any more than it is necessary to label a brother and sister living together as a married couple in order to provide them with institutional support. Polyamorous living arrangements will benefit from institutional support of non-dyadic living arrangements, but I don’t have anything against that because I don’t see that as encouraging abusive situations.

I do not think that we (even in the west) have reached a point of gender equality where monogamy will not tilt towards being exploitative of women/girls in practice, even if it is gender-neutral in theory, so I agree that polygyny can’t be expected to either (yes, I just virtually quoted what you wrote, no offense intended). We have only just outlawed marital rape in every state in the past decade, and I believe several states still have inadequate laws, just to give one example.

I don’t support immediately creating a legally codified institution of polygamy, as I think it would have serious problems, but I think that we need to develop better social and legal/civil support for committed relationships other than dyads. Just as the beyond marriage folks list non-marital dyads that need better institutional support and recognition, they also list poly groupings (many of which are non-sexual) that also need better institutional support. If the support structures developed for poly groupings in general prove beneficial for polygamous marriages, I don’t believe that this will be harmful. If a civil institution of polygamy develops out of these support structures, I think that that institution will probably look very different than traditional polygamy. It would probably still support the basic aspect of polygyny (1 male spouse, 2 or more female spouses), since I don’t think anyone would want to forbid polygynous relationships (while allowing polyandry and other forms of polygamy) on the assumption that they are inherently abusive and exploitative. Also, I suspect that, as Mythago pointed out in reverse, banning polygyny exclusively would be unconstitutional.

If three people live together in a mutually supporting relationship, domestic partnership agreements as they currently exist will fail to function properly for them. I think that that deserves to change. I may be biased by the fact that I would personally benefit from such changes.

The one polygynous marriage that I am personally familiar with does not seem abusive or exploitative (although it is basically only polygynous by happenstance). This probably biases my point of view as well.

Polygyny is an important component in that matrix of abuse and exploitation. That women and girls are abused in other ways doesn’t change that. Regardless, your claim that “What the outcomes would be from a polygamy or polyandry practiced in the open, under the harsh sunlight of public scrutiny, is a complete unknown” is bunk. Because we do know what polygyny has been like under those conditions. On the other hand, we do not have any data suggesting that gay marriages will harm anyone. On the contrary, gay marriages can theoretically be beneficial because of the many reasons already stated in this thread.

“Non-gender specific polygamy, even if it is polygynous in many cases, seems distinctly preferable.”

I do not think that we (even in the west) have reached a point of gender equality where polygamy will not tilt towards a polygynous, exploitative of women/girls mode in practice, even if it is gender-neutral in theory.

Which is why I haven’t let your more recent comment through, Pietro - it was all about SSM, and had no references at all to the subject matter of this post.

(I’m not saying that people can’t mention these subjects - but they shouldn’t be the main or only subject of your post.)

Adding to what Robert just said, historically and cross-culturally, marriage has been an exploitative and abusive institution towards women and girls. We are currently working towards developing an institution of monogamous marriage that is not exploitative and abusive (we only outlawed marital rape nationwide in the past decade, and many of the state laws are still weak).

I definitely oppose legalizing (although I favor decriminalizing) polygyny (or, despite its marginally less abusive history, polyandry), because reinstating gender as a key component of marriage would be a huge step backwards for us. Non-gender specific polygamy, even if it is polygynous in many cases, seems distinctly preferable.

Mythago,

It’s true, and perhaps I should have stated my case slightly differently to an anti like Pietro.

Pietro,

No matter how much of a transformation of marriage you think Goodridge was, Goodridge et al neither asked for nor gained a new and separate institution. They asked that the institution be changed to allow them to be admitted to it. The gender aspect of the entrance requirement was the only change they asked for or received.

Are any of those societies places where women and girls aren’t, as a matter of course, abused and exploited, regardless of what type of marriage or family structure they find themselves in?

You know, there’s a world outside 21st century USA. If you look at that world, you would know very well what these outcomes will be, and have been. Historically, socially sanctioned and out in the open polygyny has been abusive and exploitative of women and girls. It continues to be today in those countries that sanction it. Polyandry is a different story. I know some polyandrous societies that are relatively egalitarian.

The crucial part you may not know is that the Mass Constitution is different from the U.S. constitution in ways which permit the Goodridge decision. The language on which Goodridge was based is not the same as the U.S. Constitutional language.

To expand a little on Mythago’s answer (although Mythago’s answer is pretty much all that is really needed):

Here is the opening of the majority decision in Goodridge:

Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support; it brings stability to our society. For those who choose to marry, and for their children, marriage provides an abundance of legal, financial, and social benefits. In return it imposes weighty legal, financial, and social obligations. The question before us is whether, consistent with the Massachusetts Constitution, the Commonwealth may deny the protections, benefits, and obligations conferred by civil marriage to two individuals of the same sex who wish to marry. We conclude that it may not.

Goodridge et al. asked specifically for access to the institution of civil marriage, with all its rights and responsibilities, and the court agreed that, marriage being such a central and important institution, the state could not deny it’s citizens access to the institution on the basis of their partners’ sex.

They did not ask for a new institution, they asked for access to an existing institution. They asked for no change to that institution other than a change to the restriction of who is permitted access to the institution.

It is true that their opponents in the legislature tried to create a new and lesser institution so that they could still be denied access to the institution of marriage. This attempt was rejected by the court, and failed in the legislature. No new institution was created.

Got it?

Isn’t that what happened in Mass.?

It just seems to me that by calling for “the separation of benefits and recognition from marital status” that rather than wanting marriage not to be the exclusive route for legal recognition, they instead don’t want it to be a route for legal recognition at all.

Nik, that sentence you quote can be interpreted that way on its own, but not in the context of the whole statement.

Read as a whole, the only reasonable reading of the BeyondMarraige.org statement is that they are calling for marriage to be one of a number of options. There is no legitimate reading which can interpret them as calling for the legal status of marriage to be eliminated. Here’s a few quotes (emphasis added by me):

Marriage is not the only worthy form of family or relationship, and it should not be legally and economically privileged above all others. While we honor those for whom marriage is the most meaningful personal ­– for some, also a deeply spiritual – choice, we believe that many other kinds of kinship relationship, households, and families must also be accorded recognition. [...]

Rather than focus on same-sex marriage rights as the only strategy, we believe the LGBT movement should reinforce the idea that marriage should be one of many avenues through which households, families, partners, and kinship relationships can gain access to the support of a caring civil society. [...]

Now, more than ever, is the time to continue to find new ways of defending all our families, and to fight to make same-sex marriage just one option on a menu of choices that people have about the way they construct their lives.

Do you really think there’s any plausible interpretation of the above statements in which they are calling for marriage to be eliminated as a legal option, rather than becoming one of multiple options?

If they don’t mean that, what do they mean by “separation of benefits and recognition from marital status”? If you can get benefits and recognition from mariage, then surely they’re not separate? And if you can’t, then surely the “end of marriage” folks have a point?

If I say “we shouldn’t have only Marvel Comics. We should have DC and Marvel Comics,” that’s not calling for the end of Marvel Comics.