Time to recognize polyamorous marriage?

The state makes itself irrelevant if it defines marriage in a way that's excessively at variance with the way society defines it. That's why the ban on divorce had to go; that's why same sex marriages had to be recognised. Marriages were already breaking down and people were separating and entering into second relationships; same-sex couples were already marrying. And not just the people involved but their families, friends, neighbours and community were accepting and supporting this.

But where are the analogous polyamorous marriages? I'm not talking about polyamorous individuals or open relationships - we know that those exist. I'm looking for something that could meaningfully be called a polyamorous marriage that we could recognise as a marriage, with all the attendant legal and administrative consequences. Point to real-world examples in Ireland, please. And, if you can't point to any, on what basis are you asserting that we already have this tradition?

Lots of different kinds relationships exist. There's no logical progression from "relationship of any kind" to "marriage of that kind". If people in polyamorous relationships turn those relationships into marital relationships, then it's time to ask whether the state should recognise them and, if not, why not. But you can't "recognise" something that doesn't exist, so I'm asking you (not for the first time) to point to a polyamorous marriage - an actual, real-world polyamorous marriage with actual real-world people in it and actual, real-world people accepting and supporting it - that the state could recognise. If you can't, then there's nothing for the state to recognise.

It is the point. if there is not a sufficient cohort of people who wish to engage in polyamorous marriage then why would the state enact laws to allow it?

Yeah, I know, buy you asked "But where are the analogous polyamorous marriages?" - and I answered this earlier by highlighting the catch 22 situation - polyamorous relationships can't get married, that's the whole topic of conversation! Would they even want to?

Beyond that, you need to refdefine your question.

That's the question.

Again, I'm not pushing for this - I'm just saying that they could if the will was there. The idea that a contract can only have two parites is the fallacy here.

If there was a will for it there would be a campaign for it as there was with divorce and gay marriage.

Take it up with who? And why would I want to do that. I'm trying to understand your point and failing miserably.

well no, it can't. Marriage is defined as a union between 2 people.

Not sure how that is connected but the point remains that a marriage contract cannot have more than 2 parties. It is a contract but one that is well defined.

Lots of societies practice various forms of polygamous marriage (though ours, as it happens, doesn't). But this thread discusses polyamorous marriage, which is different.

In Islamic (and most other) forms of polygamous marriage a man may have several wives. He is married to each of his wives, but the wives are not married to each other. Nor are they married to anyone else; they are married only to him.

Polyamorous marriage would be different. You can have a polyamorous relationship of three or more people, each of whom is a partner to one or more (or all) of the others. Or, you can have a polyamorous relationship, in which all the parties are partners to one another, plus they are all free to have other partners who are external to the relationship. Or no doubt we can think of other possible models for polyamorous marriage.

Polyamory relationships as conceived of and practiced in modern western societies tend to be strictly egalitarian, with all of the spouse having the same status, rights, expectations. Polygamous relationships and polygamous marriages as practised in various societies tend to be notably inegalitarian.

SFAIK there isn't any society in the world that practices a form of marriage constructed on polyamory relationships of this kind. I'm happy to be corrected if someone knows of one.

This is a key point. (Conventional) marriage is a contract between two persons, but it's not a contract whose terms they get to negotiate and agree. It's a standard form contract; the terms are set by culture, society and law (with law coming a definite third here). You can choose to enter into a contract of marriage, or you can choose not to enter into it. But if you choose to enter into a significantly different contract, on terms of your own devising, by definition that's not a contract of marriage.

This isn't a bug; it's a feature. The point of marriage is not really to regulate the relationship between the spouses; they can do that themselves. Princess Consuela Bananahammock — wonderfully promising username, there — and I can make all the promises we want to one another, and we can light all the candles and scatter all the rose petals, and we can have all the hot monkey sex we like. None of that makes a marriage. What makes it a marriage is where we do this (apart from the sex, obviously) before our family, friends and community, and we seek to engage their acceptance and support, and we expect this support to have concrete expression that affects other people — so our property rights, our inheritance rights, our tax treatment, our rights and status in family law, etc, etc, are all changed in standard, well-understood ways that are intended to reflect and support the commitments we have made.

Marriage, in short, isn't really about the relationship between the two (or more) spouses, but about the relationship between the spouses on the one hand and wider society on the other.

So, to talk about recognising polyamorous marriage, we'd have to start by looking at the commitments polyamorous spouses make to one another, for which they seek family and societal support, and think about the kinds of societal support that is appropriate for commitments of that kind. Obviously the commitment that might be made in the context of a polyamorous relationship can't be the same as in a conventional marriage — there won't be a commitment of exclusivity, for one thing — But the question we need to answer is not what the commitments in a polyamorous marriage are not; it's what they are. And — this is the point I've been making all along — if this isn't already happening, if there isn't an established set of commitments that polyamorous partners make to one other and for which they seek support, if there isn't a functioning model of polyamorous marriage, there can be no answer to that question.

You rightly say that the contract of marriage has to be well-defined. But I'd go a bit further; the terms of marriage aren't something defined in the abstract; they are defined by real facts; by what people — the spouses, their families, their friends, their wider society — actually do. Marriage is a social reality that the law recognises and accepts (or, sometimes, doesn't recognise or accept, but that tends to work out badly). Which is why I say that, if you want me to recognise a polyamorous marriage, you have to show me one that I can recognise.

Philosophically I see the difference but the law couldnt mind read the participants. I guess the law would have to stop at you can only be in one due to tax and property issues. Its not something I'd be in favor off and there arent any laws against people living as they want

The law doesn't mind-read the participants in a conventional marriage either. Marriages are real relationships that, by the agreement of the spouses, commit to a set of ideas that is established by society, culture, convention. The law then recognises that the spouses have committed to these ideas and affords them legal and administrative recognition/support. Or, it doesn't afford them recognition/support. The decision about whether to afford legal recognition or not is (or should be) based on a judgment about whether it is for the common good to encourage, recognise, support, affirm, etc marriages of this kind. We as a society have decided that we will recognise same-sex marriages, and that we will not recognise polygamous marriages on the Islamic or Mormon models.

But the question of recognition doesn't even arise until we have (a) real partners in relationships that are committing to (b) a real set of ideas established by society, culture, convention. I don't think we have that in Ireland in relation to polyamorous marriages, though I'm open to any argument to the contrary. Until we have it, I don't see that we can talk meaningfully about recognition. How can we decide whether its good or bad to give legal recognition and support to a set of commitments when we have no idea what those commitments are?

If there were no tax implications that come with marriage then it would be a fairly easy change to make. But can you imagine, given all our current struggles with public health and housing and environment and youth crime, if the government spent time and money unwinding the current setup to create a tax solution for this 0.001 per cent of the population! Not to mention the amount of people who would abuse it for financial gain.

I think your point is this: it is appropriate for us as a society to say that it is right (or, that it is wrong) to "recognise polyamorous marriage" - i.e. to give legal recognition to, and assign legal consequences to, the commitments that spouses in a polyamorous marriage make to one another — without knowing what those commitments are.

If I'm wrong — always highly possible — can you say, in one sentence, what your point is?

(I have a suspicion that the source of the confusion between us may be that we do not have a shared undertstanding on what it means to "recognise" marriage. Which is why I have embedded an explanation oif that in my one sentence above.)

I don't think the commitments involved in a polyamorous marriage are obvious at all.

The key point in a conventional marriage is that it's exclusive. That won't be the case in a polyamorous marriage. That changes almost everything.

For example, in a conventional marriage one spouse has significant inheritance rights when the other spouse dies. These can override anything in the will. The reasons for this are (a) I have a unique obligation to support my spouse, materially and financially; I have no similar obligation to anyone else; and (b) I am the only person who owes an obligation of this kind to my spouse. Neither of these things are true in a polyamorous marriage, which begs the question; what is true? What obligations or expectations to spouses in a polyamorous marriage have in regard to one another's estates? We can only answer that question by actually looking at polyamorous marriages to see what the spouses promise, understand, expect about this. If there aren't any polyamorous marriages then the question can't be answered.

That's just one example; it could be multiplied.

Is it appropriate that an unlimited number of spouses in a polyamorous marriage should be allowed to be assessed jointly for income tax, as a married couple can? Are the characteristics which lead us to allow that for married couples also characteristics of polyamorous marriages? Is the joint assessment of, say, 7 spouses even feasible?

As a conventionally married person, I can't mortgage or sell my home without my spouse's consent (regardless of whether my spouse has any ownership of it). In a polyamorous marriage, do I need the consent of all my spouses? Just those who have at some stage lived in the house? Just those who currently live there? And do all, or only some, or none, of my various spouses require my consent for them to mortgage or sell their homes?

If I live in rented accommodation and I die, can all my spouses take over my lease? Some but not others? Just one? If just one, which one?

Two of my spouses fall out with one another and, as a result, one of them leaves the marriage by divorcing the rest of us. Am I, and are all the other spouses, subject to property adjustment orders and maintenance orders in favour of the ex? Or just the spouse with whom they fell out? Does the ex get a single maintenance order against all of us collectively, or a series of individual maintenance orders against each of us? (I.e. if another spouse welches on their maintenance obligation, can I be compelled to make up the shortfall?)

Etc, etc.

The bottom line is that polyamorous marriages are inevitably going to work very, very differently from conventional marriages, and they give rise to a host of questions that don't arise in conventional marriages. Until we know how those questions are answered, we don't really know what a polyamorous marriage looks like, and it's not really possible to say what kinds of legal or administrative recognition or consequences might be appropriate.

ignoring those financial type decisions for moment there are other situations where the outcome is unclear. If one partner is on life support which of the other two partners are considered next of kin for decision-making purposes? who decides if life support should be continued or removed?

The whole point about legally agreed marriage is that the spouses don't agree the rights among themselves. Spouses' inheritance rights, tax rights, mutual support obligations etc aren't chosen by the spouses; they are baked into the status of marriage by societal decision. You can decide to marry or not to marry, but you can't decide to marry on the basis that your marriage will be characterised by a unique set of rights and obligations that arise purely out of agreement between the two of you.

If people in a polyamory relationship want a tailor-made set of agreements between themselves that concern only themselves, they can already do that. Legal recognition of marriage is different; it implies a set of rights and obligations that society determines, and that society supports and enforces in various ways. To talk about recognition of polyamorous marriage, we have to start by identifying the set of rights and obligations that characterises polyamorous marriage — not a hypothetical set that could characterise polyamorous marriage, but a real set that actually does. Then, and only then, can we made a judgment about whether there is benefit or detriment in affording legal recognition.

People were entering into gay marriages long before the state gave them any legal recognition, either as marriage or as civil unions. They made commitments of fidelity and exclusivity to one another, they invited social affirmation and support of those commitments, they accepted obligations to share their resources and support one another materially and emotionally, etc, etc. The couple themselves, and their community, knew exactly what all this meant. All that was lacking was acknowledgement from the state.

And this isn't unique. I'm old enough to remember when people who couldn't legally marry (because they couldn't get a divorce, or because they had a foreign divorce that wasn't recognised in Ireland) would enter into unrecognised second marriages. Again, everyone understood what it meant for them to do so.

It's likely that today, if not in Ireland then certainly in other European countries, people are entering into unrecognised polygamous marriages. Once again, the characteristics, commitments etc of these marriages are well understood, both by the spouses and by their wider communities. When we think about whether we should recognise these marriages or not, we know exactly what it is that we would be recognising or not recognising.

I just don't see that anything like this is true for polyamorous marriages, which at this point are speculative, hypothetical, undefined or purely abstract. I'm not denying that people enter into and sustain polyamorous relationships, but there isn't yet any common, shared understanding of the characteristics that would attend a polyamorous marriage. That's only going to emerge gradually, through the lived reality of polyamorous marriages, just as it has done for the various kinds of marriage - recognised and unrecognised - that already exist.

They're not legally recognised. But they still happen; that's my point. There exists a form of polygamous marriage which people enter into even though its not legally recognised. So far as I am aware — and I'm open to other views, but nobody has contradicted me on this yet — there is no analogous form of polyamorous marriage which anybody is entering into.

(On the nitty-gritty: Islamic marriage ceremonies are not recognised as creating a valid marriage in the UK; if you have an Islamic wedding you also need to have a civil wedding, if you want to engage legal recognition. Which means, if you're already legally married and you celebrate a religious wedding with a second or subsequent wife, you are not committing the crime of bigamy because, legally speaking, you have entered or attempted to enter into a second marriage. But socially speaking, of course, you, your spouse, your family and your community all regard this as a marriage.

There is no need for concealment or hiding away, because nothing illegal is happening. The state ignores the second and subsequent marriages - they have no legal effect and they break no laws, so why would the state be interested? - and most people who don't know or aren't close to the family involved have no reason to notice them, or become aware of them.

Alternatively, people can go to another country - usually an Islamic country - to celebrate a second/subsequent marriage, which will be legally recognised in that country. They then return to the UK, regard themselves as married and are accepted and treated as married by their family and community. or, people migrate to the UK, having already entered into polygamous marriages.

The practice is not uncontroversial; many UK mosques will decline to host an Islamic wedding that isn't going to result in a legally-recognised marriage. But there are those that will and, anyway, as a matter of Islamic law neither a mosque nor a cleric are necessary for a valid wedding - just the bride, the groom and a formal marriage contract freely entered into between them.

It's estimated that up to 20,000 people in the UK are living in polygamous marriages of this kind.

That's just the UK. But you can take it that in any country with a significant muslim population there are likely to be people living in polygamous marriages.)

Oh, I'm not saying that the phenomenon of polygamous marriages in the UK is a good thing, still less that the UK should legally recognise these marriages. I'm just saying that it's a real thing, and it's only because it's a real thing that any question of recognising polygamous marriages can even arise.