So this morning, on my way to work, I listened to a really interesting Poly Weekly episode on marriage. This episode was inspired by Mistress Matisse’s recent article in The Stranger, which I also urge everyone to go and read.
I was going to message Minx with my thoughts following the PW episode, but I had so many thoughts on all of this that I decided I’d just make it into a blog entry instead. Plus I don’t blog enough anymore. So here goes.
Matisse does a good job of deconstructing the difficulty of defining what poly marriage even is, so I’m not going to rehash that here. Just go read it. She also points out the sheer practical and logistical impossibilities of getting something like this into law. She points out the absolutely mammoth task the queer movement had to go through – and is still going through in many places – to get same-sex marriage legalised, and points out that “fundraising infrastructure is key – and queers have it, poly people don’t.”
But the thing that interested me the most in all of this, and the point I most wanted to respond to, was that Matisse and Minx both point out the simple fact that no-one seems to be lobbying particularly hard for poly marriage. In fact, within the poly communities they each mention – and in the ones I frequent, from what I can see – there appears to be a large amount of simple apathy towards the subject.
Sure, someone might occasionally “dream out loud,” as Matisse says, but let’s be honest here – how many of us are fully paid up members of the Poly Marriage Now club? I know I’m certainly not. There’s a lot of issues that are important to me, but to be absolutely honest, this just isn’t one of them.
Marriage in general is an interesting topic to me. I have personal reasons to be somewhat uneasy with the idea, given that I was engaged to an Abusive Asshole from the ages of 18 to 20[2] which was, I now know, much too huge a commitment to be undertaking at such a young age and with such a relative lack of experience. There was, of course, a time it was normal to be married off by 18. We do not live in that world any more. People these days typically have more relationships, and get married later – with many opting not to marry at all, including those in long term, stable relationships.
I haven’t entirely ruled out getting married someday – in some ways, it’s something I feel that I’d quite like. But the things I want are the opportunity to have a big, special celebration of my commitment to my partner(s) with our friends and family around us. Unless it came down to a “we need to do this so one of us can stay in the country” (or similar) type situation, the legal aspects of traditional marriage are of very little significance to me.
And in this way, there’s an interesting dissonance in my head. One of the aspects I find difficult about the idea of traditional marriage for myself is the idea of ONE of my relationships being legally (and to an extent, socially) recognised in a way which explicitly closes any and all of my other relationships from being recognised in the same way. In this sense, the idealist dreamer in me thinks that being able to legally marry more than one person would be wonderful.
However. I also accept that allowing polygamy[3] is at best an absolute legal and ethical minefield, and at worst pretty much impossible.
Why, you ask? To begin with, where does one draw the line of what is legal and what isn’t? Can you marry a second person without your first spouse’s consent, or do they need to give it? How would anyone differentiate between consent which was freely given and consent which was coerced? Does everyone involved in the group or family have to marry each other for this to be allowed (ie a triad or quad,) or only the people who are actually sleeping with each other?
When I was 18 and naive, I’d have been all for crusading for legally recognised polyamorous marriage. I liked the idea of being married to my boyfriend and my girlfriend and my husband and my wife and my sweetie and all of us living together in one big happy poly family, with our commitment recognised under the law. I’ve changed a lot since then. I’ve no idea what my future holds, of course, but my best guess right now involves one of three things happening;
1) I choose to remain unmarried.
2) I someday marry a partner, but enlist legal help to draw up contracts/agreements with anyone I’m in a long-term/very committed/life-partner style relationship with to ensure that as many of the relevant rights as possible are afforded to those people as well as my legal spouse.
3) I opt for a type of “marriage” or commitment ceremony or similar recognised by my religion, but not recognised by law, which can therefore potentially be entered into with more than one person concurrently.
So yeah. I’m not going to be campaigning for the legalisation of polygamy anytime soon. I’d rather take what we have and work with it. I’d rather create and invent new ways of doing things, ways which fit within the dynamics and the relationships that we’re actually having, rather than try to mould a centuries-old institution to fit us.
Though most of the advice is fairly US-centric and as such largely useless to me on a practical level, I’m fascinated with the Alternatives to Marriage Project and wish there was something similar in the UK[4.]
We’re in pretty unchartered territory here, people. We’re reinventing what is commonly understood by love, fidelity and faithfulness. Why can we not also look at reinventing and re-imagining commitment?
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[1] I want a “Poly Bar.” Is that just me??
[2] Thankfully, I came to my senses before I married him.
[3] Used here in the literal meaning of the word, “marriage to more than one person,” NOT as a synonym for polyamory.
[4] I’ve even toyed with the idea of creating it myself, but I have neither the time, energy, nor legal know-how at the moment.
I am in the process of ending a marriage. Perhaps Im still stunned by the separation, but right now I dont think I will be marrying again.
I married for the “staying in the country” reason. I don’t have a desire to have a polygamous marriage but it would be nice if the law acknowledged polyamory. Currently, marriage ceremonies say that marriage involves the “exclusion of all others”.
I fear I may be in the rose-tinted minority here, but I would be in favour of a law that allowed you to choose to marry more than one person.
I admit that I would carefully phrase it so that each pair of people would need to make individual commitments [i.e. a V might only need 2 marriages but a triad would need 3 and a quad a staggering 6 - you can imagine the cost being a real issue!!!] and that any person an individual was already in a marriage to would need to give legal consent [I wholeheartedly agree that there are issues with coercion but I think that those are already present in the current system and need to be carefully safeguarded by registrars and the police].
Whilst there are many problems with the baggage of marriage and its execution and it doesn’t work for any number of people I do believe that a legal validation of a relationship has merit for those that want it.
I didn’t need to call my civil partnership marriage for it to be worthwhile but I do want it to be irrelevant what the gender of my legal partner is (or was or becomes) and similarly I want my relationships to have equal status in the eyes of the law regardless of how many there are if thats what my partners and I choose.
On the other hand I’m probably not going to become a poly marriage campaigner because I’m too busy actually living my life and organising my calendar!
I cohabitate with my two boyfriends, as well as one of their partners. I love living under the same roof with people I care about, so we also have my closest friend and non-blood sister living with us. That said, I don’t want poly marriage. While the freebies and tax perks of marriage would be nice, I can deal with a bit of extra paperwork if it means maintaining the balance and stability I’ve found already. I’ll have a handfasting ritual someday, but that’s a religious ceremony that has nothing to do with the law. My apathy toward poly marriage stems from there being no value in it; I’m not being barred from anything (at this time) that marriage would unlock for me.
Ha! I was all ready to comment and then read the last paragraph which said pretty much exactly what I was going to say, thought I’d say “marriage” specifically rather than “commitment.”
The problem is that “marriage” like “love” or “relationship” is such a vague term that means so many different things to so many people, and as such we as a society will never easily agree to changing it. I’d prefer to simply address the practical (and legal) issues and beyond that be given the freedom to describe my world as I choose to.
Maybe I’m still being naive, but I really don’t see the huge complication in allowing polygamy. Simply extend the rights of a married person to more than two people. All spouses could visit in hospital. Inheritance would be split equally (in the same way as to children if you haven’t left a will). Tax breaks same for all. Average income for social welfare is… an average of all spouses who you’re directly married to.
No, I’m not going to fight for it (because I don’t want it right now or in the perceived future), but I really don’t see why it should be so complicated.
I feel like I’m meeting more and more people (monogamous and otherwise) lately who don’t view legal marriage as necessary. Perhaps it’s just the social circles I run in, but a lot of those circles include polyamorous folk. I’d love to see a study done on current views of marriage overall and among poly people. I’m personally unmotivated to get married and tend to lean toward the “it’s an outdated institution” side of things, though I understand why many other people really want it for themselves.
Two points to raise here. The first is a minor one and i dont want it to detract from your arguments but technically “Polygamy” means marrying more thn one woman and the word stems from the days when women were chattels to be owned.
My second and more serious point is a question. In USA the Mormans had the legal right to polygamy and then the law was changed. Does anyone lnow why this was. Was it because of legal complications arising from the law or was it just considered to be badly drafted?That might give some clue as to the use or problems inherent in changing the law here.