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I live in a community where there are several "poly" communes- several sets of adults that are "religiously" married. They have several "legal" married couples within the group. They have children between them. often not between the legal married couples. Also- there are several BDSM "poly" farms here in Hawaii, that have some sort of hierarchy that only they themselves can really define.

What is interesting to me living here and seeing this is this- they are having a hard time negotiating the financial and legal obligations of their relationships. Some also have some kinds of religious beliefs that holds their communities together. I seem to see that most of the communities are no more or less successful than one man one woman marriages. They live on farms and co-own, well, the farm. Sometimes these communes break up and it is not healthy for the children or the adults regarding what happens next in courts.

Secular marriage as it is practiced in America, for about 100 years now, has nothing to do with procreation or religion- but rather, the rights the married has when a spouse becomes ill and can not make decisions for themselves, or the marriage has ended. The actual day to day living of marriage means nothing legally at all.

The idea that "one man one woman" is the "traditional" marriage is of course wrong- polygamist marriage far out dates our current secular definitions.

So my question is:

Should the government end the marriage thing as we know it?

Should we go to contractual agreements only- without the current "default" we have now?

If it's all between consenting adults then I really don't see how it's any of your fucking business, quite a few of you guys on this board have shown you're absolutely determined to micro-manage peoples' personal lives and you obviously get some kind of kick out of being able to restrict what people can and can't do.

The fact that you're just trying to come up with these pathetic and petty excuses like how it will cause more peadophilia or beastiality only shows you up to be morons, surely you realise that? And no as an Anarchist I honestly think that instead of trying to use marriage to enforce your own particular brand of what marriage should be, if your religion can't be tolerant towards others then you should get the hell out of the business instead and let the government handle it.

Yes, that's my position, I would rather have government than your 'god' trying to dictate what is natural 'love' and what isn't, nevermind all the usual arguments that in regulary straight marriage you have to put up with all kinds of bullshit and a huge number of them end up getting divorced or falling apart anyway, but as usual you guys completely ignore those kinds of facts. Live and let live, if nobody is getting hurt, you're just being an intolerent cunt, it's that simple, it isn't anything to do with marriage being sacred or traditional, we all know exactly what the game is of people like you who are against these sorts of marriage, you just don't like homosexuals or people who don't subscribe automatically to your religious doctrine.

Oh and to back up my claims of STRAIGHT marriage falling to pieces over the past years, here are some studies, it looks like recently the trend though has been picking up a bit regardless of the whole homosexual marriage thing, so the two are completely unrelated it seems, WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?! lol.

Ooooo! This ones from the office for national statistics too! So yeah, going after homosexuals over marriage just makes you totally full of shit.

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1/divorces-in-england-and-wales/2011/sty-what-percentage-of-marriages-end-in-divorce.html

http://www.apa.org/topics/divorce/same-sex-marriage.aspx

http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/parenting.aspx

Again when it comes to these kind of bullshit claims in regards to gender stereotypes and sexual orientation fear mongering, it really is not difficult to find lots and lots of data to refute all of this.


Adding to this, there's a theory I've had for awhile now that the amount of men in particular who are gay and want to get married officially are actually going to reduce the number of actually straight men out there who are single because there's less of a stigma attached with being openly gay.


So the maths involved with this would be.

Man + Man = SingleWoman, SingleWoman

So this means that these women either have to go and find one single man out there or they have to be come lesbian. In short because there would be so many men getting married I suspect compared to women then that would lead to an imbalance in the straight male to straight female population. So this means that for ever SingleStraightMan there would be two or even more SingleWoman per SingleStraightMan. In short, if you are actually straight and not a total pussy you would also have to be a complete idiot not to support gay marriage.

Should the government end the marriage thing as we know it?

And, how would this help? Seems more like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Should we go to contractual agreements only- without the current "default" we have now?

One of the things that state recognized marriages does is discourage abuse - basically making women and/or children slaves in the relationship. If you go with strictly contractual agreements and no state recognition, you lose that. Marriage will become strictly caveat emptor. If there's one thing that we know about the history of marriage is that polygamous unions were primarily about ownership and were heavily abusive to women and children and without regulation, this will likely return. Yes, polygamous unions were around much longer than the dyadic marital relationships of today in the West, but they also were about something completely different - those historic polygamous unions aren't a tradition we should bring back.

I don't know what else to say since these were the only two choices given. It seems a better question would be how can marriage be changed to accommodate poly amorous unions. Doing away with it completely - while on paper it may seem like a good idea - just doesn't make practical sense, in my opinion.

Should the government end the marriage thing as we know it?
No, keep it as an option for all citizens. As has been pointed out elsewhere, laws have been written that apply only to married people, the two examples that immediately come to mind is a spouse not being forced into testifying against the other spouse and rights to SS payments.

Should we go to contractual agreements only- without the current "default" we have now?
Same as above. How would one contract for SS payments or claim the right to not testify? I don't think it can be done. You don't get to write your own laws without going through the appropriate legislature.

As for people living in polygamous communes, go ahead. Just don't expect to have rights such as child support, alimony payments, and whatever other rights there are to marriage and its subsequent dissolution. In the common vernacular, you're shaking up. It's an informal thing that might involve contracts but usually doesn't.

Neither of those are necessary. If marriage were abolished, then those laws wouldn't necessarily even need to be amended. The condition would simply no longer be met. Ditto for testimony. Things which should be considered in the discussion on whether to abolish marriage, but certainly not conditions that make abolishing it either difficult or impossible. The benefits, like any other benefits associated with being married, would simply cease.

So you don't see that as a problem? Why should we go down that path?

We don't need the government to end marriage,  less and less people are choosing to marry in the first place,  young people are doing a cost:benefit analysis and realizing it's just not worth it when there's a 2/3rds chance they'll face divorce in the first 5 years. The trend will continue until only the super religious bother with marriage at all. That shit is feudalism dragged two centuries too far into the present.

They're not going to end it for many reasons, largely because Christians would cry and kick off about it, but if people want to get married then they can and should be able to do. If you don't want to get married but have the legal benefits you could just get a lawyer and write a contract out with your partner and legally share your stuff and you can also leave your money or possessions to them in a will. Let those that want to marry in the eyes of the law and everyone else can do what they want.

Nowadays legal marriage has become a business for some gold-diggers. First the gold-digger will marry some successful guy, and for the next 10-12 months, she will live a luxurious life using the spouse's wealth. Then the demands will become more and more unreasonable, and the guy will be forced to file for divorce. And due to the anti-male laws prevalent in  many of the countries, he will be forced to forego half of his wealth and will be required to pay child support for the rest of his life.