The wording is very important. An extremely religious person would have no problems with two men signing most legal documents like loans or business licenses, and legal marriage is basically a combination of those two things. As soon as the word "marriage" is introduced to describe this contract, it's a huge problem. It stops being a legal issue and it starts being a religious issue. The next logical step is to call it civil union when gay people get together. This creates a new problem because it means gay people are seen differently in the eyes of the government. Gay people would have "civil unions" but straight people have "marriages." If we want everything to be completely equal across the board, everything should be called a civil union. If you want to have a marriage in a church, you can still do that. God sees you as a married couple, but the government sees you as a civil union couple. Religious people would have no way to defend against gay civil unions since it's just a regular contract between two people with no religious connotations. So much of this gay marriage debate is about the word marriage. Very few people are actually against the idea of gay people signing legal documents. It's religious people who say gays should have civil unions, and it's gays who are upset because it means they're not treated the same as straights. Switching everything to "civil union" would completely fix everything.
We could always adopt Canada's tax system. Canada doesn't have joint tax submissions. The husband and wife each file their own tax return.
Actually it does. As long as gays are trying to win the battle for marriage licenses, there will be a united front of religious people against them. The easiest way to win the battle for legal equality is to change the wording. I'm confident that gays will eventually get mainstream support for gay marriage, but how long do you want to wait? 10 years? 20 years? We could have this problem fixed within a year if we just changed some words.
It's not so much that it's a slippery slope or it doesn't matter because it's consenting adults the question your asking is whether the government should endorse plural marriages with legal benefits.
To decide that, we'd need to look at the benefits and issues for both the citizens and the government/society.
For normal marriage between two people the benefits are pretty obvious.
- inheritance rights
- medical visitation
- use less social services
- generally healthier
- parental rights
Among others.
With plural marriages many of those benefits are complicated and or may not apply the same to the second, third, and fourth spouse as it does to the first.
The other thing is same sex marriage now means that equal numbers of partners in a plural marriage can pair off and if the head of the household passes their spouse can marry the next spouse so inheritance can pass through the rest of the family.
So while I think polygamists can make the case for government acknowledgement of their marriage I don't think the cost/benefit ratio is anywhere near the same as normal marriage and without the constitutional issue SSM had I don't see a compelling reason for the government to grant additional benefits.
Edit: What Elfenix said.
Yes, maybe, hopefully, some day in the brilliant future the Supreme Court will rule that same-sex marriage bans are unconstitutional.
Aaaaand fuck those people.
Aaaaand fuck that. Nobody is changing the common language just because a bunch of delusional nitwits got their collective panties in a bunch.
Or we could just wait for the religious nutjobs to be continue being marginalized, pointing and laughing at their impotent rage along the way.
You seem a bit out of touch regarding current events
I've been thinking about this a bit more. How about this? Single people are denied the right to marry people that are already married.
Many people in the poly community would say so. Many would say that the reason that something like 50% of all monogamous couples cheat on one another is because they are naturally polyamorous and are fighting their nature. This causes a lot of unnecessary pain and frustration, as well as legal hassles since a large number of them end up in divorce again and again.
What I expect will happen is that eventually a judge will decide that a specific polygamous marriage should be allowed, and once that precedent is set legislatures are going to scramble to try to define just what is allowed polygamy and what is not. This will be a process with many mistakes, and I fully expect that the first few attempts will be just short of disasterous.
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