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Friday, January 02, 2015

The new "marriage" frontier?

One Happy Family: Mom, Dad, and Dad on Yahoo Parenting tells the story of a polyamorous relationship, in this case one woman and two men. The woman is married to one of the men. They all live together and would all like to be married to each other. I don't agree with the practice. I post the link here because of particular things I found intriguing in the article.

One of the men said, “I would like to have the benefits that married people have. Benefits apply to relationships when you get married that you don’t have otherwise. I look at that and think, Why can’t we?” This was the initial central argument for homosexual marriage, nay, civil unions to start with. If marriage is for the purpose of giving any grouping of "lovers" the legal benefits that married people have, why should the polyamorists be left out?

This trio feels "thrown under the bus" by same-sex marriage activists. These activists, for the benefit of their own cause rather than "marriage equality" in general, distance themselves from polyamory and plural marriage. On the other hand, this trio shows signs of looking down on "religious polygamy" -- polygamous marriages practiced by "religions and cults." The fact is, the reasons put forth to recognize one of these states as marriage are reasons to recognize them all as marriage. One size fits all.

Curiously, though one purpose of polyamory is open sexual relationships -- it is defined as "participation in multiple and simultaneous loving or sexual relationships" -- two-thirds of the polyamorous trio didn't want to be open about it, and the woman even "bristled" when the reporter asked about their sex lives. She also "monitored" what the third party was saying, and finally "cut him off".

Definitions
polygamy -- the condition of having more than one spouse at one time
polygyny -- the condition of being married to more than one wife at the same time
polyandry-- the condition of being married to more than one husband at the same time
polyamory -- participation in multiple and simultaneous loving or sexual relationships (The wife in this story describes polyamory as a "build-your-own relationship structure.")

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