Marriage & Polyamory

Interesting survey results on polyamorists' interest in marriage were recently published on Loving More's website.  As background, conservatives who oppose marriage equality have been making slippery slope arguments for years about the purported danger of legally sanctioning same-sex marriage and a resulting inability to distinguish plural marriage.  See, e.g., Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 590 (2003) (Scalia, J., dissenting).  In response, as I noted in my article Polyamory as a Sexual Orientation, some marriage equality proponents have tried to distance themselves from polyamory and have sometimes cast aspersions on it.  79 U. Cin. L. Rev. 1461, 1484 (2011).  However, polyamorists themselves face considerable discrimination and appear to be deserving of legal protections, although there is uncertainty about whether and what types of protections they want.  79 U. Cin. L. Rev. at 1513-14.  Hadar Aviram's research on the Bay Area poly community suggested that that community at least did not want to advocate for poly marriage, partly out of fear of taking away steam from the marriage equality movement.  Hadar Aviram, Make Love, Not Law: Perceptions of the Marriage Equality Struggle Among Polyamorous Activists, 7 J. Bisexuality 261, 264 (2008).  This new survey data, however, shows that a significant majority of Loving More's national respondents (65.9%) would take advantage of plural marriage if legally available, although, interestingly, an almost equal--but slightly larger--percentage (66.9%) think that no relationship structure "deserves special recognition."   Thus, there seems to be a preference for disestablishment of rules privileging certain relationships, perhaps along the line of Nancy Polikoff's work, coupled with a practical willingness to marry if the option were available. 

Comments

[Jimbino]

Wouldn't it be a fine world if the gummint got the hell out of the relationship business, letting any and all to form any relationship by contract, and only intervened when the interests of third parties (mostly children) who were not party to the contract are affected?

Wouldn't it be nice to have a Constitutional amendment that stated that sex, religion, race, etc., may not be considerations in any law of the land?

Let those who want to practice sex, marriage, religion and breeding do so without gummint interference.