"poly marriage" -- some thoughts

A scholar told me his reading was "a man can keep as many women as he can satisfy" -- which, after speaking with many monogamous women over the years, seems to often be "less than one." :eek:

Which is why, as evidenced on this board, polyandry works better than polygyny. Right now I am the go-to sexual outlet for 1 woman and 2 men. :cool:
 
OT: In my opinion, flawed men wrote the Bible. They were patriarchal, and wanted lots of nookie, and lots of kids, and wanted to assure each kid was biologically their own, so, only polygyny was legal. Polyandry definitely was NOT, in fact, even a wife having an affair was punishable by death. There was not even any protection for her if she was raped, other than to be discarded by her husband and marrying her rapist.

Later Jewish laws written in the AD era, stipulated that, to protect older wives from abuse and neglect from the husband being smitten (in NRE) with a newer wife, a wife had the right to divorce her husband if he didn't provide for her equally, including sexually.

Personally, I am bored with marriage. It is outmoded. I don't get all excited when young friends or family members get hitched, I didn't get all excited about same sex marriage. I agree that once we have universal health care in the US, as in Europe, marriage rates will drop. No one wants to be owned by another these days (kinky people excluded, but that is different). Marriage has long been a form of slavery, with the man as owner, the woman as slave.

I agree with you that "flawed men wrote the Bible". And I wasn't saying that they "had it right the way they accept"... I was saying it's BS for Christians to claim "the only valid marriage is '1 man + 1 woman', because The Bible says so"... as most Christians claim.
 
There's a Rightist webmag that launched late 2013. Who knew there'd be a pro-poly article there?

While there's a LOT about this article that really irks me -- their four-year non-marriage is getting stale so they fix it by getting a girlfriend :rolleyes: -- Sara Burrows, the author does finally (halfway through) raise a viewpoint I'd never considered.
From income-tax breaks to estate planning benefits to Social Security and insurance benefits to the right to make medical decisions for one’s spouse, there are all kinds of carrots dangled in front of Americans as rewards for getting hitched.

Instead of putting unmarried individuals on equal footing with married people, the government has chosen to appease the masses by blessing another category of monogamous couples with the privileges of marriage—those of the same sex.

This is discrimination, plain and simple. It discriminates against single people who have no formal romantic relationships and a growing number of people who identify as polyamorous, who maintain multiple romantic relationships at once.

The government has no business incentivizing any type of romantic or non-romantic behavior. It has no business rewarding us or penalizing us based on our relationship status.

By granting gay couples the same “privileges” as straight couples, we are widening the gap of inequality between coupled and non-coupled individuals. The only way to have real equality in this country is to treat everyone as individuals with equal rights, not unequal privileges. Otherwise, we open the doors to social conservatives’ worst nightmare—polygamy! Not long after that, single people, vying for the same entitlements, will surely fulfill former Sen. Rick Santorum’s prophecy by requesting to marry their dogs!

So instead of legislating sexual morality, the government should stick to what it was designed to do best: protecting individual liberties.
She then puts up a section head, What’s Really Romantic Is Autonomy, which had me all psyched for a Free Market Libertarian rationale for nonmonogamy... but she trails off into blathering about how freakin' wonderful their triad is (though I'll give points for their leaning toward polyamory rather than polyfidelity).

Burrows is, of course, writing a blog about it all, which is actually a decent read.
 
Well, since I figure a large chunk of TheFederalist.com readers are Right Wingnuts & believe that Burrows & everyone around her should burn in Hell sooner rather than later, it predictably offered immediate criticism, because they know their readers are too stupid to figure out their own damn objections & need 'em pre-chewed. This is by D.C. McAllister, a woman who happens (like Burrows) to be a journalist from North Carolina.

The title is a subtle clue as to the calm, logical persuasive style that follows.
Polyamory Is Bad For Kids, Polyamorists, And Society

Welcome to our brave new world. Marriage is romanticized into insignificance. Sex is everything.

Burrows is correct: If marriage is primarily about love and romance—as the Supreme Court has unilaterally decided—then the government should get out of marriage licensing.

But, despite the Supreme Court’s decision, marriage is about more than just love. Love is part of it (or can be), but when it comes to the government’s interest in marriage (which is another way of saying society’s interest in marriage), it’s about children—and not just childrearing, which is all Justice Kennedy focused on in his opinion; it’s about childbearing.

Why? For the very reason Burrows gives for government getting out of marriage: protecting individual rights and liberties. Whose rights and liberties? Those of children. The reason local government gives marriage licenses is not to legislate sexual morality or to meddle in people’s romantic affairs. It’s to have on record that any children who might come from that biological union will be taken care of by their biological parents (and it’s not the job of the government to give a litmus test regarding who can and can’t—or choose not to—have children).

By recognizing the family unit, the government is protecting the rights and liberties of children to be raised by their actual mom and dad, not by anyone else. Parents are held responsible for their children. The state isn’t responsible. Their neighbor isn’t responsible. They—the biological parents— are responsible. By removing this protective shield around children, the state exposes children to being intentionally and completely deprived of a parent or to government itself taking the parents’ place.

Anyone who advocates for government getting out of marriage in the name of liberty is actually creating a situation in which greater liberty will be lost as government authority expands into the lives of our children. In other words, if parents aren’t responsible for children, the state will be.

Libertarians make a big deal about protecting individual rights and liberties for adults, but they don’t seem to have any interest in protecting the rights and liberties of children.

urrows was so quick to throw off the chains of religion and social norms that she fails to see that she has entered a new kind of bondage: she is bound by the chains of her sexual desires. Little does she know that those butterflies that make her feel so alive will soon become dragons that burn off her soul and reduce her to an empty shell of animalistic appetites. Burrows fails to see that liberty—real liberty—is found in self-government and self-control, not in doing whatever the hell she wants.

Deborah Taj Anapol, author of “Polyamory in the Twenty-First Century,” says polyamory doesn’t offer all the answers newbies expect. ... "They are expecting great things—more love, more sex, more family, more fun, more pleasure, more excitement. What they find is more jealousy, possessiveness, manipulation, control, self-centeredness, lies, melodrama, chaos, power struggles, and pain.”

...it’s not love if there is no commitment. It’s only sex. It’s only lust. Those who are in love, Lewis wrote, have a natural inclination to bind themselves by promises—promises of faithfulness and devotion—which is why polyamory inevitably devolves into a pigsty of jealousy and pain. People who love want promises with that love; otherwise, anger and destruction follow.

There is a beauty to familiar sex between a husband and wife that is a thrill all its own. The love is deep, and sex is an expression of real intimacy—a love built on promises that there is only one. No jealousy. No fear. No pain. And, I should add, no sexually transmitted diseases.

Burrows is a woman enslaved to lust and to romantic notions about “being in love.” It is keeping her from experiencing the glorious freedom of committed—and, yes, quiet—love. So absorbed is she by lust and so bound by her sexual taskmaster that she doesn’t even stop to think about the impact her polyamory will have on her daughter. To become healthy adults, children need the stability of parents who are exclusively committed to each other, without creepy strangers who only care about sex drifting in and out of their lives.
Yeah, she supports her anti-poly rant by citing Deb Anapol -- whew, at least she didn't quote MY book!! :eek: -- bolstered with modern marriage authorities C.S. Lewis & William Shakespeare.

I chopped out about half the verbiage, figuring we've heard it all before. This article could be a drinking game: have someone read it aloud, & everyone takes a shot when they hear some tired old mistruth they've heard at least a hundred times before. Nobody'd be sober by the end.

Anyway, I include this in detail primarily because it raises another old point that we've neglected: other than social control & kowtowing to The Church's demands, why is there "marriage" at all? As raised here, two reasons dominate: "because we're in love" or "to raise a family."

It's always surprised us at how few people actually seem to think at all about those reasons.
  • If the purpose of marriage is to express & indeed to solidify a deep & abiding bond of love, then anyone in love should be allowed to do it.
  • If the purpose of marriage is to raise children within a stable, loving home environment, then anyone with that purpose should be allowed to do it.
McAllister clearly states "#2 only!!" but handily pretends to be too stupid to see the pitfalls that surround it.

It means that monogamous couples incapable of childbearing should have their marriages nullified.

It means that monogamous couples who have no interest in spawning should be denied marriage.

And it means that anyone who can demonstrate a sincere desire & credible ability to raise healthy smart kids should be granted marriage as a right -- whether they be straight, gay, atheists, or multiadult.
 
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There is plenty of evidence that children should be raised by a tribe, not merely by an isolated mother/father unit. Our nuclear families can, and do, actually harm children by social isolation.

We have all heard the saying, it takes a village (to raise a healthy child). Yet we continue to reward the isolated nuclear family.

Abuse can and does happen. Many abused children love school because they are nurtured better by their teachers than by their own parents. Teachers are now trained to spot and report abused children. In more progressive countries, like Sweden, kids have a right, and a hotline, to report their parents for abusing them. This doesn't help tiny kids who can't use a phone, however.

In the "olden days" and in many traditional cultures still today, kids aren't raised by just their biological parents. They are raised by the tribe, their relatives, their grandparents, aunts and uncles, and other adults in the tribe. They have more social contact with kids other than their immediate siblings. They have more of a safety net, should a father die, should a mother prove unfit.

As polyamorists, we think we are pioneers. But we are just returning to a more old fashioned, and perhaps better, mode of family. Poly parents struggle with how much contact lovers should have with their children. We are making it up as we go along.

Adding to the difficulty in the present day, is the ability to uproot a family, and move far away from one's tribe. Then we start over, creating a new chosen family in the next location. The kids don't have the protection of a stable tribe which is committed to their welfare.

Shit, until this century, we experimented with isolating babies and very young children even more. "Don't 'spoil' them. Don't hold them. Put them in a crib or play pen or a carriage. Don't feed them when they cry for food, feed them according to the clock. (Don't even feed them human milk, feed them a mixture of cow's milk and white sugar. As soon as possible, don't even hold them to feed them that bottle, figure out how to prop it in the child's mouth as it reclines in its chair or carriage.) Don't put them to bed when they are tired, put them to bed when it's convenient for the adults, and let them 'cry it out' until they pass out exhausted from crying from the abandonment."

Oh, and if the child's objections get to be too much for the adults, spank the living bejesus out of them.

This technique is supposed to raise "independent adults." Did it work? No. It raised neurotic adults who didn't have their infant needs for touch met. It also raises adults with a propensity for violence, who were disciplined with the harsh smack of a hand, or weapon (rod, paddle, yardstick, etc.) on their tender buttocks, or other body parts.
 
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Very well-said.

I'm against home-schooling. Okay, so it's not producing a surfeit of sociopaths or anything, & I have enjoyed the company of the homeschooled. But in this age of social isolation, & the clear societal problems stemming from it, this exacerbates the problem whether in the name of "safety" or "academic standards" or "morality."

Increasingly, we're raising kids who don't know how to deal with people not like themselves. Then we blithely launch 'em off to college & expect that between geographic uprooting + mind-boggling study + love/sex + alcohol/drugs they're just automatically gonna KNOW how to get along AND furthermore create deep connections to others.

You may have noticed that in the articles I've recently cited, there's a recurrent theme of "the stability of the two-parent household." This was unintentional, but now it fits in.

My brother's daughter (not quite 30) has three kids; call her Kristi. My bro & his wife are long divorced, living maybe 150 miles apart. Kristi often leaves one or more kids with one of the 'rents, so that she can look for a better job or a second job or do weekend one-offs. Her boyfriend (occasionally fiance but that seems to wax & wane) is a great guy, a decent father (none are biologically his), & all-around stable. But he's also a farmer, & that means some crazy-long days, especially at planting & harvest but also mid-season crises, & then there's winter wheat, so it never really stops.

And there's no WAY in Hell that he & Kristi could raise three kids by themselves. Her parents make this possible, yet neither gets any tax or societal benefits from functionally being quarter-time parents to the children.

There were times in my childhood when it woulda been a total PITA for my 'rents to tote me & my brother around AND my baby sister while trying to fix something on the house or get groceries, so we'd spend a couple hours with one grandparent or another.

I have a handful of friends who were entirely raised (practically from birth) not by their biological mother, but by HER mother or sister or even aunt. In some families, this is just how it's done: someone willing to take in a child (often because they foresaw needing more help in a few years on the farm or in the store or whatever) simply received possession, de facto adoption.
 
I actually would like to see the government out of the business of giving preference to married vs. unmarried citizens. I agree it's incredibly discriminatory, and an incentive-based system for procreation, given the tax on our available natural resources, is not only unnecessary, but probably very unwise. We have excellent ways, without marriage, to determine parentage/liability for a child, so marriage is no longer really relevant in that regard.

Again, I think if the US ever gets national health care, marriage will become less relevant (as I think it should be). I'd also like to see the other incentives and "automatics" go away, so people could make more informed decisions about who decides their health care options should they b rendered incompetent, etc.
 
I'm against home-schooling. Okay, so it's not producing a surfeit of sociopaths or anything, & I have enjoyed the company of the homeschooled. But in this age of social isolation, & the clear societal problems stemming from it, this exacerbates the problem whether in the name of "safety" or "academic standards" or "morality."

Actually, homeschooling had huge benefits for my daughter. I taught her from 5th grade until she graduated last week. :) Homeschooling is NOT always - or even frequently - the isolated, religiously-driven indoctrinization model that a lot of people picture when they think or talk about it. We were heavily involved in a local homeschool co-op, which was a tribe for us - I had a solid connection with at least a dozen mothers, and my daughter had activities with kids of all ages multiple times a week. I hosted book clubs, parties, sleepovers, volunteer activities, tubing and camping trips, a strategic board game club, and I now teach high school science from my living room twice a week as a business. Even though she's graduated, my daughter is still heavily involved with her friends - she went roller skating last night with a group of them and had a pool party last Friday with almost 20 teens. Last week she was out at the movies twice with various friends. She is definitely not isolated!

If anything, I feel homeschooling has given my daughter - and all of the kids she knows - a fuller sense of who they are as human beings. They didn't have to pretend to be people they're not to fit in to some mold that "society" tells them they have to be. Out of a random 20 kids that you could grab from her group - more than half identify as LBTQ and all are confident in their identities. None of them had to experience painful bullying in a public school, and they've had solid love from their parents. Hell, my poly household has been a model to them as well - it's not threatening and it's totally normal to them now, which can only make them more awesome adults later in life - even if they are monogamous, because they can see it isn't some crazy scary way of life.

To paint a broad brush and say that homeschooled kiddos don't know how to deal with people not like themselves - my experience has shown the exact opposite.
 
Yeah, I wasn't going to get into that... but of course, I also facilitated my kids' education, from K-12. We unschooled, they had child led curriculi, we were in a large secular homeschooler's group (like 100 families). We could have done activities with other families every day of the week if we wanted to. My kids did scouts, a UU youth group, sports, they took formal classes in art and science and music, etc., etc.

If any of them would have asked to go to public school, I would have allowed them to enroll. I have a younger friend now who is homeschooling her kids, and her 10 year old is going to start public school in the fall at his request.

Was it perfect? Did I do everything "right" for them? Do I never second guess whether I made the right decision in this or that area for how to facilitate their education? No. But nothing's perfect in this world. Public school, with its emphasis on testing, and all the other problems, sure ain't perfect either. From my experience, some kids can end up with plenty of social anxiety going to school as they can in an unschooling situation.
 
Surely, I can see the benefits of what I called communal education, as opposed to families that basically keep their kids under guard 24/7 with as little outside influence as possible.

But... well, there's this thing. ;)

In my experience, when someone of reasonable intelligence & of good heart begins to stray toward saying, "I'm not biased," they're generally wrong.

Apologies if I seem to be putting you on the spot, Magdlyn, but you gave me a GREAT number. :eek:

Sociological truism -- The very process of selecting people for a group is inherently biased, if it's non-random.

Given that the United States (per the 2010 Census) is 12.2% African American & Black, 7% indigenous peoples, 4.7% "Asian" (oooh, I detest that term...), & 16.3% Hispanic/Latino, how did the "like 100 families" stack up?

How many languages did the parents speak?

Was there a wide variety of political views in the households?

Did you have a good range of economic levels, maybe from "barely getting by" to "comfortably professional" (doctors, lawyers, engineers)?

Then there's religion: In 2014, the U.S. was 25.4% evangelical, 14.7% mainline Protestant, 20.8% Catholic, 5.9% of non-Christian faiths, & 22.8% unaffiliated.
________________

We all have biases, we all have prejudices, we all have irrationalities.

All that we can do, those of us of good heart, is
  1. be as aware as possible of our personal biases
  2. remain aware that these are probably but the smaller portion & many more lurk, &
  3. don't let them push us around
That's why I try to be as kind as I can to people who think they "hate" homosexuals or coloreds or religious weirdos or polyfolk -- their very blindness prevents them from understanding that they are blind.
 
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And I am always interested in finding reasons why it needs to be "marriage with more people" rather than a civil union (with churchly stuff optional).

If it's for love & a sense of bonding & to publicly celebrate commitment, then I don't see why a state-sanctioned contract is consonant with this, let alone necessary.

To me, marriage per se is nothing more than a way to gain certain privileges granted by various levels of government. Aside from that, IMNSHO it really has no place in polyamory, & the term alone only multiplies confusion & draws hostility.

I'd like to see something like granting civil unions the same privileges as churchly marriage.
If by civil union you mean common law marriage, how can they have the same rights as marriage? If you by civil union you mean a marriage performed by the state...I woul call that a marriage, too - in my country that is the term. There is no difference between a marriage performed by state, church or view of life society. They all have the "right to magistrate marriage" in my country,

Marriage? Civil union? I do not care at alle what it is called; what is important is the legal rights what will come from changing the laws. If some people prefer at different name I am ok with that, as long as it actually means that my partner can move and live with us, that there are no legal problems if I choose to have children with both men, and that when I die, both my children and my men naturally gets a share of the inheritance. Those things are a 100 % times more important that whatever those terms are called!

As to if it should be blessed in church, that is a clergical question. I want something that the state can provide, and right now they are NOT doing this.

In my country, civil unions and marriage are the same. Common law marriage are a mini-version of marriage (with less rights) and draw upon marriage laws to work. There are no seperate common law marriage laws, just some regulations in marriage laws, laws regarding parenthood and so on. Even marriage/civil union law draws upon other laws. It is really a potluck of laws that needs to be changed, even if it is often reffered to as marriage law.
 
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Ah. Hum. I wonder how many poly people equate the word "marriage" with "churchly things"? Most people I know were married by a judge or some such person so to me "civil union" is the exact same thing only with an awkward name to appease a vocal minority of strange people. The church only got involved in marriage fairly late in history- witness the continued existance in some states of Common Law marriage, which just involves living together as husband and wife for a certain number of years, no official needed. That is the basisof some of the laws that make polyamorists nervous they could be hauled in for bigamy.

Leetah
Yes well, different countries, different terms I guess. I dont think most people in my country think of marriage as neccesarily having to do with the church /any churces. You can marry in the church, or in the town hall, or by the representative of the humanitarian society, or a the mosque etc.

I was married to my husband at the town hall. I would have liked to marry (or whatever you will like to call it) my boyfriend, too, but unless the laws change, we only have the options of continuing our common law marriage (which gives us few rights since my marriage overrules the common law marriage) or me divorcing my husband to marry my boyfriend. This is something we seriously consider, given that my boyfriend live abroad and would like to move here.
 
To my mind, a major problem is use by the Churchly of the term "marriage" in a deliberately propagandistic way:
  • you can be united before a judge or a justice of the peace
  • it is a ceremony, not a judicial transaction
  • this is legally the same as marriage, therefore it is a marriage
  • ceremony, particularly marriage, is NOT a place for the courts, & is exclusive Church territory
  • QED: the Church can freely weigh in on EVERY "domestic joining" in the United States
Hence, even the most atheistic of homosexuals who treat registering their domestic partnership in an entirely businesslike manner, as though they were applying for a building permit, are readily seen by the Churchly as having a GAY MARRIAGE that directly infringes upon the religious freedoms of All Right-Thinking Christians Everywhere.

IMO, the term "marriage" needs to be minimized, & "wedding" can go with it.
There is no difference between a marriage performed by state, church or view of life society.
The problem may be different elsewhere. I only address my experience in the United States, but you should acquaint yourself with our socalled "religious freedom" laws that grow every day.

Over here, common-law marriage popularly means a variety of things, some of them mutually contradictory. It is variously (mis-)taken to mean unmarried cohabitation, contract marriage, tribal marriage, & marriages that went through all the usual rigamarole but failed to file the certificate correctly. Only eight states continue to allow new common-law marriages to be established.

The rules as to what constitues a common-law marriage vary from state to state. It's rather detailed in Texas, but can be so simple as Rhode Island:
  1. the parties seriously intend to enter into the husband-wife relationship
  2. the parties’ conduct is of such a character as to lead to a belief in the community that they are married

Years back, I was told that the purpose of common-law marriage was intended primarily to protect women, in cases where
  1. a man showed every intent to marry, but died from illness or at war, &/or
  2. a man was using promises of eventual marriage to gain favors (sexual & otherwise)
I've long had the impression that common-law marriage has been being squeezed out of existence from two sides: the Church feels subverted by it, & there's less social pressure for marriage in general.

A major problem with common-law marriage is that there is NO simplified path for divorce -- most people think it just ceases to exist when they get separate apartments. :rolleyes: A rare upside of the standard wedding contract is that (largely thanks to the "no-fault divorce" revolution) the contract can often be ended for little more than filing fees. If you want to end a CLM, at least that level of formality is needed, & maybe a full-on trip through the courts.

...which kinda begs the question (again) as to how CLM is in any way better than filing the damned certificate. :confused:

Anyway, there's STILL no allowance in CLM anywhere for anything other than "one man, one woman" in this nation, & the likelihood of wording being expanded is approximately 0.00...%, so the point is entirely moot in any discussion of polyamory.
 
Only because this was resurrected:
That is the basisof some of the laws that make polyamorists nervous they could be hauled in for bigamy.
Y'know, I really have never heard this before. :eek: Being a widespread problem, I'm very interested in hearing more about this.

My thought, though, is that any given poly person is about as likely to be charged with bigamy as to have their house hit by a meteorite.

:D

In reality, there are MANY more charges that would be brought up by snarky local authorities, because there's just too much burden-of-proof necessity for bigamy. More likely they'll go after the height of your lawn, number of pets, zoning restrictions against any business dealings, residency numbers, number of vehicles associated with the house, sanitation codes, anonymous complaints from neighbors, or declaring you a de facto bawdy house or house of assignation or disorderly house (used to control some student-rented apartments around the University of Minnesota into the 1970s).
 
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To my mind, a major problem is use by the Churchly of the term "marriage" in a deliberately propagandistic way:
  • you can be united before a judge or a justice of the peace
  • it is a ceremony, not a judicial transaction
  • this is legally the same as marriage, therefore it is a marriage
  • ceremony, particularly marriage, is NOT a place for the courts, & is exclusive Church territory
  • QED: the Church can freely weigh in on EVERY "domestic joining" in the United States
Hence, even the most atheistic of homosexuals who treat registering their domestic partnership in an entirely businesslike manner, as though they were applying for a building permit, are readily seen by the Churchly as having a GAY MARRIAGE that directly infringes upon the religious freedoms of All Right-Thinking Christians Everywhere.

IMO, the term "marriage" needs to be minimized, & "wedding" can go with it.

The problem may be different elsewhere. I only address my experience in the United States, but you should acquaint yourself with our socalled "religious freedom" laws that grow every day.

Over here, common-law marriage popularly means a variety of things, some of them mutually contradictory. It is variously (mis-)taken to mean unmarried cohabitation, contract marriage, tribal marriage, & marriages that went through all the usual rigamarole but failed to file the certificate correctly. Only eight states continue to allow new common-law marriages to be established.

The rules as to what constitues a common-law marriage vary from state to state. It's rather detailed in Texas, but can be so simple as Rhode Island:
  1. the parties seriously intend to enter into the husband-wife relationship
  2. the parties’ conduct is of such a character as to lead to a belief in the community that they are married

Years back, I was told that the purpose of common-law marriage was intended primarily to protect women, in cases where
  1. a man showed every intent to marry, but died from illness or at war, &/or
  2. a man was using promises of eventual marriage to gain favors (sexual & otherwise)
I've long had the impression that common-law marriage has been being squeezed out of existence from two sides: the Church feels subverted by it, & there's less social pressure for marriage in general.

A major problem with common-law marriage is that there is NO simplified path for divorce -- most people think it just ceases to exist when they get separate apartments. :rolleyes: A rare upside of the standard wedding contract is that (largely thanks to the "no-fault divorce" revolution) the contract can often be ended for little more than filing fees. If you want to end a CLM, at least that level of formality is needed, & maybe a full-on trip through the courts.

...which kinda begs the question (again) as to how CLM is in any way better than filing the damned certificate. :confused:

Anyway, there's STILL no allowance in CLM anywhere for anything other than "one man, one woman" in this nation, & the likelihood of wording being expanded is approximately 0.00...%, so the point is entirely moot in any discussion of polyamory.
Ok. There are different laws everywhere. In my country, it is never illegal to have more than one partner, even where children is involved. There is a high profile in my country where the man has children with both women. They only worry if one partner is suffering somehow.

Sadly, getting married at the registrate is little more than signing a contract, which is why many even non-religious people prefer church weddings.

What "common law marriage" (we call it samboerskap - "together-living") means in my country, is simply that you live on the same registered adress, are not legally married to someone else and live together in a romantic/sexual relationship. Usually, you have the rights to registrer for joint insurance after 2 years of living together. After 5 years you get limited inheritance rights. If you want help getting pregnant, you can as a registrered couple (single women are not allowed). You have no duty to cover expenses for the person you live with, but you are obliged to cover expenses for your children or step-children. Usually, the father is registered as the father at birth, and gets parental rights from that. If the couple split up and have kids, they are obliged to go through a compulsory negotiation.

I was "together-living" 3 years before getting married. We had a contract, as reccomended by lawyers, basically it stated what we owned before we started living together and how we planned to split expenses.

I plan to "together-live" with my boyfriend when he moves here. We might be able to get some rights, like sharing Insurance. It really depends on the banks.
 
Surely, I can see the benefits of what I called communal education, as opposed to families that basically keep their kids under guard 24/7 with as little outside influence as possible.

But... well, there's this thing. ;)

In my experience, when someone of reasonable intelligence & of good heart begins to stray toward saying, "I'm not biased," they're generally wrong.

Straw man right off the bat, Raven. I didn't say I was unbiased. I even admitted I am not perfect.
Apologies if I seem to be putting you on the spot, Magdlyn, but you gave me a GREAT number. :eek:

The number 100, you mean? You love statistics, numbers, "odds." I am talking of children's spirits. We have come at the issue from differing viewpoints or goals so I don't predict any mutually agreed conclusions.
Sociological truism -- The very process of selecting people for a group is inherently biased, if it's non-random.

Given that the United States (per the 2010 Census) is 12.2% African American & Black, 7% indigenous peoples, 4.7% "Asian" (oooh, I detest that term...), & 16.3% Hispanic/Latino, how did the "like 100 families" stack up?

Sigh... does every school in the USA reflect the statistical breakdown of a nationwide mix of ethnicities and races?

At the time my kids were young, the area we lived in was mostly white. So the public schools would also have been mostly white. I know however, that blacks are statistically less likely to homeschool. It's probably economic. The school district I grew up in was mostly white. My first boyfriend however, somehow, was black. What do you know about that?
How many languages did the parents speak?

You are now asking ridiculous rhetorical questions. I did not poll them.

Was there a wide variety of political views in the households?

It was a secular homeschooling group. I reckon most tended towards progressive. But I did hang out with one family where the mom was rather a fundamentalist Christian. Also, my kids' dad's family of origin were fundamentalist and right wing, gods help them. The homeschoolers were not my kids' only social contact. Most of the classes they took, sports they played, and groups they belonged to were probably predominantly public schooled kids. We participated in an intergenerational choir for years where the kids were educated in different ways, "home," public or private schools. They also interacted with the adults in the group who had probably been in public schools and public or private colleges. They also played with their cousins and kids in the neighborhood. Homeschooled kids do not just interact with kids of their exact age group, 6-8 hours a day, as in regular schools. We even sang in assisted living centers for senior citizens. Again, straw man and assumptions about a topic you know little about. I do believe unschooled kids get more exposure to the "real world" of diverse cultures, ages, etc., than in the institution most kids grow up in. We did a lot more field trips than the average kid ever gets to do.

Did you have a good range of economic levels, maybe from "barely getting by" to "comfortably professional" (doctors, lawyers, engineers)?

Yes, some were well off and some had to stick to a tight budget to be able to have one parent home to work with the kids.
Then there's religion: In 2014, the U.S. was 25.4% evangelical, 14.7% mainline Protestant, 20.8% Catholic, 5.9% of non-Christian faiths, & 22.8% unaffiliated.

We had friends of many faiths. As a result, perhaps, my oldest is pagan (last time I heard), my middle is currently a born again Christian, and my youngest is atheist. We exposed them to other families of different faiths, and also to reading material on world religions. They even went to Sunday school occasionally with my in laws, and explored nature based faith (Wicca), Hinduism, native American culture, Judaism, etc., through the UU church. They learned of Buddhism and Shinto at home. They read about early Puritanism through history lessons and living museums. Not a problem, really. Religious studies are a field of interest for me.
We all have biases, we all have prejudices, we all have irrationalities.

All that we can do, those of us of good heart, is
  1. be as aware as possible of our personal biases
  2. remain aware that these are probably but the smaller portion & many more lurk, &
  3. don't let them push us around
That's why I try to be as kind as I can to people who think they "hate" homosexuals or coloreds or religious weirdos or polyfolk -- their very blindness prevents them from understanding that they are blind.

Not sure where you're going with this.
 
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This focus on homeschooling is interesting. We practically dont have homeschooling in my country, it is almost never done. Most people send their children to the local school, those who dont send their children to our countries very few private schools. My younger siblings went to Catholic school, which is almost the same as International school because there are just a few white faces. I spent a year in a Lutheran christian school, and I have gone to a Lutheran Christian "folk" school - but then I was pretty old, above 15.

I plan to either send my children to the local school, the Montessorri school, or the International school. I have never even considered homeschooling them. It sounds time consuming for me and lonely for the child. You know, most children are in kindergarten from the age of 1 and then in school the rest - when I was young I never went to kindergarten and would play with the kids in the street, now there are rarely any stay at home mums (the ones usually have very many kids or are sick) and no stay at home kids to play with.
 
you live on the same registered adress, are not legally married to someone else and live together in a romantic/sexual relationship. Usually, you have the rights to registrer for joint insurance after 2 years of living together. ... If the couple split up and have kids, they are obliged to go through a compulsory negotiation.
Clearly, the word "civilization" applies only in a loose sense to the United States. :( What you describe could indeed be a great basis for formal multi-adult & even multi-household commitments, & without Church standing grimly in the midst of it all.
 
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