This thread is devoted to discussing the following alternative U.S. Constitutional Amendment. If you wish to discuss any *other* possible amendments, please make a separate thread for it.

Proposed Alternative Federal Marriage Amendment:

"No person in the United States shall have more than four spouses. All marriages between any two persons already married shall require the written consent of any existing spouses to be valid. Any rights and responsibilities under marriage, that any State may establish, may not be construed to create unequal rights between spouses in any marriage."

Note, this differs from Islamic tradition limiting a man to four wives in that a wife may also have up to four husbands. Further, there may be no distinction between wifes and concubines, or primary or secondary spouses. Each wife or husband has the same legal status as any other in a given marriage.

Bellham

First, I don’t know how women feel about having multiple husbands, but I think any man who thinks he can handle more than one wife deserves what he gets.

Ethically and morally I don’t have any objections to this. However, it would be a litigious nightmare waiting to happen: think of multiple spouses being involved in divorce proceedings, child custody battles, inheritance fights.

Then again, maybe if we only allowed lawyers to have multiple spouses…

She could steal, but she could not rob

Each spouse can have up to 4 lawyers?

I notice the language is gender-neutral. Does that mean you can have gay marriage squared? I wonder what prez. Bush thinks about that

-- erin --

Wow, thought this little venture had died a silent death last week.

I specifically wrote the language to be as inclusive as possible, to accomodate everything from (tho I wasn't trying to highlight this) gay marriage to current Islamic practice.

The only real proviso was that each spouse had rights equal to any other spouse, and also veto power over the addition of any spouse (regardless of sex/orientation) to what is essentially a group marriage.

Yes, it's possible if two women and two men combine in one marriage, and it later breaks up, a man who stayed home to help raise the kids would not only have a possible case for alimony from his wives, but also his co-husband.

My purpose in phrasing all this so broadly was to raise the question of just where people decided the line really had to be drawn if, as seems the case, marriage as a custom is now up for renegotiation.

I could argue that polygamy could be destabilizing (typically, we'd expect a minority of men monopolizing a disproportionate number of women, and creating a larger class of single, disgruntled, males). Given that young males in the age range of about 18-34 represent both the prime marrying age *and* the prime age for probability of criminal behavior, do we really want to piss off this demographic?

Bellham

There needs to be some clarification to either explicitly prevent or allow string marriages for want of a better phrase. i.e. a string of group marriages such that A,B and C are married, but C is also married to D and E, who are married to F and G etc.

"There needs to be some clarification to either explicitly prevent or allow string marriages"

Yes, my intent was to limit marriage arrangements to include up to five persons, but no more. Implicit was that if A and B are married, and A wants to marry C, B would also become a spouse to that marriage, for a total of 3 persons in one marriage.

Perhaps "All spouses in a marriage are considered spouses of all other participants. All marriages involving persons already having one or more spouses shall require the prior written consent of those spouses to be considered valid parties to the marriage" would be clearer.

In effect, this provides for a form of group marriage in the legal sense; even if one muslim man takes three wives, they are all considered equal spouses before the law. I'm trying to make a definition that is emcompassing, or at least indifferent to the legal statuses of traditional (both monogamous and polygamous) marriage arrangements. At the same time, I'm trying to ensure something like an equal protection clause for marriage, which is relatively novel.

Also, this means that any member of a marriage has veto power of the addition of any other members (monogamy is effectively enforceable for anyone who wants it by this provision alone).

Bellham

I'm sure that if we had two different words for 'religious marriage' and 'civil union' the whole problem would just go away...

In the UK Marriage = Civil Union

If you get married in a church, you have to have a court appointed registrar there to record the marriage, otherwise you aren't actually married.

In Holland, you must get married by a JoP first. You may have a church service afterwards, but unless you've been to see Da Man (or woman in my case...actually, I'm pretty sure she was a Wookie), the church service doesn't count.

This post brought to you by Tyson Foods. It's what your family deserves

Similarly in France. Church and state separation = good.

Kradlum - you are not quite correct: Marriage is a 'superset' of civil union i.e. one can be civilly unified (sic) without participating in a religious marriage ceremony, whereas a religious ceremony as you point out has no weight by itself. But even so, the situation in the UK is that 'civil unions' and 'religious unions' both use the same word.

My point is that if they didn't, we would have less of a problem since it seems fair for gays to get civilly unioned (as described above) whilst allowing individual religious establishments the right to choose whether to conduct religious marriage ceremonies for them.

Couldn't resist the Update.

Spousal Benefits for Gays at U.N. Challenged.

Sexual Politics makes strange bedfellows:

"A bloc of more than 50 Islamic states, backed by the Vatican, sought today to halt U.N. efforts to extend spousal benefits to partners of some gay employees."

The proposed new policy:

"A marriage recognized as valid under the law of the country of nationality of a staff member will qualify that staff member to receive the entitlements provided for eligible family members."

And this bit was especially news to me:

"The United Nations has recognized polygamy, a common practice in the Islamic world, as a legitimate form of marriage and permits employees to divide their benefits among more than one wife. But the decision to expand that right to same-sex partners has fueled intense opposition."

So even at the U.N. a guy can have two wives, but not one husband. Curiouser and curiouser.

Bellham
~Arguing principle from convenience is no principle at all.~

quote:

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Originally posted by JohnBellham:
So even at the U.N. a guy can have two wives, but not one husband. Curiouser and curiouser.

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Unless your country supports legally same sex marriages. Those decadent Europeans...

José

...and of course, he's *certainly* not allowed two husbands :P

From 'Furthermore' at Wired News:

quote:

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Britain is poised to do what the United States remains unable to do: extend the right to marry to gay couples.

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Decadent Europeans indeed.

________
You have to give up.