orichalcum (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
orichalcum) wrote2004-05-20 01:33 pm
orichalcum) wrote2004-05-20 01:33 pm
Amusing and educational links of the day
Salon, on D&D video games.:
"Tom: Hey. You know what I always like about Dungeons & Dragons?
Jeff: What's that?
Tom: The complicated gradations of good and evil. You could make your character good, neutral or evil, but then you could shade it with "chaotic good" or "neutral evil" or "lawful evil."
Jeff: If only our leaders recognized such careful gradations. The Axis of Chaotic Evil is a much better way of looking at things.
Tom: Bin Laden is very much a chaotic evil figure. Lots of charisma points, though.
Jeff: How about Donald Rumsfeld?
Tom: I'm going to say lawful evil. How about John Kerry?
Jeff: Neutral good.
Tom: Ralph Nader?
Jeff: Definitely chaotic good. The bastard. "
Then there's a really good article on the whole "slippery slope" argument against gay marriage by Dahlia Lithwick on Slate. It again raises interesting questions in my mind about the issue of legalizing polygamous and polyandrous marriages:
So, I've discussed with people on this list before how, while I see nothing wrong with other people* having polyamorous relationships, I'm not sure that polyamory is compatible with marriage, for reasons that felt fairly incoherent to me.
*Just to make things clear, "people," for the purposes of this discussion, are defined as consenting, sane, honest adults.
Lithwick brings up several issues which I think are valid, beyond the traditional argument that polygamous marriages have historically frequently led to a serious power imbalance, often between older men and much younger women. This is true, but there is the obvious hypothetical of, say, 3 men and 2 women, all of roughly the same age and sexual experience, who want to have a happy, legally sanctioned family together. The argument that Lithwick makes against this is that the right to privacy sanctioned by the Supreme Court in cases like Griswold vs. CT (from which one of our marriage readings was taken) specifies a highly intimate, binary relationship. The idea is that it is personal, private intimacy which is beyond the government's control or scope. When you get to a love nest or 5 or 7 people, you may be in the range of the "right to assemble," but the privacy doctrine quite arguably doesn't apply.
Another logical argument to me deals with the specific kinds of rights which marriage gives, and which gay couples desire so urgently and justly. Let's take, for instance, the right to make medical decisions for one's spouse. If you have 4 spouses, the chances for exceedingly messy arguments and controversies is much higher. There's a strong advantage to simplicity in having _one_ other person who is primarily responsible for your welfare when you aren't available to decide yourself. In the Living Will I wrote after college, before traveling around the world for the year, it was necessary for me to set up a complex system in which at least 2 out of 3 of my immediate family members had to agree to, say, pull the plug, because I worried about the ability of all three people to agree on that decision. Now, I know that the person whom I trust and love most in the world will make those decisions, if ever necessary.
My final argument mostly comes down to cynicism, sadly. I think that one of the fundamental human emotions is jealousy. If you look, for instance, at the Ten Commandments (not bringing religion in here, but as an illustrative point), 3-4 of them are specifically about preventing or punishing jealousy or envy. None of the polygamous relationships described in Genesis seem to work out at all well - Rachel and Leah are jealous of each other, Sarah beats Hagar, David's kids by different wives fight. Compare this to Jacob and Rebecca, who have a great relationship as far as we can tell.
I'm not saying that there aren't generous, loving, forgiving people who could and do make permanent polygamous and polyandrous relationships work. But I think it's a huge gamble for society to officially sanction, because my guess is that the failures outnumber the successes in the long run. (As opposed to gay marriage, where I think that one of the leading causes for failure of long-term gay relationships is currently exactly the lack of formal sanction or commitment.)
Thoughts? My apologies if I offend anyone with these thoughts; they're my opinions, and, as stated before, I'm very much not trying to prescribe a lifestyle choice for anyone. Do what works for you.
"Tom: Hey. You know what I always like about Dungeons & Dragons?
Jeff: What's that?
Tom: The complicated gradations of good and evil. You could make your character good, neutral or evil, but then you could shade it with "chaotic good" or "neutral evil" or "lawful evil."
Jeff: If only our leaders recognized such careful gradations. The Axis of Chaotic Evil is a much better way of looking at things.
Tom: Bin Laden is very much a chaotic evil figure. Lots of charisma points, though.
Jeff: How about Donald Rumsfeld?
Tom: I'm going to say lawful evil. How about John Kerry?
Jeff: Neutral good.
Tom: Ralph Nader?
Jeff: Definitely chaotic good. The bastard. "
Then there's a really good article on the whole "slippery slope" argument against gay marriage by Dahlia Lithwick on Slate. It again raises interesting questions in my mind about the issue of legalizing polygamous and polyandrous marriages:
So, I've discussed with people on this list before how, while I see nothing wrong with other people* having polyamorous relationships, I'm not sure that polyamory is compatible with marriage, for reasons that felt fairly incoherent to me.
*Just to make things clear, "people," for the purposes of this discussion, are defined as consenting, sane, honest adults.
Lithwick brings up several issues which I think are valid, beyond the traditional argument that polygamous marriages have historically frequently led to a serious power imbalance, often between older men and much younger women. This is true, but there is the obvious hypothetical of, say, 3 men and 2 women, all of roughly the same age and sexual experience, who want to have a happy, legally sanctioned family together. The argument that Lithwick makes against this is that the right to privacy sanctioned by the Supreme Court in cases like Griswold vs. CT (from which one of our marriage readings was taken) specifies a highly intimate, binary relationship. The idea is that it is personal, private intimacy which is beyond the government's control or scope. When you get to a love nest or 5 or 7 people, you may be in the range of the "right to assemble," but the privacy doctrine quite arguably doesn't apply.
Another logical argument to me deals with the specific kinds of rights which marriage gives, and which gay couples desire so urgently and justly. Let's take, for instance, the right to make medical decisions for one's spouse. If you have 4 spouses, the chances for exceedingly messy arguments and controversies is much higher. There's a strong advantage to simplicity in having _one_ other person who is primarily responsible for your welfare when you aren't available to decide yourself. In the Living Will I wrote after college, before traveling around the world for the year, it was necessary for me to set up a complex system in which at least 2 out of 3 of my immediate family members had to agree to, say, pull the plug, because I worried about the ability of all three people to agree on that decision. Now, I know that the person whom I trust and love most in the world will make those decisions, if ever necessary.
My final argument mostly comes down to cynicism, sadly. I think that one of the fundamental human emotions is jealousy. If you look, for instance, at the Ten Commandments (not bringing religion in here, but as an illustrative point), 3-4 of them are specifically about preventing or punishing jealousy or envy. None of the polygamous relationships described in Genesis seem to work out at all well - Rachel and Leah are jealous of each other, Sarah beats Hagar, David's kids by different wives fight. Compare this to Jacob and Rebecca, who have a great relationship as far as we can tell.
I'm not saying that there aren't generous, loving, forgiving people who could and do make permanent polygamous and polyandrous relationships work. But I think it's a huge gamble for society to officially sanction, because my guess is that the failures outnumber the successes in the long run. (As opposed to gay marriage, where I think that one of the leading causes for failure of long-term gay relationships is currently exactly the lack of formal sanction or commitment.)
Thoughts? My apologies if I offend anyone with these thoughts; they're my opinions, and, as stated before, I'm very much not trying to prescribe a lifestyle choice for anyone. Do what works for you.
no subject
I would support legislation that allowed people to formally register a multi-person "group" in order to gain certain specific rights of family, such as hospital- and health-related stuff. In fact, I think that's an interesting idea that society should be thinking about in general, and not just for romantic relationships. There are many people out there who would, I think, ultimately find it just as important to have their friends able to be there with them, making those critical decisions, as their families. The definition of who is emotionally "family" is getting more fluid, and I think some laws could change to accomodate that.
To the extent that the power-imbalance argument sways me, it sways me in the opposite direction: let's legislate it so we can attend to and monitor it. I think we've had that discussion before. *shrug*
Prejudice and so forth.
I'm a bit icky with the idea of closely monitoring the power-imbalance situations, just because it gets too close to government interference in private personal lives. The vastly different experiences of poor and rich families with potential child neglect/abuse situations comes to mind here.
I definitely agree on being able to expand the definition of "emotional family," with perhaps a restriction on time-limits for knowing the person or something? Not disagreeing, but it's quite possible that I would have defined, say, my frosh year roommates as "emotionally family" fall of freshman year, and 9 years later, I don't plan to say hi to them if I see them at reunion.
OTOH, certain friends will be undoubtedly be called Uncle or Aunt by our kids, and those relationships will be very important. The advantage, though, of biological family is that you're less likely to lose permanent touch with them, or drift away, and you're likely to have at the least many shared experiences and views. Obviously this is not necessarily true. If, say, A. and I and all of our immediate families except our hypothetical 3-year-old were killed in a car crash, I'd rather have the kid be raised by very close friends than, say, distant cousins, and that's not cuz I don't like our cousins. It's messy. And to a certain extent, I'm not sure how much officialness and legality helps.
Re: Prejudice and so forth.
Yeah, to recap something I know I've said to you before--on the other hand, many folks' definition would include man-and-woman; whereas my definition is, people you're willing to elevate to a distinct and different level of importance in your life, and make a life-time committment to stay with. I don't pretend that that's not hard and complicated to do for more than one person (heck, even if I remain poly I don't *ever* expect to want to marry multiple people), and that's one of the reasons why it boils down to "too difficult to legislate" for me; but that said, humans clearly are capable of making that level of committment to more than one person. Kids, f'rinstance. (Damn it, does committment have one or two t's? Neither looks right, and I don't feel like looking up.)
*shrug* As I said--not my crusade, but that's where I come down on the issue.
If, say, A. and I and all of our immediate families except our hypothetical 3-year-old were killed in a car crash, I'd rather have the kid be raised by very close friends than, say, distant cousins, and that's not cuz I don't like our cousins. It's messy. And to a certain extent, I'm not sure how much officialness and legality helps.
Well, I think legalization would be specifically aimed at the situation you described there. That kind of thing.
But I absolutely agree with you on the idea that it shouldn't just be "sign your name on the dotted line and you've got new family forever." I envision something more like, you pre-register, and then a year or two later you confirm and it goes into effect, and then you have to meet up and re-register every five years or so. It could be really meaningful: like a marriage ceremony, and re-affirming your vows every five years, except not marriage, because a family committment, rather than a romantic one. I think that would be cool.
And I think it would speak to another thing that I *dis*like about our society, which is the increasing importance placed on long-term sexual relationships above all others, to the point that I think part of the reason there's so much slash out there is that people want to explore deeply emotional, committed relationships between men who are friends and comrades, and sex becomes the expected playing out of that. Bring back comrades and blood-siblings and what-not!
Eh, it's not a new rant, but it's one of my favorites.
Re: Prejudice and so forth.
no subject
I seem to remember that a vast number of people jumped all over a certain other lj-er when she insisted that the definition of marriage was one man and one woman. How is defining it as two people, but not more than two people, any less arbitrary? If all the parties involved as consenting adults... etc.
This has nothing to do with my personal comfort levels, in which marriage between two people of whatever gender seems like marriage to me, while a poly-marriage doesn't seem like marriage to me. It's a question of unambiguous justice. If the same standards are to apply to all consenting adults... the argument used to defend gay marriage... then the same standards must apply to all consenting adults... even the polybigamous Mormons, or whichever other group makes you twitch. (If they're involving kids, that's something else again.)
I personally think that the state should get out of the business of marriage, period. It should offer legally binding relationships for whomever wants them--man and woman, two men, two women, one man and a harem, bunches of people of both genders--with secular benefits. Let marriage be the province of the religions, and let each religion set its own rules.
I recognize I could have thought this out more, and it might not be optimally coherent, but I wanted to jump in.
no subject
Continuing the nicely reasonable and civil discussion...
So, the interesting question from my perspective is the conflict between being fair to people who want to get married to multiple consenting adults, and the benefit or disadvantage therein to society and social structures.
My current opinion, which, I should note, I'm not being dogmatic about, and am trying to work through with the help and commentary of ya'll, is that polymarriages are likely to have more disadvantages to societies than advantages, because I foresee a lot of quarreling between multiple spouses over the issues that normally the government likes to leave between a married couple (how to raise children, medical visits, inheritances, etc...).
I fully admit that I don't have any solid good evidence for this theory, having not done extensive research on, say, conflicts or harmony in Middle Eastern polygamous families, which in any case have some of the power imbalance issues mentioned earlier. If one could set up, oh, I don't know, Oregon as a control state to test such theories, it might be interesting, but the state tends to also be against psychological experimentation with humans.
To ask the "how does it hurt you" question popular with us fans of gay marriage, it obviously doesn't hurt me personally, except insofar as it probably makes my legal and tax system immensely more complex, as contrariety points out above. It's possible I might wind up as a minority in such a society, but hey, that's refreshing, and doesn't hurt me.
However, the lack of personal hurt doesn't mean that I can't theorize about what I think the general social consequences would be. As said above, the interesting aspect is whether I'd be willing to deny people the rights of (multiple) marriages and thus cause them personal harm, if I definitely knew that it would cause general social harm. The honest answer is that I'd want to know more, both about the specific group of people and the potential harm. But then, I'm personally in favor of requiring people to have some form of counseling or education before they have children, at least, so that might cover it.
The other issue with polymarriages on a widespread societal level, incidentally, is that it makes issues of accidental incest significantly more plausible. If you aren't sure who the father of a child is, his or her potential number of 1st cousins is enormous.
Of course, 1st cousins turn out not to hugely matter genetically, but still...that's another potential issue of general societal interest.
Certainly, in a society where we allow 16-year-old naive kids to get married, and mass murderers, one leans towards allowing such bonds for sane consenting adults. But I do have this feeling, maybe from being married, maybe from a variety of roommate situations, maybe from studying history, that society works better when the foundation is a binary bond. Obviously, there's also a strong difference between my own opinions and my willingness to enforce them on others.
Not that I rule the world, anyway. Cuz if I did, life would be cooler. And I'd have a puppy.