Speak Out : Plural Marriages?
(This post was written by a member of A4A, if you wish to write an article, please submit to blog at adam4adam dot com)
Since the recent Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage, the conservative religious crowd is now beginning to suggest that it is only a matter of time until plural marriages will be the law of the land too. One religious sect practiced plural marriages in 19th century America until laws were enacted to prevent those marriages. Now there may be a resurgence and judicial review to remove the obstacles to plural marriages.
Looking ahead to later years, we may find ourselves accommodating three or more heterosexuals, gays, or lesbians who are legally bound by marriages throughout the land! The marriages may or may not be of the same gender. Picture a large family arriving at an amusement park with four males, no females and ten children. OR maybe it will be three males, two females, and 14 children. In the latter case the two females would be responsible for giving birth to possibly 7 children each and possibly sired by all three males in the family.
As a gay male, can you imagine the possibilities of accommodating a variety of sex partners within a plural marriage and daily servicing each of them? If you agree, you could get lots of variety without having to surf the net. Would there be a problem if one of the males said that he had already been seeded earlier that evening and was not ready for a remount? Would that lessen the importance of hookups?
DAVID M in Texas
What you’re describing is basically a few fuck buddies hanging out together who now have kids. I can’t imagine something like that being healthy. It lends too quickly to a commune mentality and that never ends well. When you make comments like [paraphrase] “if one of your husband’s is worn out because he’s already been seeded you have others there” it just makes me feel like the relationship is a bathhouse and why would you bring children to the bathhouse? Polygamy might work; royal families of the past had many wives and heirs but I just don’t see it being widely accepted anytime soon. Maybe in 100 years or so.
I do hate this argument. While I will never argue against someone and their rites to have multiple partners I draw the line at this. Not because I find it morally wrong but what if a spouse were to have a life threatening accident. (For sake of simplicity let’s say a 3some partnership) one says “I want to pull the plug” and the other does not! What then? What about tax breaks for having all these children. Would that mean all three + partners get these tax breaks? Even if one does not biologically or have rights to the child? And I don’t care what anyone says… Legally speaking… There can only be two parents to a child (worked in legal child services for a long time) it’s just not feasibly possible at the end of the day. More I could write but I want to see other comments. Oddly enough this is the first post I’ve ever responded to.
You actually think this would be a good thing? Stunning. And people wonder why out society is in such moral decay. Well, marriage stopped swirling the bowl and finally went down the drain anyway. Why not just keep kicking it while it’s down. Stunning.
It will get nuttier and nuttier, then we’ll marry dogs, cats, plants, horses,, converting back to ancient tribes who worshipped the sun, moon, stars…slippery slope to la la land.
OMG!
It is hard enough with just one person much less two or three more!
Imagine the litigation of divorce that will happen(and it will)? The court battles would be enormous! I for one hope that does not happen…we gay males have a problem being true to just one person much less three!
Prenups anyone???
For me, the SCOTUS decision was more about equal rights than the privilege of getting married. It took me two failed marriages to females for me to realize that I was marrying the wrong gender. I can thank my religious upbringing for those fiascoes.
Now, that I have finally accepted that I’m gay and that is OK, I have no plans in my future to marry again. I am enjoying the having NSA sex with multiple sex partners. I have a great deal of slutting around to catch up on.
From my perspective, we already have plural marriages. Currently, they are sequential marriages. I know this one lady who is on her seventh husband. She is still in her thirties too!
So, people are going to do what they need to do to satisfied their basic needs, to have sex. That can be doing as I am doing and slutting around or marry every Tom, Dick, and Harry that comes along.
Well said!
The first part of this article already suggests a bias. As a minority I have noticed many minorities do not support gay marriage. That said the intentional targeting of conservative religionists is misleading. True they oppose gay marriage but they are by far not the only ones. Now on to plural marriages…. Anybody with common sense knew this was next on the list. Gay people had their 5 minutes of fame and now it’s the polygamists turn.
Well, apparently marriage is merely a social construct who’s only boundaries and stipulations are what we choose to make them. So why not multiples?
Why did this go from marriage to sex? Why is it always about sex with gay men?
What would be the point of marriage altogether if you end up being able to marry anyone else you want?
This has to be one of the stupidest posts I’ve ever seen anywhere. This is why people hate us.
enough already!!! and so monogamy goes a little deeper to hell….and the example you gave—-i’m sure it already has ‘been there done that’ before. specially with all the sluts and man-whores around.
No offense, but this is absurd. Gays didn’t win the right to be married because the definition of marriage was somehow flawed. They (We) won the battle for equal marriage rights because we love people of the same gender. Not multiples, not minors, not animals, and not inanimate objects. Two people who love each other can now marry each other, and it is NOT a challenge to the traditional idea of marriage as the joining of two people.
The SCOTUS has already ruled that polygamy is not protected, and can be outlawed by the individual states.
There are no significant efforts to further modify the marriage laws, and “news flash” – gay churches have been marrying gay couples for decades – the change is that they’re now legally binding and legally recognized by the state.
This kind of rhetoric is usually spouted from right-wing sky-is-falling zealots who are freaking out that people unlike themselves are being recognized as “normal”.
Chip
My ancestors were members of that sect (and most of my family are still practicing members) and I have a great-great-grandfather who had three wives, along with several other extended family members who practiced plural marriage. As tempting as it is to look at the situation and see variety as the big plus, the reality is that it’s hard to maintain.
In the case of the 19th century Mormons, there was a sexual relationship only between the man and each of the various wives, but the wives each had a relationship with each other wife. If those were harmonious, friendly relationships, then that boded well for the family.
This would become more complicated if there are multiple sexual couplings in the mix. If you have two men with two women, and all are sexual with each of the others (assuming bisexuality for all four), you have six potential ‘couples’ plus the potential threesomes, and the foursome. While it sounds exciting, it’d be hard to keep everybody happy.
Is it coming? Possibly. But I’ll probably be happier just trying to maintain a single romantic relationship. That’s challenge enough for me!
I have watched the Mormons on tv with there brudes of kids and homes. The husband usually works, but the wives will work as needed as well to make the marriage viable financial wise. I know it has been around for years with the Mormon lifestyle. It basically looks like with so many wives available, the man is making his own village (family) The women never look happy in these types of shows I have viewed, and I know it is all they know, but I wonder if they think about singular life with just one man and a woman. Must be a lot of pressure with finances and raising so many children. That is my thoughts on this lifestyle.
Lets try to succeed in one on one relationships first before we they to make it even more complicated. Yes we gays are usually ahead of trend, but maybe its time to slow down just a bit. Just saying.
One it will never happen, two the courts will not allow this blasmame at all. I’m down for same sex marriage BUT… I’m not down for polygamy. I’m a lds but my church has turn around what happened hundreds of years ago, but this will never happen.
Since when a marriage has stopped a man or a woman from cheating or satisfied all the needs of a sexual gay man from looking outside of it for a challenge or fresh meat. Marriage has become a living arrangement for convenience. So a plural marriage is not a solution but more like a potential problem down the line for any body gay or straight that desire constant sexual excitement from the same people over and over again. I don’t think plural marriage equate more sex or more commitment from multiple spouses. If one likes to have sex with multiple partners then why getting into a marriage much less a plural one.
What works for some does not work for others. If the adults all consent to it then more power to them.
Well… as I saw on a sign in support for gay-rights marriage, “ALL love is right” and another one said… “You cannot tell me who to marry and who not to marry!” So, what do you do now? I’m afraid we are in for some major problems with the religious sects and others who promote this alternative “marriage life-style”.
I’ve talked to many straight people who are against gay marriage for this reason alone. They said it wouldn’t stop here and idiot posts like this just prove them right. I agree with Ivan, this is why they hate us.
Must be a slow discussion day for the site if we’ve jumped to this so soon after legalizing gay marriage.
i’d disagree outright. marriages these days is more a business arrangement for the tax breaks than it is a union of souls as marriage was originally intended for. add to that the vows are false lip-service now a days compared to my grandparents generation. “till death do us part” i’ll believe that when i see a couple that’ together thru the good, bad, and nightmarishly ugly.
I’m really surprised at how many men on this site are suddenly appalled at the “moral degradation of society” at the suggestion of polygamous marriages. Holy crap. To many still, same-sex marriages are still “moral decay”, yet I am sure none you agree with that stance. Admittedly, the logistics of a 3-way or more-way marriage could get somewhat complicated, but some cultures have had polygamy for centuries, so there’s obviously a path through it. I believe if a triad truly love one another, they’ll work it out amongst themselves. Just like same-sex marriages don’t impact the sanctity or legitimacy of opposite-sex marriages (which is what I think makes any claims of our moral degradation of marriage inane), why the hell do any of you think that a polygamous marriage somehow negatively impacts you if you’re not in one? Geez… talk about hypocrisy!
Now is the time to celebrate our rights and take a step back and let everyone regroup and come together as a country. give our opponents time to realize gay marriage is not a threat to them. We have our civil rights now stop the attacks on all sides. After all, we are ONE nation!
When the same-sex marriage hearings we’re held during the Clinton administration, the repubs quickly derailed it by interjecting that bisexuals would claim a right to plural marriage, and that bestialists would claim a right to marry their pets.
Let’s not forget that marriage, in the legal sense, was created to insure the orderly transfer of assets and property.
Priests can’t marry cuz the pope doesn’t want anyone being able to claim his basement full of treasure.
Most of us can’t even keep one man happy for an extended period.
As gay men are we never satisfied? We already have a bad rap for a supposed “agenda”. Articles like this piss me off. Why stir up more shit? And the writer OF COURSE has to end with sex. Some gay men are truly pathetic.
I really would prefer that this topic not be brought up at this time. The last thing we need is to lend any substance to the argument made by slippery-slope-sky-is-falling conservatives who are convinced the country is going to hell in a hand-basket because of all the “wicked, evil things we are doing” (See: Pat Robertson). Note: The U.S. may be going to hell, but it’s because we are selling our government to the oligarchs by voting for the candidates they sponsor and control.
Contrary to the belief of opponents, the marriage equality battle was/is not about having sex. It’s about same-gender-loving persons being recognized as equal in the sight of the law, and ultimately, in the eyes of our society. It is important because while gay and lesbian persons are a minority, we are a significant minority — larger than the majority realizes (or will admit). The rights were finally acknowledged because they were fought for and won.
By contrast, the number of people who desire plural marriage is infinitesimal. If they want legal recognition, let them fight for it. I doubt that will happen.
In a word, ABSURD.
All the sex(a myth)and slut shaming aside, at the end of the day, legally, marriage is a business arrangement, for culmination of property and children who would usually fall under the domain of a patriarch. One of the reason polygamy was outlawed was due paternity rights concerning children, and who had the right to inherit what property,wars and family feuds were started throughout modern and ancient history over this. Personally, I think people should have the right to do what makes them happy, but it makes me jealous because I can’t even get and keep one boyfriend let alone two or three.
The whole uproar over marriage equality can be traced back to imprecision with terms. It used to be that unions of people happened only in churches and they were called marriages. Marriage was solely a religious term. The government did not perform marriages. When the government performed civil unions–the correct, non-religious term, people called them marriages instead of civil unions. For the tax code, civil union should have been the legal term for all unions be they religious or government performed. Same-sex marriage would have been legal LONG ago had it been seen as a civil union and not a religious marriage. Three way marriages make a lot of sense for gay men. My father is married to his husband and they have a third partner who is a couple years younger than me who is very much a part of the marriage yet he is not married to them.
Marriage, gay or straight, one. What is wrong with someone who wants more than one marriage partner? I agree with jay, you can’t find a decent boyfriend. One who believes in love, kindness, respect and consideration. I’m not gonna put up with their stuff. Oh they think you will but not me. So one marriage. Dedicate yourself and everything in you to getting it right. But the other person has to make the same effort.
This sounds more like a circus than marriage that you are dreaming of.
18 years later the kids would all be totally messed up, if they were not swinging from high bars and running around like clowns.
This is an interesting topic. First though we need to remember both the original purpose of marriage and what it was not. Marriage was not about having sex. Marriage was not about monogamy. Marriage was not about a commitment to a deity. Marriage was not about tax purposes (after all marriage predates the state and the concept of taxes). Marriage was not about only being married to one person. Today most of the original intention of marriage has been lost due to Christians forcing their viewpoint on marriage, morals, and ethics at sword point in the past… thus we have the lingering effects of their forced religion, morals, and ethics in society today.
The function of marriage is primarily based on property rights and secondarily based on inheritance rights. The entire point of marriage was to make a public statement that your assets are jointly owned and that you are working together for your joint benefit. Secondarily, marriage was for producing (or adopting) an heir. Therefore, group marriages are essentially an extension of the primary purpose of marriage.
In the future I think that group marriages would further strengthen society because it has many benefits. Group marriage would add economic strength to a family due to having more working adults in the family units. When producing or raising children, it would make it easier for one of the partners to stay home and raise their children. You wouldn’t have to rely on strangers to care for your children or rely on the state to educate your children. I believe that marriage would become more appealing to people, if you removed government from the entire process of marriage. A lot of the problems surrounding marriage today is due to the government meddling in peoples’ personal lives.
hey, #lovewins. Right? I mean who are we to judge and get in the way of other finding happiness? We just won our rights and already many of us want to deny it to others.
To all you self loathing homos that have a problem with plural marriage because of morality, please step the fuck off your holier than thou high horse and see that your love is not the only love. That we shouldn’t prevent multiples from marrying simply because “what if someone wants to pull the plug and the other one doesn’t” even though that is something we could easily work around. Fuck your idea of what marriage is supposed to be, because you seriously can’t fathom the beauty of what it is to be poly. To call a poly relationship “a bunch of fuck buddies that want to have kids” is small minded in the least. I would think that a gay forum would be more understanding of alternative forms of love. This is not depravity. These are consenting adults that choose to love each other. Whether the number be two adults, or five, you have no idea what a couple’s dynamic is. I seriously thought that more of my community would understand that heteronormativity AND marriage are social constructs. That our perception of love has been confused by ignorant JUDGEMENT. I am so fucking disappointed at these comments. Open your damn hearts and stop judging others. Just because you were born with the socially acceptable amount of parents doesn’t mean that multiples are wrong about wanting to raise children. What an idiotic thought. Fuck your idea of what love should be. So long as it’s consenting, and it isn’t taking advantage of anyone’s innocence, then we’re good!
Good comments, Frank! I agree whole heartedly. The amount of ridged thought and, dare I say, self loathing is frightening.
I’ve been with my husband for 12 years married three. We’ve had another person lived with us for the past eight. We didn’t sleep together some 90 sleep so I will make some tight he sleeps me sometimes I sleep in the other room. We don’t have kids YET. If and when we choose to have kids then would be one big family. We are not legally married but he’s considered our husband.
I don’t understand why people want to judge just because we want to hug and love someone else at the same time hugging and loving someone else so you’re saying that our heart can’t go out and be spread love to everybody
This is total BS! Gays already mock marriage. We want equal rights, but want to have them under different rules. Marriage is a commitment between 2 people. Gays want their cake and eat it too. Then throw it up in the bathroom. If ur married and are having extra marital affairs. That’s called cheating, HELLO!