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wedrifid comments on Poly marriage? - Less Wrong Discussion
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My general view is there's nothing inherently wrong with poly (although it's not for everyone), and legal stuff shouldn't be used to prevent poly relationships. However, poly marriage is more complex.
Legalizing gay marriage is, in a sense, trivial. The transformation of the law to allow it is fairly straightforward.
But having some form of legalized poly marriage is rather more complex, and it seems to me those complexities largely arise from the fact that, when legalizing it, you have to choose whether or not marriage will be transitive. Regardless of which option you choose there, there will be some odd consequences.
Basically, consider this simple example: A, B, and C are married to each other. A and B want to divorce each other. Both want to remain married to C. What should the law do?
More fun: How should parental rights work in large poly marriages?
Joint tax filing?
etc...
I'm not saying these are unsolvable questions, but it's not a direct simple transformation of marriage the way legalizing gay marriage is. There's actual nontrivial stuff to solve/figure out/decide.
Basically, going from 2 to N opens up a larger space of possibilities.
Oh, incidentally, the notion of poly relationships has been advocated on LW several times.
That part should be easier. Base it off genetic testing with biases towards whichever of the two parents is the one that had the child burst forth screaming from their genitals. Further modify implementation of rights by discretionary judgements made in favor of the child's best interest. Basically, do exactly the same thing that the system should do now without the poly relationships being formal.
Hrm... not sure such a bias makes sense, especially in a group marriage where everyone was involved in raising the kids, for example. (Again though, I'm not saying these things are unsolvable. Just... there's a bunch of little things like that that would, in fact, have to be specified.)
(I'll avoid commenting here on the extent to which the system presently mucks things up, since that's outside the scope of the discussion.)