Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: busy

Polyamory Is Love

Tags: gender studies, news
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  • 6 comments
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ysabetwordsmith

Yes...

ysabetwordsmith

February 20 2012, 19:23:54 UTC 9 years ago

A key thing that bothers me about this is: The government's only justification for nosing into people's private lives is to manage the overlap between private and public business. That includes things like shared property ownership, childraising, personal taxes, etc. Essentially, a society needs to know which adults are functioning as a social unit.

When a society refuses to acknowledge and support some of the social units formed by its citizens, this causes the problems that institutions such as marriage were devised to solve. Those problems then affect everyone who encounters those folks in an official capacity -- such as employers, realtors, lawyers, school staff, health care providers, etc. Right now we have a whole lot of family structures, only ONE of which is officially acknowledged. The result is a rat's nest of red tape, and a lot of needful things not getting done efficiently. This is disgraceful.
whuffle

Re: Yes...

whuffle

February 21 2012, 13:31:10 UTC 9 years ago

Very well said!

And yes, one of the things that bothers me frequently is that the so many of the arguments about whether or not to legalize alternative forms of union are predicated on the present day mores of Judeo-Christian faith. In a country that is SUPPOSED to have a complete separation of church and state, this is one topic on which we do a lousy job maintaining that separation.

Yes, there was once very good reason to exercise extreme caution when it came to who married and procreated together. In centuries past when we didn't entirely understand the genetics of procreation, ingraining the necessary rules into our religion to keep the genetics of the human race healthy was a reasonable solution, not unlike the purpose of Halal or Kosher laws. But in the present day when we do understand how inbreeding can create lethal genetics, we should be capable of legislating based on those needs, not on faith-based laws which should not be part of our governance of the population because not all of the population adheres to the same faith.

You're right; we do not have a way to separate our legislation currently so that it can accurately document more than one format of family structure. Given how common alternate family arrangements are becoming, that's an issue that we really need to address. But because it's wrapped around sex and intimacy, it's one that's going to be very difficult to bring out into the open. For a society that is loath to poke its noses into people's bedrooms, our legislation is like the white elephant sitting in the corner.