Poly Next?

[warpus]

My point is that if adultery is illegal, then it's not possible to legally sleep with anyone besides your legal spouse. I think Narz meant polygamy, since you're right, polyamory isn't a legal thing, except that within a marriage it's illegal if adultery is.

Yeah, his use of polyamory threw me off - I looked it up and it means "multiple people loving eachother" or something similar, and doesn't seem to be necessarily related to marriage.

How could adultery be illegal by the way? If two married people choose to make their marriage open, can't they do so? Is this a weird "in some states only" American thing? Or maybe I just don't understand the concept of marriage or something?

 

[LucyDuke]

There's a reason I keep mentioning the question of its legality. It's definitely a legal question in more than the USA. See: middle east.

 

[bhavv]

How about forced marriages between straight and gay people of the same gender?

I choose ... wait, polygamy too ..... Snerk and Narz.

 

[downtown]

I don't think it will in the near future, but who knows? It's not like there's a real, sympathetic, politically organized group advocating for it though.

 

[warpus]

There's a reason I keep mentioning the question of its legality. It's definitely a legal question in more than the USA. See: middle east.

I suppose. I assumed that most western nations stay away from the bedrooms of married couples. Their relationship should be one that they decide on, however they see fit to define that. I was also under the impression that open marriages are common enough in the U.S., so I didn't imagine there'd be legal blocks to setting up such types of marriages/relationships.

So.. what legal road blocks are there in place in the U.S. that would prevent a married couple from having an open marriage?

And I didn't consider places like Saudi Arabia, because their laws are whack... and sexist.. and all that.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I suppose. I assumed that most western nations stay away from the bedrooms of married couples. Their relationship should be one that they decide on, however they see fit to define that. I was also under the impression that open marriages are common enough in the U.S., so I didn't imagine there'd be legal blocks to setting up such types of marriages/relationships.

So.. what legal road blocks are there in place in the U.S. that would prevent a married couple from having an open marriage?

And I didn't consider places like Saudi Arabia, because their laws are whack... and sexist.. and all that.

There are no road blocks to having as much sex outside of one's marriage as one wants; the problem comes with taxes, inheritance, ownership, divorce, paternity etc.

 

[LucyDuke]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adultery#United_States

Apparently it's a felony in five states. Penalty of life imprisonment in Michigan. These are antiquated laws but they are laws.

 

[Birdjaguar]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adultery#United_States

Apparently it's a felony in five states. Penalty of life imprisonment in Michigan. These are antiquated laws but they are laws.

Adultery remains a criminal offense in 21 states, although prosecutions are rare.[140][141] Massachusetts, Idaho, Oklahoma, Michigan, and Wisconsin consider adultery a felony, while in the other states it is a misdemeanor. It is a Class B misdemeanor in New York[142] and Utah, and a Class I felony in Wisconsin.[143] Penalties vary from a $10 fine (Maryland)[144] to life sentence (Michigan).[145] In South Carolina, the fine for adultery is up to $500 and/or imprisonment for no more than one year [South Carolina code 16-15-60], and South Carolina divorce laws deny alimony to the adulterous spouse.

 

[Commodore]

About the only part that made any sense whatsoever was South Carolina denying alimony to an adulterous spouse. It's kind of hard to ask for a spouse to compensate for the loss of living standard resulting from a divorce if you're the one that caused the divorce.

Of course, if I ran the world, the whole concept of alimony would be scrapped anyway, so maybe I'm a bit biased.

 

[JollyRoger]

Why wasn't that adulterous Governor prosecuted in South Carolina?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Allowing same sex marriage affects no other laws. Any law that has the word "spouse" in it, be that tax code, divorce and family law, contracts with insurance companies regarding "group" coverage for "the employee and their spouse", right to refuse to testify against spouse, probate law covering people who die without a will but with a spouse, on and on and on; none of that changes just because we now have wider options on who might be the spouse.

On the other hand, if you allow a person to have more than one spouse every one of those laws, others I can think of, undoubtedly a bunch someone else could think of, and the really problematic bunch that no one would think of until they created a rat's nest of interpretation problems, would have to be updated. That is an entirely different world.

If you want a loving relationship among multiple partners to have some sort of legal status, just incorporate.