ajay:
Nice questions. Let me give them a shot:
a) spousal benefits. Approach 1: as with children. One of my co-workers has five of them. I have none. All five of theirs get covered anyway. Approach 2: set a dependent-limit, to include children and spouses, of no more than N. Approach 3: get a rational health-care system in this country and avoid the whole issue.
b) I think you may possibly be overestimating the number of people who'd want to actually marry legally and whether people who don't live together would want to marry (are there many monos who marry legally but don't live together?) I suspect more typical numbers would be 3-4 people married, possibly with nonmarital outside involvements as well. But in any case, yes, I think living arrangements would make a difference in any alimony/support decisions. If five live-out spouses are supporting the household of three live-in spouses financially, that should be taken into account. If Jill runs a hedge fund and supports all of them, then when she runs away with her hot young secretary and gets a seven-way divorce, she should have to support them in whatever way is typical in divorce cases. My sense is that lifetime alimony is getting to be a thing of the past, though, and it's more likely to be a brief "until they get on their feet" sort of thing.
c) tax allowances. I've always filed singly so I'm not an expert on the permutations of U.S. tax law, but the same discrepancies exist already with households with multiple dependents, filing singly, vs. jointly, "head of household" (whatever that means) and so forth. I think it would simplify things for every adult to have to file individually. If not, then whatever advantages or disadvantages accrue to marital status (I've heard it both as a marriage bonus and marriage penalty, depending on income level and income discrepancy) could be divided proportionately or via some sort of formula (N% per spouse). I feel sadly certain the IRS can come up with a way to do this and a nice new Schedule for it.
d) custody. possible approaches: 1. children are the offspring of the entire marital group. 2. children are the offspring of their genetic mother and father. 3. children are the offspring of whichever spouses are listed at birth as parents. Note that (1) provides an excellent reason why Jill might have only two spouses and four really good friends.
Unaddressed in all of this is the exact nature of a legal poly marriage. Does it mean joining a marriage-entity, or does each individual pair-bond have to be established separately? Are Jill's husband and wife each married only to Jill or are they married to each other as well? In the latter case, the bond would survive Jill's death (or Jill running away with her hot secretary); in the former case, not. Those would be different legal situations.
Earl @ 641:
Don't states which permit home-schooling generally have some sort of minimum-basic-skills mandate as to what the kids have to learn and some sort of testing mechanism?
That seems like a good approach.
Carrie:
Exactly. And try googling April Divilbliss sometime.
Bruce @ 632:
I think the Texas ranch is a somewhat different problem from the one they have on the Utah/Arizona border, where (as I understand it) the entire local government is effectively run by the FLDS. In Texas, self-evidently, the FLDS doesn't run the government and the government seems quite willing to be there to support anyone making a complaint. In those border towns (Hildale/Colorado City), there is no outside recourse at all other than the state governments, which finally seem to be making tentative stabs at reining in the FLDS with the Jeffs prosecution and the work they are doing with devolving property to private ownership (see here).
Carrie @ 630:
As you say, we already deal with medical decision-making with (for example) multiple children. You'd want to have medical powers of attorney, but those are practical for people other than polys as well - think about the Schiavo case. You could have people fill them out with the marriage license.
Unsplittable things are dealt with all the time in divorces: either the two parties come to an agreement about who gets it, or they sell the asset and split the money. The law should be able to handle the situation.
The anti-same-sex-marriage people have been fulminating about how it will lead to polygamy for years. I hope they're right.
Greg @ 624:
2004, 20 men were excommunicated and stripped of their wives and children, who would be reassigned to other men. 2005, eight men of the church were indicted for sexual contact with minors. 2005, Brent Jeffs filed charges that he was sexually molested as a child by members of his family. 2005, a number of "lost boys" say they were kicked out to reduce the competition among males for wives. 2006, the FBI named Warren Jeffs to their Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list on charges of sexual misconduct with minors. He was found guilty of two counts of being an accomplice to rape.
I think most of this other than excommunication could be covered under existing law:
- "stripped of their wives and children". Okay, sue in family court for custody and/or visitation. I suspect the courts would side with the father in this case on the grounds of wacko-cult membership by the mother. If an adult woman wants to leave to stay with her husband and the FLDS prevents her from doing so, it's kidnapping or unlawful restraint or somesuch.
- sexual contact with minors: plenty of laws about this, and it sounds like they were applied. I'm pretty sure FLDS doctrine doesn't actually support molesting male children.
- kicked out: child abandonment. Sue the parents. And that's perfect justification for taking those kids into foster care.
- Jeffs: the law worked to some degree, though it's interesting that the case involved a 19-year-old husband/rapist.
The problem is preemptively assuming all this will happen to every child in the FLDS. That's how I think Texas CPS overreached.
Let's try this for a comparison:
- many children have been molested by Catholic priests
- in some dioceses, there appears to have been a long-term conspiracy by the hierarchy to protect these priests from the law, cover up the abuse, and place them where they have the opportunity to continue their predation
- arguably, the doctrine of celibacy for priests is a contributing factor
Would it then be appropriate to remove all Catholic children from their parents, shut Catholic schools, etc., on the grounds that some number of Catholic children will in the future be molested by priests? And what if the government is populated by Hagee-like Christian fundamentalists, who deride Catholic doctrine, consider the Catholic church to be a wacko cult, and feel that teaching Catholicism to children is brainwashing them and training them to accept abuse?
I don't know that I want the government to be making those calls. In the FLDS case, I happen to agree that they're wacko cultists with nasty sexual/marital practices. But what happens when they come after some other non-mainstream religion that I consider perfectly harmless? (I think paganism with a poly element would be a top candidate for this sort of governmental interference, and poly is certainly a risk factor for having children taken away.)
albatross @ 625:
I think one place to start might be, what happens if one is allowed to simply marry a third person with all the same obligations/responsibilities/rights as the first two people share? What problems does this create other than the need to redesign some forms with more than two lines?
(Yes, this is simplistic. But I don't know what the "hard questions" people worry about are.)
elise:
Thanks for chiming in. You and Mike were certainly among the people on ML that I had in mind, but I didn't feel I ought to cite specific examples. (My rough count, without thinking too hard, is eighteen posters on ML that I know for certain are poly. I'm sure that number is low.)
My civil rights and existence are curtailed by the lack of acceptance and legal recognition for poly relationships. And on broken hearts - would I still be with ---- if it hadn't been for the pressures on the relationship caused by the need for secrecy because of the fear of losing her child? Being hidden away and having to pretend in public hurts.
abi @ 612:
It's not that I disagree with what you say needs to be done, and I think it's an even bigger problem in their home area where they actually seem to have governmental control of a couple of towns straddling state borders than it is in Texas.
But how exactly does one implement any changes in a way that does not become the government deciding what is a legitimate religion or not? Most people here, including myself, would probably agree that what they're teaching their children (or failing to teach their children) is repulsive, but how do you draw a qualitative line between FLDS and more mainstream religions? How do you prevent the abusive implementation of their beliefs without criminalizing the beliefs themselves? Outlawing polygamy doesn't prevent "spiritual marriages" and I don't think it should. (Nor do I think polygamy should be outlawed at all; leaving it outside the law enables this sort of abuse.) It needs to be something less subjective than "well, we think they're a wacko cult," since in the U.S. we have the constitutional freedom to be part of wacko cults if we want to and people have different definitions of what constitutes wacko. On a practical and constitutional level, how exactly does this work in a case like the Texas ranch?
As I said originally, I think Texas way overreached here, and it's probably going to be harder to do anything useful now than it would have been before.
PJ:
It's those wedding cakes. Sugar highs. Lots of mischief potential there. And champagne - tons of bubbles, frothing madly, corks popping, those little flutes. You could do yourself an injury!
Constance:
Is that supposed to be an answer? 'Cause it doesn't make any sense.
PJ:
I don't think these ladies have either birth certs or driver's licenses.
I think that making this statement means you haven't even read the article I linked to, and possibly not even my post. If you don't find the current agreement of:
the woman
her lawyer
the Texas courts
Texas CPS
the local media
that these documents exist, what can I possibly say to convince you?
albatross:
Yes, I've seen David's posts on raseff on the topic. But I've been following the case myself.
Constance:
You might try looking around you in fandom, for starters, where you will find any number of poly situations, many of which are of decades in duration. Or check out alt.polyamory. Or get to know the myriad poly persons on Making Light. Sure, not all poly relationships end happily, but plenty of monos split up painfully and unpleasantly too - should we also ban monogamous marriage? And is it really better to have no legal protection (alimony, child support, property rights, etc.) when a relationship breaks up?
Also: polyamory is not the same thing as polygamy. Polygamy (multiple marriage) is not exclusively one man/multiple women; it works the other way too. The assumption that it doesn't is sexist. (The term you want is polygyny, as opposed to polyandry.) Do you feel it's unjust for a woman to have several husbands? What if having three spouses enables a household to have one stay-at-home parent while the other two support the family financially? Do you think the state should step in to force one spouse out of the home and the stay-at-home parent into the workforce? How exactly is that protective or beneficial?
PJ:
It seems to me that giving a birth certificate and a driver's license ought to be sufficient to establish identity and age. A 27-year-old is not exactly a borderline case. The clothing seems to have a surprising color range, well beyond pastels (black dresses have appeared this week - goth FLDS?) and there are at least three distinct dress styles; the hairstyles vary quite a bit if you look at them. I'm still trying to figure out if they back-comb or rat their hair to get that look. (I use a rat, myself.) Yes, they may have been deliberately obfuscating their identities, but I'm getting a little reluctant to take Texas CPS's word on anything.
Marriage at 14 was legal in Texas until a couple of years ago. I think it's now legal at 16. Texas was not unduly troubled by married teenagers until FLDS moved in. I think if there were any under-16s in imminent danger of being married off, the state would be correct in stepping in. But I'm having trouble working out the imminent danger to, say, a three-year-old of either sex.
It's not an easy issue, since I think the religion is nutty and its being taught to children is brainwashing. But I'm very twitchy about having the government make that decision. Where does it stop? There are quite a few religions I don't approve of and think are nutty; if I worked for CPS, could I remove all children being raised in them?
Clifton:
How closely have you been following the case? Here's one blurb on the 22-year-old. (Her husband is 24.) The 27-year-old is mentioned in this article as one of the six "girls" acknowledged this week to be adults (along with two others last week, one of whom was the 22-year-old, I think.)
The standard for removing children from a home is supposed to be "imminent danger", and I don't see that that existed in the overwhelming majority of these cases, unless you consider religious brainwashing an imminent danger. (I'm willing to entertain that argument if you're willing to extend it to mainstream religions as well.)
Make no mistake, I think that marrying off teenagers to 40(plus)-year-olds is nasty, though I don't have anything against polygamy as a concept and don't find their beliefs unusually nutty in the context of religion in general. But I think that the idea that the state can decide that a driver's license and birth certificate are inadequate proof of age, declare a woman a minor, and force her into state custody is pretty scary too.
Stefan @ 563:
I don't much care for the FLDS, but Texas overreached in this instance. I think it's a dangerous to have the government deciding what religions are or are not inherently abusive, or prone to situations which make abuse likely - one could make the same arguments about any number of mainstream religions. And I think it's terrifying to have the government reclassify adult women as minors and force them into state custody.
Well, I signed up for it. I requested a private cabin so I have somewhere to go to preserve my sanity. (Most people are in big dorm-style cabins.) Of course, now I find out if I get in or get wait-listed, which would be a funny ending to all my angsting.
The dance style in question is Lindy hop.
I'm not particularly intimidated by dance classes; I've taken a few in my life. It's partly a social thing (I hate groups of strangers and am terribly shy in such groups) and partly the intimidation factor of an application form that asks for various types of experience for which I have to keep filling in "none". It's also just a step way outside my comfort zone (going from expert to beginner, whee!) which is good for me but also a little scary. I don't mind doing this for the odd class here and there (and do), but going off to camp and doing it for six straight days with no breaks in a group of strangers is a lot scarier. The only people I'm going to know are two of the instructors who probably don't remember me at all from one class four years ago.
But I must remember: the proper approach to a hangup is to dive right in and experience it. On the scale of Scary Things it's probably easier than a ferris wheel.
Ronit:
I was hoping people would say encouraging things, actually. :) I really shouldn't panic at the thought of going someplace new dancewise; it's irrational.
Terry @ #536:
I am so plagued by my imagination that I still suffer irrational fears of bees and ants induced by childhood exposure to The Swarm (book) and (blush) Empire of the Ants (one of the stupidest big-bug B movies ever). I think I should avoid it.
(Okay, the bee fear is not totally irrational - I have a bee sting allergy which has not yet gone anaphylactic, but I'm under orders to avoid getting stung since reactions tend to escalate with repeated exposure.)
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