| Poly
activists are aware of relatively few situations
where a lack of relationship recognition
has had serious consequences for a family.
Robyn Trask of the noted polyamory organization
Loving More knows one family who was refused
the right to visit a partner in the hospital.
However, stories of acrimonious breakups,
for example, are fewer than one might imagine.
"Polyamory as
a lifestyle requires a commitment to principles
of ethics and responsibility in the first
place," says Valerie White, a lawyer
who is also the executive director of the
Sexual Freedom Legal Defense and Education
Fund and a founder of Unitarian Universalists
for Polyamory Awareness. "That means
that they presumably would also apply these
same principles to the process of breaking
up."
Trask suggests it might
be simply that such cases are resolved quietly
because "people try to work it out
without the courts. The courts aren't very
helpful."
"There are no precedents,"
agrees Jim Fleckenstein of the Institute
for 21st Century Relationships. "How
are they going to decide this stuff? I think
somebody who wanted to make a handsome living
as an arbitrator of such disputes could
do very well advertising themselves to the
alternative communities and solving their
problems without reporting to the courts."
|
 |
Trask says a lot of people she knows in
the poly community would like to be able
to get legally married. Certainly, Owen
would like to marry his partners if he could.
But is that option really
just around the corner like the conservatives
say it is?
"As a legal matter,
there's not a chance in the world that a
court in [Massachusetts] would decide that
since we permit same-sex marriage we have
to permit the marriage of three or four
or more people," says David Chambers,
professor emeritus of law at the University
of Michigan Law School. It's not that you
can't make a legal argument in favor of
poly marriage now, he says. It's just that
society isn't ready for it.
American University
Washington College of Law professor Nancy
Polikoff adds that concerns about Mormon
fundamentalism create complications for
poly advocates. "You can argue against
polygamy because it's embedded in this patriarchal
structure in a different way than same-sex
marriage is ... even though a casualty of
that argument may be relationships that
aren't grounded in patriarchy like the kind
of poly relationships you're talking about,"
she said.
[previous]
[2] [next] |
