DIY Families

It's always fun when I find the hook for one blog while researching another.

The late James Dobson, evangelist and leader of "Focus on the Family", was viciously homophobic, as you might expect. In researching my last blog I was confronted with nasty anti-gay propaganda everywhere I looked. But it was the mildest quote that hit me hardest:

 His usual audience gasps. "Any combination thereof! Shame! Shame! Sinner!" And I'm here shrugging and saying "he's not wrong. So when can we have group marriage, already?"

Before 2005, to be married in Canada you had to meet five conditions having to do with: 

• Number (two only)
• Sex (opposite)
• Age (16 with a judge's permission, 18 without)
• Consanguinity (a five dollar word prohibiting close blood relatives from marrying each other
• Consent (you obviously can't marry someone against their will)

In 2005 it became legal for two men or two women to marry. I was best man for my closest friend's wedding that year; he and his partner travelled two thousand miles to be in a place where their union was legal. 

That couple is still married today, albeit living in the United States. As of 2021, the most recent date for which data is available, there were 117,640 same-sex couples in Canada. About one third of them (33.4%, or 39,292 couples) are married. About 12% of same sex couples (14,117) have children living with them. 

Traditional one-man, one-woman marriage still exists (of course). It needs to be said because opponents of  same-sex marriage unfailingly blared that if we allowed men to marry men and women to marry women, marriage as a whole would collapse, families would collapse, society would collapse, and our entire galaxy would shove itself into a black hole forthwith. Of course they could never explain how all this collapsing would happen. I asked quite a few of them; the mere question marked me as an enemy, a heathen, hellbound.

It's been over twenty years. Society may well be collapsing but I don't think 1.1% of Canadian couples are responsible. 

And even James Dobson suggested that if gay people could get married, there was no reason to stop groups of people from marrying. He was correct.

Look at those five conditions again. Note the conditions that actually pose a danger to the couple and to society:

AGE. Adults cannot marry children, nor can children marry other children. This is eminently reasonable since children are too young to consent.

CONSANGUINITY. Study the royal families of Europe to see why this condition's here: incest has ugly physical, mental and emotional consequences. It is of course assumed that people who marry will engage in intercourse, if not produce children. I would argue that assumption is not valid in all cases, but concede it is in most, (and how do you prevent it? Marriage between relatives is okay as long as both are sterilized?) Naw. Just admit this is a reasonable precaution. 

CONSENT. I have consistently stated I am strongly opposed to any structure of relationship that does not include consent. THIS INCLUDES the scenario most people seem to imagine when they hear the words "group marriage:" one 'alpha' male and his harem, the harem usually being much younger....often violating the AGE principle. 

So these are all problematic. How is NUMBER likewise problematic?

It is so only if we're talking about Mormon-style polygamy, Joe Smith and his child-wives. But even that's a function of AGE (too young) or CONSENT (often manufactured where it exists at all). 

Ensuring these kind of relationships are NOT permitted would be the responsibility of the court.

Yes, the court. I won't force churches to recognize something they're manifestly uncomfortable with. And in some cases I wouldn't trust churches

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I was not in a group marriage. I was not married to Mark. 

Eva was not in a group marriage either -- that would have been illegal -- but she considered herself married to both of us and so did we. I officiated the commitment ceremony after careful research about what I could and couldn't say. (That ceremony took place in our home; a public ceremony would have been a legal grey area I was keen to avoid.)

In polyamorous terms, we were a "non-hierarchical cohabitating MFM vee." 

Non-hierarchical: neither relationship was considered more important

Cohabitating: we lived in the same house

MFM: the gender makeup of the arrangement, this also shows Mark and I were not partners (or it'd be MMF)

Vee: emphasizing Eva's position as the "hinge" partner

This is one form of polyamory. There are dozens....some people say there are as many kinds of polyamorous relationship as there are polyamorous people in relationships. If you want to discard all the terminology, you can just call it a 'DIY' or 'chosen' family and leave it at that.

Now ask yourself: are chosen families any more or less valid than the families we are born into? If not, why not?

Under current Canadian law (Section 293 of the Criminal Code), Canadians are prohibited from engaging in "common-law relationship[s] with multiple partners simultaneously if the relationships involve a conjugal aspect". If the law had ever come for us, we could have simply (and truthfully) stated that only one common law relationship existed, between Eva and Mark...but the law likely never would have come for us, because it focused on cases where coercion and lack of consent existed. 

So we were (probably) home free. But ours is merely one possible configuration. There are triads, quads, and more exotic structures out there that likely would run afoul of the law...and I can think of no good reason why they should.  Provided, again, that all parties consent (which is a defining requirement of polyamory in the first place). 

Why is this necessary? It isn't, to many polyamorous people, just as there are many homosexual couples who choose not to marry. Yet marriage is an option for those same sex couples who do choose it, and I believe it should be an option for people like us.

How many people are like us? A surprising number. One in five people have practiced some form of ethical non-monogamy. Now, just as with gays, only a fraction of a fraction of that one in five would ever consider multiple marriage. As a percentage of all couples, it might be as low as 1.1%....which is the number of same sex married couples. 

Marriage confers certain benefits, from an advantageous tax structure to legal hospital access to issues surrounding death. There is also the emotional benefit inherent in saying to the world: this relationship matters. I commit to this person.

You can finagle your way into something resembling some of these benefits, and Eva and Mark did, But only some, and those only because our relationship structure was what it was.

Children would have complicated things immensely.

If you read the article linked above, you may be surprised to find some polyamorous people have children. The people who fixate on sex are of course disgusted and again I find myself incredulous at how any non-traditional relationship is IMMEDIATELY sexualized. Do traditional couples have sex in front of their children? Of course not. Neither do gay people and neither do polyamorous people. Eva used to say that our family was "99% just like yours, and 1% is none of your business". That cuts both ways: your sex life as a monogamous people is equally none of my business. But it's amazing how many people immediately think orgy orgy orgy. Hell, there are ASEXUAL polyamorous peeps. 

These poly families with children have had to fight for legal rights on a case by case basis. In both Newfoundland and British Columbia, judges have granted that three people can be named as parents on a child's birth certificate. 

In the U.S.: three dads appear on a child's birth certificate in California; Somerville and Cambridge, MA, prohibit discrimination against polyamorous families in employment and policing; Oakland and Berkeley, CA disallow discrimination based on relationship structure in business, city services and housing. 

These are good first steps. Cuba is the goal.

In Cuba, you choose your family structure. You choose who is legally protected as a part of your family unit. This has untold benefits well beyond polyamory: why can't two sisters live together and raise each other's kids if they want? Maybe four close friends want to form a family. Shouldn't that be up to them?

Really. Shouldn't it be?