Polyamory in The Atlantic Part Two-The Politics

From The Atlantic's interview with polyamorous lawyer Diana Adams (also discussed here and here):

I'm working to create alternatives to marriage, because I think that if we could choose marriage affirmatively instead of it being a default, it would make relationships stronger.

Ah, the old "I'm trying to protect tradition" argument. This is the old progressive habit of attacking the consequences of their reforms. The problem with marriage, you see, is that people get married as if it's something that should be done, instead of looking at it as simply one possibility in a smorgasbord of choices.

Progressives believe that our traditions were handed down to us by a handful of frightened, violent old men who enforced their prejudices upon pain of death. Old fashioned marriage--that may be fine for some people but, you know, most people do it just because they think they're supposed to.

The high rate of divorce is offered as proof that traditional marriage isn't a very good option for a lot of people. So, let's add more options! That way, the people who choose traditional marriage are doing so because that's the romantic relationship they want--thus, all traditional marriages will be successful.

Progressives simply don't believe in the concept of sin. They don't believe that people want to do things that are wrong and that those urges need to be managed and suppressed. No, instead, they believe that those urges are right and that restrictions against them are what's wrong.

Traditional marriage is not a cakewalk and is always imperfect. But, historically, it's been effective in minimizing the damage caused by giving in to traditionally-sinful desires. Polyamory represents the effort to create institutions around our desires and not what works best. The political agenda is to make the arrangements of self-indulgence legitimate,  as legitimate as the self-sacrificing arrangement of traditional marriage.

Marriage is an incredibly intense contract. It's a legal-financial contract that you're making, declaring that you're going to be the other person's social welfare state and safety net if they screw up. I mean, you’re signing the most important document you’ll sign in your life and people read it less carefully than a cell phone contract. People have no idea what they’re actually committing to and are horrified a lot of times when they find out.

"I always cry at the signings-of-the-most-important-document."

This is an example of the progressive's materialist view of the world. Traditional marriage is a declaration of oaths, not a legal matter. A man and a woman declare that they are linking their lives together (as the beginning of a family) until their deaths. They are affirming their responsibilities to one another. Should they fail in their attempts, their behavior is considered a reflection of their character--it is dishonorable to backslide on one's oath.

No, to a progressive a marriage is a little government, a personal "social welfare state and safety net."

But we see that, for all of Adams' paradigm-shattering rhetoric, her real work is--like all lawyers--manipulating the legal system to get what her clients want.

Domestic partnership, for example, has tremendous possibility to create a more expansive version of what a relationship can look like. Domestic partnership was originally created as an alternative for gay couples who couldn’t legally get married. But then, all these surprising things started happening where these other kinds of people started using it for their own purposes. For instance, many elderly widow friends have entered into platonic domestic partnerships. It’s a situation like the Golden Girls. These are friends saying, “I live with her, and we watch out for each other, and I want her to be the person I can share my health insurance with.”

This, I like. It's a separate, secular arrangement that establishes non-marital households for legal and tax purposes. I'm curious as to what the limits are--certainly all the adult residents of an apartment building can't register as partners--but it makes sense that we have different versions of household arrangements, much like business are arranged differently.

However, it would be wise for social conservatives--who have been largely silent on America's health care situation--to consider how often health coverage has been used as a wedge for attacking traditional institutions.

I’m helping one polyamorous triad right now set up an LLC so they can share their finances. We’re making them employees of their own three person corporation so that they can be covered under an employee health plan.

Well, that's interesting. Would this kind of maneuvering even be necessary if our health care system was less Byzantine?

There are a lot of things we can do with co-parenting. With the busy lives that we lead, I think that three adults per child is actually a great ratio. So many parents are overburdened. I work a lot with lesbian couples and sperm donors in a three-parent model. They’re basing their relationship around a child. That’s a model that many courts and policymakers can wrap their heads around better than a polyamorous triad. If one woman contributes an egg, the man contributes sperm, and the other woman acts as a gestational surrogate, then all three of them are biologically a parent. We can do a three-parent adoption.

I suppose it's nice that it's all child-centered--Oh, wait. That's just to convince the squares, I guess.

I like how Adams makes it sound necessary that a child have three parents. I say that, if you're all so busy that you need three parents to raise your child, it's time to reexamine your priorities. The policymakers like child-centered models because they like the parents to actually be child-centered. In case you've forgotten---and I don't blame you, with the piles of rhetoric on top of the idea--marriage was always about family formation.