[jbrown]

How is exclusivity crucial to marriage in the maximal broadness sense? It might be crucial in the current legal landscape, but that's not what we're talking about here. I tend to think that in the broadest possible sense marriage is just a contract and there's nothing preventing it from including more than two parties. Or, even if you do create a compelling argument for it being a contract between only two people, why should that preclude me from making another similar contract with a different party?

[sjwright]

We are absolutely talking about the current legal landscape. If you want to discuss polygamy in a spherical cow universe, that's fine, and I've already said I have no in-principle objection to formalizing polygamy.

However, a union between three or more people (or multiple concurrent marriages) is in an engineering sense a very different mechanism. It has more moving parts and more complicated parts. Most critically, its interfaces to the outside world are different.

It would require substantial root-and-branch changes to a massive amount of existing legislation in every country and state. Using a different word in law (while accepting colloquial use of the word marriage in everyday parlance) is a practical necessity.

[dragonwriter]

> However, a union between three or more people (or multiple concurrent marriages) is in an engineering sense a very different mechanism.

Forming, adding to, withdrawing from, dissolving, and otherwise handling unions of three or more people, including in dealing with how the members of the union deal with their rights and powers vis-a-vis the property and prerogatives of the union as such between each other and in interfacing with outside entities has been dealt with fairly extensively over the past several centuries in the evolution of partnership law. And most of it can be viewed as a fairly direct multiparty generalization of the two party way similar things are dealt with in existing marriage.

There's no real reason that a generalization of marriage law to handle multiparty relationships that reduced naturally to the same handling for two-party cases as status quo rules would deserve any different name.

[sjwright]

It is still a very different mechanism.

It is still a very different social construct.

Sorry, but polygamy doesn't get to ride the coattails of gay marriage for free. Despite the howls from conservatives, this slope isn't inherently slippery. You have to change minds before you can discuss changing laws. (And besides, I thought we all agreed the anthrozoologists were next in line? Then NAMBLA. Wait your turn.)