{"id":60,"date":"2008-12-09T05:55:36","date_gmt":"2008-12-09T05:55:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/comment-of-the-day-7.html"},"modified":"2008-12-09T05:55:36","modified_gmt":"2008-12-09T05:55:36","slug":"comment-of-the-day-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/comment-of-the-day-7.html","title":{"rendered":"Comment of the Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two in a row for Dr. Science<\/a>!<\/p>\n

\n

Wow, I just checked back to see if the old thread had died, and what
\ndo I find! Thank you, Tony. BTW, the pronoun used for me is “she”, not
\n“he”.<\/p>\n

“A Walker” — Who cares if two is not equal to three?<\/i> — The law. In law, there are about 1400 legal benefits to marriage<\/a>, and the vast majority of those rights presume that the marriage is between two (2) persons only. As I have argued elsewhere<\/a>,
\nour current marriage law is *barely* able to deal with the complexities
\nthat arise when a marriage has only two partners, and that despite
\nhundreds of years of experience dealing with traditional
\n(inegalitarian) two-partner marriages. Egalitarian multipartner
\nmarriages simply do not fit into the legal structures we have, so there
\nis no practical basis for making them legal as yet. I guess there would
\nhave to be at least 50-100 years’ experience with custom-made
\npolyamorous contracts before legal mavens could even think of making a
\nstandard poly marriage contract — there simply isn’t enough experience
\nwith how these things tend to work out. So no, “Your Name”, I don’t
\nthink there’s anything wrong *in principle* with poly marriages — but
\nlaw is all about practice, practicality, and precedent, and that
\ndoesn’t exist yet and might not for centuries.<\/p>\n

Marriage has always been tied to sex because the act of sex for
\nheterosexuals is what launches the long-term project of raising
\nfamilies—the enterprise being contracted.<\/i><\/p>\n

Here is where I put on my Actual Evolutionary Biologist\u2122 hat and
\ndisagree. Most mammals do not have any arrangment like marriage, and
\nyet they manage to have sex and rear offspring perfectly well.<\/p>\n

Consider the case of Jacob, in the Book of Genesis. Jacob loves only
\none woman, is married to two women, and has legitimate children with
\nfour women. <\/p>\n

What makes his relationships with Leah and Rachel “marriage”? It’s
\nnot love, and it’s not having sex or children. What sets marriage apart
\nis *in-laws*, and this IMScientificO is one of the things that makes
\nhuman marriage unique. Indeed, if you look at what happens to Jacob, it
\nseems that his first marriage is really a contract with Laban, who is
\nable to swap Leah for Rachel and hold Jacob to it.<\/p>\n

Marriage is a social and economic arrangment which usually
\nincorporates sex and reproduction, but which is clearly necessary for
\nneither. For societies with property, marriage is crucial for
\ndetermining inheritance, and if you look at that list of “marriage
\nrights” you’ll see that most of them are about economic or medical
\ndecisions. “Being able to have licit sex” is *not* on that list,
\nhowever psychologically or religiously important it seems. And the
\nsame-sex couples and their allies (like me) aren’t fighting for the
\nright to an imaginary sex license, but for equal access to those 1400
\nreal, legal rights of marriage.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two in a row for Dr. Science! Wow, I just checked back to see if the old thread had died, and what do I find! Thank you, Tony. BTW, the pronoun used for me is “she”, not “he”. “A Walker” — Who cares if two is not equal to three? — The law. In law,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment-of-the-day","category-same-sex-marriage"],"yoast_head":"\nComment of the Day - The New Christians<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/comment-of-the-day-7.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Comment of the Day - The New Christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Two in a row for Dr. Science! Wow, I just checked back to see if the old thread had died, and what do I find! Thank you, Tony. BTW, the pronoun used for me is “she”, not “he”. “A Walker” — Who cares if two is not equal to three? — The law. In law,…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/comment-of-the-day-7.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The New Christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-12-09T05:55:36+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Tony Jones\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Comment of the Day - The New Christians","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/comment-of-the-day-7.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Comment of the Day - The New Christians","og_description":"Two in a row for Dr. Science! Wow, I just checked back to see if the old thread had died, and what do I find! Thank you, Tony. BTW, the pronoun used for me is “she”, not “he”. “A Walker” — Who cares if two is not equal to three? — The law. In law,…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/comment-of-the-day-7.html","og_site_name":"The New Christians","article_published_time":"2008-12-09T05:55:36+00:00","author":"Tony Jones","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/comment-of-the-day-7.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/comment-of-the-day-7.html","name":"Comment of the Day - The New Christians","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-12-09T05:55:36+00:00","dateModified":"2008-12-09T05:55:36+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#\/schema\/person\/a5d6dffe0f41c25b4bd8136be22c4074"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/comment-of-the-day-7.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/comment-of-the-day-7.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/comment-of-the-day-7.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Comment of the Day"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/","name":"The New Christians","description":"Tony Jones on Christianity and the Emerging Church","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#\/schema\/person\/a5d6dffe0f41c25b4bd8136be22c4074","name":"Tony Jones","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/d50\/d50708c3731048719806adf9c6f6df30x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/d50\/d50708c3731048719806adf9c6f6df30x96.jpg","caption":"Tony Jones"},"description":"Tony Jones is the author of The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier and several other books on Christianity and prayer.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/author\/tjones"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}