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From: chapman@calder.Berkeley.EDU (Brent Chapman)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.social
Subject: Re: Why no marriage ?  No polygamy !
Message-ID: <15095@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Sat, 2-Aug-86 00:01:45 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.15095
Posted: Sat Aug  2 00:01:45 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 3-Aug-86 02:45:08 EDT
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Reply-To: chapman@calder.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Brent Chapman)
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In article <945@dadla.UUCP> rob@dadla.UUCP (Rob Vetter) writes:
>	O.K., (he says raising his dragon scaled sheild), I brought these
>	two subjects together because to me they are very related.  I too
>	want to have children.  I also see major advantages in marriage
>	for raising them.  But the biggest problem with marriage is the
>	accepted or implied promise to be loyal to one and only one other
>	person.
>
>	A person can be loyal to their country, their family, their employer,
>	and their spouse - can it hurt to be loyal to their SPOUSES ?

I agree; I regard laws concerning marriage as part of the same class
as laws concerning sex between consenting adults (let's not go into
definitions of "adult" here; I have my own pet peeves on THAT issue..
Why is it we hear of "sex discrimination" and "race discrimination"
and the like, but never "age discrimination" ?), how a person spends
their leisure time, and the like: No one else's business but the
parties involved.

Robert A. Heinlein does a neat job of discussing the advantages of
polygamous marriages, and makes a minor issue of the topic in at least
two of his books: _The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress_ and
_Time_Enough_for_Love_.  (From one of the books:  "The plural of 'spouse'
is 'spice'."  :-)

>
>	Monogamy is an outgrowth of the female "needing" a provider.  Now
>	that it has been shown that the female is perfectly capible of
>	providing for herself, it seems silly.

This remark, taken in context with those earlier in his posting, seems
to imply that when the writer discusses "polygamy", he means "one me,
many wives", instead of a so-called "extended family group".  I hope 
I'm misinterpreting his meaning.

On a related topic, has anyone here had any experience with "extended
non-blood-related family" situations?  For instance, two married couples
living together as one big family?  I'm simply curious about what special
problems (and joys) such an arrangement can cause; marriage is nowhere
in my forseeable future.  (Maybe I've been hanging around with
Peter "Marriage isn't a word, it's a sentence" Korn too much lately  :-)


Brent