I’m sitting down to get started on today’s post last night at 10:25 pm having just gotten home from a long, stressful, exhausting day at work. I still haven’t caught up on rest from the last two weeks, the Northwest Freethought Convention, and the week before that.

My recovery from the root canal is going well. The antibiotics are doing their trick so it doesn’t hurt much and I haven’t taken any Vicoden today (yesterday). I’m taking 1750mg of Amoxacillin each day and as I’m writing this I’m three days into the ten day regimen. This is the second highest dose of antibiotics I’ve even been on and it’s kicking my ass leaving me tired, drained, and causing a little nausea. I’m sure that’ll all get worse as it contiues to wipe out the natural flora and fauna of my digestive systems. That being said, it is much better than having an infection go out of control that close to my brain.

Anyway, enough about me, it’s time for the rant.

During my vacation last fall when I went to Yellowstone National Park, I saw lots of massive family’s pouring out of giant SUVs and Vans with Utah plates, countless Asian tourists, and a handful of European tourists from a few different countries. Since I was there by myself I took advantage of the opportunity to do some people watching, even though the bacteria was far more interesting than any of the people, and I’d try to figure out where people were from and try to make interesting observations that kept me entertained.

When I was approaching the Dragon’s Mouth hot spring I saw a white male in his 30s with light hair, a blond boy who was about 8 years old, a blond woman also in her 30s, a relatively light skinned black girl who about 7 years old, a relatively light skinned black boy about 9 or 10 years old, and a very tall black male in his 30s who I would have guessed to have been originally from Africa or the Caribbean, of course once I heard his accent I could tell he was an immigrant from Africa. The order in which I describe them was the order they were standing in.

I was a little puzzled because it was obvious who the dad’s were, but comparing the children to their fathers the woman could have been the mother of any of them. I tried to give them their space, but I also wanted to check out the spring and the viewing area was quite small. The woman was very polite and friendly and was more than happy to share the space, in fact she was kind enough to take my picture, which you can find on the About Me page. I don’t know if they could tell that my attention was pretty evenly split between analyzing them and watching the waves coming out of the Dragon’s mouth, but it was. At one point the mother asked the blond boy if he wanted his picture taken with his sister and at another the white man was holding the black boy and the child was calling the man “Daddy.” As I mentioned earlier, it appeared that the white boy was the middle child. When they left the two men where walking together while the mother tried to get her children to let go of the railing and return to the car.

I had never seen a polyamorous family before, let alone an obvious polyamorous triad. They were enjoying the park just like any other family and were obviously very happy and comfortable with their arrangement. Yes, they were one big happy family. I’ve ranted a bit about how gays and lesbians should be free to marry the ones they love, but why shouldn’t this family be able to as well?

If the woman were to be going somewhere with one of the men while the other stayed home with the kids and they were to die in a car accident, odds are the family would be torn apart. The surviving man would only have legal rights to one or two of the three children and odds are that the parents of one of the deceased parents would take custody of the children who’s genetic father had died. There’s even a chance that it would be the dead man’s parents and they wouldn’t ever let the kids see their other dad and siblings.

That’s just not right.

The standard formula for a marriage today is the one that fits with nearly two thousand years of Christian tradition, but it clearly doesn’t even fit with the Biblical allowances for polygamy. A traditional monogamous marriage works great for a lot of people. I’m a bit of a jealous guy, so I’m sure it would work a lot better for me than some of the less traditional models. However, I know that this doesn’t mean that those for whom the societal norm doesn’t work should have to stick to the norm.

Hemant Mehta had a post on Friendly Atheist where he shared some excerpts from Sadie Smythe’s new book Open All the Way: Confessions From My Open Marriage, one of the best was:

The fact is that everyone, everyone, should be given the opportunity to design their relationships according to the specifications of those involved. All should be authorized to draw up their very own relationship plans and put them into action.

And so that’s what we did.

I’ve given some thought on how to work out a system that would allow marriages for more than two people. As long as everybody stays together there’s no problem. Getting married is as easy as paying a few bucks to the county and bottle of Scotch your local apostate (that’s my suggested honorarium), then saying a few magic words. Divorce and death is where it gets tricky since community property has to be divided.

It turns out there’s an easy solution. This would also make getting married a little more difficult (a good thing) and make divorce a little easier (it’s painful enough for those involved, so making it a little easier would also be a good thing). Require a prenump and a will, for every marriage. If situations change and all parties agree then they can be amended. Any additional partners being brought into the union would also require amendments to the prenump and will.

This may sound a little too businessy, like maybe it would kill the romance involved, but if you think about it, marriages are legal partnerships, much like a corporation. When incorporating a business it doesn’t matter whether there’s two, three, or five owners, it just changes the terms on the charter most importantly in what happens with the assets if the corporation is dissolved. What compelling secular reason is there for marriage to be any different?