Why not make it legal for anyone who *wants to* to have multiple marriage partners

"Making it legal" should be a non-issue under US law, since the "legal license" is a civil agreement to allow joint actions for both, for either to act for both, and joint ownership (and responsibility) for property.

A truly "hands-off" treatment here could permit anyone to "live with as many people as those people find appropriate," and they might be "joined in a religious sacrament" which they can call marriage if their religion chooses to do so; but under existing civil law no person is permitted to participate in a civil marriage with more than one other person.

A main difficulty is that civil law has an "interest" in the dirty sex that might occur within the group, since we have never figured out a way to treat children except as "property" in the law.

Children, being "property," must belong to "someone," so the civilly married partner of one who procreates with another must be the sharing owner of the property of the "legal partner" with all the attendant responsibilities; and we have not figured out a way to give the "partner by sacrament-but-not-by-civil-law" an appropriate separate "ownership" of the property (including the children and the assumed powers of attorney) of the non-civil (sacramental) marriage.

The civil marriage law has no established way for the one with multiple partners to "split" his/her interest in property "shared" differently with different partners. (who should inherit which and what is a significant puzzle, and which speaks for whom under simultaneously existing - and possibly conflicting - powers of attorney screams of conflicts?)

The "shared property" (custody) difficulty where more than two "partners" are involved is partially addressed by some divorce laws, but there is virtually no acceptance of "prior agreement" (pre-nuptual contracts) that's generally effective, and the burden on the courts to allow application of exisitng "custody" resolutions would be horrendous, since in effect each case requires a "decision" about what to do because the "law" didn't work.

Anything that requires a license is a civil action that should have virtually nothing to do with religion. There should be no need to intrude "sacred rites" as a requirement in them.

The "sacred rites" should be left to the churches, with the minimum "workable" intrusion by civil law.

We've been arguing about which is what for far too long now, although even figuring that out leaves a lot of questions that likely will never be addressed until that is done unequivocally.

John