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<p>So? I’m an atheist. Yet I still want be married, and I want my atheist so to be able to marry without hypocritically going to a church to do it. (I don’t mean that people who have church weddings are hypocritical, far from it. But an atheist who went to a church just to get married would definitely be being hypocritical.)</p>
<p>I realize this is just a terminological dispute. But I’m not going to surrender “marriage” to the churches without a fight.</p>
<p>Churches can bless any kind of union they want: two opposite-sex people; three people; two people, a dog and a hamster; whatever the church wants to do. But changing civil marriage to permit three people marrying isn’t even defined. We can’t make that change, because we don’t even know what it is. Would the three people each be married to the other two? What if two wanted a divorce and one didn’t? If there were a divorce, what about custody of any children, and child support? If one spouse got incapicitated, who would make final decisions about health care for them-- what if the other two spouses disagreed? If one died, would both the others get Social Security benefits? How would the family fill out tax forms? Would several non-Americans be allowed to legally come to the US as spouses of one American? If a child was born overseas into a marriage, where the bio parents of the child were not Americans, but their spouse was, would that child be an American citizen?</p>
<p>We know exactly how same-sex marriage would work legally, and we don’t have the slightest idea about how plural marriage would work legally. Before we even think about legalizing plural marriage (not that anyone seriously is) we have to say what it is.</p>