Why is it illegal to have multiple spouses?

[FrustratedFool]

@Belacqua
Agreed.  My spirit is such that I desire the old system to collapse more quickly and more fully.  Bur that's probably a dangerous impulse.  Mostly, I just don't like what appear to be stupid restrictions on my life.

Agreed, restrictions that no longer serve a purpose are often too slow in disappearing. I suppose it has to do largely with one generation dying off, and the next generation being more accepting. 

There have been work-arounds in the past... Like for gay couples in Japan it was normal for the older man to adopt the younger man as his son and heir. Even if they were nearly the same age. This gave them all the legal rights of inheritance, co-ownership, etc. I'm sure the record-keepers at city hall knew exactly what was going on, but nobody stopped it. 

So I hope that whatever it is that's best for you, there's a way to manage it in the near future. 

But I'll suggest another idea that maybe I've written about before, that is relevant here. I think that non-traditional relationships have a certain value in remaining non-traditional. Though something is gained in making gay marriage, for example, the norm, something is also lost. 

If you read about the Paris of André Gide, or the Tokyo of Yukio Mishima, it is clear that the men in these circles saw their homosexuality as an alternative to the bourgeois mainstream lifestyle. They would have hated the idea that hotels would offer expensive wedding packages for two men just as they do for male/female couples. Two men together, or two women, or other non-traditional combinations, were an intentional thumb in the eye to the uncreative, workaday, white-picket-fence life. (Neither Paris nor Tokyo have white picket fences, but you see what I mean.) 

The genius of the modern system is that it subsumes all alternatives within it. They all become just another page in the same catalog. Five men sharing an Italian farmhouse for sexual pleasure, as Oscar Wilde did, is no longer transgressive, but an option on a discount package tour. 

It's the same with modern US Satanism, for example. Satanism used to be a truly dangerous alternative, when its adherents believed in Satan and thought they were risking something. Now it's a bunch of cosplayers, who get a kick out of teasing conservative Christians, but buy their clothes in the same stores, vote Democrat, take out car loans, and hate Putin. Just as they're told to do. They share 99% of their values with their non-Satanic neighbors. 

So-called hippies are distinguished by the brands of corporate clothing they buy.

So while I absolutely support the right of people to live the way they wish, and commit to whomever they love, I wish we could maintain strangeness. I want sub-cultures which enable a more complete escape from normie life. 

Elliot Page, before he transitioned, did a documentary about gay life in Tokyo. He went to a tiny gay bar of a type that's very Japanese -- unmarked, only seats about four customers, only known by very limited word of mouth. He asked the 80-year-old proprietor if it wasn't hard to live as a gay man in Japan before gay liberation. And the proprietor's answer was kind of wonderful. He said, "It was very beautiful." Emphasizing each syllable: u-tsu-ku-shi-ka-tta.

I agree that something is lost. Ask the lesbians who can't find a lesbian bar now.

I still enjoy the slight feeling of rebellion I get from being outside the norm. But the law shouldn't have to get involved. I can easily be bohemian enough for most people to consider me odd and challenge social norms without having to break laws that shouldn't exist. Laws like that simply get in the way.