A personal example

[awfulhorrid]

I am writing a thesis for my Composition I class with a topic of "Families in Contemporary Society." My working thesis statement is fairly simple: "Traditional marriage does not fit the needs of all potential relationships in contemporary society." I'm considering aspects of same gender relationships and polyamorous ones, but I'm also looking at

Comments

[terheyt]

You really should look at how modern Quebec society has been handling things since the Quiet Revolution in the 60-70s. Last year, 63% of couples living together were not married. The average length of time that non-married couples had been living together was either 12 or 13 years (I'll have to look it up, and send you a llink to the citation).

Quebec was also the first province to acknowledge same-sex civil unions. They did it by saying any two non-blood relatives living under the same roof for over a year (unless one is a sub-lessor of the other, and there is a written contract to that effect) can claim the other as spouse for purposes of insurance, MPoA, and alimony. It nicely covers people of differing genders, both those who transition and those of no declared gender.

From what I understand, there have been some steps forward on legal recognition of poly households. I don't know the details, but I do know my friend's daughter has a mother and two fathers recognized by hospitals, schools, and tax purposes.

I'll try and do a little digging for sources for you, but I've got a lot of balls in the air myself right now. At the very least, I hope I've at least given you a few breadcrumbs towards fruitful research. If there's anything you need translated, drop me an email. my username here at gmail dot com.

[stormdog]

Wow; that sounds wonderful! I'll have to ask my Canadian girlfriend and see if she's familiar with any of that!

[terheyt]

If she's a Canadian history fan, or living here, she probably will. If not, probably not. I grew up right across the river from Quebec, and did a lot of history reading, and followed politics closely, and being married to another woman made me specifically interested in gender/sexuality laws, and still didn't learn about most of this until after I moved to Montreal.

Les deux solitudes...

[stormdog]

Thanks for mentioning it. It's definitely something that both of us might be interested in reading more about.

[awfulhorrid]

As it turns out, the paper isn't nearly as rigid as I initially thought. I'm far more used to thesis papers being objective and fact based. It seems that we're not only encouraged to use emotional arguments, it's more or less built into the paper's description. (I have to keep reminding myself this is just "Composition I!" The whole paper is only going to be about two pages total.)

I would be rather interested in seeing some of those resources for myself, of course, but it's not a high priority. I too have a lot going on right now!

Oddly enough that's my gmail address as well ...