Polyamory and The Marriage Battle

I was reading an article a few days ago on Witchvox.com about a battle for the recognition of polyamorous marriage in Canada. While I personally have nothing against polyamory, I do have to say that a battle such as this would have a very difficult time being fought here in the United States, and not just because of the current "popularity" issues that are holding back the advancement of gay marriage.

The battle for gay marriage is (or should be) a relatively simple one. At its core, it is a matter of gender of one of the partners. The same legal structure behind the privileges of marriage would be kept in place with exception to that one detail. Amazing how this enormous fuss can get boiled down to that one little point, isn't it? Gay spouses have no more or less privileges than heterosexual spouses in states that allow same-sex marriage. It really is just a matter of gender.

Those who wish for the legal recognition of polyamorous relationships would have a more difficult fight on their hands because of those legal privileges and assumptions already in place relating to marriage. Things like inheritance in the absence of a will, or the ability for a spouse to make medical decisions for an unconscious spouse, or even end of life decisions in the absence of legal documents such as a living will. When there is more than one surviving spouse, the legal issues do become a lot more complex. How would pension or social security benefits for a widow/widower be handled if there is more than one per deceased spouse?

For this battle to be fought here, our entire system behind what marriage means (on a legal level) would have to change. (Let's face it, despite what opponents of gay marriage say, the issues of what any marriage constitutes should not be defined on a religious level in a country that claims to have freedom of religion.)