advocacy versus possibility

A further explanation on my thoughts on people's freedom of association: custom is often confused with what's "moral". It's customary to say "hello" to someone, or "excuse me", or "thank you" or any of the other nicecities that constitute civilized life. It's customary that a man ask a woman to marry him, and it's customary in Western civilization that one man and one woman marry and enjoy all the benefits of such a relationship, whether they be physical or economic or social or procreative--now, we shouldn't just toss customs out the window, nor should we not recognize that the social benefits of one man to woman help in the long term demographic challenges that all Western nations face--but the kind of association that I'm envisioning is a competing field of choices for people--think back to the days of the Western frontier, and specifically, to the recent allegations concerning Lincoln's "homosexuality." Lincoln lived in what was essentially still a frontier, Illinois, and he resided in a room with two other men who rented the space just as he did--they shared the room because of necessity and sometimes were forced to share beds. The primary reason for this was economic--it was cheaper to just rent the room or the bed than an entire room to yoursel or, even more unimaginable, an entire house to yourself, even for a young lawyer like Lincoln. My point is that back then such informal group associations happened all the time, and they happened for the mutual benefit of all parties involved. Today it is even more applicable, as all the people that I know who are in their twenties and are unmarried are not "with" someone live with roommates. Imagine if those people could form a "group marriage" that was economic in nature, not intimate. Together those people could purchase health and car insurance cheaper, pay their taxes together, and pool their resources in a legal, formal matter that demanded, no required responsibilites from all parties. A person would essentially buy their way into such an arrangement and then be paid their investment upon their departure. Such associations would enable people to overcome the collapse of the nuclear family and it's safety net while at the same time reducing further government intrusions into their affairs by giving them more choices because of their combined purchasing power and combined assets. Now this is only one such situation--if the state of Utah were to recognize polygamy as a legitimate form of marriage, I say go for it. One woman is too much work for me right, I can't possibly imagine any rational man choosing to have to deal with more than one by himself, but some people might wish to form polyamarous marriages with multiple partners or simply a group marriage between individual couples. Who knows? The point is that we cannot prohibit free association--it's the First Amendment to the Constitution for crying out loud! And just one other point: it was customary for thousands upon thousands of years that some people be held in servitude and be forced to perform manual labor for those held them as slaves. Slavery was a global institution whose roots reach back as far as the dawn of civilization itself, indeed customary practice was argued to be moral by Southern proponents of slavery. Slavery was supposed to help bring the souls of the heathen Africans closer to the light of Christianity, and most of them argued this position seriously, even so much as using the Bible as evidence! But we ought to be thankful that we abolished this odious insitution and that we fought for more than a century to help bring the descendants of slaves and other minorities full partners in the American expedition and allow them every opportunity to succeed. I'm not suggesting that marriage is an odious institution--far from it, marriage is the binding clue of civilization--the only problem is that as it stands now, marriage has become more like the cheap grocery store brand tape that doesn't really work and you can never quite get it to tear right or stick to--and there's no going back to the magical world of yesterday or any sense in trying to stand in front of history and yell "halt!" because it won't work. The industrial revolution began the process of destroying the nuclear family, and the information revolution has dug the hole--there's nothing really left to do but accept it and move on, and again, adopt my federalist approach by amending the Constitution to allow the states to define marriage for themselves while simultaneously not forcing any state to recognize another state's marriage license. Gotta go pack up for a show.