Here’s the thing: As women, we really can make our own choices. We just might choose things people don’t like. If a woman wants to marry a man, that’s great. If she wants to marry another woman, that’s great too. If she wants to marry a hipster, well — I suppose that’s the price of freedom. And if she wants to marry a man with three other wives, that’s her damn choice...I'm not endorsing this. Just anticipating that many readers will want to talk about it.
The definition of marriage is plastic. Just like heterosexual marriage is no better or worse than homosexual marriage, marriage between two consenting adults is not inherently more or less "correct" than marriage among three (or four, or six) consenting adults. Though polygamists are a minority — a tiny minority, in fact — freedom has no value unless it extends to even the smallest and most marginalized groups among us. So let’s fight for marriage equality until it extends to every same-sex couple in the United States — and then let’s keep fighting. We’re not done yet.
IN THE COMMENTS: Salamandyr said:
Am I right that her argument is that something is only bad if it hurts women?Leo said:
@Salamandyr wasn't feminist grounds the example used in the supreme court when Sotomayor asked about this?I'll answer that: Yes.
And for those who want to know my position: I note 2 completely different questions. 1. Should the state be able to criminalize the activities of more than 2 adults who engage in private rituals proclaiming that they are married and then claim to be married? and 2. Should the state recognize marriages with more than 2 adults for the purposes of tax laws and benefits programs? As to #1, I think this is a matter of individual autonomy, a combination of free speech, freedom of association, and freedom of religion, and the state must leave these people alone. As to #2, I think the state can limit marriage to couples. Here, I think there can be a limit across the board: Everyone can have one spouse. You can combine #1 and #2 and have one legal marriage and additional members of the household that you can call whatever you want. It's none of the government's business.
Mitch H. said:
Polygamy is everywhere a marker for poverty, instability, and edemic social disorder. It encourages social inequality, and generally results in the trade of women like cattle, such that big men collect and stockpile wives as status symbols, while surplus and marginal men turn to violence and crime in order to "get theirs."As a social ill, it's not worse than adultery and fornication. Some men get multiple women and some men are on the outs. Why should the people who believe in polygamy be denied their version of the same thing? If your answer has to do with how they think about what their relationships are — that they think in terms of "marriage" — that shows why there is a freedom of speech/association/religion problem.
Posts
268 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 268 of 268": ...but religious practice and observance is a Constitutionally, specifically protected status."
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"What about those religious practices brought into the country by immigrants which came from a culture alien to the host country?
Should the sharia law whose foundation is religious be interpreted into the constitution of the host country?"
4/16/13, 8:08 PM
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I can not wait for someone to answer this question.
Inga wrote: I can wait for someone to answer this question.
Polygamy is on the slippery slope towards clitorectomies.
What about those religious practices brought into the country by immigrants which came from a culture alien to the host country?
Very generally, the states will recognize foreign marriages unless doing so would violate a fundamental precept of US law. Most states would not recognize underage marriage, incestuous marriage or polygamous marriages. By their nature, however, these calls (which are made by judges in most cases) are pretty subjective, and while 20 years ago "homosexual marriage" in all probability would have fit in that list, it very possibly would not currently.
Once here, however, the marriage would be subject to the laws of the state, particularly divorce laws. Prenuptial contracts which mirror sharia (or other non-US) law can be held valid, but not necessarily so. Basically depends on how badly the terms piss off the judge.
Which is not a good standard in my view, though I admit good standards are hard to come up with.
I hope the 2 minute wait wasn't too bad.
Here, I think there can be a limit across the board: Everyone can have one spouse.
Really? That's funny...most of us used to think there could be a limit also...Everyone can have one spouse of the opposite gender.
Everyone can have one spouse.
That sounds like more of a bias than a rule. Sure, it's easy, but why deny the plurals? This has been framed as "Freedom to Marry who I love." What rationale is there for a limit?
As a social ill, it's not worse than adultery and fornication.
That's a remarkably flippant assertion. Says who?
Some men get multiple women and some men are on the outs. Why should the people who believe in polygamy be denied their version of the same thing? If your answer has to do with how they think about what their relationships are — that they think in terms of "marriage" — that shows why there is a freedom of speech/association/religion problem.
And Mitch isn't saying that polygamy is a "social ill" in and of itself. The argument is that over the long-term, monogamous and polygamous societies tend toward different social outcomes - resulting in significantly different types of cultures. Thinking about that seriously requires that you get beyond the "intra-cultural" boundaries you're framing it in now - because the whole "freedom of speech/association/religion problem" you posit here may not be relevant to, or even any longer have any meaning, in the very different type of culture that will evolve from a radical change in family form.
Shana said:
Althouse said, "As to #2, I think the state can limit marriage to couples. Here, I think there can be a limit across the board: Everyone can have one spouse."
Why?
And if the state can limit marriage to couples, why can't it limit to opposite-sex couples?
"Everyone can have one spouse of the opposite sex."
This just seems like ad-hoc reasoning on the part of gay marriage advocates.
I see Gahrie got there first...
@Renee
You are right- not chattle. But contracts may define responsibility rather than making something a commodity. A human is not an object and no contract can or should make them so. But to suggest that mom and dad and dna are the answer is to ignore the not hundreds but certainly hundreds of thousands of children with at least one parent whose dna apparently failed them. If the word love is meant as a noun perhaps I am wrong - the parents who abandon or abuse or ignore their children may still feel an emotion they call love. I love my kids, my car, my puppy, my x-box? Instead I believe the word love (in this context) is a verb that demands action on the lovers part to protect and promote and provide for and to prepare their children to live as adults 18 years after their birth. (had a Jesse Jackson moment with the alliteration there)
We are somewhat drifting from the original topic but there is no doubt that a child needs to be loved but they also need to be fed and clothed and given a home and an opportunity. As a human I want every parent to love their children and get the warm heebie-jeebies while they provide for all the material needs of the child. But no law or agreement will ever be able to create feelings in someone who doesn’t have them nor compel them to act positively on that love. But the law can require each and every parent support the children they bring into the world. And yes, that means if someone is such a crappy parent the children are taken away the parent is still responsible for paying the bills.
And I am glad you are a spouse. That is a perfectly reasonable way to describe oneself. Reasonable but without meaning until you define what it means to you and your spouse (or whatever they may choose to call themselves). The word used to mean you were married to a person of the opposite gender but now it simply means you are legally a couple with someone.
@chuck
Your point is well taken. As I am not an attorney I don’t have a solution to the divorce rules quandary or the child custody thing. On the one hand if an adult enters an agreement that is to their detriment it was their decision and they pay the price. Hence several of the women I have been involved with. But children did not enter into the agreement so how to protect them from that kind of stuff I don’t know. I don’t suppose you can just say that if you have any extreme religious views or are absolutely obsessed with the conspiracies and contrails you just shouldn’t procreate? I think any contract can be broken but there are generally consequences. And I don’t think beheading, stoning, damning to hell, shunning, or washing the mouth out with soap should be amongst them..
Frankly it isn’t just the liberals to be worried about. On the one hand the liberals will want to protect their pet groups but the right has enough pet ideaologies to keep us busy as well. Stupid isn’t hard to find anywhere you look.
@NewShitIShouldHaveSaidEarlier
I like to think I am an originalist but find it hard to imagine the thought process of the founders if suddenly faced with today’s issues. On the other hand, if they had been exposed slowly over a long time I expect many of the founders would disappoint many on both the right and the left, even the libertarians the green party and the socialists. As much as they were patriots in our view they were also mostly men whose primary purpose in creating a new country seemed to be to secure as much freedom of action and freedom to make money and acquire property as possible. Their interest in the common man was simply to show their respect by making as few rules as possible that would impede a mans progress between economic classes. I think a lot of them would be happy to argue many of these points but many of them would also think the ultimate outcome not particularly important.
Well said, Angelyne, but your arguments are wasted.
Talking to the left is pointless. They want what they want, and cannot cannot cannot say no to any desire that arises, believing their Id must be good. Or God.
Their answer to dissent is to shout you down, call you evil, or say 'whatever.'
This one is just a joke, ok.
I don't like polygamy because sex feels good and I want it everyday not just every M W F.
@well the law should represent and promote what we value. If the law can not promote parents loving their children, then why does the state care about two or more consenting adults. Get rid of marriage AND civil unions, and focus only on parental engagement in family law.
I have a Catholic marriage, thank God. No confusion. I know what I made a vow to. The Church considers it a vocation, not just a relationship.
It always was a simple question of where to draw the discriminatory line, and some people just prefer that people they can't relate to be on the other side it.
So Althouse found her outsiders, but once it crossed the biological and historical lines, we have to accept that it's purely subjective comfort level. I'm less comfortable with polygamy than SSM, but not by much, and I have no really good justification beyond what I have against government approved marriages of all kinds.
Making some people's contracts more powerful than others based on the fact that they claim to be in love at that particular moment was the big step.
That's a remarkably flippant assertion. Says who?
Anglelyne: Exactly. This is more ad hoc reasoning from Althouse.
The possible consequences of no-fault divorce and abortion were mostly ignored by advocates like Althouse. Now we have over a million abortions per year and 20 million children growing up in single parent homes.
The liberal proponents of divorce and abortion didn't intend this, but here we are. And now our liberal friends have more blind social engineering they wish to inflict on society.
SSM and polygamy are the left's way of saying Here, world, hold my beer and WATCH THIS!
" Here, I think there can be a limit across the board: Everyone can have one spouse."
That's no more across the board than everyone can marry one person of the opposite sex. That was universal and equal too. When it became about simply what people wanted or "love", then polygamy is required, because someone still loves someone who they are not allowed to marry.
A difference with arbitrary distinction. Whether it is a couple, couplet, or any other combination, the only normal (i.e. fit) relationship is between a man and a woman.
IT is notable that there is continuing discrimination against unions based on sexual behavior. If homosexual behavior is to be normalized, then they must also include platonic relationships. Furthermore, they cannot justify discrimination against any union irrespective of form or kind, numbers or combinations.
The homosexual activists, and their heterosexual patrons, are demonstrating a unique prejudice when they do not support universal unions.
That said, in the interest of equal protection, they must also speak out against all elective abortions, where a human life is aborted to preserve the wealth and welfare of the mother and/or father. This is a clear violation of a basic human right to life when a man or woman lacks a voice to protest and Arms to prevent its premeditated murder.
creeley23:
Exactly. The problem is progressive. In order to gain favor with greedy and irresponsible women and men, they rationalized premeditated murder for convenience as a "right."
As for homosexual behavior, if society intends to normalize a dysfunctional behavior, then it must normalize all dysfunctional behaviors. If it continues to consider elective abortion as normal, then premeditated murder at any age or stage of development must also be considered normal. The only "objective" standard will be a force of Arms or democratic leverage (i.e. bullying).
Western civilization is rapidly approaching a dysfunctional convergence.
With each new line now there will those in the life boat saying "OK, I got the people I care about in the boat, now lets get out of here before anyone else swims up, and then marriage will sink.
I'm fine with that because as a single person, you bastards will let me drown anyway. I just want to belong, to be appreciated, to have my love validated by the government.
This is my stop, please. Time to step off the libertarian train.
Here is where the "gay marriage is a right!" argument gets dangerous. No one ever should have taken that absurd route. The conservative argument for gay marriage was not only better, but it didn't lead to garbage like this.
Sorry Freeman, this line doesn't go the libertarianville. That's a whole different direction. This bus is headed for bigger government with more people licensed, and approved by central authority than by their conscience or community of choice.
Nomennovum: Your response to my comment used the word "progressive" in a way that could imply that you mean that I am a "progressive". If that's what you meant, you either owe me an apology, or a meeting at dawn, swords or pistols, your choice.
No this bus does go to Libertarianville, only the town doesn't look quite like it did in the brochure.
As I've said in other topics, if Americans wish to redefine marriage to include gay marriage, OK. It's legitimate to advocate. Let's talk.
However, I object to the position which Althouse and other advocates take that gay marriage is a right which follows necessarily from American law, that opposition to gay marriage is therefore bigotry on par with miscengenation laws, and as such the matter must not be left up to democratic vote, but rectified by the highest level of the courts.
Yet somehow the same arguments don't apply to polygamy.
No. Anyone who wants to redefine marriage is welcome to make their case. But I'm not buying the claim that gay marriage is beyond discussion and voting because there is a slam-dunk, indisputable legal argument that makes gay marriage a right.
Everyone can have one spouse. You can combine #1 and #2 and have one legal marriage and additional members of the household that you can call whatever you want.
That's what we have had for a long, long time...excepting the fact that the spouse had to be of the opposite gender.
Why is your fix for the polygamy argument of multiple spouses any less arbitrary than saying marriages have to be between one woman and one man?
Western civilization is rapidly approaching a dysfunctional convergence.
I coin that convergence the Singulariderp.
The definition of marriage is plastic.
I've just read the analogy below from a New Zealand blog. At the moment they have a SSM bill for consideration in the Parliament
"Similarly, if you change the definition of marriage so that it includes more types of union, you reduce the uniqueness of all marriages. A second (fictional) analogy makes this clearer by taking things to the extreme: Suppose the law was changed so that everyone who lived on the same street was automatically considered to be a married group, so that everyone (or at least everyone who lived on a street with more than one occupant) was married. Would that affect marriage from the perspective of a person who was married prior to the change? Quite clearly so. When everybody is married, everybody may as well not be married. "
The conservative argument for gay marriage was not only better, but it didn't lead to garbage like this.
Freeman: Remind me what the conservative argument for SSM was because I'm thinking it was just to encourage monogamy and little else. It certainly wasn't "tax equality" nor would it have been "forced social acceptance" for social equality.
Why is your fix for the polygamy argument of multiple spouses any less arbitrary than saying marriages have to be between one woman and one man?
So far as I can tell, Althouse won't answer this question.
Her trick is always, always, always to redefine marriage behind the scenes as a relationship between two people, then claim that equal protection must allow for same sex marriage.
However, if marriage is defined as between a man and a woman, as it always has been in America until about five minutes ago, then same-sex marriage can't exist by definition, so equal protection has nothing to protect.
Again, if Althouse and her fellow advocates want to redefine marriage to their liking, we can have that discussion, but we're not going to start from their assumption.
I agree with many people on this thread. Godfather, Angelyne, freeman (although I'm not sure I see this as a libertarian argument).
If marriage isn't a right, the laws regulating it can easily be redefined by the state. We've don't that many times already- the age you must be, the number of parents who must approve if underage, the relationship of the two people to each other. As society has changed, those laws have been changed. We could do that easily with gender.
We would do it as recognition that gay people aren't anything different than heterosexuals, other than they fall in love with people of the same sex. They want to get married, be stable, have commitment.
If marriage is a right, all bets are off. Most regulation has to go away. You can't say two siblings have no right to marry. It gets very hard to say three people don't have the right to marry. And then marriage changes so much it's no longer recognizable. Would it still be desirable?
Godfather,
How about water pistols at 3 paces two weeks from today? I'll be in Aruba at the Hyatt. The guy in the blue and white bathing suit with a drink in one hand and his other hand wrapped around the waist of a younger girl.
MayBee,
It is undesirable already, when you look at the trends of declining rates.
So the spouses of heterosexuals are recognized by the state and everyone must obey—or else. So the spouses of homosexuals are recognized by the state and everyone must obey—or else. But the spouses of bisexuals, who must marry one male and one female to express their love and sexuality—must not be recognized by the state?
Sorry, only bigotry limits marriage by homosexuals, bisexuals, and many other genders I won’t mention here.
"What about those religious practices brought into the country by immigrants which came from a culture alien to the host country?
Should the sharia law whose foundation is religious be interpreted into the constitution of the host country?"
Nini, the US is not required to adapt religions or incorporate something like sharia law into our judicial systems, but we are prohibited from infringing on the right of others to observe and practice their religion... at least in theory.
So... drug laws outlaw peyote and other laws prohibit the collection of eagle feathers but we make exceptions for the religious practice of those native american groups that incorporate those things into their religious observances. The 1st Amendment requires it.
In the case of polygamous marriage, however, we've decided that the interest and right of the State to control and limit who gets married and who doesn't get married is so great that the special status of religion described in the 1st Amendment isn't enough.
Althouse put a bit from the supreme court hearings up there where the guy, Olsen I think, or the Justice, argued that polygamy wasn't something related to a person's status the way homosexuality is, or presumably race is, because it was only limiting behavior or actions or some such.
Which leaves us in a curious place where a general notion of equality resting on the idea that someone is "born that way" outweighs the specific enumerated freedom and constitutional guarantee that protects a person's right to observe their religious faith.
In essence, that individual desire confers more protection than the 1st Amendment of the Constitution.
Australia, as I understand it, doesn't have a Bill of Rights, so us being bound to ours may seem sort of weird.
"Everyone can have one spouse."
HATER!
. As to #2, I think the state can limit marriage to couples. Here, I think there can be a limit across the board: Everyone can have one spouse
HA HA HA HA
HA HA HA HA
HA HA HA HA
HA HA HA HA
HA HA HA HA
Wow, the hypocrisy and intellectual cowardice is stunning!
Remember Ann, in your silly bit of pretend libertarianism when you asserted the state must justify intrusiveness?
Note all the justification you provided for your discrimination.
It is like super-duper persuasive.
Nomennovum wrote: "How about water pistols at 3 paces two weeks from today? I'll be in Aruba at the Hyatt. The guy in the blue and white bathing suit with a drink in one hand and his other hand wrapped around the waist of a younger girl."
You're on. See you there. If I'm late, start without me.
Althouse said, "As to #2, I think the state can limit marriage to couples. Here, I think there can be a limit across the board: Everyone can have one spouse."
do those spouses include your brother, or an underage kid? Then you really can't marry the person you love can you?
The definition of marriage is plastic.
the definition of "child" is also plastic. The definition of "family" is also plastic. Therefore, who's to say that you can't marry your mom or an underage kid. What is a kid? What is a mom and what roles must society afford them. MUST it be so that moms can't shtup their kids? who"s to say? MUST the age limit be set to it allow kids to marry? Couldn't the age limit be set to when a woman menstruates and when a man ejaculates?
If pedophiles are born that way and kids are willing participants and adulthood in the past has been determined to be when a woman menstruates (just ask prophet Mohammmad) then shouldn't we redefine when children can marry to accommodate both pedophiles (who are born that way) and kids who want to marry?
As a social ill, it's not worse than adultery and fornication. Some men get multiple women and some men are on the outs. Why should the people who believe in polygamy be denied their version of the same thing?
Adultery and fornication doesn't confer any social status or advantage, unless your lover is Louis XV and we're talking about Versailles. They are, in point of fact, subversions of law and order. In a polygamous legal framework, the big man can point to his bevy of wives who are, legally, his. In many such societies, they are his possessions, see above, women and cattle as status markers.
Why would you want to reinforce human evils with human law? Isn't the point of law to protect and cushion each other from the clash of each others' selfish and unconscionable desires? To protect the weak from the full expression of the desires of the strong?
We talked earlier about the Japanese use of those women called sobame. This is the practice that often saw young girls sold by their impoverished, landless parents to rich men to fill out their harems. Among the FLDS, teenaged girls are traded back and forth between the patriarchs to reinforce alliances and preserve comity in the community. This is polygamy as practiced, not some airy, bloodless abstraction of free-choice libertarian theory.
Shouldn't *that* make you cry?
Just like heterosexual marriage is no better or worse than homosexual marriage
That's a hell of a whopper right there. I can't believe someone wrote this and meant it.
What if marriage is not based on family or love but simply a financial transaction between two people? I.e. I want to give my mom my benefits, therefore I "marry" her? Or, I want to give the kid down the street benefits, therefore I marry him?
I mean, the whole gay marriage argument seems to rest on the argument of love. And as Inga always says, we know plenty of people who are sterile and old, so if its just about families shouldn't we not allow them to marry?
Well, so too with love. Hat if we find people who don't really love each other? Should we deny me a marriage license?
How about we just skip love, and go right to conferring benefits. And in that case why not have marriage for everybody? Incestual couples, gay couples etc.
And why stop at couples? You can have your family on your insurance plan, so why couldn't you marry a few people and all have them on your insurance plan?
That could be a way to push Obamacarw by the way. Everyone is covered because they're married to someone, or someone's be it their lover, or friend or a complete stranger.
As to #2, I think the state can limit marriage to couples. Here, I think there can be a limit across the board: Everyone can have one spouse.
If the state can do this, then the state can limit marriage to one spouse of the opposite sex.
But really, the wider problem isn't "gay marriage" or the legal definition of marriage. It's that there is a legal definition of marriage at all. Why is the state in the business of determining what marriage is? Why are people so insistent on being regulated by the government? Why treat one group of people differently than another? Isn't the constitution and many of the founding legal principles of America to treat everyone the same, meaning individuals, instead of by groups or class?
In other words, why is it legal or even right to treat married people wholly different from single people? And indeed why have single people subsidize married people?
The conservative argument for gay marriage is that society would be better off if we encouraged gay people to be a bunch of squares the way we do straight people. Home, family, community activities, stability, all of it.
Ken wrote:
"As to #2, I think the state can limit marriage to couples. Here, I think there can be a limit across the board: Everyone can have one spouse."
If the state can do this, then the state can limit marriage to one spouse of the opposite sex.
this is something that the Althouse's of the world don't seem to grok. She wants to say, when it comes to gay marriage, that society can't define it to not include gay marriage, but when it comes to any other marriage society can define marriage.
Can society limita couples marriage to non blood relatives?well then why not gays?
I'll wade through the other 150 comments I've skipped later and wonder here (as it appears others may have) about the "safety net" (read food stamps, Medicaid -- OBAMACARE for all!!11!!) / public assistance quagmire here. <--- Make that chaos.
Calculating one man's income with 3 wives and 9 children puts everyone except Bragelina on public assistance which will be paid for by ... drum roll ... the financially responsible US citizen! (and with the Islamists it is 4 wives and 16 kids who hate America too.)
Yeah! Whoo hoooo !!
Free phones, food, gas and mortgages! (And who needs free contraceptives?)
How STUPID STUPID STUPID can we get.
Part of it has to do with the state not wanting to raise children produced by couples. Since children are the future of society, and since biological couples are the ones that actuall produce them, and since the state doesn't want to be supporting bastards that parents don't it promotes the biological relationship that furthers its future, and which is the one responsible for raising kids instead. Gay marriage doesn't do this and polygamy doesn't do this.
Once we get into what marriage is, there are then restrictions on the behavior. So, society restricts incestual couples because, well its not in society's interest to normalize incest.
Also, since its a contract of sorts that involves divvying up of assets and custodial rights, how could govt not be involved in marriage?
what if there are kids in the mix? Ant they bastards? shouldn't society recognize that bastards are worse off than non bastards, and allow for bigamists to marry his lover so as to not leave his child as a bastard.
In concubinage cultures and low-shame nominally monogamous cultures, there's such a thing as "acknowledged bastards", who have some rights, but are distinctly disadvantaged in comparison to children of the legally recognized marriage. I have no earthly idea how that would work in a welfare state; the modern polygamous states generally don't feature significant welfare-state governance. Hmm. Except Saudi Arabia. I don't know an awful lot about how Saudi welfare and inheritance works, to be honest. I think that welfare rights vest entirely in the males? Let me go do some research...
Everyone can have one spouse. You can combine #1 and #2 and have one legal marriage and additional members of the household that you can call whatever you want. It's none of the government's business.
why cant't two gay men live together and call it whatever they want without forcing the state to recognize it as a marriage, particularly since the state sees little to no utility to doing so?
Ugh, hard to parse, but I *think* Saudi women's status as perpetual minors means they get treated like minor children in US welfare terms - they're considered to be covered under their guardian's citizenship status for purposes of health care costs, welfare receipts, education costs, and so forth. Sharia holds a female heir to have one-half the rights to the deceased parents' inheritance as a male heir, and presumably only divorce cuts out a child from inheritance.
This is great! We can lead with polygamy and then follow up with Sharia. We'll be all primed and ready for it.
"As a social ill, it's not worse than adultery and fornication. Some men get multiple women and some men are on the outs."
If you really believe this, you're just not paying attention.
Getting laid doesn't make men better and more functional members of society. There's a great deal of evidence that getting married to a woman DOES make a man a better and more functional member of society.
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<blockquote>
So, the Dems are reaching out for the Mormon vote now?
--http://www.blogger.com/profile/14016958658756431602
</blockquote>
Yep.
And not just any Mormon votes, but the Fundamentalist LDS ones even Mitt wouldn't touch.
Headline: "Extreme Left Joins Fundamentalists".
It is to laugh.
Truth in labeling...
-- The labels marriage, union, polygamy, are all legitimate interests of the state and should be define by the people.
--Orange juice is what the FDA says it is... you can't sell orange drink as orange juice. The people have defined these labels thru the FDA. No one questions the states interest and right to define and enforce these labels. When you serve it in the privacy of your home you can call it what you choose.
-- Whether individuals choose to drink of these different flavored relationships should then be up to them as informed free citizens.
--The behavior belongs to the individual. The definition belongs to the people.
Oof the spelling on this one was atrocious -
Adultery and fornication doesn't confer any social status or advantage, unless your lover is Louis XV and we're talking about Versailles.
what if there are kids in the mix? Aren't they bastards? shouldn't society recognize that bastards are worse off than non bastards, and allow for bigamists to marry their lovers so as to not leave their children bastards?
Whether that ends up being one big polygamous marriage, or whether we allow for two separate marriages I'll leave to legislators. Only, since we're redefining marriage to be whatever, why not both?
Feminists should continue to work on expanding marriage to bestiality as the most important realtionship they have is with their cats.
that was awesome.
None of this conversation would be even happening if homosexuals had any common sense.
I think the state can limit marriage to couples. Here, I think there can be a limit across the board: Everyone can have one spouse.
"Here, I think there can be a definition across the board: Everyone can have a spouse of the opposite sex [even if they don't want to have sex with them]".
That argument is never accepted for "why non-same-sex-marriage is not discriminatory against homosexual couples".
Why should "anyone can get married, as long as it's just to one person" be any different from "anyone can get married to one person, as long as that person is of the opposite gender"?
I don't really care as a matter of policy, but I don't see how there's any intellectual consistency here in the arguments that are accepted or rejected.
What's the underlying principle that reconciles them?
Is it anything other than "I think PAIR is more important to MARRIAGE than OPPOSITE SEX?" - because that's going to be tough to defend, either rationally or world-historically, given that polygamous marriages are actually common, worldwide, but same-sex marriages are not remotely so
Polygamy. What a great idea. It has worked so well for the Arabs. The women in those countries are so well treated.
There is point in any thought process where you reach a conclusion that is so obviously insane, that you must stop and say to yourself: "I am barking up the wrong tree. Perhaps I should go back to the beginning and reexamine my premises."
If the government can limit marriage to couples, then they can limit marriage to heterosexual couples, to fecund couples, to couples above a certain age, or to couples with children, or any combination thereto.
Best would be to have the government provide tax benefits to civil unions, and note that religious marriage is one possible form of civil union. That way suits of religious organizations for refusal to perform marriages have little justification, as such refusal creates no harm.
"Polygamy is everywhere a marker for poverty, instability, and edemic social disorder. It encourages social inequality, and generally results in the trade of women like cattle, such that big men collect and stockpile wives as status symbols, while surplus and marginal men turn to violence and crime in order to "get theirs".
The only time polygamy is ever a social problem is when it is forced on women. When women aren't given a choice about being part of plural marriage, that's when it becomes demeaning.
But if a woman voluntarily agrees to a polygamous marriage, what harm is there in it? If she doesn't agree to it, then it shouldn't be allowed. Just because a guy wants a second wife doesn't make it ok if his current wife is opposed to it.
But if both parties are agreeable, there's no social reason to disallow it.
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