Heterosexual marriage in all senses doesn’t work. Half end in divorce.

Saying polygamy should be illegal b/c of arguments like women could be subserviant aren’t logical in holding with freedoms.

There are women who are the ‘bitches’ of their husbands who don’t give a crap about them but it’s still a right for them to marry.

There are only really 2 options with the government and marriage.

1. All marriage is legal no matter how sick and wrong it might sound.

2. The government should just drop legal marriage and just say people can call their relationships whatever they want.

Personally if marriage was dropped in the legal sense, I would still buy a ring, ask the girl to marry me, and go to a church and have a wedding. I could care less if the government said it was official or not.

Therefore, the onus is on you to provide the incentive of the government to provide you those priviledges, and saying “people who don’t agree with me are flawed� doesn’t cut it. What is the state’s interest in gay marriage? How can stuffing genital A into orifice B derive any benefit for the government? In the case of heterosexual marriages, the likelihood is that a ‘lil taxpayer will result.

I guess happy hour started early today, eh Bri?

Last I checked, getting a polygamous or gay marriage from a religious or other institution is quite possible.

What this discussion really boils down to is government benefits vfor having such a relationship.

I don’t buy the “anyone against gay marriage is a racist bigot homophobe nasty-person!” argument because it is a non-argument. It is nothing more than personal invective against people. You can already GET gay marriages in some churches, what you are seeking is government recognition(and thus benefits) to such a union. Therefore, the onus is on you to provide the incentive of the government to provide you those priviledges, and saying “people who don’t agree with me are flawed” doesn’t cut it. What is the state’s interest in gay marriage? How can stuffing genital A into orifice B derive any benefit for the government? In the case of heterosexual marriages, the likelihood is that a ‘lil taxpayer will result.

In the case of polygamy, you have to deal with a whole hoard of insurance concerns and other marriage rights. Do all spuses get to visit or just one?

The point is the debate is not about “lifestyle choices” it is about “what is the governments interest in giving benefits for your chosen union”.

If you actually take the time to read the profiles of Emma Smith and Eliza R. Snow, you’ll find some of the most compelling, tough and powerful women in American history. I don’t doubt that there were abuses as well, and maybe quite a few of them. But the history of Mormon polygamy is not purely one of men subjugating women.

The problem is, when the Mormon church officially denounced polygamy and started excommunicating anyone who practiced it, the practice lost a lot of its social legitimacy. Not only was it illegal, but now it was socially unacceptable.

The result was a culture-of-secrecy among those who still practiced polygamy that is a breeding ground for the type of abuses that Mr. Stewart is probably thinking of.

The end point is that Tom Green and other noteworthy examples do not prove that polygamy is inherently abusive. Modern Mormons are of two minds on this issue. On the one hand, most are children of their generation and find the idea of having more than one wife, or of sharing a husband, personally repulsive. However, they are also faced with the religious need to justify HISTORICAL polygamy as practiced by the early Mormons.

The reality in Utah is rather complex. I don’t think you can make the case that all modern Mormons are secretly waiting for polygamy to make a comeback. Most of them are just as turned off by it as most of the Christian Right is. But their are definitely more reasons for Mormons to be sympathetic than are found in mainline America.

I should note, I don’t advocate bringing the practice back. Best leave well enough alone.

There is a principled line to be drawn between same-sex marriage and plural marriage — the government has to draw a line for the extension of welfare benefits (like social security, etc.) somewhere. Yes, it’s an arbitrary line, but an arbitrary line based on economics rather than religion.

1) I think there was a bit more to the “social” issue of first cousins marrying. Back when more people stayed put–which meant more people spent their lives around extended families–marrying first cousins could pose a bit more complexity as far as churning up extended family relationships. That’s even when the marriages worked. Can you imagine when they didn’t?

Now, this isn’t such an issue because we’re all so very mobile and, it seems to me, less intertwined on a daily basis with extended family.

Of course, we also know more about genetics etc.

2) A picky, picky thing regarding Christianity and examples of polygamy: how many examples of those relationships are in the NEW Testament? While the OLD Testament is vital to understanding how Christianity developed, and–of course!–it tells of prophets foreseeing a Messiah, technically Christianity did not exist until, well, Jesus’ existence. Further, there’s an excellent theological argument to make that Christianity still didn’t come into being until AFTER the crucifixion. Think about it …

In any case, my point is that it is not precise, and probably not really fair, to use the Old Testament tales as evidence of a history of polygamy in Christianity, as such.

3) Finally, I agree that the divorce rate is sad commentary on how much we really value marriage. But I would caution as to how we throw around statistics about divorce to say that “we’re” not good at marriage. Remember that the divorce rate includes people who “fail” (I use that word ONLY in the context that “not good at” brings up; I don’t view divorced people as failures) more than once. While more than half of all marriages may end in divorce, that does not mean that more than half of all people ever married have divorced, or that a minority of people are “successful” at marriage (as measured by divorce, at any rate).

We can’t address the issues if we’re inadvertently mistating the facts.

See this, for example.

“How many American marriages end in divorce? One in two, if you believe the
statistic endlessly repeated in news media reports, academic papers and
campaign speeches.

The method preferred by social scientists in determining the divorce rate is
to calculate how many people who have ever married subsequently divorced.
Counted that way, the rate has never exceeded about 41 percent, researchers
say. Although sharply rising rates in the 1970′s led some to project that
the number would keep increasing, the rate has instead begun to inch
downward.”

(By the way, I’m not endorsing the web site on which this article appears; it was just the quickest hit for the NYT article I’m referencing.)

My concern would be that if the supreme court ‘discovers’ a constitutional right of gay couples to marry (do heterosexual couples have a constitutional right to get married? maybe in the 10th amendment?), when there is no explicit language in the constitution forbidding discrimination on sexual orientation, then I don’t see how that right doesn’t extend to polygamists desiring to marry (as part of their religion), when there definitely is explicit language in the constitution forbidding religious discrimination.

We should change the rules based on societal fiat: gay couples can marry because we as a society say it’s ok. It’s a good solution for the same reason the Order of the Garter is good: because there’s no damn merit in it.

A compelling case against polygamy needs to show that polygamy is harmful in and of itself. The idea that it is simply because it prevents some men or women from getting married because others are married to multiple spouses doesn’t cut it for me, frankly. That doesn’t mean the proof can’t be made; it just means it hasn’t been made.

I should say that I’m of two minds about it. On the one hand, I generally agree with the principle that Michael stated, that adults should be allowed to enter into the contracts they desire. I think the case also could be made that, like drug use and prostitution , polygamy’s bad effects could be reduced through legality and regulation. But at the same time, there is no denying that most polygamous societies are cruelly abusive towards women.

Not to mention the thought of actually being in a polygamous relationship, at this point in my life, just makes me tired. Especially after watching the first episode of Big Love.

I do want to note a slight aversion to the argument about defective offspring and point out that with all of the genus operandi that has survived thus far, we still have an alarming number of “defective”? children with CP, Mongoloidism, etc. so I am not so sure about the scientific basis for that point of view.

On the other hand, in the animal world where we have been able to “breed for characteristics” we get some pretty tempermental critters i.e. dobermans and shepards. …… so if you plan on marrying you sister … understand from the outset …. she may produce children who are really hard to get along with.

My “yuck” is a social “yuck”, not a scientific “yuck”. I simply wish I could have avoided social baggage that I don’t need, because of course, your Average Joe, upon hearing of cousins marrying, will go “yuck”. And even myself, I can’t help but instinctually go “yuck” despite knowing quite well that it’s not a big deal.

That is of the essence. We have a choice here. We are not at the mercy of gravity. This slope is not slippery. Every step “down” it (and some of them may be “up”) is optional and can and must be weighed and considered.

The culture I wish to nurture is one in which homosexuals are recognized to exist as a fact, not a problem, and encouraged to live a good life like anyone else, rather than shoved into the closet, shamed, and made to feel that there’s no point in aspiring to a stable, open, loving life since they’ll be despised anyway.

The culture I wish to nurture is also one that encourages the face-to-face intimacy of two people. I was thinking yesterday, “Marriage is really the only relationship in which you come to see and know and love another person a little bit the way God does — that is, as he or she is.” I don’t mean the word “love,” there, as a good feeling. I mean it as knowledge and profound acceptance regardless of your own tastes and annoyances. That’s such hard work and it can really only be done one on one, or it is diluted and provided with escape hatches (which of course we tend to find anyway).

High school anthropology, of course, over-simplifies. Statistically, the most productive years of a man’s life are prior to getting married. Ostensibly, because the guy spends lots of time innovating and producing in a crazy attempt to impress the female. As soon as a man gets married, risk becomes anathema, and innovation and production drop off drastically. So you have lots of girlless guys who suddenly become very productive in a strange attempt to rectify their girllessness, and eventually, they become productive enough to impress the girl or else they burn out early. Many will burn out early and even die off, but because the conception rate should theoretically stay around the same, society doesn’t quite collapse. And you get lots of extra volunteer soldiers.

The question, if you want to look at it from this angle, really turns into, is the higher productivity worth the higher crime rate? And since we don’t really have a sufficiently polygamous modern society to study, I’d say, on a guess, it’s probably not, since crime (at least stealing anyways) is pretty much the arch-enemy of capitalism.

On the subject of polygamy and gay marriage, I personally, on a moral level, don’t like either one. But like Callimachus, I don’t see any reason why my moral opinions should have any effect on what you and other consenting adults are able to do. I agree with Alan that there’s more potential abuse that may need to be regulated with polygamy, but the solution that America traditionally tends to have for that is simple enough. Leave it up to the states to figure out. And conveniently, Utah will be the only state that cares enough to want it to be legal. So they get to deal with the quandry that is polygamy, and the rest of us get to shrug while they work it out. If they find a fair and equitable solution, the rest of the states can later adopt it. Or at least, that’s the general idea.

The problem only comes in when the religious right puts their foot down and starts demanding ammendments to the Constitution to outlaw polygamy and/or gay marriage for everyone in order to “defend” their narrow views of the “sanctity of marriage.” And I love how they just prefix whatever issue they want to push with the word “sanctity” (see abortion, capital punishment, gay marriage, polygamy, whatever) and they get instant credibility with their constit’ency without any real thoughtful examination involved. It’s neat, really.

Societies that have a lot of polygamy going on have to answer the question of what to do with all the left over men. Back in the day when war was a constant fact of life, extra men would just go off and get killed. With no war, the theory goes, they just stick around and – without the mollifying influences of estrogen and dopamine – get into trouble.

[I'm aware that this confuses "incest" and "inbreeding," but so does this whole post. If it's illegal to have a child by your sister, that doesn't automatically make it illegal to have sex with her. Ew. But this thread wasn't my idea.]

Actually, I think I’ve read that first cousins are pretty safe, genetically, as breeding partners. According to Wikipedia, 24 U.S. states prohibit marriages between first cousins, but 7 permit them under special circumstances and the rest don’t restrict them.