Gay Marriage and Polygamy

Great Debates
1

I hope this is the proper forum for this.

I’m trying to determine/rationilize my opinion on the acceptability of gay marriage (which I support 100%) versus the “slippery slope” argument that devolves into allowing every “other” “type” of marriage to be acceptable, including polygamy, which I am, though not supportive of, kind of ambiguous, but maybe somewhat skeptical (perhaps ignorantly) of its virtues and legality (ie issues of jealousy, “forced” marriages, whatever else I am not thinking of…).

The way I understand it, a primary, seemingly rational, argument againt “gay marriage” is that if we allow that, then we’ll have to allow polygamyst marriages, incestual marriages, bestial marriages, etc. Therefore we “need” to restrict the definition to the “Traditional” definition.

I try to rationalize it by determining that allowing 2 persons to marry each other, regardless of persuasion, is fair. Under this scenario, Polygamists are permitted to marry, just not more than one other person. Their rights are the same as everyone else’s - Any 2 polygamists may marry each other, regardless of sex or race.

I guess I also see the slippery slope go the other way - if you argue that gay people should not marry each other, then why do we let pedophiles, serial killers, drug dealers, rapists, etc marry each other…?

Am I rationalizing this sufficiently? I suppose I could say it is good enough for me, so if you don’t like it, stuff it, but I am very interested in supportive/divergent opinions.

2

I don’t have any real problems with polyamory, though legal polyamorous marriages would probably require more complex revisions to marriage codes than gay marriage. (I’d guess, IANAL). That said, I don’t see why legalizing gay marriage means we’d have to legalize polyamorous marriage. Laws aren’t forced on us by grim logical necessity. The reflect the often whimsical preferences of society. Why is alchohol legal and marijuana not?

3

The slippery slope is an utterly bogus argument. Marriage, in the law, is a relationship between two people granting them each certain default rights and presumptions with respect to the other. I am empowered to make medical decisions for my wife and she for me, etc. Couples in a marriage may vary who gets responsibility, or even assign responsibility to someone outside the marriage. (e.g. if one spouse is not mentally competent, the other may assign medical decision-making power to a child or trusted friend rather than the afflicted spouse). But legal marriage is a set of default presumptions that apply in the absence of contrary agreement. Indeed, if it weren’t for the fact that hetero couples can enjoy these benefits just by getting married whereas same sex couples have to pay lawyers to create documents to create an approximation of the same relationship, and even then aren’t assured that those documents will be given effect (witness the recent case in Florida), we probably wouldn’t even be having a debate about gay marriage.

Medical decisionmaking is just one example, but one that makes it clear how granting same sex marriage is not the first step on the slope to legal recognition of polygamous marriage. It’s harder to create default presumptions when three or more people are involved. Let’s say A, B, and C are in a polygamous relationship and A is incapacitated. Who should the law presume makes medical decisions- B or C? If it’s both, what if they disagree? Do B and C have decisionmaking power with respect to each other? The point is, once you introduce a third person, it is harder to create default presumptions, so legal documents clarifying who gets to do what with respect to whom is likely to be required anyway.

What the slippery slope argument is really about is societal approval of the relationship, not the legal aspects. The theory is that if gay marriage is legal, that means society is tolerating something sinful, and once that door is opened, then all kinds of other sins are tolerated. But legal recognition of gay marriage is completely separate from social acceptance. There are still a fair number of people who don’t think that people of different races, religions, etc. should be married, and regard such relationships as sinful or contrary to Scripture. That doesn’t mean that there is a legal basis for denying legal protection to such relationships.

The bestiality and incest arguments are equally vacuous, since they are nonconsensual (or presumed to be such). Legal recognition of the right of two men or two women to the legal presumptions and benefits of marriage do not give you the right to marry your cat or your sister.

4

First, laet me obserrve that it’s a legal question, not a moral one, being asked.

Second, in the U.S. the right to marry is a basic civil right (see Loving v Virginia). We do not “permit” anyone to be married.

However, rights may be regulated provided that the regulation passes some legal tests – valid non-religious purpose, for example, affecting all equally, or if discriminating, doing so on the basis of some nexus to a valid governmental purpose (and how strong a nexus and how important a purpose varies according to the form of discrimination). We can go into detail on this for 100 posts or so, but kindly accept that as a very broad-brush summary of the legal principles in question.

Now: Marriage laws contemplate binary unions. One man and one woman, or in a few states two men or two women. They do not contemplate multi-partner unions, which would require a freh body of law to regulate. (If Alice divorces Bob and Carol and Ted, are the three of them still married? What if Carol then divorces – are Bob and Ted, two straight men who agreed to share wives in a polygamous relationship, legally married to each other?)

Incestuous unions with the potential for progeny are normally considered to be bannable owing to the potential for birth defects. (If anyone wants to argue the pros and cons of incestuous marriage, they are cordially invited to open a new thread.)

Marriages involving an underage partner are prohibited or allowed only under stringent guidelines for the purpose of protecting the minor from his/her inexperience or impetuousness. While I have known a 16-year-old couple with the emotional maturity and responsibility to contract a marriage if they so chose IMO (and part of the reason I evaluated them as that is that they had a medium-term plan for their lives that involved marrying after high school, then pursuing their career goals together) and would have evaluated them as readier to marry than some legal adults, the point is that most teens are not yet ready for marriage, and the law takes that into account.

Marriage to a non-human animal or inanimate object barely needs alluding to as the ultimate in slippery slope argumentation – almost no one in his/her right mind seriously suggests such a marriage for him/herself.

But notice that there is a valid government interest in regulating or prohibiting these classes of potential marriage – society’s interest in not being unnecessarily burdened by defective children, society’s interest in protecting the young, the difficulty in adapting a body of law evolved over centuries regarding a two-party contract to accommodate multi-party contracts.

In contrast, there does not seem to be a valid secular governmental purpose in the prohibition of same-sex marriage.

5

Anti-SSM proponents would draw their restriction at: ONLY 2 people who are members of the opposite sex and not related.

The posters in this thread would draw their restriction at: ONLY 2 people who are not related.

You seem to make much ado of the fact that you are not discriminating against anyone, but in fact you are simply drawing the line for what you find acceptable at a different place.

If you are going to say that morality has no place in law, then there is no cogent argument against polygamous or incestuous marriages. The law doesn’t current lend itself to polygamy? It doesn’t lend itself to gay marriage, either. You change the law; I’m sure if we set our mind to it, we could draft a law dealing with how polygamous marriages would work…

6

I think the argument that gay marriage would lead to polygamous marriage is the only one that holds any water at all. It’s true that the same reasoning that leads one to conclude that gay marriage should be legal works just as well in considering that polygamous marriage should be legal. Which, honestly, is fine with me. If three people want to get married to each other, I don’t see any particular reason to forbid that. It’s not the sort of relationship I want for myself, but that doesn’t give me the right to say that no one should have that relationship. But, as pointed out, it’s not as simple as allowing monogamous gay marriage, and would require a good amount of entirely new legislation to hammer out where the rights and responsibilities lie. Still, if legalizing gay marriage is the catalyst to the process of figuring that out, I say “So what?”

To a certain degree, you can use the same reasoning to argue for incestuous marriage. Except that here, the state can claim a vested interest in reducing the possibilities of serious, deleterious health issues caused by inbreeding. Legalizing gay marriage does not increase the risk of disease or defect - if anything, it reduces it, by creating a framework of socially sanctioned monogamy for gays.

Beyond that, the slippery slope devolves into idiotic irrelevancy. It can’t lead to marrying a minor, because marriage is a contract, and minors by definition cannot enter legally binding contracts. They can be entered into some contracts by their legal guardians, but this ability is not total: there are many contracts that minors cannot be forced into, even by their parents, and marriage is one of them. There’s no reason that would change if gays could marry. None of the arguments in favor of gay marriage would be applicable to that issue.

Along the same lines, someone wanting to marry a sheep also fails, because none of the rights and responsibilites inherent in the marriage contract can be carried out by an animal. A sheep cannot own property, or make medical decisions, or claim government benefits. You can’t marry an animal because an animal can’t sign a contract. Again, none of the arguments in favor of gay marriage apply to this reason for barring sheepfuckers from getting wed.

7

You mean, there is no cogent argument based in morality against polygamous or incestuous marriages. There could easily be cogent arguments against both polyamorous marriages and incestuous based on other factors, such as problems assigning dominace if the remaining members of the marriage disagree about what to do in medical cases, for example, or cases regarding the ability of the child to enter into contracts.

Slippery slopes aren’t good argument. Just because there’s no reason to prevent gay marriage doesn’t mean every other possible variation of marriage is equally unproblematic.

8

Seems to polygamy does require a redefinition of marraige while gay marriage does not. At the least, polygamy requires the legal notion of a spouse’s rights and responsibilities be clarified. With a two-person marriage (between A and B), spouse A has, by default, legal next-of-kin status to B and the right to make certain decisions if B is rendered medically incompetent and such. How this nice, simple and clear business gets translated to polygamy escapes me - does spouse C have to defer to A if B is incapacitated? Can C and D outvote A? What responsibilities, if any, to C and D have to the biological children of A and B in the event A and B die or are incapacitated? The rules could fill a book six inches thick.

9

The difference is that you could amend the marriage laws to allow for gay marriage with the stroke of a pen: It’s still basically an interaction between two people, and the fact that those two people are of the same sex doesn’t require any change in the marriage laws beyond just the laws stating who is allowed to marry. Polygamous marriage, by contrast, would require a re-write of essentially all laws which deal with marriage in any way, laws which have been built up over the course of centuries and which impact many other aspects of law in many ways.

Note, incidentally, that this is not an argument that we should not change those laws, but it is certainly an argument that it would be much more difficult to do so.

10

First, I’m not talking about children. I mean incest like an adult brother and sister who want to marry each other. No coercion and both are of sound mind.

Next, I’m sure that there would be some problems to hammer out in regards to polygamous marriages. There are problems in any legal situation; that is why we have state legislatures.

You argument would be like saying, “Well, these cars are just too complicated. Some people want a 75mph speed limit, others want 55. Some want big SUVs some want eco-friendly cars. Some want highway spending, some want toll roads, etc. To hell with it, no legal cars!”

If it is a fundamental right for two people to join in marriage, then why not three people? Why not a hundred people? Just because you would have to rewrite the law?

What about Brown v. Board of Education? Should that have been passed over since all relevant laws dealt with segregated schools and that changing them would be too hard?

11

Say you have an unrelated man and woman who both carry recessive genes for a certain genetic disease/birth defect. Should the government forbid the two of them from marrying as well?

12

Heh, “some”. There are divorce cases in “simple” two-person marriages that go all the way to the Supreme Court (recent Canadian example). Sorting out the legal issues of a contentious polygamous marriage would be mind-boggling.

13

Or if you had adult brother and sister who were verified to be free of genetic defects, or if one or both were sterilized? What is the significant government interest in prohibiting that relationship then?

14

Sorry; I brain-farted the incest thing.

Regardless, you misconstrue my position. I am not saying that there are insurmountable reasons why any given type of marriage should not be allowed. I am saying that by removing the ‘moral’ objections, you have not demonstrated that there are not other problems with the other types of marriages. Such problems need not be insurmountable for us to elect not to change them; they merely need to be sufficiently problematic to compel a vote against.

15

I don’t have a problem with polygamy, if people had the strength to make it work.

Two people usually can’t make marraige work, even if they are “religious”. Even more difficult with more than two.

If I lived 5000 years, I doubt I would try marraige again. I probably shouldn’t comment.

16

Polygamous marriage, or rather polygyny, is common in some places. The laws and customs of those places seem able to deal with it.

What consenting adults choose to do with each other doesn’t concern me. If necessary, the law can be adjusted to suit most situations if it doesn’t already.

17

The strongest argument against the slipperly slope that I know of is this:

Homosexuality is an innate type of characteristic that separates gays from straights. Thus, being gay is akin to being white or asian, it is inherent, and there should be no law to discriminate people who are simply born that way

Polygamy is a practice. People are not born polygamous, or with polygamous tendencies. It is a learned trait, much like religion, that is not innate and therefore should be regulated to much more of an extent that sexuality is. Polygamous people are not polygamous without their marriage. In fact, polygamous people are no longer polygamous if they get divorced, whereas a gay person is gay whether or not he is married

I believe the same is true for zoophiles (people attracted to animals) or incestuous people. For one, I’ve never heard of nor have I ever read any studies that hinted at zoophilia as anything other than a learned trait. Kids arent born with a desire to fuck animals. On the other hand, gender identity is a very real and big part of humans, and many people have expressed very early on that they have always felt they were different from other people.

As for incest, doesnt their very nature, if you want to assume it is innate, posit only a certain number of people can be incestuous? After all, you dont develop incest if you’ve never had a sibling, so how can anyone say that it is as deeply ingrained as homosexuality?

18

Actually there are plenty of people out there who would happily lecture you on why some or all people are evolved to be polygamous. Here’s one of many possible examples. It’s obviously nonsense, but for the purposes of setting legislation that doesn’t matter. If enough people are convinced by such nonsense, then won’t the “innate trait” argument lead inevitably to legalized polygamy?

19

Well, sure, by systematically denying women rights their liberal democracy counterparts have become accustomed to.

20

Right, those places can deal with polygyny, but what would happen if a Saudi woman were to try to marry two men? I suspect that the laws and customs wouldn’t be so obliging then.

begbert, why would you try to disregard the moral objections? Any law that’s not based, directly or indirectly, on moral principles is a bad law. Saying that gays shouldn’t marry because “that’s the way it’s always been” or “the Bible says so” is terrible precisely because those reasons have nothing to do with morality. On the other hand, “Incest shouldn’t be allowed because it leads to birth defects” is a clear moral objection to incest, and therefore a reasonable reason to pass a law against it.