The truth is no defense against bureaucracy.
And I forgot : nobody should need to convince you also because, according to the very rethoric used in this thread you should provide a valid reason not to support for other peope a right that you claim for yourself.
Would you then be okay with flipping the marriage laws–i.e., giving straights and gays both the same right to marry someone of the same sex? This would be just as equitable as giving straights and gays both the same right to marry someone of the opposite sex.
Incidentally, you keep pulling that [paraphrased] “Totally factually probably 98% of straight couples can or maybe would will have had children.” I’m having trouble finding the exact stats, but check these out:
- 19% of women ages 40-45 were childless in 2000; the birth rate to women age 40 or older is tiny.
- Over a third of all births in the US are to unmarried women.
- 84-90% of women have been married by the time they’re 40.
This means at least 9% of married women (90% married, 81% have kids) don’t have kids while married–and probably higher than that, since of the 81% who have kids, a third of them may have had those kids out of wedlock.
We’re not talking about a situation in which only 2% of marriages don’t result in children. We’re talking about, if I’m understanding these numbers correctly, at least 9% of opposite-sex marriage. That’s about one in every elevent marriages; that’s far, far higher than the percentage of marriages that could ever be held by same-sex couples.
(I may well be misreading the stats, and I’d welcome correction if I am).
Daniel
I think one can legitimately draw a distinction between same-sex marriage and polygamous marriage as a practical matter: The groundwork for SSM has already been laid by generations of gradual reforms which have converted heterosexual marriage from a relationship with legally defined clearly distinct gender roles to a relationship (legally speaking) between two equal and consenting adult partners. Back in the 19th Century, it would have actually made sense to ask (regarding SSM) “But, which one’s going to be the husband and which one’s going to be the wife?”) Now, not so much. IANA(Family Law)L, but my understanding is that our laws are largely unisex when it comes to the mutual rights and responsibilites of husbands and wives.
So, implementing SSM is dead easy: Wherever a law refers to “man and woman” read it as “two consenting adults”; for “husband and wife” read “spouse”. As a practical matter, though, polygamy would require a whole new set of rules. Are there any limits to the size of the marital relationship? (Islam limits marriage to one man and not more than four women, but I don’t think we want to implement sharia law in this country.) Could 50 people all get married to each other? How about 500? If Person A is married to Person B and Person A is also married to Person C, what is the relationship between Persons B and C? Could A, B, and C all be married to each other, and C also be married to D on the side? If A, B, and C are all married to each other, what if A wants to divorce B but remain married to C (who wants to remain married to both A and B)? If 5 people are in a relationship, and two of them decide to divorce the remaining three, how do they split things up?
None of these is necessarily any great moral bar to society eventually recognizing marital relationships that involve more than two people, but from a purely pragmatic viewpoint it does make sense to implement the easy change of recognizing same-sex marriage before we go and give ourselves a lot of headaches trying to sort out all the intricacies of polygamous relationships (even leaving aside the political issue that SSM doesn’t have majority support yet, but is still probably less unpopular than polygamy).
Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. Fine, if SSM marriage is legalized, then as an inevitable consequence, everyone will get to marry everyone else, as often as they like. And the fact remains, I still do not give a shit. Are you happy now, Clairobscur?
MEBuckner made a great list of someo fo the complexities inherent to legalizing polygamy. One more: the right of spouses not to testify against one another. Imagine the field day the Moonies could have with that!
Daniel
Cool. Could I put in a request at this time? I’d like to marry Goldie Hawn twice. Oh, and Selma Blair once, then Selma Hayek four times. Thanks! 
I hate to hijack this thread and I’m not going to be back to read any replies because I normaly avoid GD because I’m not great at debates but I have to interview someone who is against Same Sex Marriage for an English report. I did recieve permission to ask in IMHO but I have only had replies from people who are pro. If anyone here who is against SSM would allow me to interview them by E-mail I’d appreciate it. My E-mail address is in my profile or you can post in my IMHO thread and I will E-mail you.
Again sorry for the hijack
Not really. I would have been happier if you had given a shit. It’s very unfortunate that I can’t vote in favor of “marriage only for people who give a shit” which would quite deservedly exclude both you and ** randyjet **
That said, since I seem to have gotten the last response I can expect from ** Miller ** and since there are obviously here some causes that are widely too popular/cool to need support, and others widely too unpopular/uncool for people to even think they should consider them, since arguments, including moral arguments, apparently only apply if the cause belong to the first category, I’m going to leave the thread. It irritates me too much to have to support the rights of people who “don’t give a shit” and it’s not worth the pain. Especially since i’m probably amongst the last ones who should give a shit about who’s allowed to marry whom.
Can I just say this is an excellent summation? I kept sorta meaning to mention this is one of my posts but it seemed like way to much work to address this point, and you did it way more thoroughly than I could have.
Polygamy and SSM are not the same issue. Polygamy is a choice and being gay in 99.9% cases is not. The only similarity they share is the word marriage. There is no reason to assume or evidence to indicate that allowing SSM would somehow lead to a justification of polygamy. You feel it might. Do you have any evidence to indicate this is so?
If you have any evidence to support this concept then it may be relevant. Do you? Any at all?
I think the discussion should be people’s civil rights to make personal choices that don’t harm anyone else, vs. the government as an extension of some groups moral sensibilities interfering with the private choices of citizens.
I want to see data on what is wrong with either social structure. Does it harm the participants and the society they exist in? Polygamy has been around for centuries and I don’t see how it is harmful if the people involved are consenting adults. But, that is for another thread.
already answered. One is a choice, one isn’t. One denies a significant number of people the same civil rights that many other citizens already enjoy. Polygamy isn’t about allowing some group to be polygamists and not allowing others. See the difference?
They are two separate issues requiring two separate discussions and separate votes. Did allowing blacks to marry whites result in polygamy or SSM? I think not.
Again two separate issues.
Polygamists aren’t denied the right to marry at all are they? They are only denied the right to marry as many as they feel like. Is that fair…I don’t know, maybe not. but I don’t see it as serious as denying a significant portion of our population the same rights that other people already have.
Look, I’m not adverse to the discussion, but in this thread, it’s a fucking distraction from the actual topic, alright? Yeah, it’s related, but it’s also an entire debate on its own, and should debated in its own right. Trying to do both in this thread is going to mean that neither topic gets the attention it deserves. And since you haven’t seemed to parse it correctly, saying I don’t care about polygamy means that I don’t oppose it. I don’t care if SSM leads to polygamy. I don’t care if it doesn’t lead to polygamy. I might care about polygamy on its own merits, but the fact is, I’ve never heard from any polygamists who particularly cared if their relationship was officially recognized or not. If they want to put forward their case, I’m not going to stand in their way. I don’t have any moral objection to it, but it’s an order of magnitude more difficult to legislate that SSM, and I don’t have a clue where to start with it, and there are a whole lot of objections to polygamy that don’t apply at all to SSM. Which is why it should be debated in its own thread, and not in this one.
Alternatly, what cosmosdan said.
Miller, I think his point isn’t that this should invalidate SSM, but that you’re a jerk to say you only care about a right denied if you’re not the one denied. It’s like if I said I care about gay marriage because I’m gay, but I don’t care about interracial marriage rights because I’m white.
And on preview, this post is totally unnecessary and I agree with Miller that it’s a different issue, certainly. But I’ve already done 10 unnecessary things today, so why stop now.
Oooh–I really don’t think you want to hang your hat on this argument. First off, so what if it’s a choice? Getting married is a choice, too. Second, what if your 99.9% figure is wrong–should the small minority who choose homosexuality be denied marriage, as we currently deny marriage to the small minority of folks who want to marry someone of the same sex?
Personally, I don’t see a difference at all: this looks to me exactly like randyjet’s specious argument that gay people can marry someone of the opposite sex, too. The relevant right is the right to marry who you want to marry, and that right is currently denied to folks who want to marry more than one person. (I think there are good reasons that this right cannot be perfectly analogous to the right conferred by a two-person marriage, but that doesn’t mean that the quoted argument is valid).
Strongly agreed.
Daniel
One really sound argument relative to the distinction between SSM and polygamous marriage is that the present structure provides for a bilateral contractual relationship. (It may be other things as well, but it is a CR at minimum.) Restructuring the laws to permit a different sort of bilateral CR is a minimal change. Restructuring them to provide for a multilateral CR is a much more complex process.
If John and Mary divorce, or John and Paul or Mary and Heather divorce, a marriage is ended. Community property, custody and visitation of children, are subject to fairly standard process now – and would be the same in the case of the ending of a SSM. The surviving spouse inherits; the healthy partner consents to the comatose partner’s care; etc., for all 1100 or however many rights.
If Bob and John and Beth marry, all sorts of questions arise. If Bob is hospitalized, is John or Beth the next of kin? If Bob divorces them, are John and Beth still married? Who has rights to the community property of the marriage, especially if it is still existent? What if Beth gets the divorce – are Bob and John considered still married? Does whether or not they are gay, or heterosexual co-husbands of Beth, have any legal bearing on the question? If a partner in a six-person marriage, genetic parent to one child but co-caregiver to all seven children of the marriage, dies intestate, who inherits, and in what proportions?
And I have one question for Randyjet: on what basis does he claim that marriage is not a right but a gift of the state?
There’s another issue, too:
If A is married to B, does A have to get B’s consent to marry C?
Presumably something like this has been dealt with in cases where a person’s next of kin is one of their two parents, or one of their several children.
Yes I know. My point was that it is a choice granted to heteros and denied to gays. A choice granted to most of the population and denied to a minority.
That’s not the case with Polygamy.
Duh…what?
Not the point at all. Gays cannot simply choose to be happy and content in a heterosexual relationaship. They are denied the civil rights {the pursuit of happiness, if you will} that is granted others. A legally recognized relationship.
Straights can marry multiple partners if he or she wants to do it one at a time. You can marry and divorce as many times as you like. Gays aren’t allowed the first time.
My point was that the argument for polygamy is not that some should be able to and some should not be able to. Do we allow polygamy or not? I’m not arguing for or against.
In the SSM issue many couples already have a right that is currently denied to SS couples. Polygamy is denied to everyone equally.
In that regard they are not the same issue.
You have the chance to impress us all with defining fascism for us in your view. I would also like to know how you define the old Communist Soviet Union too. Was that fascist? Was there any difference between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union?
My sole point on that is that we have an obligation to the country as well as having rights that are enumerated and grounded in our traditions and laws.
I fail to see how on earth you can make this a moral question. There are so many differnt views of what is moral it is beyond reckoning. Muslims have one view of somethings, Christians antother, and Jews yet another. I thought you were aware enough to know that.
What you and all the others are advocating is breaking new ground in law, morals, and customs. It is in no way an affirmation of rights that are commonly held to be that of all. The very resistance to it shows the truth of that proposition.