Perhaps it’s not your ears that you need checked, then.
Oh, it wasn’t false. You evidently miss the point. Unsurprisingly. In the post I responded to you were attempting to assign a degree of reasonableness to various positions. In reality, you weren’t using logic as the metric though, just your own belief system.
I hope that helps.
FWIW, I find all those reasons to be jaw-droppingly awful. If someone opposes polygamous marriages because they’re a logistical nightmare, that’s a position I can respect (although I consider it somewhat defeatist). Those reasons you quoted? They sound pretty similar to the handwaving mumbo jumbo that people try to use to oppose same-sex marriage. They suck.
She didn’t answer the question at all, let alone in the first sentence. She was asked if other states should follow Vermont’s example, and replied with some gibberish about choosing opposite marriage and marriage being between a man and a woman.
No, marriage has until fairly recently been the union of one man and the property of another man, which then becomes the first man’s property, often for reasons of unifying property claims and other business matters.
Are you saying that until recently, a husband was free to sell his wife to someone else? To leave her to someone else in his will?
If so, I would like a cite.
No, but having property doesn’t necessarily mean that you are free to do with it as you wish. I hope I don’t have to cite that.
I’m certainly not claiming that a property owner has unlimited freedom with his or her property. However, I am claiming that a property owner has a lot of freedom over the property, assuming it is otherwise unencumbered.
Do you disagree? If so, would you mind telling me what aspects of the husband/wife relationship qualified the wife as “property” until recently?
I disagree. You can’t drive your car wherever you want, you can’t make extensions to your house however you want, you can’t take off your clothes in public (and certainly both you and your clothes are exclusively your property), etc. I wouldn’t exactly call that ‘a lot of freedom’.
Well, it used to be that a whole bunch of shit a man could do alone a woman could only do with the consent of her husband. They didn’t really have an independent existence or rights of their own, not unlike other things he owned.
You can sell your car to just about anyone, assuming it’s otherwise unencumbered. Ditto for your house and your clothes. You can devise these things. You can also sell them.
That’s what I meant by “a lot of freedom.” Do you still disagree with me?
So even today, a 15 year old child is “property?”
That should be “those are the sorts of things I meant by ‘a lot of freedom.’”
We already do allow for that. No one has a problem with marriage between heterosexual couples who clearly cannot reproduce. Two eighty year olds could get married with nary a peep from you about it, I assume? So your definition is not really accurate.
Adhering to a point you believe in =/= shunning objectivity. If you think you’re objective about gay marriage, you’re kidding yourself. Bigtime.
By the way, I have to interject: I agree that people who dismiss plural marriage and incest marriage out of hand are bigots. I think marriage between consenting adults should be allowed. Period. Yes, plural marriage creates many systemic complications that would need to be hammered out, but aside from that, I see no reason for the government to interfere. I realize this is not a popular stance to take, and I’ve had this conversation with several of my liberal friends, and yes, I’ve come to the conclusion that they have a double standard too, and are close minded on the subject. I myself do not particularly care for plural marriage and find incestuous relationships freaky, but I don’t believe in legislating my personal bias.
Can’t say the same for you though, magellan01. Can’t say the same for you at all.
Remember is that the “goal” of genes is to reproduce themselves. If some combination of genes makes their reproduction more likely, than those genes will crowd others out given an evolutionary time scale. Biologically modern humans have been around far longer than agriculture; human evolution was based on how to reproduce in a hunter-gatherer society.
For reasons cited in those articles, Polygamy is a rather normal state of affairs in the above mentioned society. If you’re the most powerful man in the area, you’re going to keep as many wives and their children as you can feed and protect. As society develops and attempts are made for egalitarianism, those in power make deals with those not in power. Those unable to attract wives because the rich men keep getting them are likely to lash out violently - they’ll do anything they can to reproduce. In a structured society, this is very bad. Instead, the rich man agrees to only have one wife and civil unrest lessens as more people get their chance to reproduce.
The argument of polygamy prohibition through societal stability seems a whole lot better than a hand-wavy argument I’ve come up with against homosexual “marriage” that is not necessarily religious in nature. It’s good enough so that even I would see myself agreeing with it in a different lifetime.
One might argue that allowing homosexual unions will make it more likely that those with homosexual tendencies will choose them; given that psychiatrists now believe there is a spectrum of sexual tendencies, this might be a real problem when looking at where the next generation will come from. If we let folks have civil unions with anyone, there will be less children because many folks previously at least somewhat attracted the opposite sex will now decide to not bother when it’s perfectly acceptable to go after who they prefer even if no children can some out of it.
The obvious counterargument is “So what? We’ve got plenty of people around; you’re too stuck in your evolutionary thinking of ‘MUST HAVE MORE KIDS’ that’s completely unnecessary now” yet it’s still oddly compelling because of precisely that instinctual drive. All told, that’s the problem. You have lots of people acting on their evolutionary pressures, most of whom believe its for religious reasons, and plenty of people that have looked beyond evolution and looking for what’s fair in society. It’s quite difficult to break people of their evolutionary conditioning. In fact, one might be able to link the increase in personal rights and enforced societal equality to the world’s population starting to think logically instead of just listening to their genes.
Good. Because it would be harmful to both women and society.
Awww, there goes my good night’s sleep. You’re so mean.
I’d say there is an objective reason not to allow incestual marriage : the Charles II problem.
While a single instance of inbreeding isn’t much more likely to produce genetic degenerations in the couple’s offspring, over multiple generations it very much is, which would lead to a marked increase in the number of birth defects, debilitating medical conditions, psych problems etc…, which all put a strain on society as a whole, by the combination of not contributing to the nation’s treasury through taxes, and draining it through health care. Denying health care or the right to life to infirms is barbaric and wrong, but reducing the factors that are likely to generate them probably isn’t. I suppose it could be described as a form of eugenics, but come on, we’re not creating the master race here.
I’m with you on the plural marriage though. It would be an absolute nightmare to legislate properly and fairly for all participants, but apart from that I see no legitimate reason to disallow it.
Calling those [del]three[/del] two things ‘a lot of freedom’ is one hell of a stretch. And what do you mean by ‘devise’?
In many ways, unfortunately, yes. Minors are deprived of many things, given to their parents (in most cases, though I can’t think of any that go anywhere else) until they reach an age that the state thinks is appropriate for granting most rights.
I disagree, but feel free to call it something else. It doesn’t affect my argument at all. Let’s call it “Freedom-37.” Here’s my claim:
Normally, a person has Freedom-37 over property that he owns, which means that he can usually do things like buy, sell, give, or devise that property. Do you agree with me or not?
Leave it to someone in a will.
So the question cannot be answer with a simple yes or no? Is that what you are telling me?
And what about mental incompetents who have been assigned a legal guardian? Are they the property of their legal guardian?
I basically agree with this. In my opinion, a stronger case can be made to prohibit polygamous marriage than homosexual marriage.
At the same time, I think it’s unprincipled to claim that a person is necessarily a bigot for opposing one but not the other.
This argument ignores the agency of the women involved. We live in a society in which women have worked gangbusters to achieve equal rights, including the ability to feed themselves without being attached to a man.
We also live in a sexually permissive society. Men and women already may choose to live in polygamous setups; they just may not get a legal document declaring them married. Right now, their situation is similar to the situation of gay couples ten years ago.
How many polygamous setups do you know of? A socially destabilizing number?
Somehow I doubt it.
Note that the social destabilization argument could apply equally to any situation in which one sex has more exclusively homosexual relationships than the other.
It’s a terrible argument.
I honestly don’t think too many people will opt for it. The taboo is quite strong and the vast majority of people would not be interested. I think, for the reason you gave, that it will never be legal. As I’ve said, I personally think it’s creepy. However, when it comes to legislation, I don’t think the government should be in the business of telling consenting adults which relationships they’re allowed to have.
Just to answer my own question, most people don’t think of a mental incompetent as “property.” Nor would a typical American adult today think of his or her minor children as “property.”
Of course, you are free to define the word “property” any way you wish for sake of argument. However, if you claim that until recently, a wife was the property of her husband, you are using an unusual definition of the word “property.”