Can you give some examples: a number of people of each gender in a marriage that you would support and oppose?
Let’s start really simple, and say: one man and two women. Would you support or oppose that?
This, to me, has always been the crux of the issue, and is why I no more fear polygamy than I fear, as Rick Frothing Lube would like to say, man-on-dog marriage. One can be born gay, have a predisposition to it, and attraction to the same sex. One is not born a polygamist
It’s not the genders or numbers involved; it’s the arrangement. Your basic stereotypical many-women-one-man arrangement with limited power to the women is a bad thing (as it would be were the genders reversed). A polyamorous melange of five men and seven women on equal footing could be perfectly fine.
But let’s look at that threesome. Are the women also married to each other, or are they both only married to the man? Are all members of the marriage of legal age and not coerced in any way? Do they all have equal rights within the marriage? What are the arrangements for division of property, alimony and child custody in the event one person wants a divorce? Or if two people do? Can they chuck the third out of the marriage and if so, what rights does the third have? How, in short, does the whole thing work?*
I should add that I have no moral objection to polyamorous and/or open relationships among informed, consenting adults. I just think that there is decades of legal work to be done to make polygamous marriage into an equitable agreement between parties that is consistent with existing family law. I’d be surprised if no one has had a crack at it thus far though.
And it still has nothing to do with SSM, except so far as SSM may be a component of polygamous marriages.
*And don’t say “Jes’ fine, thanks”. That’s just tacky.
I’m prepared to entertain polygamous marriage as a concept with no specific limits on the number of people involved (maybe with a upper limit of… 20?) or their genders, but I think the framework should be a hybrid of partnership law and marriage law, rather than trying to rework just the latter.
In any case, it’s a considerably greater legal challenge than the ten-second cut-and-paste extension of marriage to gay couples.
But Savage forced his teenage son to be at the table with them. Can you imagine a teenager having to sit through this? Verges on child abuse!
Exactly, interracial or same sex marriages differ from previously legal marriages only by the stroke of a pen that limits the participants. Polygamy, on the other hand, is structurally different in a way that raises legitimate questions as to how it should be handled even if it is deemed to be acceptable in principle.
While I basically agree with you I understand the reason. I think he wants to remind Christians that beliefs have changed and Christians have altered traditional beliefs as time has passed. Christians clearly don’t embrace every passage in the BIble , so why is it nessecary to be so adamant concerning a so few passages about homosexuality?
I do agree that any believer has to understand that when you come to the table of public discourse and setting policy come with facts and common principles, not bible verses.
Eh. Kid’s gotta eat. And he left before the debate proper.
I believe t-bonham@scc.net was referring to the menu choices…
He had fish, potatoes, tomatoes and corn, with a peach cobbler for dessert. The rest is just details.
Maybe, but neither of those fit his 50 AD timeline. To be fair, he was in a debate and so I don’t expect him to nail down every fact - it’s just he was so specific with the date and he kept accusing Dan of not knowing his history.
I think the problem that poly marriages have to face is that we ask these sorts of questions, while no one would seriously say that they’re not sure how they feel about gay marriage because we need to talk about whether the people entering into them are being coerced. Yes, there are historical (and current) problems with coercion in some cultures that practice poly marriage, but there’s really no reason that we have to discuss that in light of a modern framework for legalizing such things. Of course it’s not going to be legal to coerce underage people into marriage of any kind.
I think most people on this board use reason and logic to form most of their opinions, and I agree that there are logistical issues to work out with poly marriages. But let’s be honest: the reason that the mainstream SSM crusaders have made great efforts to distance themselves from poly marriage supporters is not that there are logistical problems. It’s that the general public has a gut feeling that such marriages are wrong and icky. Twenty years ago, they had the same gut feeling about gay marriages.
The fundamental principle that people should be able to marry who they want and we shouldn’t force some public concept of sexual morality onto people’s private lives supports poly marriages just as well as SSM. Dan Savage knows this. So, for him to say “oh, poly marriages, that’s a totally separate and completely different thing” is intellectually dishonest for the sake of political expediency. It’s clear that he doesn’t want to get trapped by his opponent into voicing support for a politically untenable idea, but the philosophical argument clearly supports both.
Really? That’s the only point you’re taking away from what I wrote? But since we’re on it, we would be foolish to ignore historical polygamous marriages when considering how to proceed with modern ones. Conversely, I’m not aware of gay pairings being known for any degree of coercion by either party, so it’s not an actual issue.
IAN Dan Savage but I’m pretty sure he’s trying to fight the battles he can win. On one of his podcasts he interviews one of the politicians driving the efforts to legalize SSM in Washington (state) and they mention that they had to propose legal changes incrementally and sometimes repeatedly to get the Overton window to move, which would give them an eventual victory (knock on wood that Andersen eventually falls). And there’s no reason he should be advocating for poly marriages at the moment - they are a different (if not entirely separate) thing and it’s not intellectually dishonest to say so. His fight at the moment is for SSM and that’s what he’s focused on.
And honestly, if you’re in favor of poly marriage, legalization of SSM likely *will *make the idea of other non-traditional marriages less frightening to the general public. Pick your battles…
That’s not at all the only point I took away. It’s the only point I wanted to comment on.
I generally agree with what you wrote. Sorry for implying otherwise (I did say “I agree that there are logistical problems”, and I think the ones you mentioned are the main ones). When I don’t dispute something, I generally just comment that I’m in agreement with that part and move on to the more juicy part of the debate. But I see how it can be easy to see that most of my text is in disagreement with a small part of what you wrote, and assume that I didn’t process the rest or that I’m trying to pigeonhole you into a very narrow and disagreeable position.
Fair enough.