That’s great. Good post.
Since the law can handle inheritance cases with more than one heir, and situations where next of kin are a group of siblings, I have confidence laws concerning polygamy can be worked out. The supreme court decisions currently setting precedence on polygamy are some of the ugliest irrational bigotry I have seen from our court. Lincoln equated polygamy as a twin evil to slavery, and it was in that era, the same era when the Missouri governor issues an extermination order against Mormons, when the decision was issued. I find it repugnant that the precedent stands.
It is really harming people now. Immigrant who wish to move here but have more than one wife can’t. They must abandon any after the first, and some do. Imagine one day, you are legally someone’s wife, and they move and you are not. If the wives do come over here, the whole family is breaking the law.
Those who practice polygamy here are vulnerable. Not only is their union without benefit of legal sanction, they can run afoul of laws designed to prosecute bigamy. I think there is real a difference between someone who acquire two spouses by not informing either of the other and maintains the ignorance through deception, and someone who has two spouse who know each other and have known the situation all along. Since this is the case and polygamy is so frowned upon, those in a polygamous relationship may be reluctant to seek help when it is needed for whatever reason. Having people who feel they can’t avail themselves of legal remedies and public resources is bad for society.
In recent years prosecutions for polygamy have included those who bothered to divorce each spouse before marrying another, and yet the prosecutions were based against their polygamous conduct, and not as much against other aspects of their conduct which I personally find repugnant, such as marrying children. I think we would be better served by making it harder for any adult to marry a child than by prosecuting someone for marrying multiple people.
All that being said, I don’t see gay marriage as part of a slippery slope. I have hope that it will open attitudes, but legally gay marriage is nearly as far from polygamy as you can get. Laws against it are based on bigotry far separated from the bigotry which outlaws polygamy.
In software design, there’s a rule: “Zero, One, Infinity”. Whenever you’re considering how many of something to allow (in this case, spouses per person), you should choose one of those three numbers. If you pick something else, there’s a good chance that it will need to go up or down in the future.
We’re talking about a legal institution, not software. I don’t see the relevance.
ETA: This isn’t even how most software programs (especially databases) are designed, in any case.
I’ve always looked at the slippery-slope argument this way:
Imagine that there was no such thing as marriage. Then, someone proposes: “Hey! Let’s allow two people of opposite genders to get married!”
“Hell no!” says his buddy. “Let a man get married to a woman, and next thing you know he’ll want to marry his goat, his silverware, and every member of the Portland Trailblazers!”
Now, clearly, that didn’t happen. I don’t see any slippery slope argument that applies to gay marriage that wouldn’t also apply almost equally to “traditional” marriage.
If two spouses were allowed, there would be little reason not to increase it to three, four, etc. The “slippery slope” would be much steeper, once the initial burden of re-writing the laws for threesomes was done. (I’m not saying whether it would be a good thing or not, but I agree with **colbeagle **that it would be a huge project to make the initial change.)
Well, I don’t know about “most” programs… In my opinion, it’s a worthy goal, and I adhere to it when possible.