Wow. I’ve heard of having your head up your ass before, but your heart too?! That’s got to hurt.
David: My bet is that he understood nothing of it, just like he probably understands nothing else in the English language (or any other language, for that matter).
Yo! Starboy! I come from Western Europe and well before I reached the advanced age of 26, I had already learned to communicate in English and also how to use grammar, spelling, cites, and even Logic in my arguments. Pray tell, WTF stopped you?
Well, Poly; since you ask. 
The President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles is not the President of the Church. That honour [<===Starboy: note the European usage here and also the coherent sentences] goes to the President of the High Priesthood of the Church. Quick organizational overview of the LDS is: Top=President of the Church and his two counselors constitute The First Presidency (TFP is how it’s usually abbreviated); Quorum of Twelve Apostles comes next below them; Quorom of Seventy next; Stake Presidents next; and then Ward Bishops. Flinx can fill out the rest.
As to the comparison of the TFP’s proclamations being analogous to the papal ex cathedra, you’re spot on.
Cheers!
-Chip
Lest anyone jump all over Polycarp for this statement thinking he implied that I urged bringin grief on the man’s family: that is not what Poly said! Polycarp is recognizing my call for honouring the dead man’s family’s wish to not use that suicide as part of a political agenda.
I say this because one prolific poster in this thread (starboy) has a demonstrated inability to read and comprehend even the most basic English expressions.
Thanks Poly.
Since it’s readily evident that the OP of this thread is naught but a troll, I’d rather ask someone else the following question.
Otto: I’m seriously not asking this to be funny, a pundit, rude, mean, to belittle the current SSM controvery or anything of that like. I am now genuinely curious about this.
Since sexual orientation is not chosen, but inherent, one would have to agree that bisexuality is also a sexual orientation, distinct from both homosexuality and heterosexuality, wouldn’t one? Given that, why not also advocate for marriage rights for bisexuals to marry one member of each gender?
Heck, perhaps this query alone could launch this thread into something resembling a SDMB discussion!
Which leads to the next obvious question, which is: Why not let polyamorous people marry as many others as they please, and not restrict them to one spouse?
Not necessarily Monty. One way of visualizing sexual orientation is to view it as a bell curve. On the one end you have people who are straight, on the other you have people who are gay. Needless to say both these groups are pretty small. In the middle are people who are bi, everyone else falls somewhere along the curve. Now in a society that really doesn’t approve too highly of homosexuality, more people will act more upon their heterosexual feelings than their homosexual ones. In other words, the dividing point where people consider themselves homosexual changes with regards to the culture. Essentialy in response to the question(now that I’m finaly getting to it) people who are Bi simply fall somewhere around the center of the curve(It doesn’t necessarily have to be a strict bell curve), they aren’t a separate preference. To finish it off, their existence isn’t necessarily justification for polygamous marriages, but they should be allowed to marry with whomever(of whatever gender) they fall in love.
Still later, Gerald did a terrible thing to Elsie with a saucepan.
Nu: Interesting response, yet that’s not completely answering the question I asked, IMHO.
You see, a polygomous marriage in the “traditional” sense of it is a marriage in which the husband has more than one wife. The wives are not married to each other.
Now in the bisexual fantasy someone mentioned earlier in this thread, wouldn’t that be “marrying all three to each other?”
Man, this is getting complicated!
As far as I can tell marriage is an endorsement of a pair bond-something that human beings naturally tend to form. This could be a bond between a man and a woman, a man and a man, or a woman and a woman. I honestly don’t see that marriage could be applied to more that 2 people- even polygamous marriages as you said tend towards the
man-marries-woman-man-marries-another-woman pattern which is basically the same thing doubled. If there are cases of true three-part bonds then I’ve never heard of them(not that that invalidates the idea or anything, and if they do exist I am interested in hearing about it…)
The only problem that I can see with polygamous marriages is that it tends to reduce down to one person married to two+ people at the same time. If it was truly a three part marriage then I would have no problem with it at all-but I would like to see some evidence of that sort of thing occurring.
Otto wrote:
Society doesn’t endorse it. That’s the difference.
On the subject of LDS prophets, they aren’t infallible. They’re just as human as the rest of us. I recommend checking out the link I gave to Weirddave in the thread, “Question for mormens (and catholics too, maybe)” in Great Debates.
Speaking as a bi-sexual, I find that the current political and religious outlook does not bode well for our marriage rights. This means that we have to settle for cheap, tawdry sex. With twice as many people as you.
Damn, life can be hard, sometimes. 
Nu: Discovery Channel (I think 'twas) recently aired a documentary on a tribe in the Amazon region. The title of the show was “The Marrying Tribe.” Each man in the tribe had more than one wife and each woman in the tribe had more than one husband. Now that had to be complicated!
In this tribe, was it structured such that there were separate clusters of married couples? (the smallest, I suppose, would have to be groupings of 4) Or was the structure such that the entire tribe was intermarried? (more of a communal structure?)
Either way it’s an interesting group, but I suspect that it still would end up displaying the “favorite wife” syndrome(as often occurred in harems and patriarchal polygamous relationships).
The only real qualm I have about poly marriages is that currently legal rights are conferred on spouses as a result of the marriage. If Person A has spouse B and spouse C, then the rights of B and C are going to be in conflict, as are the rights of A and B and A and C. For example, marital property. If A marries B and C then both B and C have claims on A’s property. If B then divorces A the law states what property of A’s B is entitled to, except that C is entitled to a share of the same property. The same possible results occur even if A, B and C are all intermarried to each other. Any structure for poly marriages I can come up with is going to result in someone’s rights being violated. From a philosophical standpoint I have no problem whatsoever with poly marriages, but from a legal standpoint I don’t know if it’s possible for all parties’ rights to be protected.
Since when does God rely on what society thinks to decide what is holy and righteous and what is not? If it’s a sin, then it’s a sin, regardless of what any society endorses, and if you want to legislate against sin then you can’t logically be in favor of decriminalizing some sins.
But in another thread you indicated you plan to withdraw from attempts to impose your moral and religious views on others, so this question is moot.
And when I quoted it, I had not realized the massive irony of God’s giving the particular love that works for him to Flinx. Hint: what’s orangecakes’ real name? John Corrado, shall we add this to the “metaphor? what metaphor?” list?
Otto said:
Glad to hear it! So is my wife!
Poly, You’re just full of irony! Come on over and do my ironing…
Wha? Who? Wha?
Sheesh, I miss one day of work, and look what I come in to on Monday morning! {groan}
Gimmie the rest of the day to catch up, eh?
Esprix
Hands up, who knew Polycarp was going to make some weak-ass pun on my use of “poly”?
:::raising hand:::
Otto: 
In all seriousness, while I do not agree with it, the “slippery slope” argument does bear dealing with. While the vast majority of people are interested in a traditional male-female pair bond, and we have brought into the picture the fact that a large portion of about 10% of people are interested in a same-sex pair-bond, what about those whose sexuality calls for something other than a pair bond?
Are they the next minority to be dealt with? Are we going to say, pick one and stick with him/her? Or what?
If there is even one fully functional hermaphrodite, what is his/her moral choice supposed to be? What about what slythe has brought up regarding bisexuality?