IzzyR, do you make no allowance for the idea that government should do something because doing it is the right thing to do, even if vast segments of the population disagree with it?
The OP implies that self-marriage is a bad thing. This brings up two questions:
1.) What exactly is wrong with someone wanting to marry themselves? They get no extra benefits that I can think of, and if someone is dumb enough to want to do this, wouldn’t it prevent them from marrying someone else thus helping to keep their diseased genetic material out of the gene pool?
2.) Is the OP implying that there’s something wrong with Dennis Rodman? 
I must say I agree with the OP. And I stated so several times on this board.
If gay marriages are allowed, then there’s zero reason not to allow polygamy.
By the way, “simple” polygamy isn’t impossible to handle legally. It exists in many countries, and somehaow they manage to have laws regulating it. Whether or not one will agree witht the precsie contents of these laws, having such laws in the books isn’t impossible. For some reason, a common argument I read quite often here is : “what if someone is comatose, and spouses disagree about whether he should be “unplugged” or not?”, for instance. Which isn’t an issue. When someone is in the same situation and has no spouse, the siblings cann disagree on the same issue. Still, it doesn’t seem to be impossible to handle. Until now, I didn’t notice an argument convincing me that polygamy was impossible to handle from a legal point of view.
Hmm…that was a long parenthesis. Coming back to my point :
I do think there’s no more logical reson to forbid poligamy than gay marriage. These 3 (or more) people love each other, care for each other, etc…hence denying them the right to marry while other people benefit from it isn’t different from denying this right to gay people.
But it goes beyond that. Married people are under no obligation to have children, but aren’t under any obligation to even have sex, either. Then why marriage should be reserved to people who intend to have sex? Let’s supose I’m a 65 y.o. retired and single man. My 63 y.o. brother is in the same situation. We care for each other and would rather live together than alone. On what basis shouldn’t we benefit from the same rights (for instance to be able to stay in the place we’re renting if one or the other die, to make decision about the other’s medical care, etc…) that other people who care for each other and live together have?
Now, suppose we allow all kind of marriages (between friends, between 3 people, between siblings, etc…). IMO, we’re indeed in an inextricable situation. If I can be married with women A and B and men X and Y, why shouldn’t my spouse Y be allowed to marry K and L too, though personnaly I don’t want to marry them? So, we could end up with A married to B and C but not D, B married A, C and D, D married to B and E, etc…which is, indeed, impossible to handle.
Similarily, if I’m allowed to marry 2 other people (but only if we’re all married together), why couldn’t 6 people be married together? Or, like the OP said, why not 647? A whole church? A whole town?
Based on the argument usually used to support gay marriages, I can’t see how marriage could be denied to polyamorous people, or to the two brothers in my example. If people disagree, I would like to see some sound arguments making polygamy less valid or acceptable than gay marriages. And of course, “eek factor”, “marriage is only for two people because it’s the way it has always been done here”, etc…doesn’t count as “sound”, given they could be equally applied to gay marriages. Similarily, concerning argument like “it’s not because we allow gay marriage that we’re going to allow polygamy”, which have been frequently used in this thread, I would ask : “On what basis exactly would you forbid polygamy?”. “Why should polymarous people be denied the same rights monogamous gays and straights people would benefit from?”
Now, my conclusion is radicaly different from the OP’s conclusion. I think that the government should totally stay away from the whole marriage business. All laws should be applied similarily to people in the same situation regardless of their marital status. For instance, concerning the most obvious issue, children, the same laws/tax-breaks/whatever, should apply to the parents, whether or not they’re “married”, without regard to the number of people they’re “married” to or their sex, etc…Same thing with, for instance, insurance coverage. It should either be granted to only, say, the person insured and his children, or to a given number of people the person would freely choose, or to the person and people who are dependant on him and whom he takes care of (be them “spouse”, old parents, a friend,…), or whatever other objective criteria.
IOW, marriage shouldn’t be backed, supported or recognized by the government in any way. It would avoid these wholly subjectives statements about who should be allowed to marry whom, etc…Anyway, marriage is a less and less significant institution. People aren’t expected to live together until they death, they have the ability to chose whether or not they will have children and how many, a spouse isn’t under any obligation to have sex with his husband, plenty of people live together without being married exactly in the same way married people do, people can divorce “just because” without having to provide any valid reason to do so, plenty of children have half-brothers, step-mothers, etc…
The traditionnal marriage is already past its days, IMO. It should be left to rest in a coffin.
I thought I was clear about this. It’s not that because the people think gay marriage is wrong the government shouldn’t recognize it. It’s because society has not accepted gay marriage as a marriage and gay couples as families.
If governments did not exist the institution of marriage would still exist. It exists as a sociological reality, independent of any recognition. The role of government is only to recognize what already exists, not try to create a new reality by forcing recognition.
But I would oppose a constitutional amendment for this reason (among others). Sociological groupings are fluid and can change, and there’s no reason to try to enshrine today’s situation in a difficult-to-undo constitutional amendment.
It’s a hijack, but besides the eek factor, I don’t have much of an issue with bestiality. Animals can’t give consent, but it doesn’t seem to be an issue for anybody regarding anything else than sex. Cats are kept locked in an appartment, dogs are sprayed, horses have people riding on their backs, cows are butchered, etc…
If ability to give consent isn’t an issue for riding or butchering an animal, why should it be for having sex with it?
I fully recognize that I am advocating only one, very narrow, definition of marriage, to the exclusion of other forms of “marriage” (some of which, I must concede, seem entirely plausible and reasonable to me).
All I can do is redirect your attention to my stated position: I am opposed to granting the privileges of marriage to anything that anybody feels like defining as a “marriage”. I am afraid that some forms of “marriage” which I find entirely reprehensible, disgusting, absurd, and untenable would be able to sneak in along with some other forms of “marriage” (some of which, I must concede, seem entirely plausible and reasonable to me).
Please note that I do not elucidate which forms of “marriage” I concede to be entirely plausible and reasonable and which forms I find entirely reprehensible, disgusting, absurd, and untenable. I think it’s hillarious to see some of you trip over yourselves to lable me anti-homosexual when you really have no idea of my feelings on that matter.
My big post was eaten, so let me ask: do you think the thirteenth amendment, the nineteenth amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1965, the National Labor Relations Act, shouldn’t have been passed?
As near as I can tell, some of the greatest steps forward in human rights have culminated in a government proclamation, even though huges swaths of the country were opposed to them. The government absolutely can be a force for good.
Daniel
Looks, walks, quacks, dude. You wanna not come across as an especially stupid homophobe, don’t write like one. Your choice.
As for the rest of your imbecilic argument, there’s no sense at all in banning all expansions to marriage because some expansions aren’t desirable. That’s the slippery slope fallacy. Do you think that miscegenation should have remained illegal? If not, why not?
Daniel
Light Strand, I ask you to clarify your position.
Are you saying that just because we would have to change the country’s laws is valid reason NOT to allow Polyamorous “marriages”? (I disagree with your assertion about “the entire US legal system” (bolding mine).)
Laws, and indeed our country as a whole, were changed to end slavery. Likewise to grant women voting rights and the right to own land. If changing law and society was warrented in the cases of Blacks and Women, why not Polyamorists?
Left Hand of Dorkness, you seem to be merely rephrasing Otto’s question, to which my quoted post was a response. I have nothing further to add.
Do you people not recognize the potential for disaster we are confronting here. The future of Western Civilization hangs in the balance as we vent over all the possible combinations that we may be forced, required and coerced to tolerate and accept.
What we need and need now is an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to protect the traditional and sacred relationship that lies at the foundation of all we hold dear, the bedrock of our long established sense of right and wrong. We must enshrine in the basic law of this best of all possible countries the relationship between a boy and his dog.
And not that way, either.
For the same reason that we didn’t have to allow dogs and penguins and toasters to vote at the same time we allowed blacks and women to vote. Your presumption that once you change a law to grant rights to a new group, you have to change it to include every possible group is false.
It’s not a difficult concept. Marriage as it relates to the government is your right to choose a person to be your legally recognized partner. It used to be that you could only have this right if you were both consenting adults of opposite sex and the same race. Now you can have this right if you are both consenting adults of the opposite sex. I see no reason not to allow any two consenting adults the right. It won’t make things confusing, I promise. Really, it won’t affect you one whit.
To the best of my recollection, laws had to be created to allow slavery, as we didn’t start out with it here. That was merely repealing those laws. And as for allowing blacks and women to vote, that’s nothing major by any means. “Every person (over age 18, blah blah) can vote” instead of “Every white man…” That’s a disingenuous argument, and inaccurate as a comparison, as it does not begin to approximate the legal complexities that would result from legally-recognized polyamorous unions.
Yes, I do see this as a legal issue, and so long as the government and other business/legal/etc. agencies are intent upon making a distinction between those who are married versus those who are not, I believe that the most stable and easily-regulated means of doing that is by sticking to couples. In that light, it is equivalent to a mere typographical error - again, in a legal sense - to be omitting same-sex couples from this. I can think of no rights, requirements, or privileges that apply to married opposite-sex couples (in a general sense) that would not apply to married same-sex couples. The creation of legal recognition of polyamorous unions would be tumultuous, in comparison.
(That’s not to say that I have moral issues with polyamory. I know a couple of trios - hmm, unintentional pun - who are stable and happy. I also know of a couple that got horribly ugly as they came apart, and the only good thing to be said was that there weren’t any divorces to have to go through.)
clairobscur: I’m a vegetarian and have the same issues with raising/using animals for food.
Unitarians are behind this, huh? Coincidentally, I’m a Unitarian. Also coincidentally, I’m working on getting my ass up to Canada, where same-sex marriage is pushing surely toward full national legality. I thought I’d someday be marrying my boyfriend in a ceremony celebrating both our love and and Canada’s enlightened stance on an issue very near to both our hearts.
But INSTEAD, I guess I will just marry MY SISTER, a NONCONSENTING JUVENILE DOLPHIN, and the GODDAMN SALTSHAKER, because THEY ARE OBVIOUSLY THE SAME FUCKING THING and LEGALLY INDISTINGUISHABLE.
Jesusfuckingchrist.
Man, am I glad this thread is in the pit.
Your answer didn’t make sense to me, which is why I was asking for a more detailed response. Many people didn’t recognize women as independent political thinkers in the early 20th century, yet the government changed that social reality by passing the 19th amendment; do you think this was a bad decision? If not, in what way is it relevantly disanalogous to gay marriage?
Daniel
But if we can change the “same race” , " different sex", etc…parts, why couldn’t we change the “a” and “both” parts?
You’re refering to “my right to choose a person to be my legally recognized partner”. What is this right based on? Why is it different from “my right to choose TWO personS to be my recognized partnerS”?
Not quite. Those things have been clearly proven to cause physical harm to the users (to varying degrees, pot less than the others). SS"M" hasn’t been proven to cause harm to the participants.
Why? Exactly why?
So if the campaign for SS"M" isn’t successful that’s OK with you? “Well, they tried… weren’t successful. Whatcha gonna do?”
I’ll let you further answer this one:
To the limited extent that this question makes any sense, the answer is this: same sex marriage can be made legal without making polygamy legal because legislators are capable of drafting and voting up laws that say, “Same sex marriage is legal, but polygamous marriages are not legal.” That’s why it’s possible, because the English language, combined with our system of government, makes it possible.
Daniel
I don’t know about the States, but up here it’s very simple.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms forbids discrimination on the basis of gender and sexual orientation.
It does not forbid discrimination on the basis of number.
For the same reason that when we allowed blacks and women the right to vote, we didn’t worry about whether we’d have to change the word “vote” to the word “kill people” or “get free long distance”.
The right to marry a person is a currently recognized right in our society, the only question is who gets it. Giving this right to all consenting adults above a certain age doesn’t require that we change the right itself.