If Gay marriage is a right what about this:

Gays basically claim that they were born that way so they have no real choice, (well I assume that is part or the whole of the argument) so what about someone who claims they are bi-sexual, does this mean they should be given the right to marry a man and a woman because of the way they claim they were born and have no choice in who they are?
Are their rights being denied?
In addition why then can’t someone say that they are born with the desire for more than one woman hence more than one wife; are their rights being denied because they say they have no choice that they are born this way?

virtually yours
Virtually Yours

No one is allowed to be in a polygamous marriage, therefore there is no discrimination.

If you’re looking for a factual answer (since this is General Questions and not IMHO), you should use some facts to inform and phrase your question.

Your post is a bit provocative, and I’ll note that there is a bit of a push to remove bigamy laws between consenting adults, perhaps precisely motivated by the points you bring up.

Its still illegal, but I can see that this cognitive dissonance that people are feeling like you express could lead to changes in the law.

Let’s move this to Great Debates.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

Isn’t that like saying, “No one is allowed to be in a same-sex marriage, therefore there is no discrimination, since it applies equally to men and women”, or, “No one is allowed to be in a mixed-race marriage, and since it applies equally to all races, there is no discrimination”?

The question doesn’t really have anything to do with sexual orientation, as the last sentence in the OP demonstrates. It’s really just about whether polygamous marriages should be permitted.

No, it isn’t anything like that.

The basis of allowing same-sex marriage is that if two consenting adults( a man and a woman) can marry, then two consenting adults ( two men or two women) should be allowed to marry.

Since no three(or more) consenting adults (of any combination) are allowed to marry, then there is no basis for claiming discrimination.

I’m not sure you understand what being bisexual means. Hint: It usually doesn’t mean that you require multi-gender three-somes to be sexually satisfied.

And there have been plenty of people who have consecutively married members of their own and the opposite gender. (For celebrities, Alan Cumming, Elton John, and Cynthia Nixon, Barry Manilow, and Wanda Sykes all come to mind.)

I personally have nothing against polygamous relationships…but the legal mess a marriage of more than two people would create would be tremendous. Can you divorce one without divorcing the whole group? Can pre-nups be arranged with just some of the parties? Child custody would be a nightmare, and I’m sure I’ve just scratched the surface.

Just ignore the sexual desire aspect for a moment and consider what legal marriage actually is - a form of contract two individuals have with the state in which each individual specifies that the other will be considered primary next-of-kin for issues of medical decisions and inheritances, that the two will mingle their assets in a way that allows for joint tax filings, that the two be given legal recognition for the purposes of sharing spousal health insurance, and a thousand other fairly banal benefits and obligations that have nothing to do with getting laid.

Why is it necessary that the couple be of different genders? Denying a homosexual couple access to this legal structure makes as much sense as saying gays aren’t allowed to form corporations or legal partnerships for business purposes or, for that matter, saying that women aren’t allowed to form corporations or business partnerships. The gender requirement serves no demonstrable purpose.

If one is inclined to reply “Well, a heterosexual couple can reproduce”, well… so what? Reproduction has never been a requirement for forming a legal marriage, so why add it now, and why does that argument not disqualify heterosexual couples who are unable to reproduce or uninterested in reproducing?

The legal structure as it now exists involves exactly two persons. Eliminating a pointless gender requirement is obvious. Expanding this structure to three (or more?) is less so.

Being bisexual isn’t the same as being polyamorous.

They aren’t being discriminated against in the same way that same-sex couples were, but they certainly are being prevented from living the way they want to live by the tyranny of popular opinion. If the legal issues that Czarcasm described can be dealt with, I personally have no problem allowing polygamous marriages.

A digression, but since the OP has been answered:

Michael Gambon, best known probably for playing Dumbledore in HARRY POTTER, is straight, but he’s a celebrity with a polyamorous relationship. He splits his time between his wife of 55+ years, with whom he shares a lavish mansion in the country, and his partner of 10 years, with whom he has two young children and shares a home in London. He makes public appearances with each woman (though not together), they certainly know about each other, and while they don’t all live together they don’t seem to have any problem sharing the old fellow.
More happiness to them if it’s working for them.

No, restricting marriages to only opposite-sex couples is saying “Women have the right to marry men, but men don’t have the right to marry men.”/“Men have the right to marry women, but women don’t have the right to marry women.” Allowing same-sex marriage is ending gender discrimination.

Similar logic obtains for allowing mixed-race marriages.

More to the point, allowing same-sex marriages isn’t redefining anything. Marriage was a union of two adults both capable of entering into a binding agreement prior to same-sex marriages, and it remains precisely the same afterwards.

What redefined marriage was the elimination of coverture, which defined marriage as the union of two adults, one man and one woman (or baron and feme, to be precise), into a single legal person, that person being the man (the baron). In marriage so defined, same-sex marriage is impossible because there cannot be two baron personalities, as there can only be one legal person, and there certainly cannot be two feme personalities, as there must be a legal person.

If all this sounds like double-dutch to you, congratulations. You’ve completely and utterly swallowed the most recent redefinition of marriage.

Now the question is, what about plural marriages? Those must also redefine marriage, and I’ll show you why through a hypothetical. Imagine a company where all of the principles are married to each other, in addition to anyone else they would be married to normally. Now, one of the privileges of marriage is that spouses cannot be compelled to testify against each other in a court of law. They can still choose to, but they cannot be compelled to. So that company goes on a spree, selling wholesale evil at retail prices, and when it all comes before a judge, oops, nobody can be compelled to testify.

We can argue that the privilege is obsolete and should be removed from everyone’s marriage, or we can argue that only plural marriages should be deprived of that ancient privilege. In either case, we’ve redefined marriage; it would not mean precisely what it did before. That’s why plural marriage is legally distinguishable from same-sex marriage, and why legalizing it would be more akin to destroying coverture than to allowing same-sex couples to enter into the post-coverture species of marital union.

As already noted it’s not like that.

Couple marriages already exist. The only change being made is saying gay couples are entitled to have the same marriages straight couples have. That’s equal treatment.

The same logic applied to interracial marriages. The only change that was made was saying interracial couples were entitled to have the same marriages as black couples or white couples had. Again, equal treatment.

But nobody has multiple partner marriages. So nobody is entitled to claim it as a right because other people have it.

If, as a hypothetical, men were allowed to have multiple wives then women would be able to argue that they should have the legal right to have multiple husbands. And gay people could claim the right to have multiple spouses.

I’m not convinced that the “polygamous marriage being banned isn’t unequal because nobody is allowed polygamy at the moment” argument holds water because by this logic, incestuous marriage (between consenting adults) ought to be just as legal as gay marriage if it’s between 2 partners and 2 partners only, yet as far as I am aware it is not legal.

I think the real issue is that for progressives, “progress” can only take one step at a time. The same folks who advocated for interracial marriage, would have been appalled at the thought of legal gay marriage. The folks who argue for legal gay marriage, would be appalled at the thought of incestuous/polygamous marriage.

30 years from now, incestuous and polygamous marriage will probably all be legally recognized, and the same folks calling for it to not be recognized, will be viewed the same way as today’s anti-SSM folks.

In many situations, today’s liberal is tomorrow’s bigot.

To address the OP:

No, because being bi-sexual doesn’t entitle you to marry two people. Just like a heterosexual man isn’t entitled to marry two women or a heterosexual women isn’t entitled to marry two men.

It’s not the whole argument. I’m not even sure it’s the majority of the argument. A big part of the argument for SSM is that people want it, and there is zero good reason to withhold it from them.

If they can work out the legal details, an no unconsenting parties are harmed, whatever, go for it.