Saying same sex conjoinment leads to nuptial orgies is like saying eating a hash cookie will lead to chasing the dragon in a feculent public toilet – long bow.
So what? If adults have a fundamental right to marry whomever they choose, we should not be deterred by the number of sentences it would take to change the legal code. Didn’t we just pass a HCRA that was 2,000 pages?
The whole point of the argument that I tried to make is that allowing gay marriage and allowing plural marriage are different and that the one doesn’t lead to the other, because allowing plural marriage leads to a fundamental change in the nature, law and culture of marriage that allowing gay marriage doesn’t. We could change the law to allow plural marriage, sure, and if you think that there’s a fundamental right to plural marriage, then of course you’d want to change the legal code in however you had to. Whether or not plural marriage is a good idea or should be allowed is a can of worms I frankly don’t want to open. But I don’t think that’s what this thread is about. This thread is about the argument that allowing gay marriage will necessarily lead to plural marriage. I don’t think it will. I think the two cases are fundamentally different, and I think you can advocate gay marriage without also advocating plural marriage.
Again, so what? That’s not the debate the OP is setting up. Sure there are differences, but the number of sentences in a law is a very low bar to pass-- we enact complicated laws all the time.
You don’t get to choose which cans get opened.
No, that’s not what this thread is about. That’s what you are tying to make it about, but that’s not the way the OP set up the debate.
Read the OP again:
The OP set up the debate asking whether it’s illogical to make the argument that gay marriage opens the door to plural marriage. There’s nothing in the OP asking whether people think gay marriage should exist or plural marriage should exist. The only time that’s touched on at all in the OP is the OP’s single statement of belief/disclaimer, “I’m all for adults of any sexual persuasion being able to marry as they choose.”
The OP is about the linkage between the two, and I’m not the one hijacking it here.
Agreed, the merits of plural marriage are irrelevant to the OP.
The answer to the OP is that the slippery slope argument doesn’t hold up with regard to plural marriage because plural marriage does not involve any equal protection issues. Polyamory is simply a chosen behavior, not an innate, immutable characteristic like sexual orientation. No one is discriminated against by limiting federal marriage benefits to two persons.
The OP is not asking if SSM must lead to PM. He is asking if one could plausibly lead to the other. It could, and laws with more than 4 sentences are not a barrier to that happening.
The answer is no. There is no legal relationship between one and the other. Polygamy from SSM is a legal non-sequitur.
It’s slightly logically connected in that it’s a change that some people feel is major, but only slightly, due to all the legal complications that polygamy would give rise to. I have nothing against polygamy at all, and also have nothing against it being legalised in principle, but the practical difficulties are enormous.
It’s as if allowing people of the same gender to marry is like changing the legal age to buy alcohol by a year, but allowing polygamy is like not only allowing all drugs to be legal, but doing the same for pharmaceuticals too. So. Many. New. Laws. So. Many. New. Problems. Some of those problems, especially when it comes to kids, might even be insurmountable.
You know, I’m pretty sure the ‘four sentences’ thing was just another way of saying that polygamy would require a lot more changes than simply allowing people of the same sex to marry. He wasn’t actually checking for punctuation.
Allowing people to marry outside of a church could lead to polygamy being legal. Didn’t happen.
As I said before, so what? Is anyone arguing that it wouldn’t? Do we not pass complicated laws all the time?
Your religious beliefs are not immutable. The desire to have an abortion or to marry someone (anyone) are likewise not immutable. Yet they are held to be rights.
Pedophilia is an immutable characteristic. It is not a protected right deserving strict scrutiny.
Yes, there are people who are discriminated against by limiting marriage benefits to two people: those who want to enter into a marriage with three people.
And if you are going to allow SSM under the theory that marriage is a free choice between free adults, then you need at least a rational basis for outlawing polygamy.
And the two arguments that I’ve heard: That the bill would be too long to write, and that some of these relationships are coercive, don’t do it for me.
We write long bills all of the time, and there are two-person marriages that are coercive. We don’t outlaw all marriage because some guy makes his wife scrub the floors with a toothbrush.
Cite?
Not really, no. They’re usually revisions of previous laws that require no more than a few sentences.
If you admit that polygamy laws would require much complicated legal changes compared to same-sex marriage laws, that’s arguing that they’re not equivalent, surely?
jtgain: Er, cite about paedophilia being innate please. If John Mace is going to require one even for polygamy - not even polyamory (since that’s not the issue), but polygamy - then you really have to provide one for paedophilia.
I’m not sure if there is a slippery slope here.
A marriage license is a license, after all. You might not be able to discriminate on the area of race or sexual orientation, but you can discriminate on the basis of “you already have one with someone else.”
To the point, though, would that be a bad thing? Seriously. In a subculture with a lack of males, for instance, the African American community, polygamy might be a good thing. Certainly better than one guy with children by three different women, none of which he’s married to.
False dichotomy.
Not equivalent, but similar enough that one could logically lead to the other. It’s all a question of what society decides to accept. Polygamy is legal in more countries now than SSM is, btw. It also has a long tradition in human history all over the world, something that SSM does not.
monogamous marriage was an unequal partnership, an equal partnership, an equal partnership after a certain date that was modified with prenuptial agreements.
multiple people do construct both equal and unequal partnerships for many reasons. multiple people also interact and control property through incorporation.
people could create and modify economic and custody agreements as people join and leave. more complex then monogamy but there are people willing to do that to gain the benefit.
the real danger of SSM is not that it will lead to multiple-partnered marriage, that is workable, the danger is that it will lead to people getting married to their animals.
Why do you capitalize SSM, but not the beginning of a sentence?
There is no “danger” that people will marry an animal. :rolleyes:
Hee. This is hysterical. You used the term “decriminalized.” If you don’t know what the term means, then you shouldn’t use it. And I don’t have to infer anything. All I have to do is quote your gibberish. If you can’t explain yourself clearly and if you don’t understand the terms you are using, that’s not our problem.
Maybe you should also look up the term “rhetorical.”
Religious beliefs are protected by the First Amendment.:rolleyes: It’s a completely different section of the Constitution. You might want to read it sometime.
Both of which are not related to strict scrutiny analysis under the EP clause. For someone who likes to lecture people about Constitutional analysis, you sure don’t seem to know much about it.
If we did apply strict scrutiny to pedophilia, the state has an extremely compelling reason to outlaw it: it usually causes harm to children. The fact that you left out half the strict scrutiny analysis shows that you aren’t even making a good-faith argument here.
I notice again how you completely ignore scrutiny analysis here again. You also ignore the notion of harm, the state’s interest in orderly regulation of multi-party arrangement or anything else.
Who cares if it does it for you? Rational basis only requires a reason, not a reason you like. If you don’t understand this, why are you attempting to lecture us on rational basis?
If you want to assert that an observed behavior happens as a result on an innate characteristic, you fucking prove it.