You’ve stated that it isn’t innate. How do you know that? What is the science behind your statement?
There is no right to marriage, actually, and no unfettered right to religious practices (you can’t practice human sacrifice, for instance). The right in question is equal protection. There is actually no right to get married, but if the government feels like offering benefits for it, then it has to offer the same benefits to everyone. It can’t exclude people without a rational basis (there is a rational basis, for instance, to exclude children and animals). There is no rational basis to exclude gay people.
Limiting the privileges to only marriages of two people offers the same privilege to everyone. No one is excluded. No one is getting a right that somebody else doesn’t get. There’s no equal protection issue.
It’s called “rational basis.” Look it up. The government is allowed to discriminate if it has a rational reason to do so. Rational basis is irrelevant to polygamy, though, because no one is being discriminated against.
This is a moronic argument. By this reasoning, anyone who disagrees with any law is being discriminated against.
Nope. No you don’t/ You are misunderstanding the basis for removing the ban on SSM. It excludes a group from benefits offered to others without a rational basis. Bans on polygamy don’t give anybody anything. All citizens are excluded, therefore there can’t be discrimination. There is no group being singled out.
This is a different argument. The government can legalize polygamy if it wants to, but Constututionally it doesn’t HAVE to, and that’s why SSM doesn’t open up any doors.
Because it goes without saying. It’s definitional. Polyamory is an action. Sexual orientation is not. Orientation is defined by attraction, not behavior. Polyamory just means fucking more than one person. It has no other definition other than behavioral. Asking for proof that a behavior is not innate is nonsensical. No behavior is innate.
So if you want to assert that there is some kind on polyamorous “orientation,” then PROVE it. Otherwise you’re wasting bandwidth on a fatuous hijack.
A couple of comments. First of all, and most importantly, I want to stress that this particular argument, regardless of its truth, is, on a macro scale, totally irrelevant. That is, even if someone could come up with a 100% convincing argument that legalized SSM would in fact increase the likelihood of legalized plural marriage, and everyone looked at the convincing brilliance of that argument and nodded our heads and said “yup, you’ve convinced me, legalized SSM would increase the likelihood of legalized plural marriage”, that is in no way a convincing or even relevant argument against legalized SSM.
SSM should be legal because US citizens are being unfairly denied important personal rights. There’s no way that “something else might become legal at some point using this as a precedent” is sufficient to deny them those rights. If, 50 years in the future, the US as a whole, speaking through their duly elected legislative and judicial representatives, decide that plural marriage should be legal, well, that’s a decision that they can make. Changing societies cause things that once seemed unthinkable to become clearly correct. 150 years ago there were probably some people who honestly believed plural marriage should be legal, and would clearly so become, while gay marriage would have been considered an unquestionable abomination… so who knows what the future may bring, and if it does bring it, what people in the future will look back on as important turning points in that process.
My point being
(a) we can argue about what logically follows from what until we’re blue in the face, but it’s very very hard to predict what actual ripple effects things will have
(b) that said, plural marriage becoming legal in the next several decades in the US strikes me as vanishingly comically unlikely
© but SSM should be legal entirely on its own merits, plural marriage or not.
You know, Max, that’s a very good argument. So what if SSM may, someday, somehow lead to polyamory? Even if it did, that’s not an excuse to justify discriminating against gay people.
Decades? SSM was laughable just a few decades ago.
I agree.
No, it isn’t just definitional. Being attracted to, or in love with, more than one person is not a choice. And it really doesn’t matter, anyway. Would you be against SSM if being gay was a choice?
Humans have, throughout history and across almost all cultures, practiced polygamy. It’s the default social organization. If anyone has to prove anything, it’s the monogamists. There is nothing science tells us that humans are innately monogamous, and everything it tells us that we aren’t.
there are people who are polyamorous that will state they never were able to limit their affection/love/relationships to one person, that was their psychological being since childhood. very similar to gays only having affection/love/relationships to people of their gender. very similar to bisexuals alwayy having affection/love/relationships to people of both genders. self realization happens at different ages and in different ways to people.
I realize we’re on the second page, and I appreciate your perspective, but you might want to re-read the OP re “relevance”. We’re really not discussing what you are responding to.
My OP did not focus on the rightness or wrongness or the advisability of SSM marriage, personally I’m all for it. The question was whether the argument that one led to the other was logically solid or not in the context of the US political and legal system. To say “it really doesn’t matter because SSM is a human/moral/natural right” is ethically admirable but it really is sort of beside the point.
Everybody is attracted to more than one person. There’s no subgroup for that, so no discrimination. That’s also not the definition of polyamory. Polyamory means fucking more than one person, not being attracted to more than one person.
No, but I’m not against legalized multiple marriage either. I’m just pointing out that it doesn’t trigger any 14th Amendment issues the way that SSM restrictions do.
This is an irrelevant argument unless and until you can prove there is a difference between “monogamous” and “polyamorous” people other than behavior, but for the record, polygamy, historically and presently, has hardly been consensual or equitable for most of its practitioners. the majority of persons who have been involved in polygamous marriages haven’t had a choice about it, so you can’t hold it up as organic human behavior. On the contrary,pair bonding and serial monogamy appears to be the default when people have the choice.
Well… I’m not sure of the assertion that in the historical long view monogamous marriage has been all that less coercive than polygamous marriage, or that one on one exclusive pair bonding relationships have always been the default choice.
Is less cushy circumstances than those afforded by modern western lifestyles I can see young women and their families looking at the option of being part of a relatively prosperous polygamous household being a better lifestyle option than starting from scratch with a less prosperous husband in a monogamous relationship. Is this abusive “coercion” or just being a rational economic actor?
I would love a second husband, 2 chances to get the garbage out the door before the truck arrives …
We’re not talking about being attracted to. We’re talking about being in love with.
Sure I can. And most marriages, historically, have not been equitable or consensual throughout history, monogamous or polygamous.
Allowing polygamy is the default in most societies, but in practice most people are going to be monogamous simply because of the math. But people cheat all the time, and not in a serial fashion. Serial monogamy gets imposed on us by the legal system.
Polygamy is usually forced on women, not “allowed.” Women are also rarely offered the option of more than one partner themselves. As a cultural practice, polygamy is almost always a one way street (there are very rare exceptions of cultural polyandry, but it’s so rare as to be a freak oddity).
Serial monogamy is not imposed on anybody. I chose it and prefer it above anything else. Cite that was legally imposed on me? When did that happen? I never noticed it.
They’ve never been allowed to choose it in a free society. Polygamy was outlawed in the US before women could vote. There are currently lots of extra-legal polygamous households in the US in which the women are free to come and go, and there are some, though not as many, polyandrous households, too.
Serial monogamous matrimony. Like I said, cheating within marriage is rampant. We don’t give up one partner before we find another.
I find it ironic that Dopers would march all over Washington in favor of same sex marriage in the name of equality but are OK with brushing off polyamory as something ‘other people in less developed countries do’. The views against poly marriages tend to be cultural, religious, and shortsighted. Funny. So was/is the view on same sex marriage.
Same sex marriage will lead to more gay people and the erosion of the American family. Kids need one mom and one dad.
Poly marriages will mean less women for the men and the children will all suffer in confusion. You can’t have multiple parents.
Same sex marriage is morally reprehensible.
Poly marriages are sexist and religiously backwards!
and so forth and so on. Gay people have been asking for the right to marry for decades and now that they have it, they’d like to scoff at the oldest institution of marriage itself.
Poly marriages are already practiced, so why not give them legal protection? I mean, gay people don’t have to have gay partners, but they do, so don’t give me that, “Well, they shouldn’t be polygamous, then!” argument.
Gay people DO have to have same sex partners to be emotionally fulfilled. There is no “polyamorous” orientation.
Having said that, I don’t give a fuck one way or the other if it’s legal, I’m just saying there’s no constitutional argument that not offering federal benefits for it violates equal protection the way it does for gay people. Refusing to offer those benefits to plural marriage doesn’t discriminate. Nobody gets it, so there’s no equal protection grievance.
I don’t believe Lawrence was decided on Equal Protection, and that was a case that was discussed in this thread. But both same sex marriage and poly marriages should stand on their own.
Damn, I was hoping I’d get to say that. So I’ll second this: it’s not relevant to the legal or ethical merits of legalizing same-sex marriage. It’s an appeal to traditionalism.
The polygamy issue becomes relevant if you argue that SSM should be legal on libertarian grounds - that is, it should be legal because the government shouldn’t be telling people who they can and can’t marry as long as everyone involved is a consenting adult and so on, in which case it’s interesting to ask if polygamy should also be legal because both involve regulations of marriage. From my perspective, saying same-sex marriage needs to be legal because gays are a protected class and poylgamy doesn’t because polygamists aren’t is a highly legalistic argument. The primary argument in favor of same-sex marriage was that gays were being denied a fundamental human right. The protected class thing was the legal justification.
Is being allowed to have multiple spouses also a fundamental right that needs to be granted to everyone if it’s granted to anyone? It’s an interesting question and I don’t think a satisfactory answer has been posted here.