Bigamy presumes (I think) that your spouse does not know you married another person.
It is illegal because you entered into a second marriage illegally.
Polygamy your spouse may know and approve of the second spouse but legally you still cannot do it.
Bottom line is you cannot legally be married to more than one person in the US at the same time. Period.
Not sure what your distinction is.
This thread was started about EP protection and polygamists as a class. What is your point?
No.
Right.
In some states, polygamy is illegal. In all states, bigamy is illegal. But polygamy does not require the law to exist. It is based on the principle of common law and religious marriage.
:smack: No one is arguing that polygamy is legal!
BIGAMY: BEING LEGALLY MARRIED TO MORE THAN ONE PERSON; TRYING TO OBTAIN A SECOND MARRIAGE LICENSE WHILE STILL LEGALLY MARRIED. ETC. MORE THAN ONE LEGAL SPOUSE. KIND OF AN OXYMORON, SINCE YOUR SECOND MARRIAGE WOULD BE INVALIDATED.
**POLYGAMY: THE PRACTICE OF HAVING MORE THAN ONE SPOUSE. DOES NOT REQUIRE LEGAL RECOGNITION OR PROTECTION. HAVING A SPOUSE IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT. TENS OF THOUSANDS PRACTICE THIS IN THE U.S. **
I was trying to help you understand the term, but it’s not working. Also, polygamists exist. As a class and IRL.
It is working fine.
What you are missing is how the distinction matters.
The OP of this thread is about an Equal Protection analysis. They have none. You are on about something else.
Polygamists can stand in front of a minister and proclaim their marriage to a second wife/husband.
That has PRECISELY the same legal weight as me “marrying” my next door neighbor when I was five. Which is to say WE WERE NOT MARRIED! Zero legal reconginition of it. Being adults and having more pomp and ceremony changes nothing. Just window dressing.
There is nothing magical about a religious ceremony. Sure, some might think so but let’s face it, this is all subjective personal belief.
Get it?
It does not matter if your church says you are married as far as the state is concerned. It might matter to you personally but so what? As a matter of law, which this thread is about, you cannot marry more than one person.
Period. Full stop. End of story. The buck stops here.
No. You are wrong. The purpose of this thread was to determine if polygamists were a class. You may argue to you heart’s content that they are not, but it doesn’t change facts.
You can fake marry your five your old kindergarten friend. There isn’t a law in the country that makes it illegal.
There are specific laws in the country that prohibit polygamy. Some states do not have this law. Polygamists are a class.
Get a law degree or sit in a seminar and come back to me. Your post is not your cite.
Wait - cohabitation with the intent of plural marriage is against federal law - but again, people practice it. Ever seen Big Love? It can be done.
You can be married and then play “house” with as many people as you want. The government could not care less.
What the government cares about is if you have two (or more) spouses claiming benefits. Only one is ok with them.
We should just all agree that polygamists are anyone who wants to practice polygamy. That should solve the debate 
There are polygamists and they do not deserve to be a protected class either
Indeed.
Your problem is being explicit when you say “class”.
As has been noted anyone can be a “class”. The question is does that “class” merit heightened scrutiny?
Polygamists don’t. Period.
That puts them in the same group as paintballers. If the state wants to make it illegal the state can do so and no court will say otherwise.
Depends on context. The laws were written so that Mormons and Native Americans would be discriminated against. I don’t think SCOTUS has heard a case on polygamy in a hundred years…or more.
If a man is married and has a mistress and love child on the side, the government will not prosecute, even though it is -technically- illegal. Under that definition, my dad is a polygamist a few times over!
:eek:
While the crackdown on polygamy rarely happens, that was not the original intent. It’s just not PC to say that we legislate against polygamy because of rejection of other religious norms…otherwise the feds would be arresting polygamist sects all over the country.
If I remember correctly, Lawrence is a case to look to when considering potential future cases regarding polygamy, but the court has changed since.
It is not a matter for the government to legislate what two consenting adults do in their intimate matters…nor is it really fair to have a sodomy law that is designed to discriminate against gays and not hetero couples.
They do deserve it. It’s a matter of religious freedom, and it’s one we’ve been trying to restrict since the 1800s.
Paintballing isn’t illegal, nor is it a practice among a group that is a protected class (religious).
Using your argument, homosexuals are in the same group as paintballers and nosepickers. :dubious:
edit: Please read the OP and Bricker’s link.
Whack-a-Mole, you think that polygamists don’t deserve any scrutiny. But they’re prohibited from practicing their marriage legally. it is clearly an established concept that is done around the world and across at least 3 religious sects I can think of in the US, not counting secular poly arrangements.
They are burdened and discriminated against.
Furthermore, the discrimination against religious poly arrangements and not secular ‘paramour’ types is extremely fucked and ironic in all kinds of ways, since the original ban was a rejection of religious minority groups, including ethnic ones.
In short, our knee-jerk reaction to polygamy was based on racial and religious prejudice. Now our knee-jerk reaction to polygamy is based on on a PC distaste of misogyny and the bad PR that poly marriages receive.
American law circa 1800s was not concerned with gender equality and children. Promise.
Native Americans are a special case and requires a history lesson I am not up for giving right now. Suffice it to say there are a very narrow exception (assuming they even practice polygamy which I am not sure of).
You can stand in front of anyone you want in your backyard and have them marry you to your 100th husband. The government does…not…care. You can pump out ten babies by ten different men. The government does…not…care.
Your only LEGAL marriage is to man #1.
If you are sitting at the dinner table with husbands 1-4 and you admit to some crime (any crime, take your pick) husband #1 cannot testify against you. You have spousal privilege and that is a right that accrues to you. It is not up to him to decide to spill the beans on you. YOU can, literally (as a legal matter), tell him to shut the fuck up and he has to. Husband 2-4? Say hi to witnesses for the state.
Again, you can live with whoever you like. You can call them all husbands. Play house with multiple partners all you like. The government does not care.
Try to exercise marital rights as husband two –> infinity and the government cares. Taxes, inheritance, taxes, custody, taxes and so on. 1,138 of such rights.
Not how I remember Lawrence but I am no expert so you’ll have to be more explicit. My sense is you are very wrong on this but I am no expert so point it out to me please.
Pretty sure sodomy laws have been undone by the Supreme Court. If any still exist I’d say they are unconstitutional (my opinion…not necessarily the court’s opinion).
You are mistaken.
I have been parroting the Supreme Court test for what level of scrutiny to apply (already posted it but will post again):
This is not my opinion. This is how the Supreme Court does it. Don’t like it take it up with them.
As it stands polygamists fail the “immutable” trait test so they do not get heightened scrutiny as the courts see it.
To be clear…I am citing the COURT’S take on it. You can argue it is dumb if you want but note it is not my rules but government rules.
Don’t give history lessons (esp. to a history teacher) on things you aren’t sure of. Anti-bigamy laws were passed out of ethnocentric-ism.
But…it’s…illegal…on…paper…but…not…prosecuted…cause…its…backwards.
It does not have to be legal to exist.
You do understand that the government does not give out magical cohabitation fairy dust?!
I’m exhausted. Lawrence … Scalia… my brain is withering. A google comes up with stuff like this but I can get back to it tomorrow. The state can’t claim to protect the traditional norms of marriage, nor can it legislate the sexual conduct of consenting adults.
Yes, and hopefully paved way for anti polygamy laws to be undone. Or redone. Sodomy laws were rarely enforced for the longest time.
Laws that aren’t prosecuted are still dangerous. I mean, the feds could walk downtown and raid all of the MMJ shops if they wanted.
Of course not. Government sanctioned marriages are done via paperwork, fairy dust is totally obsolete.
(:
So is the virgin bride!
Immutability isn’t necessarily required for suspect classification (although in practice it usually is). Religious groups may be suspect classes, and religious discrimination is treated with strict scrutiny, even though religion isn’t an immutable characteristic.
Nah. Fodder for another thread, and not a question I have all the answers to, or have ever claimed to. I think that answers are possible, but absolutely agree they aren’t easy. I think it’d have to look a lot more like incorporation law than current marriage law.
It’s the immutability claim I’m taking issue with, and it’s exactly because it seems to so closely mirror the gay experience.
I take it your claim is that homosexuality is immutable, since they pass Supreme Court scrutiny?
It what way is homosexuality immutable that poly-ness isn’t? The desire is still there, even if the behavior isn’t. I’ve known ever since I was a small child that loving one person doesn’t render me incapable of loving another. My first dating experiences were full of cheating (on both sides) that I felt no angst over, because I understood romantic love and sexual attraction - for me - to be something I could feel for more than one person. (Well, that’s not entirely true. I felt angst because I didn’t feel angst as I had been taught I should. I felt bad for lying and breaking trust, but that’s not the same thing as feeling bad for loving more than one person at once.) How is that different from little boys growing up knowing they felt romantic love and sexual attraction for other boys, instead of girls?
It seems as if, for both, bigots’ answer is: I don’t care what you do, as long as you don’t ask the state to recognize it.
Argument against gay marriage: Marriage is a bond between one man and one woman. Response: Why one man and one woman? Why not two men?
Argument against plural marriage: Marriage is a bond between one man and one woman or maybe two men or two women. Response: Why two? Why not three?
And how is that NOT discriminatory? How can we justify honoring the bond between Wife 1 and Husband 1, but not Wife 1 and Husband 2, 3 or 4?
Yeah. I was about to say that Wikipedia is wrong on this one, but if you follow Whack’s link, you find that his quotation about all of those traits being required is either from somewhere else or is out of date:
I don’t understand the argument that since polygamy is illegal, it doesn’t exist, and therefore they are not a class/protected class.
You could say the same thing about same sex marriage in Florida, for example. Clearly, since it’s illegal, there is no SSM in Florida, therefore no protected class.
I know that this isn’t your point, but I am confused as to what it is…