I have answered you three times now. Read my replies.
Your replies are complete non-sequiturs. All three times.
It does because this thread is about Polygamy.
And I have already explained about the weird poly pedo cult compounds. Do I need to explain about those again, and why it would be a bad idea to legalize their pedo cult?
I relied on Wikipedia.
Should we ban gay marriage because, under the current child marriage laws in the US, they allow a man to marry an underage boy?
Should we abolish plain old hetero marriage, because under current marriage laws, they allow a man to marry an underage girl?
Or should we ban child marriage if child marriage is what we have a problem with and weigh polygamy on its own merit?
I’m not even particularly in favor of polygamous marriage. As noted by others, there are all kinds of legal issues that would have to be worked out, and that are much more complicated than just allowing two people of the same sex to marry. But I think your argument against it is really, REALLY stupid.
None of those come under the weird poly pedo cult compounds. Do I need to explain about those again, and why it would be a bad idea to legalize their pedo cult?
Those pedos dont want gay sex. They want underaged sex slaves.
And we arent talking about BANNING Poly marriage, we are talking about legalizing it. It is already banned.
I wont reply to you any longer.
Do you base all decisions about how the country should operate based on how they might impact a handful of tiny cults, as opposed to how they’ll impact society overall? Do you think that’s wise?
Or immigration. I personally know of at least three cases of marriage fraud (people who didn’t intend to live together until death do we part, and in some cases weren’t even romantic partners) for the purpose of getting someone a green card. The cost of a sham marriage is much lower if you don’t give up the chance for a real marriage by doing so.
Of course, maybe we SHOULD allow anyone to sponsor anyone they promise to support for immigration purposes.
Excellent. I was just about the formally ask the two of you to drop the topic of how legalizing polygamy makes cults that currently “marry” many girls to older men worse.
It makes sense because some of the results can be the same. Having a large number of unmarried and unmarriageable young men is destabilising for society and leads to trafficking of women. But as I said, we don’t know whether it would cause such an imbalance in modern society.
I think the prohibition was a good thing in the past. (And followers of different magic books have endorsed it, so we can compare.) Perhaps it is no longer necessary. But if I was in power I would prefer to let some other country be the guinea-pig and iron out all the problems before changing the law.
Ref @puzzlegal’s guidance just above … Completely setting aside the “pedo” part, @DrDeth has a point.
Places like FLDS would be very pleased to be able to create fully legal marriages where 60+ yo horndogs got a new 18yo woman for their (or her) birthday every year.
And rest assured that in that subculture, those 18 yo fully legally adult women have substantially zero agency as actual independent adults. They’re trapped in an abusive relationship from birth to death. The only thing that changes over time is who the abuser(s) is/are.
Numerically these are a tiny fraction of all Americans. But the horror is very real for the women press-ganged from birth into this mess.
Yet another “gift” widespread tolerance for religious fundamentalism brings to America.
My own POV echos @Strassia’s.
- Child marriage is wrong, period.
- Culturally coerced marriage is wrong, period.
- Any religiously-motivated opinion on polygamy, pro- or con-, is irrelevant - as a pluralist modern society we don’t behave, and certainly don’t legislate, according to anyone’s ancient magic books.
- Poly marriage is not per se morally wrong, but before being made legal there is a lot of legislation and regulation and precedent and cultural habits that would need to be consciously updated. With an eye to empowerment and protection for the participants as well as fraud management for the rest of us.
- The above is a tall order for the US’s culturally divided polity to handle smartly. Too tall IMO. For too little gain given the extreme minority of people who can handle it well versus the rampant opportunities for abuse.
Excellent post, you said I better than I could.
Yes, thanks for re-directing the discussion in a productive way.
I question the premise that polygamy (or especially “polyamory”) is in fact illegal in the U.S. as a practical matter.
As has been alluded to in the thread, the obvious reason that “just legalize polygamy right now” won’t work and is not analogous to same-sex marriage is that the legal aspects of “marriage between a man and a woman” can be easily transposed onto “marriage between any two people.” The rights of the husband/wife become rights of the spouse, and since we in fact went from no states where SSM was legal to it being legal everywhere in a 7-year period, there were very few logistical difficulties in figuring out how it would work. Wife has right to visit husband in hospital → husband has right to visit husband in hospital, etc.
For more than 2 people you can’t just copy the existing laws wholesale. Every polygamous arrangement has to negotiate its own “marriage contract” as to how the elements of the marriage (community property, health care decisions, child custody, etc) will work. But you can do that now, and people do it all the time. There quite obviously ARE people living in “polyamorous” arrangements, and there is nothing at all stopping them from entering into contracts about the division of their property and so forth. As far as child custody and living arrangements, no one is ever going to agree to make an exception to the family court principle of “child’s best interest” just to accommodate polygamy, nor should they. If your polygamous arrangement is causing abuse or chaos in the home, then yes, you absolutely do have to “justify yourself to the government” - just like if you are a two-person couple or a single parent and there is a reason to suspect that your child is being harmed.
Given the practical realities of what “polygamous marriage” would look like, what specifically is it that people advocating it actually want to see beyond what is available to them right now, other than “less care for the welfare of children” for some reason?
They want legal recognition and protection, and I cant blame them. In some case the “2nd spouse” cant get their husbands/wife’s insurance, since not legally married.
Mind you , I know a few poly relationships, and they seem to get by. No one is breaking down their doors with handcuffs. They seem as happy as any duo couples.
But there was one issue- My male friend- the husband- was dying in the hospital. He had a DNS order. The legal wife said Ok, pull the plug the other "wife’ fought it, so the hospital delayed for almost two months while legal hashed it out.
The extra hospital bills for those two months were horrendous, even tho he had decent insurance. The hospital, after some urging did cut some slack on that.
Now, that might have been a issue even if both spouses were legal, of course. Still, a lot of hard feelings and expenses.
Pre-nups and everything in writing would be critical.
My point is - you can write a living will right now that says “Jane Doe has the authority to make decisions as to my end of life care” even if you are married to Jill Deer. And if you are polygamously married, these conflicts will still come up, until and unless you negotiate the particulars. So what would be different if polygamous marriage were allowed, in the hospital situation?
Now, that might have been a issue even if both spouses were legal, of course.
Oddly enough, I think it is (or was) in Utah. My info may be out of date, and comes via a friend who is a polyamory advocate.
In contrast, it’s legally supported in Massachusetts. MA created a class of domestic partnership contracts prior to legalizing same-sex marriage, and the bounds of what a legal domestic partnership can include are pretty broad. I have a friend who entered into such a contract with two other people. And when he split up with one of them, they effectively paid alimony to that person. But the legalities were pretty smooth.
They did have to hire a lawyer who specialized in that, they couldn’t just go to town hall and pull a license, like an ordinary couple wanting to be married could have. But since there are a lot of complexities to their situation that aren’t handled by the standard marriage contract, that was probably a good thing.
Got a cite for that? Serial monogamy, whether inside or outside of marriage, is still monogamous heterosexuality. Not that heterosexuality has anything to do with this issue - I’d assume polygamy would also apply to same sex couples.
As DemonTree mentioned, the “magic book” supports it in places. Why not be like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Unlike SSM, there are good secular reasons to be opposed to polygamy which you just keep hand waving away.
If you believe there would be as many multiple-men one woman marriages as the opposite, I’d like a cite for the number polyamorous relationships of that type. I’m not buying it.
Plus, legalization implies approval. Those who could afford such relationships now, like the rich and powerful, are not likely to do so openly since they are in the public eye. That would change with a change in the law.
I’m sure legalization increased the number of SSMs. That’s a good thing. And women in this kind of relationship have less power than women in traditional relationships. The last thing we need to do in this society is make a bad situation worse.
It does not affect your base pay, but at least when I was in, it affect several living allowances* and there was separation pay when deployed**.
*We had allowances to compensate for cost of living in certain areas. I was posted to Hawaii for 4 years and got extra pay for that, but not as much as married sailors.
**I believe the justification was to compensate for things like extra child care and support needed when the sailor spouse was not available.