Ha! Your superior intellect was able to discern my hyperbole. I must be more careful using the word “all” - it’s so, ya know, inclusive.
I must admit my mistake. I concede. I retract my statement. Please allow me to rephrase:
The roots of current western culture accepted polygamy, almost without exception, until the Catholic Church decided it against their interests.
Better?
Bovine excrement. Technically correct, but totally irrelevent in context.
The statement you quoted was in response to an assertion by UDS, and was intended to divorce (pardon the pun) the notion that exclusivity in marriage was central to the western concept of marriage, except until recently. As I later stated explicitly, I wasn’t intending to advocate polygamy in that post.
Interesting that you noted the Aegean culture as the exception. Indeed, the philosophy of ascetism was the apparent influence on the Catholic Church eventually leading to the monogamy standard (first for priests, eventually for lay people as well).
It would probably make more sense to express your annoyance in a thread about a topic other than polygamy, else you come off a bit boorish. But just to double down, I’m annoyed how many gay marriage supporters seem base their support, not on principle, but only on self interest. Hypocrites, indeed.
No. My superior intellect points out that you have yet to define what the “roots of current western culture are”, other than a few selected cites you’ve drudged up. One could argue that “current western culture” is founded on Greek, then Roman, then Catholic, then Protestant cultures, none of which were especially polygamous.
Selected pagan, “barbarian” tribes across Europe, yes.
“The roots of current western culture”, no.
It isn’t even valid to throw out the “culture” argument and say that “the ancestors of current westerners”, since most of the populations have been displaced so much over the past ~1500 years.
Well, “the roots of western culture” didn’t develop with Baltics or Slavs, sugar.
Make a thread about it. Homosexuality has nothing to do with polygamy. Don’t expect us to fight your battle.
I always read these arguments, and honestly they don’t make sense. Can I remind you that a lot of people aren’t married? Hence, that when they on life support, their children, or parents, or siblings could also disagree about the plug issue?
Wouldn’t it be complicated to share the estate of deceased people who had several children? How should it be handled? Divided equally? Per seniority with the oldest child getting more than the younger ones?
I hope we’ll find someday a solution to these difficult issues, so that people can have more than one child or one parent.
I think Aldebaran actually has a good case. In our societies, where having several partners is a relatively common practice, and well tolerated, one of these partners is granted many priviledges by the government. It might be fine and dandy for most people, but not necessarily so for some other, like our resident trio. I can’t see a reason why, if three people are living together in common agreement, one should be deprived of the advantages another one enjoys (or at the contrary, why one should be granted priviledges denied to the other).
Many countries where polygamy is legal have passed laws stating that the wife can oppose a subsequent marriage of their husband. One could easily imagine such a system where a second (or third, fourth, etc…) marriage could only be contracted with the consent of the existing spouses.
I mentionned in an older thread the example of two retired single brothers who would want to live together, with the benefits associated with marriage (for instance the second one being able to stay in the house they live in after the death of the first one), and who obviously wouldn’t be interested in having intercourses… I fail to see why unrelated childless people could benefit from such an arrangment by marrying each other (nobody is going to check whether or not they actually sleep together) while these two brothers couldn’t.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they actually were. My reasonning is that contrarily to monogamous marriages, not only polyamorous arrangments aren’t recognized and backed by the government, the families, society, but also they’re actively discouraged. As a result, I would tend to suspect that if they aren’t significantly more stable than an “average” monogamous relationship, they are likely to fall apart almost immediatly, or more probably to not even been considered as an option at the first place. IOW that it requires a much stronger commitment at the first place to establish such a relationship.
Of course, it wouldn’t apply anymore as soon as it would be legally and socially recognized/accepted.
Your society, maybe. Not mine. Sure, we don’t send people to jail for having an extra boy-/girlfriend on the side, but such behavior is not commonly accepted in America by any stretch of the imagination. And that doesn’t even begin to touch on the societal disapproval over multiple partners in the same household. Over here, we prefer the mistresses to be discretely (and hypocritically) hidden away from everyone else.
That’s a perfectly sensible sentiment. But it’s also a perfectly sensible sentiment to limit the automatic conferral of such benefits (recalling that most of those benefits are always freely available via contract) to two persons instead of, for instance, five.
Sorry, but I’m just not impressed by claims of discrimination based on numbers.
Then, I could similarily say that currently no select group of people can practice same-sex marriage, and that nobody is denied the right to marry someone of the oposite sex. So, it’s applied equally too.
Here I could say : Where polyamorous marriage is fundamentally different is that currently our laws allow any people to get married, so long as there aren’t more than two of them.
Following this reasonning, I could hence state that polyamorous marriages should be allowed, but not same-sex marriage. Because, as you mentionned “it’s fundamentally different”. And on this basis, could deny a charge of hypocrisy.
The law is currently “two people of the opposite sex can get married”. And this law is applied with perfect equality. Nobody is denied such a marriage. Homosexual people aren’t, and polyamorous people aren’t, either. It just happens that none of these two groups is satisfied by such a marriage. So, one group would like to change the “two” part, and the other the “opposite sex” part. No fundamental difference, except that the concept of same-sex marriage is now getting mainstream acceptance, while the polygamous marriage still doesn’t.
So, yes, I think there’s some hypocrisy (or more likely some lack of perspective) in suporting one and opposing the other on the basis that “it’s different”, a non-argument which could be (and is) used by people opposing same-sex marriages.
I hope then that you don’t expect anybody who isn’t homosexual to “fight your battle”?
Fortunately for various minorities, a lot of people who didn’t belong to them “fought their battles” in the past. Lacking that, being minorities, they wouldn’t have been able to achieve any advancement. Nor would you, without the support of heterosexuals willing to fight yours.
I didn’t write “commonly accepted”. I wrote “common practice” (isn’t it in the USA, or are adulterers exceedingly rare?) and “well tolerated” (do most people in the USA cut ties with friends or relatives when they discover they have cheated on their spouse, for instance?).
In my society I’ve been told that it was “fucked up” (yes, that is a direct quote) that someone asked me for permission to pursue a relationship with Teine. And when I asked him if it would still be fucked up if she’d not asked and just cheated, I got an answer, “Of course not.”
There’s a discussion in one of my groups going on at the moment about those people who will be happy to cheat with a married person, but who become uninterested in the relationship as soon as it becomes clear that it’s with the spouse’s knowledge and consent.
In other words, my experience is that honesty in one’s multiple relationships is less socially accepted than being a lying, betraying, cheating asshole.
Well, they’re not exactly encouraging others to want to fight for them. Look at how, for example, Rep. Barney Frank, the HRC, and the DNC have all consistently abandoned transgenders in their ongoing battles for inclusion in nondiscrimination and hate crime legislation. :rolleyes:
A few selected cites? Please review post #29 in this thread, where I stated, “Polygamy was accepted throughout early Christian, Jewish, and Muslim societies.” Do you deny that? Or do you deny that the cultures of the early Christians and Jews, combined with the cites for Germanic, Scandinavian, Celtic, and Slavic cultures are not at the roots of western culture?
You mention Protestantism - take a look at what Martin Luther’s take on polygamy was.
While neither the Greeks nor the Romans endorsed polygamy, both societies accepted mistresses and concubines (a less socially desirable solution, I hope we would all agree).
Lilairen’s point is well taken, dishonesty in extramarital relationships is more socially acceptable than polyamory. I still struggle to understand that, it appears to be an artifact of some immoral religious teachings (although not biblically rooted).
Maybe not in your idea of polygamy, but certainly within the concept of polyamory, homo-/bi-sexuality is common (and while perhaps not common, transsexuality isn’t exactly rare). Also, see clairobscur’s post #92 for along this line (not to mention #93).
The poly’s arguments rest on concepts like liberty, honesty, equality, respect, love, commitment and integrity. What part is unworthy of your support?
Yes, I was under the impression that, the majority of men are more jealous than females.
This may have been hard wired into men in the old days, having to do with making sure the offspring were theres, courtesy of Desmond Morris.
I may be wrong.
Also about the woman shortage too.