While Justice Clarence Thomas did say in his concurrence that he would revisit Obergefell and Griswold v. Connecticut, the first case to find that the 14th Amendment protected a married couple’s right to use contraceptives, no other justice signed his opinion. If a case challenging Obergefell ever made it to this court, and there is no reason a case would ever make it that far, it would lose 8-1.
Despite all these facts, Democrats in Congress felt the need to vote on a “Respect for Marriage Act,” which they pitched as legislation that would protect “the hard-earned gains of the Equality movement.”
The problem is the actual text of the legislation did a little bit more than that. As Heritage Foundation Senior Fellow Roger Severino noted, the way the bill is written would make polygamy legal nationwide as soon as just one state legalized it.
“For the purposes of any Federal law, rule, or regulation in which marital status is a factor,” the bill reads, “an individual shall be considered married if that individual’s marriage is valid in the State where the marriage was entered in to.”
This means that if California were to legalize polygamy, then every state of the union would also have to recognize polygamous marriages formed in California.
Is the possibility of a state legalizing polygamy far-fetched? No more far-fetched than the Supreme Court overturning Obergefell.
Um. Yes. It’s much more likely that the Supreme Court would overturn Obergefell. But keep on with your slippery slope argument.
I’m surprised they didn’t use the “farm animals” argument that one of my church friends used the Sunday after Obergefell.
If I can extend this to the broader argument, why wouldn’t polygamy in 2050 be viewed the same way gay marriage was viewed in 1990 - something that seems impossible but then becomes mainstream? Everything seems unthinkable until it isn’t anymore.
I believe we have had conversations in this forum about how legalizing polygamy is much more complex an issue than gay marriage, but I can’t seem to find them. help?
They have to come up with something to try to deflect the obvious political optics of being put on the spot to expressly protect contraception, gay marriage, and interracial marriage (i.e. either offend the racists and Talibornagains or offend mainstream Americans), and if a “ludicrous leap of logic” is all they have in that department (and it is), so be it.
OK, let’s follow the rabbit hole. Let’s say that California does legalize polygamy, and Alice marries both Bob and Carol in California. Alice then moves to a nice red state that would never legalize anything that radical, like Utah. What does this law state? That Alice is still married.
On the other hand, suppose that we didn’t have this law, and California keeps same-sex marriage legal, but Utah doesn’t. Alice marries Carol in California. Then Alice moves to Utah. Utah doesn’t allow same-sex marriage, and so, in the eyes of Utah law, Alice is still single, and free to marry Bob there. And now, we do have polygamy.
I don’t have any fundamental objection to polygamy, but it’s definitely more complicated. Gay marriage doesn’t need any different laws than straight marriage, but polygamous marriage does. If Alice marries Bob and Carol, but then Alice dies, is there still any relationship between Bob and Carol? If Alice, Bob, Carol, and Dave all happen to be straight, can there be a marriage where Bob and Dave are both married to both of Alice and Carol, but where Bob isn’t married to Dave and Alice isn’t married to Carol? If we already have a happy group marriage containing n people and the n+1th person wants to join, do all of the existing spouses need to agree? A majority of them? Just one? Are the answers to all of these questions the same for all marriages, or can a marriage set its own rules on a case-by-case basis?
If polygamy advocates want to go to the hard work of sorting out all of these messes, I wish them well, but I don’t feel inclined to figure it out myself.
We’ve had tons of them. The takeaway I got was, morally, who cares, but there are a lot of thorny problems involving kids, inheritance, divorces, etc., that aren’t an issue with just two spouses.
Weird legal issues, and the jack-mormon cults with compounds use it to abuse underage girls, and commit incest.
But all the Polyamorous people I know are very cool, so, just get Utah to make some raids, and all that will be left is some weird legal issues that can be solved in time.
Lots of concerns that it can be used to force women into subservient positions, especially in societies that strongly restrict female education and exposure to non-societal information, such as various Mormon subsects.
A secondary issue is economic, in that for certain individuals who already believe marriage is primarily (or entirely) economic in nature, you’d end up with those with assets and standing having a disproportionate number of the women, which leaves a large number of angry, young males with fewer options, which doesn’t lead to safe or positive images towards women either.
The Democratic Party {…} accidentally voted to legalize polygamy.
As Heritage Foundation Senior Fellow Roger Severino noted, the way the bill is written would make polygamy legal nationwide as soon as just one state legalized it.
Simple answer, let polyandry also be legal. I would love to have a couple husband [actually back when mrAru was deploying regularly, a spare husband around the house would have been nice. I joked once after the 4th or 5th pelvic exam in a row to diagnose an internal issue that that was the most action I had since my husband deployed. The navy doc wasn’t pleased about the statement [but the female corpsman watching sort of sniggered.]
Oh, sorry, wasn’t debating that -if- polygamy became legal, that polyandry shouldn’t be as well. I was summarizing what I felt were the two main arguments of the prior thread that grabbed me.
Going to IMHO, I feel that yes there are legitimate legal/contractual concerns about how poly (both) relationships should protect the parties involved including inheritance, benefits, and children, but that’s -it-. We just need to work out the messy details, much like we’ve done with vanilla and SSM marriage to date.
But in terms of P&E, yeah, it’s Democrats are about protecting the rights of SSM (and considering some of the (R) bitching, interracial marriage) by putting things broadly, as the current SCOTUS is tying itself into knots trying to define things super narrowly.
So the broad language of the legislation in the OP is supposed to be a feature, not a flaw. But I fully expect the current Republican party to seize on any opportunity to paint the other party in the worst light, since, well, they haven’t put forward an actual agenda in decades other than support the rights of white (male) Christians over anything else.
Understood, I was more responding to the pissed off young men =)
And the easy solution to the legal bits is EVERYBODY gets a prenup - you get a prenup, you get a prenup, and you over there gets a prenup =) If things are laid out in a contract, then if there is a bump, the court gets to play Solomon and make the decision. Honestly, most couples can do with a prenup even if it is to delineate who takes out the garbage and who puts the dishes away or walks the dog, or whatever.
[actually I like a SF approach to things - marriage is no longer religious based at all, it is contract based. One has 1 year, 3 year, 5 year and 18 year [based upon having a single child by contract] and only after successfully done at least a 3 year contract one can go for the child contract, and after managing the child contract can one go permanent. At the end of the term, no marriage, and they can contract for additional terms. No divorce courts, everything is dealt with via contract.]
You should read Gravity Dreams - if you haven’t already. Nanite based future earth society based on both contracts and a mandatory societal requirement for truth with a capital T.
So back to the OP - I really don’t see this being framed as a debate, yeah, the Republicans are (as is more or less the norm recently) trying to make Democrats look like crazed sexual deviants. This has been the playbook for over a decade.
Unless the debate is that, no, actually a polyamorous legislation was the intent of the mentioned legal intent.
Washington Examiner, the Moonie newspaper. Cults LOVE Trump.
The Epoch Times, another big Trump supporting paper, is the media outlet of China’s Falun Gong cult. Before they tied themselves to Trump, they were one of those free throwaway papers you grabbed from the box when it started raining and you didn’t have an umbrella.
But cults LOVE Trump. That’s why so many of his supporters were so easy to indoctrinate, they were already in a cult.
“Polygamy” means “multiple spouses,” not “multiple wives,” so legalizing polygamy would include legalizing polyandry. The specific term for “multiple wives” is “polygyny.”
Yes. Zero percent of states have suggested legalizing polygamy. But twenty percent of the justices who would be needed for a majority have suggested overturning the Obergefell decision.