What about gay incestuous marriage? No genetic problems there.
A question : is marriage about being able to produce children, in your opinion?
It’s a perfectly good argument if we have not assessed how other countries have done it or if we share laws with those other countries. Marriage is contextual, not absolute.
What if they don’t have offspring?
Should we ban non-incestuous marriages that are likely to produce genetically defunct offspring?
Does it sound like a bad idea to allow monogamous heterosexual marriages in a society where women aren’t truly equal, then? If it doesn’t, why?
And what prevents wealthy people from having most of the sexual partners available, currently? Why do you think marriage would change a thing?
And what gives you the right to decide that people shouldn’t be allowed to marry/fuck/whatever wealthy people just so that they would stay available for others? Can I also ask that women be banned from dating young, attractive and intelligent men so that I could have my chance?
I think the question boils down to this:
We are in the process, as a society, of agreeing that dyadic marriage is still an important social construct, important enough to allow same-sex couples the privilege of marriage. We’re deciding that there is a social benefit to be gained by allowing SSM, and a social detriment to its continued prohibition.
So: Is there a societal benefit to allowing or disallowing poly marriages or line marriages? Is there a societal detriment to allowing or disallowing them?
And: Is there a societal benefit to reducing the incest taboo?
What is exactly the social benefit of allowing SSM, and the social detriment of not allowing it? If you can tell me that, and it can’t apply also to polygamous/incestuous marriage, then you have an argument against the latter two.
What if they do? Surely you agree that it would be absolutely better for society if we could reduce genetic defects among the population. The question is whether that concern for society outweighs the burden placed on an incestuous couple. Of course, you could argue that they might go ahead have have their two-headed children out of wedlock anyway, but you could also argue that we don’t want to encourage that.
Not necessarily. I can see how a society might decide that dyads are superior and should be encouraged, while multiple marriages are inferior and should be discouraged. In a broad sense.
Ditto for incest; I can understand an argument that the incest taboo is directly beneficial to society for reasons unrelated to marriage issues.
Some arguments :
-Marriage isn’t about producing children. Not anymore, at least.
-People carrying genetical defects with a high or even certain risk of being inherited by children are allowed to marry and reproduce. Even if their spouse carry the same defective gene, so rising the likelihood that potential children will inherit it. If marrying is allowed when there’s a known risk, why isn’t it when there’s simply an higher than normal risk?
-If siblings or whatever marry and have sex, presumably they still would have sex even if they weren’t married. Getting married or not doesn’t change the slightest bit the likelihood of sex resulting in children.
That entire argument is tainted, IMHO, by a pervasive overestimation of the risk of defect. We have it in our heads that offspring of filial unions are guaranteed to be malformed or defective, or have two heads. But the actual genetic risk is awfully small. At least in a single generation. As Hector points out, the real risk comes from inbreeding among successive generations.
If only you hadn’t cut my quote off, you would have seen my very next sentence:
Why you would cut my quote off only to rebut me by saying almost exactly the thing I said is mysterious.
IMO that’s a terrible reason to oppose polygamy, inasmuch as it suggests men are entitled to wives. No, they’re not. Women get to choose the relationships they want, with whom they want, when they want, in the structure they want. If it turns out that a lot of women really want to be in polygynous relationships, that’s not the business of anyone except those women and the man whom they marry.
Whereas Velocity erred in cutting off the quote too soon, you err in starting the quote too late. If you’d quoted the sentence right before the part you actually quoted, you would have seen a rebuttal to this proposed solution:
In other words, the polygamous legal structures existing in, say, India (where Muslim men may take multiple wives) is not going to work for a hippie commune where three men and three women want to join all together in a multiple marriage. I am entirely unconvinced that if we’re going to have just one strucutre, the India model is the one we want.
And society might decide that dyads of the opposite sex are superior and should encouraged, while same sex marriages are inferior and should be discouraged. In a broad sense.
I think you need an argument as for why they’re superior.
So you would prohibit incestuous marriage because they *might *have children, and the children *might *be defective?
No, not at all. But a marriage is more likely to produce children than most relationships, ceteris paribus. This is more of a child-prevention thing than a child-encouragement thing.
First, I think that in very special circumstances, consanguineous marriages are actually allowed. If two people who are closely related by blood-- it will usually be people who share one biological parent-- but don’t realize it, because they are not legally relatives, due to adoption, sperm donation, undisclosed adultery, rape, or something else I haven’t thought of, happen to meet and marry, and then later discover they are related, there is no legal requirement that they dissolve their marriage. Of course, they are not legally related. These instances are going to be very small in number, that they are probably statistically negligible. However, I am not a lawyer nor an actuary.
Polygamous marriages I think, open up some opportunities for fraud. There’s a limit to the number of green card marriages that happen, because you can be married to only one person at a time, and someone who wants to be with a genuine romantic partner isn’t available for a green card marriage. If you could be married to as many people as you wanted at once, there’d be more marriages for green cards, or cheap health insurance.
Also, there’d be a question about who is someone’s next of kin in a polygamous relationship. If a guy with five wives arrives unconscious at a hospital, and someone needs to make decisions, there needs to be new law.
It is very easy to legislate SSM under current laws. It’s not possible to do that with polygamy.
Incest is legal, I think, if the people who are biologically related are not legally related. If they are “regular” family under typical circumstances, it isn’t legal, but it’s questionable for other reasons than just the fact that it’s incest. As someone else said upthread, can we be sure the relation really began when both people were consenting adults, and absolutely not at all before. If we allow incestuous marriages, I think they are going to have to stand up to some scrutiny, and someone has to do the scrutinizing, which means again, new law.
I’m glad you didn’t mention inter-species marriages. They have consent issues, and again, you’d need new law. You can’t just say “More kinds of couples, under existing laws.” When miscegenation laws were struck down, the situation was the same as it is for gay couples-- there was no need for revision of current marriage laws to allow interracial couples.
Apparently I appear to be making some sort of argument, but for the life of me I have no idea what you think that is.
Yes, we are deciding in the US that same-sex dyads are no longer considered a societal ill, and the taboo against homosexuality is not benefiting us.
I don’t think so. I think that people marry when they decide to have children, rather than have children because they’re married.
Ok, so I asked you : why exactly? And how does it not apply also to for instance incestuous marriage?
You answered roughly : society can decide to prefer monogamous marriage. Yes, sure, but it can also decide to prefer heterosexual marriage. You didn’t respond at all to my question.
What is the societal benefit of SSM that wouldn’t exist for incestuous marriage?
And there also need to be a new law urgently for cases when a guy with five children arrives unconscious at a hospital, and someone needs to make decisions because this problem is stil unsolved.