[QUOTE=Wee Bairn]
Not a slippery slope, because beastiality and polygamy are illegal, homosexuality is not.
[/QUOTE]
But having multiple sexual partners is generally not illegal, and polygyny is legal in many Muslim countries. Once you deal with informed consent, problems of child rearing and custody, and financial issues like health insurance, not recognising polygamy comes down to moral and religious objections.
[QUOTE=Giles]
But having multiple sexual partners is generally not illegal, and polygyny is legal in many Muslim countries. Once you deal with informed consent, problems of child rearing and custody, and financial issues like health insurance, not recognising polygamy comes down to moral and religious objections.
[/QUOTE]
You’re right- I personally don’t see the problem with polygamy myself, as long as its not mandated by some religious freak- one guy wants to marry two adult women, and they want the same, sure.
[QUOTE=Mangetout]
As others have said - it’s not that you’re not seeing the logic, it’s that you’ve hit on the area where there isn’t any.
[/QUOTE]
No, I see the logic! (Which is not to say I think it’s flawless or that I agree with it.) It’s along the lines of what Billdo and constantine said. As far as I know (correct me if I’m wrong), no society in past human history has allowed people of the same sex to marry each other. By expanding the notion of what marriage can be in one way (so the logic goes), you open the door for it to be expanded in other ways, beyond its traditional understanding.
[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Crap, missed the edit window:
ETA: Oh, right, there was an OP. Well, the short answer is that there are some people, like me, who see any change in the concept of marriage as a crack in the door to radical change for what I percieve to be the better. I don’t have the energy or political clout to do anything about it, mind, but it does get the ol’ noggin thinking. If “man and woman” isn’t critical, than why is “two”? It’s just the way of thinking of someone who might choose “WhyNot” as a username. 
gonzomax, most people who believe in a creator god also believe in an antagonist - a Satan, if you will. How do you know gays, polys and pedo’s weren’t influenced or twisted by evil?
Now I don’t believe in such a thing, but I do believe there are lots and lots of perfectly natural things and people that we need, as a society, to repress because they cause harm. As I used to tell my herbal medicine students: “Syphilis is natural, doesn’t mean I want it!” Is polygamy one of those things that must be repressed in my book? No. But I do think that pedophilia (meaning sexual relations between adults and pre-pubescents) is one of those perfectly natural and god created things that causes more harm than I’m willing to allow in my society.
[/QUOTE]
Do you know any gays.? That would offend them more than anything I could imagine. They are just people ,some good ,some bad. They just want to live life as they are. The devil has made people angry and afraid of them. Repression of a people is the devils work.
[QUOTE=Alex_Dubinsky]
The main trigger is the one which separates “desert” societies (think arabs) from “forest” societies (think hippies), and it’s abundance or lack thereof.
[/QUOTE]
Ah, yes, the age old struggle between arabs and hippies. Truly, one of the defining conflicts of human history.
No, seriously: what the fuck?
[QUOTE=gonzomax]
Do you know any gays.? That would offend them more than anything I could imagine. They are just people ,some good ,some bad. They just want to live life as they are. The devil has made people angry and afraid of them. Repression of a people is the devils work.
[/QUOTE]
I doesn’t offend me at all. I see it as a hypothetical question. I don’t personally believe in such an entity, so I don’t believe that I could possibly have been ‘twisted by evil’. But it is an interesting thought experiment if you subscribe to that belief system.
[QUOTE=Giles]
But having multiple sexual partners is generally not illegal, and polygyny is legal in many Muslim countries. Once you deal with informed consent, problems of child rearing and custody, and financial issues like health insurance, not recognising polygamy comes down to moral and religious objections.
[/QUOTE]
There is nothing right now preventing people from living in households as multiples (just as there is nothing right now, in most places, preventing gays from living together as a couple).
What is at stake is a legal status accorded to that relationship, that of marriage, which brings with it a bunch of legal rights and obligations - in respect of stuff like survivorship benefits, insurance, access to children, division of family property, support, etc. etc.
The impetus for legally recognizing gay marriage is the unfairness of treating like cases differently - that is, that a couple (of gays) looks functionally very much like a couple (heterosexual) in terms all of those legal factors noted above; the only reason not to recognize them as the same would be cultural and religious.
In contrast, a group relationship between some multiple of men and women does not, functionally, resemble a couple in this practical sense in respect of these legal factors. It would of necessity create rights and obligations different from either a gay or heterosexual couple, by the simple virtue that you are dealing with more than two people whose rights must be considered; what would be a simple binary factor becomes complex. Take survivorship. It is obvious that a marriage as such is over when one partner dies leaving the other a widow, free to remarry (and a will to the contrary presumptive heir to all property) - but what if one partner in a multiple dies?
These are not mere problems to be worked out, they are the very essence of what “marriage”, as a legal category, is - a bundle of legal rights (I’m deliberately excluding love, sex, affection, etc. because all of these exist either within or without a “marriage”). Therefore it is not obvious that fairness would dictate that polygamy ought to be recognized as a legal form of marriage simply because homosexual marriage has been so recognized. Not to say that it may not be recognized anyway, just that it doesn’t necessarily follow, and the objections to it are of a different and more practical nature than the objections to gay marriage.
[QUOTE=gonzomax]
Do you know any gays.? That would offend them more than anything I could imagine.
[/QUOTE]
Pointing out the error in your logic is offensive to gays???
[QUOTE=Mangetout]
I suppose it’s possible that, after same-sex marriages are fully accepted and legal, the folks who want [del]polygamous,[/del] incestuous, inter-species, and other types of marriage legal might come out of the woodwork and cry “But you let them have what they asked for! No fair!”, but nothing would happen there without another decision being made. And it’s that series of decisions that is the key flaw of the slippery slope argument.
[/QUOTE]
True. Also, they forget that the vast majority of gays and straights would find those far-outlying types of marriage to be both creepy and laughable and support for them is unlikely to get any traction in the not-especially-foreseeable future. On the distant horizon, only marriage to sentient robots and aliens have any chance of acceptance, and then only after their being legally recognized as capable of entering into a contract.
In other words, there are a lot of terraces and walls on that slippery slope, and they won’t be bypassed until long after the Rapture, so it won’t affect those people, anyway.
[QUOTE=Thudlow Boink]
Pointing out the error in your logic is offensive to gays???
[/QUOTE]
Pointing out that gays are creations of the devil would certainly be. Then to say the devil created gays would fly in the face of god the creator of all things. Illogical even in bible think.
[QUOTE=dropzone]
True. Also, they forget that the vast majority of gays and straights would find those far-outlying types of marriage to be both creepy and laughable and support for them is unlikely to get any traction in the not-especially-foreseeable future.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, but to be honest, the idea of gay marriage doesn’t get a lot of support, either. It has been defeated on (I think) every ballot measure it has been on, save one. All the polygamists and incest seekers would need to do is convince a court somewhere.
[QUOTE=t-bonham@scc.net]
But if 10% of those remaining men were gay, and ended up marrying each other, that would leave the remaining numbers of men & women roughly balanced.
[/QUOTE]
Lesbians could marry each other. That would restore the inequity.
Laws infringing on the fundamental right of marriage are subject to strict scrutiny. To pass muster, the state must show the law serves a compelling government interest and is narrowly tailored to that interest.
I have been wondering about polygamy and incest. IMHO, the responses up-thread make pretty good arguments that polygamy is a compleyetly different bundle of rights than a two-person marriage.
How about incestuous adult marriages? You could argue limiting the risk of genetic defects in children is a compelling government interest, but the law would have to be narrowly tailored to address that issue. A law prohibiting incestuous marriage seems unconstitutionally broad when a more narrowly tailored law would simply prohibit incestuous couples from creating children together.
What is the compelling government interest in prohibiting incestuous marriage in light of this ruling?
[QUOTE=jtgain]
All the polygamists and incest seekers would need to do is convince a court somewhere.
[/QUOTE]
Those two groups have a pretty good (IMHO) reason to work for acceptance: as long as the contract is between consenting adults, AKA: “people who can sign contracts,” it should be allowed. The horse and car lovers, OTOH, do not have a legal leg to stand on because, just like children and the severely retarded, horses and cars are not recognized as things that have the intellectual capacity to enter into a binding agreement, and that ain’t likely to change anytime soon.
People often don’t realize that judges are limited in what they can handwave away, and one who tries to allow interspecies marriage will be instantly overturned by a higher court, not because it is icky, but because of the reason I gave above. The federal government does not control who can and cannot marry. That is a state’s affair, and in yesterday’s ruling it was the highest court in California that made the decision. And that decision was not made out of the clear blue, but was backed by involved and compelling (to a majority of the justices) reasoning based on the constitution and laws of California. That’s the way the game is designed.
For what it’s worth…
I’m on record as regards this particular slippery slope. If you can show me a dog that can saym “I, Rover, take thee, John, to have and to hold…” and state in paraphrase what those vows mean to him/her/it sufficiently clearly to convince me of his/her/its intent to contract marriage, I’ll support that dog’s right to marry (and its owner/master/fiancee’s converse right to marry it). And not until then.
[QUOTE=Johnny L.A.]
And yes, I heard about the woman who married, or tried to marry, a horse in some country.
[/QUOTE]
The U.S.A.
In the 70s (don’t remember the exact date), a man in Boulder, Colorado attempted to marry his horse. The judge threw it out because the horse was underage (it was a 3-year-old).
[QUOTE=gonzomax]
Pointing out that gays are creations of the devil would certainly be.
[/QUOTE]
I didn’t do that.
I think that’s the same thing you accused me of above, despite your use of “Then to say…”, but regardless, I didn’t do that, either.
[QUOTE=InvisibleWombat]
The U.S.A.
In the 70s (don’t remember the exact date), a man in Boulder, Colorado attempted to marry his horse. The judge threw it out because the horse was underage (it was a 3-year-old).
[/QUOTE]
Well, it was Boulder! In the 70s, no less! What do you expect?
After all, they didn’t set Mork & Mindy there for nothin’…
[QUOTE=InvisibleWombat]
The U.S.A.
In the 70s (don’t remember the exact date), a man in Boulder, Colorado attempted to marry his horse. The judge threw it out because the horse was underage (it was a 3-year-old).
[/QUOTE]
It was 1975. And although the horse was 8 years old, it was still underage.
‘Lonesome cowboy’ tried to marry his horse
I was living in Boulder at the time, and remember the hilarity the case provoked.
[QUOTE=Max Torque]
I can’t imagine polygamy being legalized; there are too many complications.
For one, it has to apply equally to everyone. Right now, one person marries one person, they most likely share property and lodging. Very simple. So, suppose things change such that you’re allowed to marry multiple people. But, because the law applies equally, this applies to everyone, not just husbands having multiple wives. Let’s say you’re a man and you marry W1, W2, and W3. W1 has just as much right to marry whoever she wants as you do. So, W1 marries H1, a guy you don’t even like. What’s your legal relationship to him? As another spouse of W1, does that mean he’s entitled to live in the home you share with W1? And suppose H1 then marries W4, what’s your obligation to her now? She’s the wife of your wife’s husband; is she entitled to something as a member of the extended family?
[/QUOTE]
That’s one reason why that particular model of polygamy might not be instituted, but it’s not an argument for there being no possible stable framework for legal polygamous marriages. The obvious alternative is that you don’t have a web of 1-1 marriages, but an N-N group marriage. That is, polygamous marriages require all N people involved to be married together. In this model, W1 can’t go off and marry H1 without your agreement (because you’re marrying him, too), and the agreement of W2 and W3.
Even using the 1-1 model, there’s no mathematical reason why property couldn’t be divided many ways. Using your example, if You, W1, W2, and W3 would each have a 1/4 share in the house you buy together. H1, could, presumably, be given 1/2 of W1’s share, giving him 1/8. As for what happens if you have a disagreement about living arrangements, I’d assume it’s the same thing that happens in any marriage. Either you come to a compromise of some sort, or you get divorced.
And, everyone claiming that polygamous marriage would mess with ratios of men and women, i think you’re missing a major point. There is nothing, now, that keeps people from being in relationships with more than one partner. People who have such desires can already fulfill them, and they have already removed themselves from the marriageable pool. Saying that making polygamy legal would cause people who otherwise would have been in monogamous marriages to get polygamous marriages is just as silly that saying that making gay marriage legal will cause people who would otherwise have been in heterosexual relationships to be in homosexual relationships.