No, Just as having laws against interracial marriage is racial discrimintation, having laws against same sex marriage is sex discrimination.
lee - The Virginia case (aptly named Loving) involved a law that made not all interracial marriage a crime, but only interracial marriages involving whites a crime. That was a violation of equal protection because you were treating different races differently. The Court, in dicta, seemed to think that any marriage law involving racial classifications would be unconstitutional, but Loving didn’t decide that issue, and I don’t believe it has been revisited since 1967. In addition the law in Loving was clearly aimed at maintaining white supremecy, which always invites strict scrutiny.
Note that if the sex discrimination argument is so compelling (as it appears on a fist glance) then the Court could have easily decided Lawrence on equal protection grounds. They did not do so.
Does America not allow polygamy for Muslims? Or muslim migrants to America that already have multiple wives?
Personally, I loathe and despise polygamy. Whatever the arguments trotted out about “protecting war widows” and women who can’t have babies sharing the second wife’s kids, I have yet to see or hear of single polygamous marriage here that isn’t about the man wanting to have sex with a younger model.
Except for one guy in Ajman who is on his TWELFTH wife, aiming to have 100 kids (has 66 so far). Muslims are only allowed four wives at anyone time, so of his previous eight, four he divorced and four have died. Four women presumably no older than 45 (because he is 53 and they tend to marry younger women) dying in a country with first class hospital and maternity care? Fucking bluebeard, in my opinion. And given his latest wife was 18, well, I think it’s just sick. So I personally utterly hate polygamy.
But I think people should have the religious right to do it - under STRICT controls: to avoid coercion, paedophilia, incest, and any financial/tax fraud intended.
We do not allow polygamy for Muslims in the US. We do not let people who wish to come here keep more than one spouse. If someone comes here, they must pick one and discard the rest.
I beg to differ.
Just finished Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven last night, and he describes several fundamentalist Mormon groups both in the US, and in Canada who practice and advocate polygamy. Utah darn near went to war with the feds over it.
The Massachuttes Supreme Court ruled that there is no rational basis for the notion that marriage should involve a man and a woman. Therefore, unless some rational basis can be produced to outlaw polygamy (or incestuous relations between adults), it would have to be allowed.
We are making a fundamental change in our definition of one of the most basic forms of human relations. The way the debate on gay marriage has been framed, there is no way to stop polygamy.
You ain’t getting the genie back in that bottle. Because all the arguments in favor of gay marriage are what got him out in the first place.
Regards,
Shodan
Shodan, that is precisely why there are so many strong and explicit laws against polygamy on a federal level, so there are greater obstacles against allowing polygamy.
Lee – From where does the federal government derive the power to regulate polygamy?
I must concur that I see no great agitation for polygamy in the U.S. And Shodan, were you refering to the so-called “Morman War” in Utah in 1857? If so, I hardly see how that is relevant today. In any case, and I say this only half-facetiously, I would think that polygamy would be self-limiting. I mean, for those of you who are married, would you really want yet another spouse to deal with? 
Personally, I have no particular complaint with gay marriage, polygamy, or any other form of marriage between consenting adults, as long as laws for things such as desertion, dissolution of marriages, etc. are applied similarly in each case.
What I have read of the Supreme Court’s ruling on polygamy, they seemed to base their rulings on the “it is just icky” principle, but since they already ruled I don’t think the current court is going to revisit it. I think they will not touch it based on the principle, “it is so written.”
Lee – unless there is a more recent case of which I am not aware, and if so please let me know, the only time SCOTUS has looked at the polygamy issue was in the context of laws in operation in the terretories of the United States, i.e. the land that is now Utah before it became a state. As such I don’t believe that there is any federal law on the books regulating polygamy, nor do I believe that any such law could be properly enacted.
As to the question of whether or not there is agitation for polygamy, acording tothis cite it appears that there are ongoing prosecutions in Utah. In all likelihood there have been more polygamy prosecutions in the last 20 years than there have been for homosexual sodomy. Granted, the web can make two goons in a basement somewhere look like a movement, but there are a host of sites on the web devoted, pro and con, to the polygamy issue.
There is also, of course, a fair amount of secular agitation among some activism-inclined polyfolks and friends for secular polygamy, not religious polygyny. Not a large or well-known (or indeed well-organised; the PAC formation discussion in which I was participating sort of petered out in legal minutiae and handflapping) movement as of yet, but eventually there will most likely be someone with their act together pushing the organising.
Probably the first issue will be dissociating ‘polygamy’ from ‘religious polygyny’.
Rhum Runner, I do want you to be correct, but I don’t think you are. Laws against polygamists coming into the country, DOMA, the Virgin Islands Bill of Rights, The Edwards Tucker Act, which BTW was upheld by SCOTUS, and several others were passed by congress, so congress has acted as if they have the right to make laws about polygamy and in some cases the courts have backed them up.