Polygamists argue gay marriage defence

[mykalberta]

I am wondering, since in North American society marriage is no longer a religions ceremony but instead a secular. Couldnt Polygamysts get away with "marrying" these women but not making it legal - in a word just "shacking up"

That is the argument I would make on their behalf.

Courts have no problem with men or women having multiple sexual partners, and for men to have children with more than one woman, the only difference is they dont get legally married.

I personally have a problem with polygamy because I think the women are in a sense brainwashed into it, its not like he is picking up random single women at a bar and convincing them all to marry him.

[photon]

I think your edit in Post 70 added a lot peter12.

I don't necessarily agree that a free society adopting polygamy would HAVE to mean it was taking a step backwards, if a society was "ready" for it, to be able to have it without the negative harm that has been associated with it in the past then there's no reason to disallow it.

So that then becomes the evaluation to base the decision on; would this be abused so much and the harm so pervasive that the benefit to the few that actually benefited from the arrangement doesn't justify allowing the arrangement.

[Gozer]

Originally Posted by photon

I think your edit in Post 70 added a lot peter12.

I don't necessarily agree that a free society adopting polygamy would HAVE to mean it was taking a step backwards, if a society was "ready" for it, to be able to have it without the negative harm that has been associated with it in the past then there's no reason to disallow it.

So that then becomes the evaluation to base the decision on; would this be abused so much and the harm so pervasive that the benefit to the few that actually benefited from the arrangement doesn't justify allowing the arrangement.

I agree that peter's edit helped me understand his point.

My counter to yours and photon's post is this: even if polygamy did lead to abuse and unfairness, it would be a necessary "step back" before society could evolve to guide it and move forward. Furthermore, opening such avenues would have the naive (me?) reevaluate remain vigilant for the freedoms I accept as universal.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Gozer

Basically what I'm getting at is that women have the freedom and the means to do whatever* they please, archaic rules for the purpose of protecting them from their "male masters" are obsolete.

* I.E. women are not limited by society because they are women. Obviously they can't do whatever they please.

Okay. Give them condoms, birth control, and a legal system that makes exception for male on women violence. We already have that.

Just don't institutionalize their choice.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by photon

I think your edit in Post 70 added a lot peter12.

I don't necessarily agree that a free society adopting polygamy would HAVE to mean it was taking a step backwards, if a society was "ready" for it, to be able to have it without the negative harm that has been associated with it in the past then there's no reason to disallow it.

So that then becomes the evaluation to base the decision on; would this be abused so much and the harm so pervasive that the benefit to the few that actually benefited from the arrangement doesn't justify allowing the arrangement.

I do think that a sizable portion of society has accepted that monogamy is the best and most important institution to base a society upon. I think that's all we need to protect, from an institutional perspective, at least.

[Gozer]

Originally Posted by peter12

Okay. Give them condoms, birth control, and a legal system that makes exception for male on women violence. We already have that.

Just don't institutionalize their choice.

?

archaic rules for the purpose of protecting them from their "male masters" are obsolete.

Forbidding polygamy for the purpose of protecting women from men is redundant and needlessly restrictive.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Gozer

?



Forbidding polygamy for the purpose of protecting women from men is redundant and needlessly restrictive.

I don't think that point stands up at all. Clearly, women do need to be protected from men at some point.

[Gozer]

Originally Posted by peter12

I do think that a sizable portion of society has accepted that monogamy is the best and most important institution to base a society upon. I think that's all we need to protect, from an institutional perspective, at least.

Circling back to the original post, a sizable portion of earth's population has accepted that hetrosexual marriage is the best and most important institution to base a society upon.

Is that the standard we should be working off?

[Thunderball]

First off, I think the SCoC has made it very clear that societal morality has no standing in their decisions. Therefore, being opposed to polygamy because "its wrong", or "it offends my morals" has no standing. When SSM was approved by the courts, they pushed that point home, that it was about upholding the rights of a minority, not appeasing societal norms and values. If that was the case, SSM would have been dead in the water.

Polygamists grinned from ear to ear when SSM passed for that reason. The other things they are likely going to point to are:

- Arranged Marriages: In many religions, most notably Islam, when young people wish to be married, they are arranged to meet with a small group, and choose a partner from that preselected group. My friend did this a year or so ago, and will be soon be married. Other religions, such as Hinduism, marriages are often arranged by the parents. If we allow parents to make their children pawns for their own personal/financial (dowery)/religious gain, surely we can't take exception in this case.

- Charter Rights: Particularly, Freedom of Expression and Religious Freedom. They'll likely highlight the part where it says rights must be equally distributed. If one group is granted a special status, the others must be afforded it too. Again, SS couples will be the precedent.

- Current Society: They will point out that adultery is not a crime, the high divorce rate and that many people are prone to cheat. They will say that their way is simply better (for them and people like them) and that more people would engage in polygamy if there wasn't a fear of legal reprisal.

I should note I'm opposed to polygamy. However, pandora's box has been opened, and if you open it for one group, you have to open it for the others. People claimed it was a Slippery Slope fallacy, but here we are.
I shutter to think who is next to demand special status.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Gozer

Circling back to the original post, a sizable portion of earth's population has accepted that hetrosexual marriage is the best and most important institution to base a society upon.

Is that the standard we should be working off?

No, a sizable portion of democratic populations have accepted monogamy. I think a majority of the world still accepts polygamy in some form or another.


To Thunderball. That's a good summary of the defence's case. I'm afraid of what might happen, but I do think the prosecution will make a strong case based upon the secularity of the original law and the freedom of individuals.

[photon]

Originally Posted by peter12

I do think that a sizable portion of society has accepted that monogamy is the best and most important institution to base a society upon. I think that's all we need to protect, from an institutional perspective, at least.

It has been I agree, and maybe it is now, but it doesn't mean it has to be that way forever. Marriage is already broken down without polygamy, maybe this is all part of a change overall in how these things are structured in society. In 100 years will marriage exist at all?

[octothorp]

The interesting thing about polygamy and gay marriage: even though I don't think there's any sort of connection between the two, there would be interesting effects of both being legalized: not only would you need to allow old-fashioned one-man-many-women polygamy and one-women-many-men, you'd also have to allow many-men-many-women polygamy, or many-men-no-women polygamy, or many-women-no-men. You just know somebody is going to start a cult where everyone who joins is going to be married to every other person in the cult.

Personally, I'm against any policing of who you live with or have sex with, as long as it all happens in a consensual manner. It seems to me that what is really problematic in Bountiful is the arranged marriages, the incredible social pressures to conform, etc. If it was one 14-year-old girl being implicitly forced into marriage with a single 60-year-old man, would the fact that he's single make it alright? Of course not. So why crack down on polygamy when it's not the part of this equation that's really offensive?

[peter12]

Originally Posted by photon

It has been I agree, and maybe it is now, but it doesn't mean it has to be that way forever. Marriage is already broken down without polygamy, maybe this is all part of a change overall in how these things are structured in society. In 100 years will marriage exist at all?

I think that this is a seperate question and more to do with personal responbility vs. religious institutions. Is marriage a sacrament or is it a deep trust between two people. I tend to follow the latter and I don't really think that the official institution of marriage needs to exist for everybody at all.

The real question is, will monogamous pair-bonding exist in 100 years? I definitely hope so.

[transplant99]

Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm

And I believe the counter-argument was, so what?

If we want to stop this slippery slope we should take Marriage away from couples of the opposite sex, no? Ever since couples of the opposite sex have been able to get married the gays have wanted it as well.

hey...i dont care either way, but the point was that it would open things up...and it has, obviously.

The problem originally argued was that this would happen and where would it end? Do we know that or will it always come down to "it doesnt affect me so i dont care". If so, that is weak sauce if there ever was one, because the courts will be tied up with every single little initiative fringe groups think they can argue successfully. people then said..."thats such a stupid argument it has no bearing on what is being discussed now", well that is now being proven wrong.

Again, personally i could care less....i still believed then as i do now that SSM needed not be the issue it became if there was a little bit of compromise from the gay rights side. Civil unions would have the exact same effect overall as calling it "marriage". I dont give a rats ass what anyone who lives with/marries/dates anyone else calls themselves or their situation, but i do know that there has got to be an end to where courts are forced to rewrite laws based on fringe groups demands.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Polyandry may indeed be very rare--I don't know the stats on it. But I know it happens because the people downstairs from us are in a two-man, one-woman relationship. I think it's weird, and certainly wouldn't be for me, but they're not harming anyone, and they're perfectly good neighbours. In the end, who am I to judge them? I'm certainly not some impartial arbiter of what is morally correct and incorrect.

However, I DO think (as octothorp points out above) that it's legitimate for a society to want to protect children from being forced into an institution that is abusive, or even younger women for that matter. I don't know what the easy answer is--but to me, an adult male marrying a child is a pedophile, regardless of what his chosen holy texts say. It's not allowed in monogamous relationships, so clearly state-sanctioned polygamous relationships wouldn't necessarily condone that sort of exploitation. Maybe the best thing is to bring this stuff out into the open so that those people who are in those situations can have their rights protected to a greater extent than they currently are, when polygamy is carried out in secret on private compounds.

But I guess if you can find a way to make sure that young women and children are being protected from sexual exploitation, polygamy itself seems to me the exact sort of thing government shouldn't be offering moral guidance on. Look to government for administration of laws and programs. For moral guidance, look to your own community and your values. It's a little weird to me, but I can't see how government is a legitimate arbiter of this issue.

[Cowboy89]

Originally Posted by peter12

What do you think happened to the young men of Bountiful?

Everyone should watch "the lost boys" documentary on CBC and think about if that started to become more prevelent in society what would be the macro result. It's all about control. Sometimes a society must reaffirm why we do things the way we do things and resist the urge to get into moral equivilency arguements on all issues that automatically devolve into
"everyone do what you feel like as long as everyone involved gives consent." The ultimate problem is that in morman sects and Islamic polygamous relationships I'd find it really hard for the women who have been indoctirnated in these faiths (That incidently are about iscolation, domination and control) could even possibly give 'informed' consent. Consent yes, but you can't tell me a 15 year old girl who has been iscolated from common society that is forced into an arranged marriage in which she has to share her 60 year old husband with 5 other wives isn't in a lot of ways pschycologically forced into it.

This isn't an opportunity for "What might be right for some, might be wrong for others, the world marches to the beat of different drum" reasoning.

[Thunderball]

Originally Posted by Cowboy89

Everyone should watch "the lost boys" documentary on CBC and think about if that started to become more prevelent in society what would be the macro result. It's all about control. Sometimes a society must reaffirm why we do things the way we do things and resist the urge to get into moral equivilency arguements on all issues that automatically devolve into
"everyone do what you feel like as long as everyone involved gives consent." The ultimate problem is that in morman sects and Islamic polygamous relationships I'd find it really hard for the women who have been indoctirnated in these faiths (That incidently are about iscolation, domination and control) could even possibly give 'informed' consent. Consent yes, but you can't tell me a 15 year old girl who has been iscolated from common society that is forced into an arranged marriage in which she has to share her 60 year old husband with 5 other wives isn't in a lot of ways pschycologically forced into it.

This isn't an opportunity for "What might be right for some, might be wrong for others, the world marches to the beat of different drum" reasoning.

I don't think anyone is disputing that.

However, our Charter of Rights and Freedoms was written by a Socialist, specifically, one of the Utopian Socialist variety. This has handcuffed our judiciary into accepting things that society finds unnerving but tolerable (like SSM), but also keeps the door open for things that are downright shocking and distasteful. Polygamy appears set to be the first of these. All in the name of multiculturalism, freedom, liberty and justice. I'm still waiting for Sharia Law to be an approved form of dispute resolution... since disapproval of it on rational and humanistic lines constitutes discrimination, intolerance and racism.

A good (albeit geeky) analogy is that our legal system is more Star Trek: The Next Generation than Star Trek: The Original Series. Picard viewed Peace and the Prime Directive as sacrosanct, and had to make some very dubious decisions to uphold those, even when common sense and morality said it was the wrong decision. The cost of upsetting the balance wasn't worth appeasing some fringe people. Kirk viewed Peace and the Prime Directive as important, but not more important than doing the right thing. He'd often make decisions that showed total disregard for the host society because they were so clearly flawed. He even risked war to defend what was right. That view was the cost of upsetting the balance was worth it.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by Cowboy89

Everyone should watch "the lost boys" documentary on CBC and think about if that started to become more prevelent in society what would be the macro result. It's all about control. Sometimes a society must reaffirm why we do things the way we do things and resist the urge to get into moral equivilency arguements on all issues that automatically devolve into
"everyone do what you feel like as long as everyone involved gives consent." The ultimate problem is that in morman sects and Islamic polygamous relationships I'd find it really hard for the women who have been indoctirnated in these faiths (That incidently are about iscolation, domination and control) could even possibly give 'informed' consent. Consent yes, but you can't tell me a 15 year old girl who has been iscolated from common society that is forced into an arranged marriage in which she has to share her 60 year old husband with 5 other wives isn't in a lot of ways pschycologically forced into it.

This isn't an opportunity for "What might be right for some, might be wrong for others, the world marches to the beat of different drum" reasoning.

I think that's a great point. The thing is, as was pointed out earlier, the specific problem here is exploitation, which takes the form of polygamy in this case. Which is altogether different from "polygamy as an abstract principle." As an abstract principle, it's possible to imagine a polygamous relationship between consenting adults, and in that case they wouldn't be harming anybody by doing what they do. Cases like Bountiful don't really meet that standard--they use polygamy as a way of granting the sanction of religion to the exploitation of children and young women. I do think the point made by octothorp stands, though--what's wrong about this isn't polygamy itself as an abstract principle, however bound up it may be in all of these problems.

But you're absolutely right that in cases like this where the real-world consequences are quite grave, you can't fall back on moral relativism as the answer.

[Thunderball]

Trouble with pulling the exploitation card is that many conventional marriages have features that could be considered exploitation, such as:
-Marriage of co-workers with disparity in status
-Marriage of people with 15 years or more disparity
-Marriage of people with one featuring a dominant, ultra-conservative religion
-Marriage of people with severe disparity in socioeconomic status
-Marriage of people of which one was in a position of dominance (older family friend, former counselor (not licensed psych), former caregiver, etc.)

The question then is, where is the line?

[Gozer]

Originally Posted by Thunderball

A good (albeit geeky) analogy is that our legal system is more Star Trek: The Next Generation than Star Trek: The Original Series.

WIN!
yes, super win