Can anyone name a single legitimate reason why polygamy is illegal?

That's not true.

There is no separation of church and state; that is to say, there is no legal bases for it in the Constitution; it is mentioned nowhere therein.

Just having the framework for greatness does not automatically entitle you to greatness. By the way, it's quite convenient that you ignored the United States, which was founded on Christian principles and, at least for now, is the greatest superpower that has occupied one of the four corners of the world. Other countries, such as Rome, were based on Christianity, which was an impetus of their burgeoning global reach. In Rome, leftism started to permeate their culture and their empire vanquished. Unfortunately, we do not learn from the past, for we are allowing leftism, which is itself a form of religion, to permeate our culture, which is leading to societal decay.

 

Yes, of course it is.

That's a bald falsehood. You obviously have never read the Constitution. First Amendment:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,"

And Christianity is certainly not a framework for greatness. The framework for greatness is reason, not faith. That is why Europe and North America became dominant in the world only after they had benefited from the Enlightenment: it was the first time in history that religion (faith) per se came under sustained and effective intellectual attack.

Because it does not test the hypothesis.

No it wasn't. The Founders were mostly Christians -- some were not -- but the US Constitution is in no sense a Christian document, nor were the Articles of Confederation.

Largely due to historical accident, not Christianity. If Jefferson -- who was no kind of Christian -- had not negotiated the Louisiana Purchase, the USA would have remained a minor power.

That is again just baldly false. Christianity did not become popular in Rome until the 4th century, when it was already in decline.

Garbage. It was the increasing concentration of wealth and power in the hands of big, wealthy landowners that destroyed Rome. This was already known to be a problem in the 2nd century. Because they were exempt from taxation (sound familiar?), the nobles had gained ownership of almost all the land, and the empire was deprived of its most efficient, just, benign, and suitable tax base: the publicly created unimproved rental value of land. The only significant exception was Egypt, which was owned by the emperor personally as part of the imperial patrimonium. As a result, the government had to impose all kinds of destructive taxes and debase the currency. Starved of the revenue that was being taken by the big landowning noble families and used to pay and equip their private armies, the Empire could not afford to pay the legions. When the barbarians arrived, they overran mostly empty fortifications that the legions had built before the rich, greedy, privileged, landowning elite took everything. If the emperors had not had Egyptian land revenue to draw on to fund the army, the empire would likely have collapsed centuries earlier.

Ain't that the truth....

And some of us (i.e., you) do not even learn about the past.

"Leftism"??? What nonsense. It is the increasingly egregious predation and parasitism of the super-duper uber-rich that have become a kind of American religion, permeate US culture, and are leading to societal decay. In the last 40 years, the shares of total wealth held by lower and middle income US households have fallen by nearly half, while the richest have seen their already-majority holdings soar even higher:

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-...DT_01.10.20_economic-inequality_1-4.png?w=600

The trend in income is similar, though less extreme because the lowest-income households have not lost as much ground:

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-...creen-Shot-2020-01-08-at-5.06.47-PM.png?w=600

What kind of "leftism" is that, hmmmmm? It seems that all your claims are just objectively and provably false.

 

You know, if you bothered to read the rest of the section, you would have seen where I asked you:

I did account for that possibility, but you immediately flew off the handle on just the first sentence.

Addressing simply this reasoning, if polygamy is a lifestyle then so is monogamy. The question becomes one of if we are worrying about the burdens to society by one, then why not by the other? And yes I know there are those like this, as well as others who are not.

I don't claim we are entitled to the recognition. But that doesn't mean that it needs to be illegal because of that. For that matter, no one is entitled to the legal recognition of their monogamous marriages. There is a difference between whether or not legal marriage should exist in general and denying it to people based on the criteria of sex or race (the two factors that are supposed to be equal in legal recognition)>

On a topic such as this, this is a subjective value. You might as well claim that it would be readily apparent that Thor wanted or didn't want a given thing to happen.

And what of the difficulties of giving legalized status to interracial and same sex marriages? Because there were plenty when they happened. Was that the responsibility to the advocates of those forms to deal with those difficulties, or the responsibility of society to deal with them? And in the case of polygamy, since it is not a form of marriage that is not supposed to be denied by a protected status, that means that if society does decide to allow for the status, then it also does have that responsibility for trying to plan for the difficulties. And that would include polygamists, who are part of that society, being part of the trouble shooting process, prior to legalizing the polygamy form of marriage.

 

Since your first suggestion was absurd, perhaps you might have realized that the second, was far more likely to be the explanation. Or even if you were not able to realize that, you certainly should have been able to understand that, if the truth had been the explanation you first offer, and you had led off with the option you had presented second, there would be nothing that I could have found aggravating about that. IOW, since you were going to offer both possibilities, is it not common sense, to first acknowledge the one that does not insult the other person's argument, and intelligence?

 

What's wrong with polygamy?

Plenty. A man his responsibly to to help raise and care for the children he begets. If he has multiple wives and runs around like a tom cat, he will be unable to do that.

 

There already IS an ample body of law (well tested, in practice) that exists, applying to monogamist marriage, going back to before America was even a British colony. Surely you understand this. The reason, is because monogamy is, for most of the human race, the system that our species determined was the overall best at serving both the community, and the individuals within it. And our ancestors had tried various systems, including polygamy. Nevertheless, again, no laws prevent those who chose a polygamous path for themselves, from living that lifestyle. They only limit the legal recognition of marriages, to one at any given time, per individual. What makes you believe that a community & its government should feel compelled to officially sanction, every form of behavior, from which, people still have the freedom to choose? If there are benefits to this legal recognition, for every marriage-- as the mere fact of your arguing your entitlement to that recognition, and those benefits, attests you believe to be true-- then how is your receiving those benefits for more than one spouse, not an expectation, on your part, of benefits beyond what most married people receive?

I might as well address the counter argument that I expect from you, right now. Of course, this means that single people, who choose not to marry, do not receive those benefits. If they wanted them, though, they could simply marry someone-- is that going to be your silly argument? If you say that it isn't, I will point out that this is no different than arguing that the polygamist is not asking for anything additional, because the same benefits would be available to any monogamist, who would only need marry additional spouses, in order to gain those benefits. This is no more reasonable, an argument. Society is not compelled, for fairness' sake, to give everyone the same benefits, for different behaviors. Were that true, one would have to argue, to be consistent, that single people are also entitled to any & all benefits given to married people. Why cannot they apply to our girlfriends? Why do they not apply to a married partner's mistress, or male lover? The reason is that society does not wish to encourage, or condone, that behavior. Does this mean that it is "denying the rights" of all those others, who choose relationships outside of monogamy?

This is the intrinsic flaw in your conceptualization of the issue, and so, in your argument. You look at each marriage partner, in a polygamous relationship, as the same as any married partner, in a monogamous one. This is a faulty premise, as the two types of relationships are not identical, or seen as such, by society on the whole-- otherwise, how do you explain the historical prevalence of monogamy, compared to your own, alternative form of romantic partnering?



P.S.-- I have, in addressing your questions, posed numerous questions of my own, to you, in reply. If you have been assuming them all to have been rhetorical-- for the overwhelming majority, that has not been the case. So, in fairness to me, don't you think it's about time, instead of just addressing whichever random parts of my answers, suits your fancy, you reply to the overall arguments I make, and respond to those questions that I have posed to you, as part of that process?

 

If a woman is allowed to have more than one husband, polygamy is fine in my book.

 

I have only gotten a skim over this post and will respond once home. If you feel that I have failed to answer questions, please reference to me what I missed. I am dealing with my dad in the hospital and maybe never coming home again (has to go tonursing home, not hospice), so I might have honestly missed them, or thought I answered them. I will try to not miss them in the future.

 

Very sorry to hear about your father's health situation. Such a point in time is, I'm sure, very difficult, for both of you-- particularly if you are close with your dad, which I, despite being w/out evidence, sense is very possibly the case. I will try to be more patient, and less critical, now realizing this stress, you are under (but, to be clear, not because I am trying to become a better person, and so create any long term changes, in my behavior-- that was meant as a joke; though you know what they say about things said in jest).

The easiest way to check whether you've missed my questions, is to consult your past alerts, then scan over my past replies, at least for question marks. When you find them, you will have the context, right in front of you. If, alternately, I identify my unanswered questions, I will need to explain any surrounding context to you, as to how we got there, and why I am therefore asking this. Or, I would need refer you back to the post, to read for yourself, anyway. But those past questions are of much less import, generally, than the current ones. If you just try to keep up from this point, I can, myself, find & reiterate any questions for which I would still like your response, from earlier in our discussion. I have a feeling that, when you don't answer something, I get around to asking something similar, later on.

Here, then, are two of my questions for you, from my most recent reply:

All the questions in the next paragraph, except the generalized, last one, are rhetorical-- that is, unless your answer is not the one that I imply. For example, when I ask, then why would it not be unfair to deny this same right to other groups, I feel that my argument shows that your argument lacks merit. If you wished to disagree with my logic then, obviously, you would need address the contradictions, to which my questions point.

And I end both that, and this, post proper, with my final question:

My best wishes, for your dad's transition to a new living situation, and for your ability to keep this from creating a distance, between you two. I am sure, though, the support you receive from your multiple partners, will be much more helpful, and carry far more meaning, for you, than my own, supportive sentiments.

 

At the moment I am still playing catch up on previous posts. I'm not sure if the questions you included in your last post were in post I already responded to or in ones after this one I'm now responding to. I'll figure it out once I get that far. Thanks for the well wishes.

I was trying to make the point, probably not well, that something being legal isn't an automatic forcing of the acceptance of it. Now I will say that more often than not, when one is making arguments against polygamy, or SSM or transgenderism or a slew of other issues, they tend to frame accepting something as if those who are proponents want them to gleefully go along and even participate themselves. So I may well have been interpreting your argument in that frame.

I was not attempting to argue that religion is a basis by which polygamy "has to be legalized" (not intended as a quote from you). For that matter given the number of atheist polygamists, that would be damn stupid as such an argument would leave them out. The legal form of marriage has to be available to all equally, with no regards to sex, religion, race, or even age (with the caveat of being capable of informed consent). IOW, were I Wiccan, I could not be denied a marriage certificate/license simply because of my religion. However, since number of participants is not a protected class, regardless of what my religion says, the state can determine how many it will allow within a single legal marriage. Conversely, it cannot hold any bearing on the religious or social forms of marriage, such as mine.

I agree. It's one of the reason that I and many others within the poly community (which includes all forms of polyamory, not just the marriage forms) point out that the law would need a major overhaul before polygamy could be made legal. But that is an issue with what legal logistics would be needed to make polygamy legal under the current laws. That is not an argument on the issue of why polygamy should remain illegal in the first place. Now maybe you see them as one and the same, but that is not a universal view. And yes I understand about the policies thing. What the law does do is lay out who is legally considered what. A hospital doesn't necessarily have to have a policy of letting a spouse do this and that, but if they do have a policy on spouses, then it's the law that determines who is considered a spouse, not the hospital. The hospital can expand beyond the law's definition, but they cannot, legally at least, detract from it. For example, with SSM now being legal, a hospital cannot claim that a woman is not another woman's wife if she legally is such and deny her access their policy states spouses can have. They can, however, decide to recognize others as spouses beyond the legal one, and hopefully have policies in place to determine priority on the spouses, since there will not be a law that covers it. Or they can deny the extra spouses unless other steps have been taken such as medical POA and such.

 

The issue is polygamy not incest. Unless you are talking about a closed group isolated from all the others of the world, this argument has nothing to do with the issue.

 

It shouldn't be illegal.

Nor prostitution. Nor recreational drug use. Nor desire to not wear a seat belt.

Any law that is based around morality is wrong.

The laws imposed should only protect the rights of others.

 

I don't recall making that request (post #?), but between everything it could have slipped my mind, or maybe I worded something that it seem as such when that wasn't the intent. That said, typically I am arguing against the standard common point of looking only at groups such as the FLDS as the reason why not to do polygamy. If one is not getting those arguments through studies (which more often than not until recently, concentrated on such groups) then the only other possible source is most likely anecdotal.

Logan's Law #4: Common sense isn't. Neither is friendly fire. Common sense is only common among those who learned a common whatever. But what is common sense to me, is not necessarily to you and vice versa. And something that we share as common sense might not be common sense to others.

Understood.

I'm following so far, although I do fear that the use of the example size rather skews the issues. But let's continue and see.

So far. I do believe that we both presented similar arguments along that line to him.

I understand where this argument is coming from and I don't disagree with the premise as a theoretical possibility. But this feeds right back to the issue of the legal logistics behind it based upon current law. And again you may see this differently, but this is an issue of what needs to be settled or overcome before we could allow it, not an issues of whether or not we should allow it.

From a legal perspective I guess it is. Legally speaking I have a legal wife, and the other two are legally married to each other. But that's not how it is from a emotional/social perspective.

Once again, I have to point out that we are fine with the current situation and don't feel a need to push, and a large percentage of the overall poly community feels that way. That doesn't mean that we don't counter arguments as to why polygamy should remain illegal, even while not trying to push for the change in law. Oh sure I would love to be able to do the quick and easy way that I did with my legal wife, but we can still get most of the same legal "benefits" though other means (POA's, all our names on titles or the like, and other methods), just requiring more time and money. But if someone wants to come on here and then claim "we can't make polygamy legal because it is abusive to women", I'm not going to stay quiet about such a false statement. There is a major difference between the legal logistic issues you seem to be looking at, and arguments like these.

Given your calling out my religion example, I feel that I cannot let this one slide. Thing is, there is nothing illegal about owning four houses in different parts of the country. Maybe if you had framed it as "and claiming primary residence on all of them for the lower tax purposes", indicating the desire of the legal benefits of primary residence on each one, then you might have a working parallel.

 

At the risk of seeming to counter my own position (not really, but I can see how it will seem that way), what if the law is based not on the morality of the issue but on the logistics of allowing multiple spouse marriages?

 

First off all, if you are going to cite from an external source, i.e. something other than your own words, you need to include a citation as to where you did your copy and paste from. The facts that the links from the Wikipedia page were still embedded in your second section indicates that you made that copy and paste. This is plagiarism.

Secondly, what the Lovings did was go to DC and legally get married, because it was legal there at the time. This is a different situation than if they simply were in a park exchanging vows with no legal paperwork to declare them legally married. For your example to be comparable, you would have to use examples where either both sets of couples (interracial and same sex) either are getting married socially only (no legal paperwork) or both sets got married where it was legal and then moved to where it was illegal.

That said, you are also hampered by the fact that states moved away from making such illegal marriages arrestable crimes. They simply declare that by law the marriage is not valid in their state. Only Wisconsin has a penalty within the law.

Oh look! I properly quoted and cited my source.

 

Here's a whole bunch of sources:
https://www.google.com/search?q=mar...l2j0i390l3.5104j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Allow me to quote one:

 

Any time that you say that one person cannot marry another person based upon the sex of the people, that's sex discrimination. You are basing the decision on the sex of the people which is in violation of the law and the constitution.

 

Polygamy is not in the best interests of our society and our society decides to not endorse it.

A group can legally have
threesomes live together and have children. But demanding citizens to endorse and encourage that arrangement is ridiculous.

 

QUOTE="Maquiscat, post: 1073791736, member: 74628"]The issue is polygamy not incest. Unless you are talking about a closed group isolated from all the others of the world, this argument has nothing to do with the issue.[/QUOTE]

Yes, it does. A man with several wives can easily found a family where all the offspring have a far closer degree of consanguinity than is found otherwise, particularly in later generations.

 

You haven't thought this through. Some men are capable of looking after multiple wives and children, other men are not capable of looking after even one. You are saying that the women who would have been content to share one of the good, responsible men who could have looked after her and their children have to make do with one of the men who can't -- or won't. Which system is going to result in more women and children not being looked after, hmmmmm?

 

It's not at all clear that polygamy is not in society's best interests.

Society has an interest in future generations. If the "best" men reliably have more offspring than the worst ones, the gene pool improves. That is why polygamy was effectively universal among our hunter-gatherer and nomadic-herding forebears.

 

That has been my impression, of much of your argument, that it presupposed certain attitudes I did not have, and arguments that I was not making. Glad you figured that out on your own (maybe with a few grumpy hints from me), so that you can now switch off auto-pilot, and go to "manual," for the rest of our discussion.

That is a 100% valid point; the thing is, it doesn't promote your argument, the least bit, because all people, regardless of race, creed (religion), color, or even sexual preference, do have the legal right to marry.

This is correct as well. I had thought you were going to try to sneak a curve in there: namely, a claim that the state has no justification for considering the number of members, in a union, as a disqualifier. Since you didn't, I miss the point, of your even bringing up religious freedom.

So it comes down to you just not believing that the State, that is, the society, should have any qualms, with approving a person's marriages, to more than one person at a time(?).

I only disagree with one thing you say, here, but it is also the only argument that you are really putting forward, in favor of polygamous marriage: that the illegality of polygamy, is wholely due to prejudice, or other irrational and illogical (therefore non- compelling), reasons. But where is your case, proving this? It seems you are just taking that, as a given.

While it is true the laws have long discriminated against homosexuals, for no other reason than bigotry, that does not put polygamists, automatically, into that same class. If they were, you would need explain why it is, that society has become more comfortable with homosexual marriage, but not with group/multiple marriages.

Beside that theoretical flaw in your presumption, there is also the pragmatic recognition, that just because something is unjust, does not, all alone, cause laws to change. Is all you want to hear: yes, you're right, but that's just how it is? In reality, societal attitudes about polygamous relationships, will almost certainly need to change first, before Judges-- who come from, and so are products of, that society-- see the light. I realize that this-- if it were simply a matter of unwarranted concerns-- makes the bar for polygamists, that much more difficult, since:
1) there are far fewer of you, than there are of homosexuals, and
2) Of your number, a higher percentage (I would guess) keep their personal relationship arrangements, more unknown to their acquaintances, than do gays. Of course, by necessity, gays long tried to keep their sexuality hidden, to avoid the unjust consequences. But it was only when they stopped hiding as much, and let people realize that they had actually known gay people, of whom they had a good opinion, for years, that the tide began to turn. I do not pretend that this did not involve the subjecting of themselves, to many wrongs, and hardships, because of their refusal to stay in the shadows.

Yet it was the ultimate recognition of enough of the majority population-- that why should what Joe or Jolene does, in private, with their significant other, affect my opinion of them, as people-- which led to cis genders, standing with them.

IMO, this is what would be required, to change the laws for polygamists. But there are two very big obstacles, to that happening. Even discounting your small numbers, it is just easier for you-- again, I imagine-- to keep this part of your life, private. You have a wife. Therefore, you do not need contend, and probably never did, with questions like, "So when are we finally going to meet that girlfriend, we've heard so much about?" For many gays, in fact-- and even for some straights, who possess certain traits, that the general population has associated with gayness-- they have had to deal with suspicions of their being queer, since they were young. So it is much easier for polygamists, in public, to pass for normal, heterosexual couples, simply out with another person or couple, with whom they are very close. There is no immediate jumping to the conclusion, seeing mixed sex groups of friends, that they are probably lovers.

The second obstacle, is really this thread's topic, and it would seem the most obvious thing to parry over, in debate. I have, already, voiced a good bit of opinion on this matter, though have not seen, at any rate, any such argument, that you have advanced. I am speaking of the obstacle of there being legitimate reasons, why society frowns on multiple unions.

Sorry to have gotten this, now, all cued up, only to run, but my post is already lengthy, and I have some things I want to attend to, which I've already put off for longer than I should have, in order to get our discussion to this point. So I will have to pick it up, in my next post.



P.S-- One of the questions that I'd earlier asked, about which I was curious-- though you are, of course, at liberty not to share this-- which, also, I thought might be helpful, in constructing arguments that were more related to your own circumstances, was whether all 3 others in your unofficial marriage, were your actual romantic lovers, or if, instead, it is a situation of husband and wife sharing.

 

So first of all there are like 4 links in that quote. But you found it so stop crying.

Second of all, no they’re completely the same. If one state allowed gay marriage and a gay couple went there and got married there and then moved back to their state, there was not A STATE IN THE UNION which would send officers to their house and arrest a gay couple for being married.

So again, your and the homosexual advocates attempt to paint this with the same brush as interracial marriage and Loving v Virginia are being excessively dishonest. It’s not even REMOTELY the same situation.

 

You should read your sources better or pick better sources. Your source is talking about the difference between a SINGLE person and a married couple. For you to make your point, however, you would need to cite something that shows married couples live longer than unmarried couples.

Which you and I both know you can’t do.

Unless it’s based on the fact the unmarried couple doesn’t get the benefits that married couples receive.

 

You did not "request," anything, nor is that what my post, you quoted, says. If you look at my original post, from which you took my quote, you will see that your quote, which I was answering, includes your doing, just what I described.

Yes, in answer to the end of your quote, here: my impressions, from which I formed my opinion, you can call "anecdotal," as they are not based on statistics. Here's the thing, though: most peoples' opinions on this, are based on anecdotal information, if even that. My concluding point, in my last post, explains the relevance of this aforementioned fact: if there is any chance of the legalization of polygamy, it would depend on its being accepted (similarly to the way that homosexual relationships are "accepted") by the community at large, with all of its anecdotally based views. If you really believe, you are going to get to the American public, through simply quoting/disproving statistics, that confirms my suspicion that you are not an American.

By the way-- you're doing it, again. Immediately after your quote, here, in which you needlessly go through the various possibilities, for my basis of information, you then take the next quote, from my post, which talks about what?
The basis of my opinions: common knowledge, with common sense, then applied. IOW, there was really no need, for any of that paragraph you'd written.

The "anecdotal" impression I'm getting, now, is that you are rushing to answer my posts, and are either tired, or distracted, to boot. Please, I would rather wait, and read a better focused reply, than feel obliged to explain your errors to you (as this gives me no pleasure-- in fact I even dislike using a phone keyboard, or any keyboard, which doesn't produce music), when these mistakes appear to be due to nothing other than your haste and/or carelessness.

So relax, give your spouses a hug, a kiss...maybe there's even a back rub, or neck message in it, for you. And have a good rest of the night.