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

I had a response on page 4.

 

Straw man again. Legally speaking, a marriage is a contract. Contract law (and marriage law) requires consent, age of majority, absence of duress, and mental competence, whether it be a contract for marriage or a contract to get cable TV. Without consent from both parties, there is no contract... there is no marriage. A tomato can no more marry a dog than can that dog enter into a contract to but a cellphone.

It should not. There is no stipulation to gender in any other form of contract law.

It should not. See above.

See above.

Because that's what it is. Frankly, government has no business in this matter to begin with - except in the case of qualified consenting adults who wish to contract with one another, in which case they would freely enter a contract which wold be enforceable under general contract law.

 

Why would you make an exception in this case?

 

Oh sure now you just sow confusion. What about Siamese twins did you ever think of them.

 

That's all well and good. But why do you need your government to define that for you? It seems to me free men don't need their government dictating with whom they may execute a contract as long as the requirements of contact law are met - those being consent, age of majority, absence of duress, mental competence, and intent.

The consenting adults don't actually have to be gay. What we did was remove the arbitrary stipulation to gender in the many and various marriage statutes. You may still marry a person of the opposite sex if your choose.

Nothing. Nor should there be. It's really nobody's business except the consenting adults involved.

It is. There is no valid reason to prohibit such a legal arrangement.

That is an interesting one. You are right, of course. However, contract law requires a person at least have the capacity to understand the legal obligations to which they agree in a contract. But 18 is definitely arbitrary. Sexual situations are irrelevant to a discussion of contract law, and there is no stipulation to them in the statutes.

Correct. At least not in a nation of free men. You have to be able to articulate bona fide harm. And I think you're hard pressed to illustrate just how you are harmed by Gary and Fred down the street picking out China patterns.

 

What other strictures on liberty would you like to see your government enact for your personal comfort?

 

Actually a better resolution -- in my view -- is to simply get government out of the marriage business altogether. Free men don't need their government involved in their personal lives to such extent.

 

How does women having multiple husbands exploit them if they so choose?

Red herring and completely irrelevant to the discussion. You are trying to conflate polygamy with coercion. The two are not rationally related.

 

OK. I see it. Thank you.

That said, I should point out a "slippery slope" is usually a fallacy.

 

This is exactly the right answer!

 

Nine months pregnant, then breastfeeding, and the subsequent raising of the baby to the point that it's a child, and a woman can't possibly compete with men, given the biological differences.

This isn't even mentioning the physical superiority of men over women.

 

You know there are some posts so odious that one feels like holding ones nose and fleeing in the opposite direction

 

Of course it "exploits women". Women are resources, just as men are. Women, because they are only capable of reproducing 9 months at a time are a much more valuable resource compared to men, who can reproduce with dozens or hundreds of women during that same time frame.

Your idea that exploitation is bad seems... suspicious. We exploit everything dealing with resources, and that's what it all comes down to. How do we best exploit this particular resource?

 

Yeah well, the truth is the truth. Don't like it? Too bad.

 

Not a cult, but the poly community is much bigger than the cults and we have plenty of units where there are more men than women and plenty with equal numbers, like my quad.

 

Who does this remind us of? From the link--

"Polygynist cultures need to create and sustain an underclass of unmarried and undereducated men, since in order to sustain a system where a few men possess all the women, roughly half of boys must leave the community before adulthood. Such societies also spend more money on weapons and display fewer social and political freedoms than do monogamous ones.

When small numbers of men control large numbers of women, the remaining men are likely to be willing to take greater risks and engage in more violence, possibly including terrorism, in order to increase their own wealth and status in hopes of gaining access to women."

 

By making polygamy legal, you automatically make polyandry legal.

 

I'm just saying that the balance is not as 50/50 as you might think. Gay men are going to be taking up other men from the pool, but since they might be gay is that a loss? Ah, but wait, the bisexual men who might have gone with a women is under threat from the gay man. Of course the genders can be reversed in this.

 

I asked t that person couldn't say how it does so. Can you?

 

My question for you is why you would want to spend your precious resources raising children who are not yours? Genetic suicide?

 

Why is it that whenever the idea of allowing polygamy comes up the naysayers act as if we are asking for everyone to practice polygamy or else? It would NOT be a polygamist or even polygynist society. The polygamy and monogamy would be there side by side. Those who don't want to share a spouse won't have to and those of us who do will.

 

Ask that of those who adopt.

 

I used to agree until the history of societies with polygamy is explored. Even the Romans, who had virtually no sexual taboos, came to outlaw polygamy recognizing the harms it causes to society.

Essentially, wealthy men spend their money buying wives instead of spend their money in ways useful to society. Little attention is paid to the children by such fathers. This, of course, leaves men without prospective women - thus no family - and young men without family responsibilities tend to be real trouble. This then requires those in power with many wives to not only establish a very authoritarian government, but also created the necessity for wars of invasion against other countries with the recruitment sales point being to kill the enemy's men and take their women. The wars also kill of many of the surplus men - then leaving more women for the rich and powerful.

This is at the core of the unending wars in the M.E. A driving force behind ISIS now is capturing women and killing off men. When you see videos of people being executed in large numbers it will always be all or nearly all men - keep the women as slaves, sex slaves or wives (badly treated wives). For thousands of years, armies rolled for the purpose of killing the men and taking the women - plus polygamous societies have reasons to want many of their own men killed off this way too - when there are too many men and not enough women left.

Polygamy in the USA essentially is not illegal UNLESS they want a government marriage license and recognition. There are essentially zero prosecutions unless it is some old preacher marrying many young teenagers.

 

As a polygamist, it's just as useful to ask you. Why raise children who are not yours?

 

Your fantasy goals of relationship are just that, fantasy. In reality it doesn't work.