Posted on 07/02/2015 7:22:08 AM PDT by Kaslin
If you're one of those rare people who think one spouse is not enough, your prayers may be answered. After the Supreme Court decision in favor of gay marriage, conservative critics spotted sister wives on the horizon. "Polygamy, here we come!" tweeted Weekly Standard editor William Kristol.
Some members of the Supreme Court agree. Dissenting Chief Justice John Roberts argued that "much of the majority's reasoning would apply with equal force to the claim of a fundamental right to plural marriage." In 1996, Justice Antonin Scalia claimed the court had put itself on the path to upholding the rights of polygamists.
They have a point -- though it does more to highlight the problems with banning plural marriage than it does to discredit same-sex unions. There are, it turns out, parallels between the two. Those similarities are not likely to persuade the justices to strike down the existing bans. But they should make the rest of us reconsider.
Before the gay marriage ruling, there was nothing to prevent gays from living together, having sex and raising children like married straights. There is generally nothing to prevent polyamorous people from doing likewise. If several females want to live and sleep with the same guy, nobody will stop them. It's just that only one of them can legally put a ring on it.
Utah, where polygamy has some fans, chose to make it a crime when a married person "purports to marry another person or cohabits with another person." But in 2013, a federal court said that law violated the right to privacy -- the same rationale the Supreme Court used to strike down sodomy laws.
The case for legalizing polygamy builds on the case for legalizing same-sex marriage. The sexual arrangements may offend some people, but they're not a crime. If they aren't done under legal arrangements, they'll be done without them.
If a man is living, procreating and raising children with two or three women, what do we gain by saying he can't easily formalize his obligations to them? Why not let his housemates gain legal protection?
Conservatives raise the specter of polygamy as though its evils are beyond doubt. But much of their opposition stems from religious objections, appeals to tradition or disgust with sexual tastes they do not share.
Those grounds were not enough to justify banning same-sex marriage -- and in the long run, they are not enough to justify banning polygamy. If conservatives want to make sure plural marriage never comes to pass, they need better reasons.
Some plausible defenses have been heard. One is that polygamous weddings, unlike gay ones, actually harm other people -- by reducing the stock of potential mates, dooming some people to singlehood. Another is that polygamy is associated with sexual abuse of minors. It may also be argued that polygamists, unlike gays, don't warrant constitutional protection because they haven't suffered relentless mistreatment.
Those arguments may be enough to keep the Supreme Court from concluding that the Constitution protects polygamy. But they aren't very convincing as arguments for banning it.
Plural marriage would decrease the supply of marriage partners -- but so do informal polygamous arrangements, which take multiple people out of the dating pool.
Besides, no one is entitled to a preferred quota of possible spouses. Some women don't want to marry anyone but George Clooney. When Amal Alamuddin became his wife, she reduced their supply of suitable partners to zero. Too bad for them.
The abuses often seen in polygamist outposts are real, but they are more likely to flourish when Big Love can be practiced only in secret, and they can be prosecuted on their own. We don't outlaw traditional marriage because Ray Rice slugged his wife.
Polygamists have had their share of persecution, at least when they were numerous enough to alarm their neighbors. Mormons didn't migrate to Utah for the salt water. They did it to escape hatred and violence. In 1838, the governor of Missouri ordered their extermination.
None of these rationales, of course, is likely to convince the court to grant a freedom that few people want and that would produce far more complications than same-sex unions. Public opinion affects the justices, and there is no groundswell of support for plural marriage.
But maybe that's because we haven't given it much thought. Conservatives raise it in the context of same-sex marriage to create fear. They should be careful. If people bother to look at polygamy, they may find it's not so scary.
Someone should tell that guy in the picture:
“Dude... think “Menopause Times FOUR! Are you CRAZY???”
If some simp wants to suck up the excess population of fatties and women hitting the wall, and legally make himself their slave mule, then go for it.
A least their sex (shudder) will result in actual humans being born. Maybe screwed-up humans, but still people.
Most polygamist families can’t survive without government welfare.
My experience? One spouse is quite enough, thank you very much.
If there is, somewhere, a constitutional protection for Sodomite marriage, there is no way to argue against polygamy. However, there doesn’t seem to be enough rich donors, multi-national corporations, political demagogues, popular sitcoms, romance comedies, news media activists, Hollywood actors, Girls Scout leaders, religious groups, college professors, on and on pushing polygamy. It’s a bit of a long shot.
I think pedophilia will be the next social revolution. But that’ll be after churches are closed down. That’s next on the agenda. There will be a short time of, “see, there’s nothing to worry about.” Then a full attack.
If they allow polygamy, then no one will have any reason to divorce. They can just keep marrying someone else, into infinity. The divorce lawyers will not go for it.
For this reason, I do not think the 5 court buffoons will give polygamist the same rights as homosexuals.
The crazy thing is, it’s not a bad idea. I mean, I love women. I married one. Could I be happy with a 2nd? I don’t know. It appealed to many people over the years and many have acted on it. Hum.....
All they need is to decriminalize bigamy, which is already happening.
And think how "couple only" marriages discriminate against the sexual destinies of those born bisexual. Properly speaking, each bisexual marriage requires two men and two women.
The celebratory slogan last week was “love won”. With that premise, can’t love be shared in many different types of marriage arrangements? The more people, the more love. Open the floodgates.
Polygamy makes a great deal of sense for a powerful and wealthy male, who wishes to have progeny to carry on the important business of maintaining the family business or possibly a political dynasty.
There is a well-established practice of serial monogamy, successive marriages separated by periods in which the prior existing marriage was dissolved, before engaging in a new marriage enterprise. However, many males, especially the rich and powerful, have found this to be an expensive undertaking.
Taking on an additional one or two females to manage the household, while remaining out in the marketplace to accrue even more of the wealth of the world, would appear, at first, to be a much more intelligent application of resources.
Besides, a man has got needs. They can’t all have headaches at the same time, could they?
Could they?
Gay Polygamy is next...................
Imagine telling someone in 1960 that by the year 2015 every state in the union would have something called ‘gay marriage’ and polygamy wouldn’t be accepted in one. You would have shortly been dodging the dudes in white jackets and big butterfly nets. The polygamists should find a bunch of gays that want to be polygamists, there might be more progress...
Freegards
For this reason, I do not think the 5 court buffoons will give polygamist the same rights as homosexuals.
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There are probably more secret polygamists in Utah than there are queers in the U.S. but legalizing polygamy would cut off some welfare if the polygs were legally married.
Polygamy leads to war.
It’s a reversion to barbarism, as our ancestors knew just 100 years ago.
No stable society is built on a few males attempting to keep all the women to themselves. The Mormons were constantly on the run for just that reason - every town they went to turned on them violently. A few self impressed clowns weren’t going to waltz off with the 3 local girls in tow and think he was gonna live to talk about it.
Ancient tribes figured this out pretty rapidly too. Things calm down quickly when you adopt monogamy.
Will that happen when we let this demon out of the bottle again?
Will we see police protecting polygamists as angry mobs of males attack them?
Hard to say. We live in a police state now, and one that imposes immorality.
But it will not be a “stable” society by any means.
Gay Polygamy
Now there’s a useful idea.
That oughta cut the reproduction down to about nothing.
They disappear in a generation
So, since it makes more sense, maybe SCOTUS will reject it. OTOH, SCOTUS likes to make history, so that may be the deciding factor.
Perhaps that explains all the angry .violent young Muslim men-the old rich Muslims get all the girls.
Its not from “gay marriage” to polygamy. Its from “1960s free love” and “no fault divorce” to polygamy. The destruction of marriage did not start with gay marriage. Marriage was on life support prior to that and gay marriage was just one more body blow — a big one — to the institution. Now comes the next one. And after polygamy, it will be something else until the institution is dead in all but name and the Left will have achieved its goal of destroying the basis for the family unit. Go out and have sex with anyone at any time. Pump out kids and the state will take care of them. No need to tie yourself down to a family or a marriage.
If you look at places where polygamy is a thing, you have the older guys with money and power expending their time and energy ridding the area of young guys and marrying the young women. The older wives seem to kind of “retire” and the baby making carries on with the younger wives.
The fatties and those hitting the wall would no doubt find all new levels of appreciation given a change in supply and demand (men tend to hoard women, not the other way around). More than likely not even menopausal women would be left to be surly in peace (which will make them surlier). You have to figure that in China the families of left over men are taking the extraordinary step of buying up female corpses just to have someone to bury next to them. I don’t think it would come to that here, but with the fuss being made over Caitlyn flip-flopping may take on all new meaning!
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