Posted on 01/05/2014 1:53:12 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
In modern America, sex is increasingly where it should be: outside the reach of government. Anti-sodomy statutes have been tossed by the Supreme Court. Contraception is widely accessible. Anyone with a computer can gorge on pornography without fear of prosecution.
Same-sex marriage has been legalized in 18 states and the District of Columbia. Now another step has been taken to expel police and legislators from the bedrooms of consenting adults: a federal court decision striking down a key element of Utah's ban on polygamy.
Last month, District Judge Clark Waddoups ruled that the law infringes not only on constitutionally protected sexual privacy but on the free exercise of religion. Utah, he concluded, doesn't have to issue multiple marriage licenses to Kody Brown and his consorts, who appear in the reality TV show "Sister Wives." But it can't dictate their living arrangements.
The group belongs to a renegade Mormon sect that regards polygamy as sanctioned by God. Brown is legally married to one of the women and "spiritually married" to the other three. Together, at last count, they have 17 children.
If a man and a woman want to live together and call themselves partners, buddies, teammates, friends with benefits or Bonnie and Clyde, the government will leave them alone. Ditto if a guy can entice several fertile females to shack up with him and spawn a noisy horde of offspring.
But in Utah, it matters what the man calls the women living with him. If he refers to them as wives, he can go to prison. The law covers not only formal polygamous marriage but any relationships in which a married person "purports to marry another person or cohabits with another person." That was the provision ruled unconstitutional....
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
Ummm...meant to respond to 59, not 58.
I do know how American law and marriage works, you want to change it to letting any religion make their own legal “marriage” as they see it supported by law, as long as the gays and polygamists call it a religion.
Until their 17 children require food stamps to feed and other "state benefits" at taxpayer expense.
Their "rights" stop when they infringe on MY right to NOT have my paycheck stolen by the state to care for THEIR kids.
That's just one example.
You don’t seem to know much about the founders and marriage, remember, you thought that it was purely religious for one thing, you didn’t know the feds were making law regarding marriage law in the 1780s and 1790s.
Today, in your own time, you want any cult or religion to define marriage for itself, and then to be recognized by American law.
I think the founders knew what they were doing when they were living under and passing marriage law at the forming of the United States, and your bizarre whackiness was not part of the mix.
Islam and gay churches and whatever people can think of as “marriage”? no way.
Your desire to make marriage purely for the religious was rejected by the founders as well.
Contrary to your ravings, the constitution does not create gay marriage and polygamy, and religion as making marriage law in America.
If you wanted to personally claim to be married to your homosexual lover, or to your four Muslim wives, that was one thing, but the founding fathers were not going to recognize your “marriage” as legal.
I think it's inevitable. And not because of why you think.
Our current tax code penalizes people for being married and married people pay higher taxes. Therefore the Federal government will legalize polygamous marriages because then they can tax the income of five people earning $100,000 each at the combined rate of one person earning $500,000.
As soon as the IRS figures this out polygamy will be legal and the Democrats (and some Republicans) will vote for it.
This happened in fact a long time ago when divorce and remarriage were made legal and laws against adultery were expunged. Once those things happened then the abolition of traditional marriage as the only acceptable form of marriage became logically and Constitutionally inevitable.
I was speaking of the founding government, not centuries later, today.
But your reasoning doesn’t make sense for today either, polygamy will come because of a cultural/anti-God war, not because government has to wait until polygamy to raise taxes.
“
Until their 17 children require food stamps to feed and other “state benefits” at taxpayer expense.”
Get rid of the state “benefits”. I’m completely in favor of that. And there a lots and lots of single and two parent families with large numbers of children living of the teat of the taxpayer.
The solution is to end the benefits, not abrogate then1st Amendment.
Duh.
Oh I completely agree -- the problem will be those who'l argue against ending the benefits "for the children."
Yeah, I know -- we're heartless bastards. (/sarc)
So defeat their argument, but for God’s sake leave the 1st Amendent alone. You may not like polygamy. That’s fine. Don’t have 2 wives.
I’m a married guy and the last thing I want is another wife. I would like a second husband sometimes, if only to take out the garbage on nights when it’s -14.
Get rid of all these idiot “benefits” and the problems largely self correct.
I’ve had it with your filthy mouth and your belligerent insults. I’ve made my position perfectly clear and I stand by it. And I also stand by.my assessment of your calculated dishonesty and abuse. Continuing this discussion with you any further would be a waste of my time.
But I will end on one last note - America really is protected by God, and you will fail in your efforts to turn it into a communist state.
You’re dismissed.
I appreciate what you’re saying but I also think that you underestimate the avarice of statists and liberals.
No, I don’t underestimate the eagerness to raise taxes, I just think your description that the left (and a couple of nuts here at FR) will support polygamy because they think the Muslim wives will be making $100.000 dollars each and can be taxed.
Polygamy is usually about collecting more welfare, polygamy will be supported as part of the left/libertarian war against God and traditional America.
You have made clear that you have some nutty idea to disallow marriage except as done by a religion, any religion, Islam, cults, ‘church of the gay goats’ and that the people will vote to do that.
“”Do I think a Mosque should tell us what marriage is? Absolutely - it should tell us what marriage is FOR MUSLIMS.””
You have so many ridiculous anti-American ideas about our past, thinking that America was unstructured and uncivilized with no marriage laws.
“” Kissing a tree is not a crime, so marrying one should not be illegal. What do you care what other people do? Why the hell has everyone decided to get into everyone elses business? And you don’t have to try to marry a tree - Protestants think Catholic marriages are void, Catholics think Buddhist marriages are void, Muslims think everyone’s marriages are void and want to marry children themselves. The Founders ACKNOWLEDGED this - and PROTECTED IT. Not by requiring government licensing, but by keeping the government the hell out of it.””
You are just not sane to think that you can introduce such goofiness to America, or any nation, and win political support to make that law.
Your religion can do whatever it wants, but you can’t force free people to make it law, or else Americans would have had gay marriage in the 1700s.
You have made clear that you have some nutty idea to disallow marriage except as done by a religion, any religion, Islam, cults, ‘church of the gay goats’ and that the people will vote to do that.
“”Do I think a Mosque should tell us what marriage is? Absolutely - it should tell us what marriage is FOR MUSLIMS.””
You have so many ridiculous anti-American ideas about our past, thinking that America was unstructured and uncivilized with no marriage laws.
“” Kissing a tree is not a crime, so marrying one should not be illegal. What do you care what other people do? Why the hell has everyone decided to get into everyone elses business? And you don’t have to try to marry a tree - Protestants think Catholic marriages are void, Catholics think Buddhist marriages are void, Muslims think everyone’s marriages are void and want to marry children themselves. The Founders ACKNOWLEDGED this - and PROTECTED IT. Not by requiring government licensing, but by keeping the government the hell out of it.””
You are just not sane to think that you can introduce such goofiness to America, or any nation, and win political support to make that law.
Your religion can do whatever it wants, but you can’t force free people to make it law, or else Americans would have had gay marriage in the 1700s.
You’re right, but I also think the IRS will look at it as an opportunity to ‘enhance revenues’.
LOL, OK.
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