Posted on 06/24/2005 8:00:10 PM PDT by wagglebee
(AgapePress) - In comments at an Ivy League school, the president of the American Civil Liberties Union has indicated that among the "fundamental rights" of people is the right to polygamous relationships -- and that the ACLU has defended and will continue to defend that right.
In a little-reported speech offered at Yale University earlier this year, ACLU president Nadine Strossen stated that her organization has "defended the right of individuals to engage in polygamy." Yale Daily News says Strossen was responding to a "student's question about gay marriage, bigamy, and polygamy." She continued, saying that her legal organization "defend[s] the freedom of choice for mature, consenting individuals," making the ACLU "the guardian of liberty ... defend[ing] the fundamental rights of all people."
The ACLU's newly revealed defense of polygamy may weaken the pro-homosexual argument for changing the traditional definition of marriage. Proponents of same-sex "marriage" have long insisted that their effort to include homosexual couples in that definition would only be that. However, conservative and traditional marriage advocates predict "other shoes will drop" if homosexual marriage is legalized -- perhaps including attempts to legalize polygamy and to changed current legal definitions of child-adult relationships.
Crawford Broadcasting radio talk-show host Paul McGuire concurs. He says in his opinion, the ACLU "has declared legal war on the traditional family."
"Now the ACLU is defending polygamy," he continues, in response to Strossen's comments. "You know, there are male and female lawyers who wake up in the morning and are actually proud of being ACLU lawyers. But I think the majority of Americans view ACLU lawyers as people who hate America and who want to destroy all Judeo-Christian values and beliefs."
McGuire summarizes by saying that Strossen's organization seems "to only defend things that tear down the fabric of society."
National Review correspondent Ramesh Ponnuru provides some additional insight. "It could be that the ACLU has defended a right for people to set up households in this way without necessarily fighting for governmental recognition of polygamous 'marriages,'" he says.
"Even if so," Ponnuru concludes, "it is hard to see how the ACLU, on its own principles, could stop short of demanding a change to the marriage laws to allow for polygamy."
Strossen has been president of the ACLU since 1991. She is also an acting professor of law at New York Law School and the author of the book, Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex & the Fight for Women's Rights (Scriber).
It was landmark U.S. Supreme Court precedent Reynolds v. United States in 1878 that made "separation of church and state" a dubiously legitimate point of case law, but more importantly; it confirmed the Constitutionality in statutory regulation of marriage practices.
Congress, state legislatures and public referenda have statutorily determined polygamous, pederast, homosexual, and incestuous marriages are unlawful. No Constitutional Amendment restricting marriage is required to regulate "practice" according to the Reynolds decision.
Marriage is a religious "rite," not a civil "right;" a secular standard of human reproductive biology united with the Judaic Adam and Eve model of monogamy in creationist belief. Two homosexuals cannot be "monogamous" because the word denotes a biological procreation they are not capable of together; human reproductive biology is an obvious secular standard.
" In our opinion, the statute immediately under consideration is within the legislative power of Congress. It is constitutional and valid as prescribing a rule of action for all those residing in the Territories, and in places over which the United States have exclusive control... Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices... So here, as a law of the organization of society under the exclusive dominion of the United States, it is provided that plural marriages shall not be allowed..."[Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 8 Otto 145, 24 L. Ed. 244 (1878).]
See also:
Late Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints v. United States, 136 U.S. 1, 10 S.Ct. 792, 34 L. Ed. 478 (1890). Revised as 140 U.S. 665, 11 S.Ct. 884, 35 L. Ed. 592 (1891).
Strossen has no intention of supporting polygyny or polyandry, it would overturn their beloved "separation of church and state" decision. She was just lying to hopefully get support for homosexual monogamous marriages. They would have no problem stabbing the idiot polygamy advocates in the back once they get what they want.
Furthermore, I don't think by some of the comments I have seen or heard anywhere that most people are capable of discerning by the foggiest notion what is at stake with this.
You do get it...
Whoops. I meant to refer to monogamy. I didn't mean to wander into a discussion of religion. Brain slip. Actually I think it was because my wife was nagging me at the time.
I agree with you about the Romans, who celebrated monogamy as a civic virtue
I'm glad you see serious problems with polygamy. Serious problems. And I don't care what kind of arguments anyone wants to bring to this fight as long as they fight on our side. My argument is that permitting polygamy in any form will destroy our society. That same permissiveness will erode what remains of our standards towards pedophilia. I think you're wrong about the universality of our disgust at pedophilia. It was and remains widespread. I submit there is no innate biological predisposition, or that if there is, it is very weak and prone to failure. Our rejection of it stems from our understanding that it is exploitive and debased. Our revulsion is moral.
We despise exploitation though exploitation is an innate human tendency. We reject pedophilia because we've been taught, inculcated with the belief that it degrades. Likewise our rejection of polygamy: it degrades its adherents, undermines the social assumption of equality before God and the law, and so on. Permit one; open a door to the other.
Is that derived from Spanish? (he asked innocently)
bump
So, in your Age of Reason, women are commodities? How long before the 35% of Mateless just shoot the top 5% and take the women? Looking at China, we may find out within a generation.
bump
There was a wierd discussion about that topic last year. Someone mentioned it on the local radio where I was on contract and it became the buzz around town for a while.
I said something to my wife about it in passing when I came home for the weekend.
She looked up at me and said, without skipping a beat "OVER MY DEAD BODY!!!" And then realized what she'd just said and broke up laughing.
Paul
Should we ever make our society a healthy one again, our birthrate will go back up.
Then we'll have trouble enough finding room for our own people, without the additional problem of making room for decades of massive immigration and their reproduction, too.
That's another good point in favor of polygamy.
And polygamy also benefits women.
Think of how hard it is for many women to find a good man.
So hard that many must settle for men who cannot hold a job, men who take drugs, men who beat them, men who cheat on them, men who abandon them and their children---
Were polygamy made legal, then many of those women would be able to have a high quality husband--and good father to their children.
LOL - I can imagine - you're right about living alone - I think our young people would fare much better with more extended family involvement - unless they drive each other CRAZY - there was more of that involvement before the invention of airplane travel and I think it made for a more solid family structure. But I still don't like the idea of polygamy. I'm not even going to mention it to my husband - Lord knows how he'll react - may even join ACLU! :)
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