I am just trying to understand this issue better. Do you support polygamy, gay polygamy, and consensual incestuous marriage, or for that matter consensual incestuous gay marriage? Please explain why or why not.

[GeneV]

I am just trying to understand this issue better. Do you support polygamy, gay polygamy, and consensual incestuous marriage, or for that matter consensual incestuous gay marriage? Please explain why or why not.

You forgot to mention marriage between men and dogs.

For some very obvious reasons, none of those are comparable to two unrelated adult individuals being able to enter into a union regardless of their sex. Each of those areas you mentioned presents issues to society and the legal structure surrounding marriage which are not present in a marriage between two adults.

BTW, what is "incestuous" has differing meanings from state to state. What's your opinion on first cousins marrying?

[gokenin]

I was watching a show on a local PBS network about the Massachusettes court case that made same sex marriage legal and the one decision in the case answers my support for it. The ruling stated "the state if it is to recognize marriage as a legal event it must recognize it for all it can not discriminate in its decision on who can get married. The state can avoid this by declaring that it will no longer validate any marriage."
Putting aside the moral right or wrong arguement of same sex marriage the basic idea that the state can create a law designed specifically to deny a segament of the population a right that others posses is just wrong for me

[MRRiley]

I am just trying to understand this issue better. Do you support polygamy, gay polygamy, and consensual incestuous marriage, or for that matter consensual incestuous gay marriage? Please explain why or why not.

Todd,

I have no objection to polygamy (straight or gay) as long as all parties involved are consenting adults. There is no intrinsic harm in a marriage of more than 2 individuals and it can in some ways offer more security and structure for children arising in the family.

Incestuous relationships, on the other hand, have significant biological disadvantages when children result from the relationship, though a childless incestual relationship is actually no more intrinsically harmful to society than any other alternative relationship.

Mike

p.s. I do find it highly ironic that the Mormons had a long standing institution of polygamy which they only gave up when forced to by civil laws (unconstitutional IMHO). Perhaps sour grapes are the reason they are so anxious to deny marriage rights to gays today.

[dadipentak]

I am just trying to understand this issue better. Do you support polygamy, gay polygamy, and consensual incestuous marriage, or for that matter consensual incestuous gay marriage? Please explain why or why not.

These are all separate issues but, since you ask, I have no problem with polygamy.

[GeneV]

I was watching a show on a local PBS network about the Massachusettes court case that made same sex marriage legal and the one decision in the case answers my support for it. The ruling stated "the state if it is to recognize marriage as a legal event it must recognize it for all it can not discriminate in its decision on who can get married. The state can avoid this by declaring that it will no longer validate any marriage."
Putting aside the moral right or wrong arguement of same sex marriage the basic idea that the state can create a law designed specifically to deny a segament of the population a right that others posses is just wrong for me

I agree, but I think the analysis of that show would be wrong on polygamy. There are many facets of the marriage laws that would be problematic if there were more than two parties to the marriage contract.

Let's start with the presumption (often conclusive) that most states have that all children born during the marriage are the children of the husband and wife. How does this play out with multiple spouses? Who are the "parents" of a child in a polygamous marriage? How would custody and visitation work after divorce? There would be a lot of working out to do to change the number of partners.

That is not my moral judgment, just an estimate of what state interests might be involved.

[MRRiley]

Those state interests are just as manageable as they are in a marriage between one man and one woman. Complicated yes, but manageable nonetheless.

[dadipentak]

I agree, but I think the analysis of that show would be wrong on polygamy. There are many facets of the marriage laws that would be problematic if there were more than two parties to the marriage contract.

Let's start with the presumption (often conclusive) that most states have that all children born during the marriage are the children of the husband and wife. How does this play out with multiple spouses? Who are the "parents" of a child in a polygamous marriage? How would custody and visitation work after divorce? There would be a lot of working out to do to change the number of partners.

That is not my moral judgment, just an estimate of what state interests might be involved.

You're right that polygamy would raise issues but I don't think they're any more complicated than the issues raised by contemporary technology (or finance, for that matter.)

[seacapt]

I do find it highly ironic that the Mormons had a long standing institution of polygamy which they only gave up when forced to by civil laws (unconstitutional IMHO). Perhaps sour grapes are the reason they are so anxious to deny marriage rights to gays today.

The whole polygamy thing with the Mormons was based in need and survival. During the pioneer days lots of Mormon men died young for a number of reasons including the trials of allways being on the move and outlaw status in certain territorries. This left alot of women and kids without husbands and fathers which in those days made for greatly diminished chances of survival.
As far as sour grapes , I don't think so. Mormons consider homosexuallity abnormal and support or popularization of it detremental to the moral standard of society as a whole.

[mikemike]

I am just trying to understand this issue better. Do you support polygamy, gay polygamy, and consensual incestuous marriage, or for that matter consensual incestuous gay marriage? Please explain why or why not.

You are not talking about apples and apples there.

At the civil level, marriage is as much about contractual co-dependence as it is about love. Treatment by the tax code, insurance coverage, immigration, and the court system (testifying against a spouse) all treat married couples differently than they do any other 2 individuals.

Polygamy seriously upsets these policies because it offers so much room for abuse such as sham marriages for immigration, health care, tax avoidance, or protection from prosecution. With polygamy you also have to deal with partial divorce which is a messy enough issue even between two people. Another issue with polygamy is that it creates an imbalance of the sexes because in communities where it has existed in the past there is a problem where the boys are expelled from the society as the reach manhood to reserve the young women for the older men. Those banished young men without prospects for love create a burden on the rest of society, and the retained women are unfairly denied the opportunity to find love amongst their peers.

Incestuous relationships also have a higher potential for some abuse like tax avoidance and insurance fraud, but the main problem with incest is that there is no such thing as a consensual incestuous relationship between two adults because those relationships have been built from childhood.

Besides the civil factors that make it easy for society to handle gay marriage better than the other types of marriage relationships you mention, there is mounting evidence that homosexuality is largely driven by genetics. I have 2 close friends that are gay and I know that it runs in their families. One has 9 brothers and sisters and was raised in a very catholic family (obviously with 10 kids) 5/10 of them are openly gay, 1 of them is a priest, 1 is a nun, and only 3 are married to a member of the opposite sex. She suspects that the priest and the nun are both gay but neither of them admit to it. My other friend is an only child but his mother is the only straight one of four children and her mother was the only one that married out of three children (she thinks her aunts are gay but they came from a generation where it is still to taboo to talk about). In society as a whole I think the prevalence of homosexuality is about 10-20% but in some families it seems to run much higher.

[Nesster]

The whole polygamy thing with the Mormons was based in need and survival. During the pioneer days lots of Mormon men died young for a number of reasons including the trials of allways being on the move and outlaw status in certain territorries. This left alot of women and kids without husbands and fathers which in those days made for greatly diminished chances of survival.
As far as sour grapes , I don't think so. Mormons consider homosexuallity abnormal and support or popularization of it detremental to the moral standard of society as a whole.

... well, gee, I thought it had something to do with all those young unmarried Scandinavian blonds the Mormons recruited to come out to Utah... after Brigham saw a few of these he had a message from God to the effect that he needed to marry a couple of them

[MRRiley]

As far as sour grapes , I don't think so. Mormons consider homosexuallity abnormal and support or popularization of it detremental to the moral standard of society as a whole.

Just as a majority of citizens in the 1800s thought and indeed even today think, about polygamy... My point is, they had their own non-traditional form of marriage. While they might still object on some level, I wonder if they would have been so vocal in opposing gay marriage if they were still able to engage in polygamous marriages.

[GeneV]

Those state interests are just as manageable as they are in a marriage between one man and one woman. Complicated yes, but manageable nonetheless.

It would stand tax law, property law, probate law, immigration law, pensions, benefits, divorce and custody on its ear to allow polygamy. Nevertheless, anything is probably manageable given enough time and effort.

My point was a constitutional one. The legal issue in an equal protection case is whether the state and society incur a burden or protect an interest that is sufficient to outweigh the burden on the individual rights. That analysis is substantially different for polygamy than for same sex two-person marriage where the same sex marriage is pretty much a "drop-in" replacement from a legal standpoint. The California court therefore found no rational basis which could justify the distinction between genders of couples.

Contrary to the assumption of the original poster, it is difficult to have a state law overturned under Equal Protection. It does not take much of a state interest to justify a distinction in the law where the distinction is not based upon a "suspect classification" (usually a minority or group subjected to historic discrimination). Number of wives is not a "suspect classification." Gender is a quasi-suspect class.

Could polygamy laws be struck down? Cases so far have supported the laws. Potter v. Murray City, 760 F.2d 1065 (10th Cir. 1985). Perhaps this could change, but most legal scholars think it is a much harder argument. FindLaw's Writ - Hamilton: The Marriage Debate and Polygamy

[MRRiley]

Oh I agree plygamy is a much harder to manage situation, and it would certainly take a lot of legislative safeguards to insure it was functional. For those reasons I don't think it will ever gain acceptence in our society... However from an ethical standpoint it is just as "valid" as any other form of marriage.

[magkelly]

If two (or more) legally adult people of any gender who aren't related to the point of actually being immediate family want to marry legally then yes, it's perfectly fine by me. I do draw the line at people marrying their own children, grandchildren, sisters or brothers, maybe even first cousins depending upon how closely they've been raised, but other than that if they're consenting adults then legally speaking it's simply none of my business. It's a matter of a license and whatever type of joining ceremony they would prefer. That's it.

I am just trying to understand this issue better. Do you support polygamy, gay polygamy, and consensual incestuous marriage, or for that matter consensual incestuous gay marriage? Please explain why or why not.