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Post by Admin on Sept 20, 2014 8:41:43 GMT -8
If legal, everyone would engage in polygamy. Just like where marijuana is legal, doctors smoke it before going into the operating room. Airline pilots smoke it before flying the plane.
Legalized polygamy has positive implications for women: they can choose the cream of the crop to marry as desirable married men are no longer off limits: Sounds like women win. That's why so many male misogynist lawmakers are opposed to Polygamy.
Is the reason you hate polygamy because you are also a misogynist?
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Post by Admin on Sept 22, 2014 7:45:36 GMT -8
80 Utah state lawmakers this week signed onto a brief that claims allowing same-sex marriage will lead to polygamy and incest.
Utah has a rich history with polygamy. It took the Mormon Church banning polygamy for Utah to become a state in 1896. Recently, a federal huge in the famous Sister Wives case ruled in favor of polygamist plaintiffs.
But 80 Utah lawmakers this week decided to invoke Americans' general abhorrence of polygamy -- and incest -- when the signed onto an amicus brief sent to the U.S. Supreme Court, demanding the nation's top justices rule against the legalization of same-sex marriage.
The word "polygamy" or its derivation appears 20 times in the 39-page brief.
Lawmakers warn the 10th circuit's analysis "would improperly lead to polygamous and incestuous marriage."
The 10th Circuit, the brief claims, "did not adequately consider the consequences of its decision for Utah’s prohibitions of polygamous and incestuous marriages."
“If the choice of marriage partners is an unlimited fundamental right … and if that marriage choice cannot be denied even when a majority believes that choice to be 'immoral,' … then the fundamental rights analysis applied by the Tenth Circuit will apply with even greater force to consenting adults desiring polygamous marriage or marriage between at least some close relatives. The prohibition of those marriages has always been grounded in morality.”
These lawmakers from the state of Utah also ask, "if polygamy may be rejected because it is not 'inextricably woven into the fabric of society,' then why doesn’t the Tenth Circuit reject same-sexmarriage for the same reason?"
“The Tenth Circuit’s fundamental rights analysis abandons all standards of morality in marriage laws," they add, "which would then improperly justify forced state endorsement of polygamous and adult incestuous marriage throughout the United States.”
Last December a federal judge struck down Utah's law banning polygamy, and in August he again struck down that ban.
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Post by Admin on Sept 25, 2014 7:11:28 GMT -8
Polygamy is the key to a long life
17:26 19 August 2008 by Ewen Callaway
Want to live a little longer? Get a second wife. New research suggests that men from polygamous cultures outlive those from monogamous ones.
After accounting for socioeconomic differences, men aged over 60 from 140 countries that practice polygamy to varying degrees lived on average 12% longer than men from 49 mostly monogamous nations, says Virpi Lummaa, an ecologist at the University of Sheffield, UK.
Lummaa presented her findings last week at the International Society for Behavioral Ecology's annual meeting in Ithaca, New York.
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Post by Admin on Sept 26, 2014 6:48:06 GMT -8
The Attack on Marriage: Polygamy is to marriage what the free market is to the economy. Which can only mean one thing: If you oppose legalizing polygamy, well, you are a Communist. By Steven Alderman Polygamy — a topic you can't avoid these days (e.g., Warren Jeffs, Big Love, Mitt Romney) — is easy to disparage. But frankly the antipolygamy arguments just don't seem convincing. Let's run through them:
Polygamists marry underage women. True, some do. But these are the fundamentalist megalomaniacs. Polygamy isn't any more inherently oppressive to women than monogamous male-female marriage. Should we abolish booze because Lindsay Lohan can't hold her Jack Daniel's?
If you legalize polygamy, it's a slippery slope, and next you'll have to legalize men marrying goats. Not really. Two adult women who are capable of saying yes or no do not equal one mute goat.
Polygamy is an affront to God and the Bible. Perhaps. But depends which part of the Bible. In the Old Testament, polygamy is accepted without judgment. David has eight wives. And Solomon holds the record with 700.
It's bad for the kids. The studies are vague. And actually, anthropologist Philip Kilbride says that polygamy would reduce the divorce rate and be better for kids.
There would be a single-man surplus. This is actually the most realistic and severe problem. The math is simple: The rich men will snap up several women. Sergey Brin will rack up Solomon-like numbers, leaving the rest of us schmucks with our peckers in our hands. (This will be true even if polygamy is a two-way street, as it should be. Women should be allowed to marry multiple men. But most won't. DNA and testosterone say that men will be the ones who do most of the spouse collecting.)
And yet...so what? Isn't that the point of the free market? Why should love be any different from business? It'd be good incentive for us other guys to start our own damn search engine.
If the government legally required that all men earn the same salary, that system would be described in a book called Das Kapital. And that's the marital system we're living under.
Polygamists of the world, throw off your chains.
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Post by Admin on Sept 26, 2014 7:59:54 GMT -8
When people debate gay marriage, some argue that it could lead to legalized polygamy. Host Michel Martin asks how, and if it would even matter. She speaks with Austin Nimocks of the Alliance Defense Fund and Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institution. www.npr.org/2012/05/31/154064922/would-gay-marriage-lead-to-legal-polygamySame sex marriage, or marriage equality, if you prefer, has proven to be a persistently explosive and emotional issue, and while many people raise the tenets of faith to explain their point of view, there are other arguments. And one of those arguments increasingly raised by opponents of same-sex marriage is that legalizing same-sex marriage will eventually open the door to demands for legal recognition of plural marriage, especially polygamy.
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Post by reverendalan on Oct 3, 2014 6:31:07 GMT -8
“Children are harmed because they are often set in perennial rivalry with other children and mothers for the affection and attention of the family patriarch,” argued John Witte Jr. in the Washington Post.“Men with lots of children and wives are spread too thin,” agreed Libby Copeland in Slate. The earnestness of these arguments is touching but idealistic. Men in monogamous marriages can’t be spread too thin? Children in monogamous families don’t rival each other for the attentions of their parents? Two-parent families are not the reality for millions of American children. Divorce, remarriage, surrogate parents, extended relatives, and other diverse family arrangements mean families already come in all sizes—why not recognize that legally?
-Jillian Keenan in Slate
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Post by Admin on Oct 6, 2014 6:16:12 GMT -8
The institution of marriage has created certain social implications that would suggest that humans were meant to have only one partner. This is simply untrue, and polygamy is nothing more than a natural preference that we humans have. Making it illegal to be married to multiple partners does not make any sense.
Polygamy is a personal choice that laws shouldn't have a say in.
If someone wants to have multiple spouses and all the spouses know there are others, why should it be illegal? Just because you are uncomfortable with the idea of it doesn't make it any of your business. Polygamists aren't hurting anyone and choose to live that lifestyle for a reason. All people should have the freedom of choosing their lifestyle. Not just gay people.
Marriage in itself is a religious rite, so any attempt to restrict the definition is an infringement on freedom of religion. Just because the majority of people believe it is wrong does not justify restricting the beliefs of others. Even in the Bible it was never forbidden, in fact many of the men of God had multiple wives, including King David "a man after God's own heart."
No one has the right to define marriage for anyone but themselves.
Polygamy is an issue that pertains to religious freedom or freedom of association as mentioned in the first amendment. The right to practice polygamy is a constitutional right guaranteed by the first amendment. Liberty is essential for societal progress and the flourishing of human happiness. Interfering with people's right to define their own marraiges violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
Using religion to persuade government to criminalize behaviors that are deemed "sinful" violates the separation of church and state and violates the constitutional rights of others. Religion is an insidious force that continually interferes with the freedom and liberty of others and must be stopped.
Freedom of association is the right to join or leave groups of a person's own choosing, and for the group to take collective action to pursue the interests of members. It is both an individual right and a collective right, guaranteed by all modern and democratic legal systems, including the United States Bill of Rights, article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and international law, including articles 20 and 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Conventions 87 and 98 of the International Labour Organization. If three people aren't a group, then what are they?
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Post by Admin on Oct 19, 2014 5:12:37 GMT -8
Both candidates for the presidency owe their very existence to polygamy (1). President Obama’s father belonged to the polygamous Luo tribe. Mitt Romney’s paternal great grandfathers moved to Mexico to continue the Mormon practice of polygamy then outlawed in the U.S. So the time is ripe to ask what advantages polygamy has over monogamy. Although plural marriage is banned in developed countries, it is surprisingly common, and popular, elsewhere with 55 percent of women sharing their husbands in Benin and an average of 16 percent of women doing so in less developed nations (2). Polygamy may be detested in developed countries but it is practiced to some degree in most societies studied by anthropologists. What did polygamy do for the Obamas and the Romneys that they could not accomplish with monogamy? Studies in animal behavior show that polygynous mating systems (i.e., one male mating with several females) have at least three possible advantages. Polygamy: a bird’s eye view There are three basic reasons for polygyny in birds. First, there may be a scarcity of adult males. Second, some males may have much better genes than others which is particularly important for populations where there is a heavy load of diseases and parasites to which resistance is genetically heritable. Third, females do better by sharing a mate who defends a good territory (with plenty of food and cover) than they would by opting to be the single mate in a bad territory. So much for birds! Do humans choose polygamy for similar reasons? My research on 32 countries where polygamy is practiced by at least five percent of married women yielded answers (2). Polygamy increased where there was a scarcity of males in the population (first reason for birds). Countries having a heavy infectious disease load had many more polygamous marriages (second reason for birds.) Women in disease-prone countries may prefer highly disease-resistant (i.e., physically attractive) men to father their offspring leaving less desirable men without mates. There is independent evidence that women care more about physical attractiveness in these countries and have a higher sex drive (3). Having economic resources facilitates polygamy for humans consistent with resource-defense polygyny in birds (reason number 3). Thus, there were more polygamous wives in countries where men could monopolize wealth whether in terms of earned income or farm land (analogous to animal territories.) My findings were not new: they corroborated earlier research but used better data. So humans turn to multiple marriage for the same three basic reasons that birds do (scarcity of males, selection for disease resistant genes, and defense of breeding territory and its economic equivalents.) In my study, I also evaluated a number of “explanations” for polygamy that are routinely trotted out by social scientists and other observers in developed countries who find polygamy repulsive. Contrary to popular assumptions, multiple marriage had nothing to do with poverty, backwardness, or oppression of women (e.g., acceptance of wife-beating) in my study. Of course that begs the question as to why polygamy survives mostly in under developed countries close to the equator and why it is so unpopular in developed countries (4, see map.) Why the developed world hates polygamy At least three factors are critical. First, instead of a scarcity of males, developed countries have an excess thanks to better public health that saves more males than females. Second, colder winters made it impossible historically for mothers to raise children without substantial help from their husbands. The most important reason that polygamy is out of place in the modern world is that it works best in agricultural societies where children contribute to farm labor and care of livestock (4). Developed countries are highly urbanized and it is very difficult to raise large families in cities because children are a huge drain on finances that lasts for two decades thanks to the extent of modern education. In agricultural societies, by contrast, children defray the expense of raising them by contributing productive labor to the household economy. Neither Romney nor Obama has any desire to discuss their polygamous background. Both are religious but they conveniently forgot the beloved patriarchs of the Old Testament like David, Solomon, and Abraham and their many wives (which neighbors were told not to covet). Romney’s Mormon ancestors practiced polygamy but it was mainly confined to members of the church hierarchy who were wealthier than others in terms of land holdings and could maintain multiple households (bird reason number three). Obama’s Luo ancestors likely practiced polygamy for all three bird reasons. There was a scarcity of males, local diseases were a major issue and powerful men could monopolize wealth. The fact that both candidates are descended from recent polygamous ancestors (1) when no other Presidental candidate ever was is a remarkable instance of American diversity. It should be cherished rather than otherwise. 1. Maraniss, D. (2012, April 12). The polygamists in Obama and Romney’s family trees. The Washington Post. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obama-and-romney-both-come... 2. Barber, N. (2008). Explaining cross-national differences in polygyny intensity. Cross- Cultural Research, 42, 103-117. 3. Barber, N. (2008). Cross-cultural variation in the motivation for uncommitted sex: The role of disease and social risks. Evolutionary Psychology, 6(2): 217-228. 4. Barber, N. (2009). The wide world of polygamy: We hate it, others love it. Blog post. Psychology Today. www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/200902/the-wi... www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/201210/the-three-reasons-polygamy
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Post by Admin on Nov 26, 2014 5:32:45 GMT -8
Part 1
Traditional marriage and family arrangements are changing.(I am talking here primarily about Western societies where Christianity and Judaism have been strongly influential—mostly European-based societies and those affected by them via colonialism and/or missionary endeavors.) For centuries monogamous, heterosexual, lifelong marriage has been the norm with other arrangements, including marriage between close relatives, forbidden. Divorce and remarriage gradually became acceptable. Even many fundamentalist Christians and orthodox Jews have accommodated to it. Now, of course, even some evangelical Christian theologians are joining the movement for full marriage rights for people of the same sex. It appears to be inevitable that most states in the U.S. will eventually issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Some Christian and Jewish leaders defend this trend as liberating, a movement of freedom and equality, continuing the trajectory of individual rights set in motion by the Enlightenment.
I’m a person who, for better or worse, always looks at social trends (and trends in churches) and asks “Where does the logic of this lead?” I believe the logic driving the “gay marriage” movement leads inevitably to next steps in “liberation” from traditional marriage arrangements. Whenever I mention this, however, many defenders of gay marriage argue that there is no massive call for legal polygamy or marriage between closely related persons. Or for abolition of government-regulated marriage. Be that as it may, my mind cannot help but wonder. If we could get in a time machine and go back to America (to leave aside for the moment other Western societies) fifty year ago (and I’m old enough to remember that time) we would find that almost nobody envisioned a coming day when persons of the same sex would be permitted to marry. A few lonely voices called for that occasionally but there was no “massive call” for legal gay marriage. It was only a dream of a few people who stayed mostly quiet about it except among themselves.
Now we see cable television programs about polygamous “marriages.”(I put “marriage” in scare quotes only to indicate these are not yet legally recognized in any state and are, so far as I can tell, still actually illegal such that the “husband” could be subject to prosecution as could the minister or other officiating person who performed the “weddings.”) These mostly exist among so-called “fundamentalist Mormons,” but that’s irrelevant to my point.
My question is not about a real or imaginary “massive call” for legalized polygamy; that may or may not happen in the future.(I suspect it will happen, but I can’t prove it.) My question is only about logic.(So please stick to that if you choose to respond.) And it is only to those who advocate legally-recognized gay marriage: What purely rational or religious-based reasons can be given for continuing to criminalize “plural marriage” or to deny marriage licenses to groups? Now, just to stave off an avalanche or even a trickle of comments based on misunderstanding. I am not here discussing the ethics of gay marriage, so do not respond as if I were. I am only asking advocates of gay marriage how they would argue against, if at all, legal plural marriage. And by “plural marriage” here I am only talking about arrangements where all the parties to it are knowledgeable, free adults and where there is no abuse or coercion.
Part 2 of 2
So, to be very specific, let me give a hypothetical example: A woman wants to be legally married to two men.(I realize this would technically, legally be labeled “bigamy” but it’s still plural marriage so I am including bigamy in this question. My question would be the same if she wanted to be married to three men or to a man and another woman.) What ethical or legal arguments would you, who advocate and support gay marriage, give for continuing to prohibit plural marriage?
Then, let’s take it a step further. Image a biological brother and sister who wish to be legally married. One or both of them will undergo voluntary sterilization to avoid the possibility of having children (who might have serious birth defects as a result). They can prove to the government that they cannot have biological children, but they plan to adopt. To those who advocate and defend gay marriage, which is the same as saying redefine marriage from its traditional definition, what rational or purely religious arguments can you give for prohibiting such a marriage? If such a couple sues for a marriage license, what reasoning should a judge use (if at all) to deny their claim?
In order to head off a flame war here, I will say the following: Here I am not advocating anything except calm, logical consideration of what changing traditional definitions of marriage might lead to. I will only post comments and respond to questions (as time permits) that honor that intention and invitation. Also, I am not assuming that religious arguments cannot be rational; I am only using “religious”(above) in the sense of reasoning that goes beyond nature alone.(I will not get into a wrangle over epistemology.)
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Post by Admin on Dec 2, 2014 13:33:03 GMT -8
United States Constitution
While the United States Constitution's First Amendment identifies the rights to assemble and to petition the government, the text of the First Amendment does not make specific mention of a right to association. Nevertheless, the United States Supreme Court held in NAACP v. Alabama that the freedom of association is an essential part of the Freedom of Speech because, in many cases, people can engage in effective speech only when they join with others.[4] Intimate association
A fundamental element of personal liberty is the right to choose to enter into and maintain certain intimate human relationships. These intimate human relationships are considered forms of "intimate association." The paradigmatic example of "intimate association" is the family. Depending on the jurisdiction it may also extend to abortion, birth control and private, adult, non-commercial and consensual sexual relationships. Expressive association
Expressive associations are groups that engage in activities protected by the First Amendment – speech, assembly, press, petitioning government for a redress of grievances, and the free exercise of religion. In Roberts v. United States Jaycees, the Supreme Court held that associations may not exclude people for reasons unrelated to the group's expression. However, in the subsequent decisions of Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston, the Court ruled that a group may exclude people from membership if their presence would affect the group's ability to advocate a particular point of view. The government cannot, through the use of anti-discrimination laws, force groups to include a message that they do not wish to convey.
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Post by Admin on Dec 15, 2014 8:06:29 GMT -8
INTRODUCTION Everything judges, legislators, policymakers, and legal scholars think they know about polygamy is based on faulty assumptions and presumptions, conceptions and misconceptions. To put it more succinctly: everything lawyers know about polygamy is wrong. As a result, American legal policy regulating polygamy has led to prohibitions and prosecutions when they were otherwise unwarranted, failures of enforcement when it most certainly would have been warranted, and the imposition of a one-size-fits-none behemoth that has left a trail of collateral damage for over one hundred and fifty years. During a federal campaign to stamp out the practice of polygamy over one century ago, polygamy was dubbed, along with slavery, as "one of the twin relics of barbarism." American presidents, beginning with James Buchanan in 1857, railed against the practice. Congress enacted legislation criminalizing polygamists, disenfranchising them, and, ultimately, toppling the financial holdings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints ("LDS Church" or "LDS") due to its support of the practice of polygamy. And the Supreme Court upheld every one of these efforts. Notably, in its 1878 Reynolds decision, the Court laid the foundation for over one hundred years of rulings against the claims of practicing polygamists, characterizing polygamy as an "odious" practice appropriately "treated as an offence against society." During the nineteenth century, the anti-polygamy movement found its footing in many of the ongoing legal and political battles of the era. The overarching debates that ensnared ... litigation-essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd/app?action=DocumentDisplay&crawlid=1&doctype=cite&docid=16+Cornell+J.+L.+%26+Pub.+Pol%27y+101&srctype=smi&srcid=3B15&key=e17a54e3e9dc01998faf5e5983b3cd86
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Post by Admin on Dec 15, 2014 8:10:04 GMT -8
ABSTRACT: Most legal scholarship about polygamy has approached it in one of two ways. Some have framed it as a question of how far constitutional protection for religious freedom and privacy rights extends, including what we might think of as “intimacy liberty,” particularly in light of Lawrence v. Texas. Others have debated decriminalization, based on the contested effects of polygamy on matters ranging from women’s subordination to fraudulent behavior to democracy.
This Essay shifts attention from the constitutionality and decriminalization debates to a new set of questions: whether and how polygamy might be effectively recognized and regulated, consistent with contemporary social norms. It argues that the gay marriage analogy, invoked on both the “left” and the “right,” is a red herring, a distraction from the real challenge polygamy raises for law - how plural marriage transforms the conventional marital dyad and whether law is up to regulating marital multiplicity.
Both of the gay analogies, the slippery slope invocation and the alternative lifestyles defense, distract us from the fact that polygamy’s distinctive feature lies not in the spouses’ gender (as is the case for same-sex couples marriage) but rather in its departures from the two-person marital model.
Polygamy’s defining feature, marital multiplicity, generates specific costs and vulnerabilities, as well as opportunities for exploitative and opportunistic behavior, some of which we have seen played out in distressing fashion in recent high-profile conflicts. Hence, this paper approaches polygamy as a problem of bargaining, cooperation, strategic behavior, and, forgive the pun, the problems it engenders. No one, including others who have considered polygamy from a bargaining perspective such as Gary Becker and Richard Posner, has confronted polygamy as a regulatory matter, instead assuming it is merely dyadic marriage multiplied. Is the law up to regulating marital multiplicity?
In contemplating the design of a plural marriage regime, we are not starting from scratch. While conventional family law, with its assumptions of the marital dyad, may not be up to the task, other legal regimes have addressed polygamy’s central conundrum: ensuring fairness and establishing baseline behavior in contexts characterized by multiple partners, on-going entrances and exits, and life-defining economic and personal stakes.
Commercial partnership law has addressed precisely these concerns through a robust set of off-the-rack rules. Contrast polygamy with aspects of partnership law to derive a set of default rules that might accommodate polygamy’s marital multiplicity, while addressing some of the costs and power disparities that polygamy has engendered. The point is not to use partnership law as a “map,” but rather to make the point that there are already conceptual models for what might be thought of as plural marital associations.
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Post by Admin on Jul 5, 2015 3:53:01 GMT -8
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