Simply put: too many legal problems arise with polygamy. I won't bore you with the rest, some countries allow polygyny , but Last edit: 2011-12-14 15:41:43 that's really it.
so what you're saying is that people should have less rights because legal issues may occur.
Not really. The thing is, there are problems with Polygamy that simply aren't there when gays fight for equal rights. Polygamy always sprung from belittlement of the other gender, no matter how much their poets tried to hide it. The whole concept was for times with abundance of womens due to wars or straight up male dominance. That is why I can't support polygamy no matter how much anyone tries to convince me.
On December 14 2011 16:12 aztrorisk wrote: so what you're saying is that people should have less rights because legal issues may occur.
Do you know what those legal issues are or are you just acting skeptic because you are uninformed? laws of property ownership, inheritance, parental rights, marital property are for starters.
Yes, believe it or not, you sacrifice individual rights to be within a society and its norms and values. This is obvious and pretty basic.
Torte pretty much nailed all the points on the head. Marriage's main incentive is that it confers a lot of economic benefits that gays aren't getting. Polygamy is even more of a legal and ethical clusterfuck on another scale to gay marriage, so it won't be touched upon soon, if at all.
The thing is for me is that marriage is meant to be you saying you want to spend the rest of your life with this person. If you want to get married to many people that imo isn't what marriage is.
OP is clearly the arbiter of the Catholic Church. His thoughtful and poignant arguments are matched only by his graceful and articulate style of writing.
Polygamy is exactly like homosexual marriages-- they both are... about ... marrying people... and uh... they're both sins against God... uh and... they're both... they're both bad.
Well, at least in the US, the primary reason that gay couples are seeking to legalize marriage is because of the legal rights marriage provides. Things like health insurance coverage, visitation rights in hospitals and adoption rights just aren't covered clearly for same sex couples which leads to discrimination (intentional or otherwise).
Making polygamy legal allows one person to grant those rights to as many people as he/she wants. Companies might have to provide spousal health insurance to 4 or 5 different spouses while most people will only have 1 spouse. I'm not saying that polygamy is wrong (even though I don't see the point), but allowing multiple spouses the same protection under the law would just create a legal nightmare. That is why I think those benefits should only be able to be bestowed upon one person at a time.
Polygamy shouldn't be bundled with homosexual marriage. One is persecution based on orientation which we as a society should advance past, the other is more or less exploitation of the other gender.
i'm on the 'end marriage having any legal standing' side of things. let religions dictate what they think marriage is, let any consenting adults enter into civil unions
The thing that bothers me the most with polygamy is that it's either "A male married with X females" or "A female marriers with X males" ( I'll skip the gays versions, you get my point right ).
This creates an obvious unbalanced relationship that's seems unhealthy to me.
I also vote for the "abolish marriage" option. Talk about an antiquated institution. My girlfriend would probably hate that though. Why do girls have such a hardon for marriage? Doesn't make any god damn sense.
Gay marriage is an obvious yes... as a straight guy, I deserve no more benefits when it comes to marriage than a gay man. It's about time we started treating homosexuals as equals.
As far as polygamy goes, if a man can manage to support and love all parties, then that's fine in my book. It's not for me, and I'm not exactly sure how it'd work, but I'd imagine that someone, somewhere, could make it work.
I'd legalize both, but it would be important to make sure that the multiple wives/ husbands/ families weren't being neglected.
Marriage and state should just be separated. I hate how married couples get tax cuts here in Germany. If there should be tax reliefs, then for children only.
Polygamy can be both Polygyny (a woman has several husbands) and Polyandry (a man has several wives), as well as a group marriage. Legalizing Polyandry only (like it is done in most countries where polygamy is legal) is misogynistic. Other than that I have no problem with it. Gay marriage is an obvious yes.
The thing about American law is that it's very specific. Astoundingly so. Changing the genders in "a union between one man and one woman" to "a union between two people of any gender" would not suddenly make polygamy look all that much better.
However, as a practicing Christian, I don't give a flying fuck who you or anyone else marries. I'm not participating in your gay marriage, so I don't care if it happens. Don't propose to me, and I won't tell you to go away.
As for polygamy, if one man wishes to be that miserable, he should be allowed to be.
As far as the state/government is concerned marriage should only be about the legal rights and issues. As such any 1:1 relationship between two taxpayers/potential taxpayers should be legal. Poly-anything is illegal because it's not a 1:1 relationship and offers tax/legal benefits that are not intended as well as creating ambiguity about some of the benefits like inheritance.
As far as I'm concerned marriage shouldn't have any relation to sex and could be between brother/sister, two straight women, man/shoe, or man/animal and it wouldn't bother me except that shoes and animals don't pay taxes. Sure I'd still be creeped out by a brother/sister 'marriage', but I can't think of any reason why it should be illegal as it doesn't necessarily imply incest.
If you want to deprecate the use of word marriage from all legal relevance that's fine, but until that happens all couples should be given the same word.
If they desire to have a different identity, why succumb to social constructs, such as marriage. Just be partners and to hell with others!
Because when your partner falls seriously ill you want a) your medical insurance to cover him and b) some rights/influence over how he's treated among other things.
Gay marriage has to do with basic rights, economic benefits, etc. Polygamy not only challenges all legal standards pertaining to marriage, it also has a cultish reputation and defeats the purpose of marriage(two people loving another and wanting to seal that bond). Polygamy is nothing like gay marriage and is in fact FAR more complicated an issue to tackle.
I normally would say something like the "marriage shouldn't mean anything legally" but I'm too ignorant of what the actual legal benefits of marriage are, and it seems like it would be pretty convenient to have marriages for legal purposes (cases of inheritance, property, etc especially if one of the people dies). And it can be straightforward given 1 person married to one other person.
So, I'd be anti-polygamy unless it can be easily worked into the legal code.
As for the act of polygamy, it already appears plenty of marriages are polygamous, just one person in the marriage doesn't know :p.
EPT
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