Stepping Up

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

And so it begins:

Kody Brown is a proud polygamist, and a relatively famous one. Now Mr. Brown, his four wives and 16 children and stepchildren are going to court to keep from being punished for it.

The family is the focus of a reality TV show, “Sister Wives,” that first appeared in 2010. Law enforcement officials in the Browns’ home state, Utah, announced soon after the show began that the family was under investigation for violating the state law prohibiting polygamy.

On Wednesday, the Browns are expected to file a lawsuit to challenge the polygamy law.

The lawsuit is not demanding that states recognize polygamous marriage. Instead, the lawsuit builds on a 2003 United States Supreme Court decision, Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down state sodomy laws as unconstitutional intrusions on the “intimate conduct” of consenting adults.

I'm in favor of gay marriage for the same reason I'm in favor of legal polygamy, legalized adult incest, and all the rest - the state really shouldn't be telling anyone else who they can and cannot be in a recognized relationship with, full stop. Unfortunately, I've found that many who agree with gay marriage do not feel the same way about these other types of adult relationships.

Why is it that "equal marriage" only exists for many when it deals with their idea of reality? Should hardcore advocates of gay marriage be lining up behind the Brown family in solidarity and support of their situation? If you believe the US Constitution allows for, if not outright mandates, gay marriage, do you feel the same way here?

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Gay marriage corrects a fundamental inequality in civil rights. Polygyny (because you know no Mormon woman will ever request to marry 5 men) is a violation of civil rights. The only means I'd support it is if like the Muslims we approve this only if the man can provide equally for all of his wives in all matters. Particularly in financial, conjugal, and child-support ones. If they can do that and want the fuss, then they can be as much a child of Father Abraham as they want to be. The really hilarious part is that polygamists have a better case for this religiously than anyone else.....

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

It's not just Mormons. I personally know a foursome (two male, two female) that is not religious at all and are all quite happy together. And no, it's not two couples. Why do we care if the man can provide for his wives? If they want to live like that, the state has no right to say otherwise. The only issue is contractual obligations to children in case of dissolution.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The law does. At least when we define law as protecting the weak from the avarice of the strong. But if God hates gays, to judge by the Old Testament he has no problem with polygamy.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

The law does what? You're not being clear.

God's opinion is not relevant to what the secular law should be.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Did you tell this to the Tea Party? When the GOP decides to get God out of secular government, then we can have this conversation. If God mandates the Speaker of the House protect a living corpse, then what's good enough for King David is also good enough for any sufficiently wealthy follower of El-Shaddai.

The law cares for the wives. I mean how does one divide inheritance with the children one has from seven wives?

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

I believe I already mentioned that point as being the one issue that would need to be figured out. But the answer doesn't really matter that much. It can be any way you want it.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

You are wrong on so many levels here it is rather funny.

1 st) Sexist much? I mean the entire thrust of your stance is that women need a man to provide for her.

2 nd) How is gay marriage any less of a fundamental inequality than plural marriage?

3 rd) Perhaps you should go read the article again, they are not suing for legal poly marriage, they are suing to have their living situation decriminalized.

4 th) So it is only legal for a man to have 2 wives if he can support them and all the children, however a monogamous couple can have 18 kids and be on welfare as a result without anyone saying anything?

5 th) So allowing a woman to marry the man of her choice is violating her civil rights? But denying her that right is protecting them? You have a very screwed up view of civil rights.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

1) No, the entire trust of my stance (tee hee you said thrust of my stance/Beavis and Butthead) is that the legal basis for polygamy would follow the Muslim idea, and the guess that the religion which brought us Orrin Hatch isn't going to accept polyandry.

2) Simple: gay men and lesbians marrying two by two is no more illegal than black men and white women or white men and black women marrying. Any argument against gay marriage has already been used against interracial marriage since before the Civil War.

3) It was criminalized by the Republicans.....

4) Citations for this other than Pals with Saddam and Nun Rapers Ronny Ray Gunn?

5) No more so than the Republican Party which defines equality under the law for gays very twistedly, to judge by their attempts to end-run the Supreme Court and revive sodomy laws.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

"1) No, the entire trust of my stance (tee hee you said thrust of my stance/Beavis and Butthead) is that the legal basis for polygamy would follow the Muslim idea, and the guess that the religion which brought us Orrin Hatch isn't going to accept polyandry. "

No, you specifically said that as a requirement for accepting legal plural marriage husbands would be required to support their wives. This strongly implies that women NEED their husbands to support them

Further Mormons and Muslims are not the only ones who wish to have legalized plural marriage. There is a Christian Polyamory movement which is just about the same size as the Momorn Fundamentalist movement, there are the new agers/neopagans who support some form of group marriage (search on Church of All Worlds for one example), then there are those who don't have any religious motivation at all such as myself so the Mormon view of it is not entirely relevant save that this particular family happens to be Mormon and not from one of those other groups.


"2) Simple: gay men and lesbians marrying two by two is no more illegal than black men and white women or white men and black women marrying. Any argument against gay marriage has already been used against interracial marriage since before the Civil War. "

Perhaps you should go back and review the history of why the LDS church dropped the practice of polygamy, there were more than a few instances of systematic denials of civil rights on the part of practicing polygamists. Further all arguments against legal polygamy are directly analogous to the arguments against legal gay and interracial marriage.

"3) It was criminalized by the Republicans....."

And this is relevant because?

"3) 4) Citations for this other than Pals with Saddam and Nun Rapers Ronny Ray Gunn? "

Um, your own post?

"The only means I'd support it is if like the Muslims we approve this only if the man can provide equally for all of his wives in all matters."

No such restriction exists for monogamous marriage and you did no propose one, ergo you don't see a problem with the quiverful folks and Catholics having 12 kids they can't afford to pay for, but those icky polygamists had better not do it.


"5) No more so than the Republican Party which defines equality under the law for gays very twistedly, to judge by their attempts to end-run the Supreme Court and revive sodomy laws. "

Why do you keep bringing up the Republican Party with me? I'm not one of them and I agree that their civil rights stances are screwed up, that does not excuse YOUR screwed up views on civil rights which is the subject of this discussion.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

1) Someone has 400 wives some of those wives will be getting shafted. Human nature, dear boy.

2) Yes, I recall the irony of using the Bible to claim polygamy was un-Christian. It's economically unfeasible and marriage is primarily an economic transaction.

3) Because these same Republicans use religious arguments, overlooking the very dubious basis for this argument.

4) My statement referred to economics, I'm not sure what you assumed it referred to.

5) Because the GOP's the one party that takes on itself, in between the orgies with whores and divorcing cancer-stricken wives for 20-year-younger mistresses to deciding what US people can and cannot do morally.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

You know muslims can only have 4 wives yeah?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

There are ways some of the really rich ones end-run around that. End-running religious prohibition is human nature as well. And I was going more for the Bible than the Quran here.

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

Um..cases with "fathers in hiding" having thirtysomething kids from far more than 2 wives are not uncommon.


However you want to serve this as a comparison to monogamous marriages, it still comes down to two problems:

multiple partners (often more than 2 wives) in a culture of child bearing, make the amount of children rise exponentially. And if you want the state to help out in providing (as the mothers of the "fathers in hiding" do), then why shouldn't the state set out some rules for it, if they legalize the system? Providing for these children is a rather big issue in Utah.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

So you're saying that we should deny civil rights to some people because other people will abuse those civil rights?


Lets step through this.

Some gays practice unsafe sex and in some communities it is rampant. This unsafe sex constitutes a grave public health risk, ergo we must outlaw homosexuality.

You just provided the perfect argument for outlawing homosexuality and literally EVERY other human activity that anyone might want to outlaw.

Don't you think it would make more sense to legalize plural marriage and then criminalize the actual problematic behavior? Remember, as I said above to Underlankers, Mormon Polygamists aren't even the majority of plural marriage supporters and they probably aren't even the plurality as the Christian Polygamy supporters is just about as large and possibly slightly larger and the non religious Polyamory movement might just be larger than both.

Remember, there are only an estimated 50,000 Mormon Fundamentalists in the entire world and not all of them are parts of polygamous households yet you want to ban the practice because of poor behavior on a subset of this tiny minority of 50,000 people.

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

No, what I am saying is that you have to serve up civil rights in a way so that it fits state and other potential involved parties in this, not just the leading patriarchs of the "old school" Mormon houses.

If you read my comment further below, it should be abundantly clear that I am not against poly-marriage, but what I am saying is that if you want state help with child support - there has to be some state involvement in the rules of this. State absolutely has a right to shape legislation. And the law should absolutely allow women to have multiple partners too, otherswise no deal.

Your example on homosexuality is not applicable, since in the case of old school mormon problem families with fathers-in-hiding, the victims are not the consenting adults, but the kids, suffering form malnourishment and poverty. This is a real social problem in rural parts of Utah.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

Should the law criminalize monogamous marriage when the man can't support the woman in the manner to which she is accustomed?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Monogamous marriage is distinct. For one thing it's a simpler economic unit, which is what marriage is really all about. Polygamy, however, is very easy to justify on religious grounds, particularly in Abrahamic religions.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Precisely which civil right is violated by polygamy? And btw I know multiple relationships that involve more than one man, one of which is just one woman. So...

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The right of women to equal treatment under the law.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

And how, exactly, are they getting unequal treatment? Note: you don't get unequal treatment from the law now if your husband is a deadbeat, so I doubt it'd hold after they legalized polygamy...

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

For one thing if conjugal rights aren't met equally.....

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

That's not a civil right, though.