Where do you draw a line? Once traditional marriage — supported by centuries of
civilization and the major Western religions — is undermined in the name of
love, there is no logical or principled reason to forbid polygamy, polyandry, or
even incest. Gay activists recoil from incest. But on what grounds exactly?
Suppose, after we formalize gay marriage, two 25-year-old sterile (to remove the
health of offspring argument) twins wish to marry? Let’s suppose they are loving
and committed. What is the objection? That it offends custom and tradition? That
it offends God? Isn’t that just bigotry?
The customary and traditional definition of marriage, endorsed by God in the Bible, is of a man and as many women as he can buy. But there's no arguing with this attitude because it's the truth. If two men marry, why not three? Or two women and one man? Or one man and a dozen women? Children are verboten, but if two adult siblings decide to marry, who can stop them if consent is the only deciding factor?
Steps must be taken, and fortunately we have a model to follow to forbid our society from going down the polygamy and incest crapper. All we have to do is substitute a word or three.
Section 1
Marriages between
Proceedings for annulment may be initiated only by the Public Prosecutor.
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
Section 5
A person who acts contrary to the prohibition of Section 1 will be punished with hard labour.
A person who acts contrary to the prohibition of Section 2 will be punished with imprisonment or with hard labour.
A person who acts contrary to the provisions of Sections 3 or 4 will be punished with imprisonment up to a year and with a fine, or with one of these penalties.
Section 6
The
Section 7
The law will become effective on the day after its promulgation; Section 3, however, not until January 1,
Logical or principled reason to forbid polygamy: polygamist families are rife with abuse, jealously and unhappiness. Often existing in closed communities, a number of young men are routinely expelled due to the surplus that makes them "useless" in that culture.
ReplyDeleteLogical or principled reason to forbid polyandry: See polygamy.
Logical or prinicpaled reason to forbid incest: aside from the fact that it's just plain gross, the dangers of offspring having genetic disorders due to inbreeding are high.
Logical or principaled reason to forbid gay marriage: I haven't heard one yet.
Charen would say that having gays marry is just as bad because it make it possible to legalize polygamy and incest, so trying to explain the difference to her is useless. And the possibility of exploitation exists in any relationship. This is a real problem. How do we convince anti-gay people that gay marriage is okay when we say some alternative marriages are okay but others aren't? Why shouldn't three men marry if they want to? Why is that wrong but two men marrying is not? I'm not for polygamy since it tends to exploit girls, but isn't that a factor of secrecy and religious hatred of women as much as more than one wife? And religion is far more dangerous to women than almost anything, but very few people are trying to get rid of it.
ReplyDelete(Incest, of coure, is always wrong and exploitive, but these people can't even see the difference between consent and exploitation, since consent is not a factor in authoritarian families.)
Logical or principled reason to forbid polygamy: the state's legitimate interest in avoiding the complications that would arise in such things as taxation, inheritance, child custody, divorce, adoption, debt, etc. etc. etc. which would be caused by marriages involving more than 2 people.
ReplyDeleteThat's good, but we have some of that anyway with multiple marriages and divorces.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the best thing to do would be to take marriage away from the churches, and make only civil ceremonies legal. People could still have religious ceremonies, but they would be purely ceremonial. Then people could hash out the legal details without dragging god and sin into it.
>That's good, but we have some of that anyway with multiple marriages and divorces.
ReplyDeleteSome, but the damage is limited by the fact that there are only 2 legal entanglements to sort out at the time of divorce, whereas in the case of multiple marriage, the number of relationships which have to be legally resolved is increased exponentially. Say there are only three people in a marriage, a man and two women, and they have two children among them, one from each woman.
Instead of, in a standard marriage, only having to dissolve/resolve 3 legal relationships: between man and woman and man and children and woman and children, we'd have to work through twice as many (3 X 2 X 1) conflicts and ownerships, tax, credit, asset and custody issues just for the adults. If we consider the relationships between the adults and the children and the children with each other (how much of woman 1's estate is woman 2's child entitled to when she's one of the equal "mothers" of the family?) it's 120 (5 X 4 X 3 X 2 X 1) different relationships to legally resolve.
The state can say it is willing to work out such problems when there are only two adults in a marriage at a time (even though they may change partners, it's still only 2 at each juncture), but considers it an undue burden on its resources to attempt to unravel and resolve the issues which arise in marriages of more than 2 adults at a time.
It sounds good; just one marriage at a time.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if businesses could help here. They are/will be desperate for revenue, and maybe they can be persuaded to take advantage of an under-tapped market. I sure don't mind using greed to get equality for all.