Thursday, January 19, 2006
Noooo! Not something else!!!
Polygamy! I remain confused about the horrendous reaction people have to it. Why does it get listed with bestiality? I recall, when I was a younger dude who was just coming into his ideological views, being shocked that polygamy was illegal long before I was shocked that gay marriage was illegal, though this is partly because gay folk don't make a big splash in Kansas. "What the hell business is it of the government how many folks folk marry?"
I continue to laugh at how gay marriage advocates continue to dismiss polygamy using the exact same arguments that gay marriage opponents use to dismiss gay marriage.
Brad Luna of the Human Rights Campaign, which supports same-sex marriage, finds any linkage of polygamy to same-sex marriage "offensive." He warned against reading too much into one Canadian study. In the United States, he said, "two people is the defining element in our system of government on contractual marriage."
One man and one woman is the defining element... no, wait! That's totally different! Really!
Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-S.F., who has pushed for same-sex marriage in California, noted, "a unique nature of a relationship with two. If you go beyond two, you can't draw a line anywhere else that isn't arbitrary."
The line at two sounds pretty arbitrary, too. "Unique nature of a relationship"? Is that a legal term? Frankly, I'd find a relationship between a dude and a baboon to be pretty unique. A dude with a baboons and an elephant even more so.
Then there's some stuff about "unequal relationships," as if marriage is an equal one. Would it be okay for two dudes and two chicks to get married all together? No inequality there.
The Washington Times interviewed polygamous Mormons, who argued they lead happy, harmonious lives. That may be, but the practice is poison for cultures at large. Rich men marry many wives. Poor men do not. Women have few opportunities and limited rights. It can't be good for the kids.
Rich men do a lot of things that poor men don't. And poison for cultures? Bad for kids? That sure sounds familiar from the gay marriage debate... Why not criminalize taking away the rights of women, rather than criminalizing doing something that some folk associate with it?
If you want to keep the government out of family life, don't legalize marriages that, when they dissolve, split property (and kids) between one husband and three wives.
Actually, if you want to keep the government out of family life, don't legalize marriages at all. Instead, keep the government out of family life. I don't see how a government intervention between two people is not the government sticking its nose in family life while between four people it is.
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