July 12, 2011

Polygamists sue using gay marriage logic

From the NYT:
Polygamist, Under Scrutiny in Utah, Plans Suit to Challenge Law 
By JOHN SCHWARTZ 
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. It will ask the federal courts to tell states that they cannot punish polygamists for their own “intimate conduct” so long as they are not breaking other laws, like those regarding child abuse, incest or seeking multiple marriage licenses. 
Mr. Brown has a civil marriage with only one of his wives; the rest are “sister wives,” not formally wedded.

Are these "sister wives" actual sisters? That's the kind of thing I find interesting, but nobody else seems to wonder about...
The Browns are members of the Apostolic United Brethren Church, a fundamentalist offshoot of the Mormon Church, which gave up polygamy around 1890 as Utah was seeking statehood.
Making polygamous unions illegal, they argue, violates the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment, as well as the free exercise, establishment, free speech and freedom of association clauses of the First Amendment. 
“We only wish to live our private lives according to our beliefs,” Mr. Brown said in a statement provided by his lead attorney, Jonathan Turley, who is a law professor at George Washington University. 
The connection with Lawrence v. Texas, a case that broadened legal rights for gay people, is sensitive for those who have sought the right of same-sex marriage. Opponents of such unions often refer to polygamy as one of the all-but-inevitable outcomes of allowing same-sex marriage.  
Such arguments, often referred to as the “parade of horribles,” are logically flawed, said Jennifer C. Pizer, a professor at the law school at the University of California, Los Angeles, and legal director for the school’s Williams Institute, which focuses on sexual orientation law.
The questions surrounding whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry are significantly different from those involved in criminal prosecution of multiple marriages, Ms. Pizer noted. Same-sex couples are seeking merely to participate in the existing system of family law for married couples, she said, while “you’d have to restructure the family law system in a pretty fundamental way” to recognize polygamy.

Huh? Professor Pizer, there are a whole bunch of Muslims who want to have a word with you about which has been around longer: polygamy or gay marriage.

Well, okay, what Prof. Pizer said didn't make much sense, but let me explain what she really meant: Here's the simple logic behind today's conventional wisdom about who should have family law fundamentally restructured on their behalf and who shouldn't:

Gays are good, so they should get whatever they want.
Fundamentalist Mormon wackos are bad, so they shouldn't. 

And that's all you need to know. The rest is just an exercise in legalistic rationalization of the basic who / whom distinction of gays good / Mormons bad.

That logic will stand to keep polygamy banned as long as it's just blond Mormons doing the suing. But, at some point, say, two immigrants from Guinea here on fraudulent asylum visas will sue for a third spousal visa to import a third spouse into their polygamous marital union. If they are all gay black immigrant HIV+ men who are members of a [long-awaited] progressive gay-friendly Muslim sect and they want immigration laws changed to recognize their culture's ancient history of gay polygamy (just wait for the scholarly books), well, then they've got what will, over a few decades, turn into an obvious slam dunk case. I can't predict exactly which legal rationalizations will be trotted out in that kind of case, but it's only a matter of time.
The Supreme Court supported the power of states to restrict polygamy in an 1879 case, Reynolds v. United States. Professor Turley suggests that the fundamental reasoning of Reynolds, which said polygamy “fetters the people in stationary despotism,” is outdated and has been swept away by cases like Lawrence.
Douglas Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine University, said today’s courts might not agree with the sweeping societal conclusions of the 19th-century courts, but noted that more attention has been paid in recent decades to the importance of internal family issues as part of the public policy sphere. Questions of child abuse and spousal domination, he said, could figure into a judicial examination of polygamy. 
“We’re more sensitive to the fact that a household can be quite repressive,” he said, and so reservations about polygamy “might be even more profound.”

Nobody ever mentions the leftover men problem with polygamy. We're only supposed to worry about the harms polygamy causes to women, not to men. (Here's my 2002 article on "The Problem with Polygamy.")
Professor Turley disagreed, noting that “there are many religious practices in monogamous families that many believe as obnoxious and patriarchal,” and added, “The criminal code is not a license for social engineering.”

99 comments:

Anonymous said...

roissy likes this




but really, let's get it over with, fast track to SCOTUS

Anonymous said...

We already have polygamy - you can have as many wives as you want, just not all at one time.

Most wealthy alpha males get married 2,3,4,5 times. And the ones that don't, usually have long term mistresses.

But as you state, what does logic or even the constitution have to do with ANY of these decisions?

Does anyone think there was a super-secret "Gay Marriage is OK" clause in the Calf or Massachusetts Constitutions?

Texas First! said...

Did I miss the post on Southern California secession?

Anonymous said...

The former King of Bhutan was married to four sisters.

One Radical said...

I've argued this since day one. If you can't discriminate, you can't discriminate. If it's about "equality", then you can't deny people the "right" to marry.

This logic will also be used for incestuous marriage.

One Radical said...

Also, gays could always get married, just not to someone of the same sex. I knew a gay guy who was married to a woman for 30 years before he got caught having sex in a park on his lunch break. He was a principal.

Anonymous said...

Roissy likes to watch, I guess? Isn't he that old creeper from DC?

Iunieis said...

"Gays are good, so they should get whatever they want.
Fundamentalist Mormon wackos are bad, so they shouldn't."

No, Mormons are a branch of Christianity, so therefore they are wacko and bad (in modern leftist thought).

ziel said...

Scalia must be channeling Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park: "Boy do I hate being right all the time."

Whiskey said...

Couple that with the female disdain for Beta Males. Women really HATE HATE HATE Beta Males, so "left behind" guys in polygamy are no concern to most women, most of the time. There's a whole bunch of disposable boys, dumped quite literally on the side of the highway by these groups, as their age-peers girls are married off to (disgustingly) 55 year old cult leaders.

But, nope TLC (might as well call it "Oprah-lite") features the "oohhh-sexy!" bit of Sister Wives (reality -- they're all hugely fat sharing some low-rent lothario). Or HBO's "Big Love" is all about the "sexiness" of hot chicks sharing Bill Pullman, and the scary-sexy badness of some cult leader, written by a couple of gay guys openly using the show to normalize gay marriage and marriage customs (lots of fooling around).

Nothing at all about the boys dumped like garbage quite literally on the side of the road at age 15. Ordinary Straight White kids not uber-Alpha are disposable to a White female/gay audience.

Eric said...

Way back in the 1967 when loving was decided people warned "if you strike down miscegenation laws eventually the court will legalize gay marriage. Hell, if the court follows the logic to its conclusion we'll see polygamy." Oh no, they said. There's no slippery slope.

You're probably right, Steve, in that the courts start with the answer and work back to the logic, the same way I did in chemistry 101. So we won't see polygamy for a few years. But we will eventually because of the Muslims.

Anonymous said...

I love how gays will argue that their behaviour is well within the realm of normalcy, BUT NO FURTHER!

Anonymous said...

"We already have polygamy - you can have as many wives as you want, just not all at one time."

Yes, and gays can already get married in all states, just not to people of the same gender in most of those states.

Anonymous said...

It's inevitable. Unfortunately in the legal wrangling over whether or not someone has the right to do something, no one bothers to focus on added protections against the fraud or coercion that can result from indulging this new found right.

Westernizing polygamy will also free it from the constraints placed on it by Muslim culture: that only a man who can support more than one wife and the extra offspring should have multiple wives.

Anonymous said...

We already have polygamy - you can have as many wives as you want, just not all at one time.

Damn, son, have you every consulted a dictionary? That's not polygamy. At all.

Anonymous said...

No, Mormons are a branch of Christianity,
mormons are no more christian than muslims.

Multiple wives would be an immigration/social services/welfare nightmare, but there is NO logical reason to prevent it if we reject our Christian ethos, which the elite have.

Anonymous said...

"But, at some point, say, two immigrants from Guinea here on fraudulent asylum visas will sue for a third spousal visa to import a third spouse into their polygamous marital union. If they are all gay black immigrant HIV+ men who are members of a [long-awaited] progressive gay-friendly Muslim sect and they want immigration laws changed to recognized gay polygamy, well, then they've got a slam dunk case."

Sounds like a job for a white male blogger posing as a Guinean lesbian immigrant!

Anonymous said...

"I love how gays will argue that their behaviour is well within the realm of normalcy, BUT NO FURTHER!"

Oh, gawd, I've already read several lengthy arguments put forth by gay marriage advocates who hated that the polygamy argument might sink their ship.

They argue from what they say is an analysis of historical anthropological data that polygamy is not analogous to gay marriage (well, duh, of course it isn't anymore than it's analogous to straight marriage). Their arguments are primarily based on the point of view that women are unfairly used by a polygamist society. Seems they enlisted the aid of any number of cultural anthropologists.

Of course, they never ever point out that most gay men wishing to marry (and those having already married), have understandings that their marriages will not be sexually monogamous. Nor do they point out that this will be the family situation into which adopted and test tube babies will be introduced.

There's enough of a difference between the expectations of monogamy upon marriage between gays and straights that this point alone should be reason enough to reject "gay marriage" as a sanctioned social institution.

Civil unions ought to be good enough.

NOTA said...

So how would you deal with this family? This guy has a wife and three roommates, and the three roommates are all single mothers, whose kids probably came from him. We don't arrest people for adultery, so what's the crime?

Is the crime calling it polygamy? How would the crime change if he were some loser who'd knocked up four baby mamas?

Anonymous said...

Prof. Pizer actually has a point in that gay marriage is easier to integrate than polygamy. Consider laws/regulation concerning health insurance. As long as gay marriage is monogamous, adding a single "partner" does not upset the current system too much. But, if polygamy is explicitly recognized, how many wives will have health insurance??

Anonymous said...

"I love how gays will argue that their behaviour is well within the realm of normalcy, BUT NO FURTHER!"

So true. At least the male polygamist can argue that he is biologically fit from an evolutionary standpoint, that his desire for more than one mate is understandable from that POV.

The gay have refuse to concede that anything "went wrong" in development.

alexis said...

I wonder if the polygamists will eventually argue that it would encourage mack daddy marriage, so the kids of mack daddy and his various ho's will feel legitimate. (It won't, of course.)

MattW said...

The guy is legally married to a single woman. The other women are with him, without any legal contract, of their own volition. How can the govt have any say in this matter?

Anonymous said...

of course if it is legalized, the most nauseating consequence will be a flurry of feminist articles about how there are no multple husband, one wife polygamist marriages.


Seriously, we're going beyond the dark ages back to utter savagery =- that's where the 'enlightenment' is ultimately leading us.

NOTA said...

I think Steve has the who-whom calculation just right. Mostly, people support gay marriage and oppose Mormon sect polygamy because of their feelings about gays and Mormons.

Did anyone in the TV show ever bring up the excess male problem? It's one of those things that's really obviously important, once you've seen it mentioned. So long as it's rare splinter sects of Mormons practicing polygamy, the extra males can just fade into the surrounding society, but if it becomes widespread, that obviously won't work. However, using modern technology to do sex selection would address the problem in a closed society, by keeping the desires sex ratio in the society. (I don't expect to see Muslims or fundamentalist Mormons doing this anytime soon, though.)

Underachiever said...

Polygamy harms society; gay marriage does not. What more do you need?

Anonymous said...

Prof. Pizer actually has a point in that gay marriage is easier to integrate than polygamy.
today's vdare front page has links to counter that- the point of gay marriage was not that gay's can marry- its a tool to advance gay advocacy- the flurry of lawsuits and social engineering that will follow will have far more negative impact than some nutcase mormons who at least want to get 'off the grid' of american political life.

hbd chick said...

"Are these 'sister wives' actual sisters? That's the kind of thing I find interesting, but nobody else seems to wonder about..."

i do! i do! except i couldn't find out if they're real sisters or not. i don't think they are (if you want to believe some random people on yahoo answers, then the answer is no they are not).

they don't look like sisters. (and they all actually look fairy normal.) not counting the newest wife, they've all been "married" 16 or more years now. pretty good record.

the next thing, of course, will be gay polygamous marriage.

EYE OF HORUS said...

Actually, I'm waiting patiently for the Bestiality and Pedophilia perverts to come out with lawsuits.
That's how it ended in Rome.

First miscegenation, then homosexuality, followed by polygamy, bestiality and pedophilia. Oh, and then the Vandals came by and burned the Whole Thing Down.

History repeats itself...

Rohan Swee said...

But, but, Steve, I've been arguing with liberals for years that this is exactly what was going to happen, and they swore, screamed, and spat, up, down, and sideways, that I was crazy for even thinking that these two issues could possibly be in an way related or the same arguments used to promote legalizing polygamy. (I exclude the wrong-headed but consistent polyamoro-libertarian types, who at least responded with an honest "you say that like it's a bad thing".) How can this be?

I also predicted that within a decade, and probably much sooner, they'd be calling anyone agin' it bigots and some-kind-of-phobes, and making MLK and Civil Rights analogies with straight faces. (Oh, and also that the Republican Party will cave completely on the issue shortly thereafter.)

I'm not betting against myself anytime soon.

Elder Cunningham said...

No, Mormons are a branch of Christianity, so therefore they are wacko and bad (in modern leftist thought).

Now I've met a number of Mormons in my travels and have almost universally liked them as fellow citizens, coworkers and neighbors.

That said, Mormonism is a 1823 mashup of American Exceptionalism and our Second Great Awakening, Christianity and L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics.

Some Mormon beliefs are pretty wacky. For example, Jesus lives on the planet Kolob and every Mormon who lives a righteous life will become a God of their own planet too.

Two songs from "The Book of Mormon - the Musical" do a decent job of describing the faith with catchy numbers:

All American Prophet

I Believe

And for anyone whose been proselytized by a pair of young Mormon missionaries:

Hello

Two by Two

jody said...

yeah, these are pretty much my thoughts on the matter as well. one man marrying more than one woman is more natural, more normal, more widespread, and has been around for as long as humans have been marrying. one man marrying one man, not so much.

it's definitely as steve portrays it. homosexuals good, euro american mormons bad, therefore, entire fundamental aspect of society turned upside for gays but not for mormons. and, steve is right, that since polygamy is by far more common around the world, it will put liberals into fits when the brown third worlders begin to sue for their right to marry several people.

there's no intellectually honest defense against this avaliable for the liberals, i'm afraid. the polygamists are totally correct on this topic. so it's gonna just be one group's opinion versus another.

of course this takes me off on a tangent, to another instance of just how logically selective and intellectually dishonest liberals are. muslims are MORE free OUTSIDE of the united states. when they are INSIDE america, they instantly become LESS free to practice their religion. therefore, THERE IS NO REASON AT ALL that muslims HAVE to be allowed in the US. the united states does not protect their religious freedoms at all, in fact, it restricts and impairs them quite a bit.

the liberal notion that the US is a proposition nation, or at minimum, that the US should be used as a "safety zone" to help the "oppressed" people of the world escape their (self inflicted) third world shitholes, works exactly backwards in the case of islam.

Anonymous said...

If the definition of marriage is open, then why can't 3 or more people get married? Why can't a man marry his mother? Why can't a brother marry his sister?

ZZ said...

If you read the formal rulings of courts, not just press reports and an occasional bombastic Scalia dissent, you'd see there is no way the gay marriage decisions can be used to allow polygamy.

At most, the cases give a single weak argument for it. However the basis of the decisions is they discriminate against a group of people for no good reason.

But states are allowed to discriminate, they just need a legitimate public policy reason to do so. The main point of the gay marriage/DOMA cases is there isn't a legitimate reason to discriminate. It is much easier to come with ones for a polygamy ban.

What they might be able to do is stop criminal prosecutions of people who live with multiple women and aren't bothering anyone. That is far from legalizing it however because in the eyes of the law it is still just one wife.

Anonymous said...

Steve, it's not true that there's been no attention paid to the men victimized by fundamentalist Mormon polygamy sects. There have been a lot of journalism articles about the "throwaway boys" of the fundamentalist LDS sects, and Krakauer in "Under The Banner of Heaven" devotes a lot of ink to them and their plight as well.

Even the hero of Big Love (a show created by two gay men, btw) is portrayed as a discarded victim of a fundamentalist sect's charismatic leader.

Anonymous said...

I think you obviously have to employ "who, whom" logic in this case. There's no getting around it.

Family law is based on social mores, not fundamental principles.

If polygamists gain a reasonable level of public acceptability, it won't be long before polygamist marriage is legalized.

jody said...

on another slight tangent, note the hostility liberals exude towards modern mormons, who are really pretty good citizens and the kinds of people you want in your nation, their peculiarities not withstanding. from a raw mathematical "hate facts" HBD perspective, as a group they are superior contributors to society from almost every metric, when compared to homosexuals.

contrast this with the adoration liberals pour on men who have sex with men, which in general basically contributes nothing to society long term, since they don't form nuclear families and reproduce. they do increase the STD transmission rate 10 fold, though.

steve, i think it would be an interesting thought experiment to imagine what the US would be like if we could magically transform all the homosexuals in the US into modern mormons. i've done some quick analysis and fact checking but it's too big of a topic for a thread post. of course since both groups are relatively small, homosexuals about 4% of the population and mormons about 2%, it won't make a night and day difference in what american is like. but these two groups could not be much more diametrically opposed from the HBD raw group-versus-group, hate facts perspective. it goes a lot further than the obvious comparisons, easily into richard florida territory and beyond.

jody said...

"Prof. Pizer actually has a point in that gay marriage is easier to integrate than polygamy."

almost no gay men want to marry. that runs completely counter to the way they want to behave. i believe in canada, in places were gays have been allowed to marry for a while, what the canadians have found is that about 10% to 15% of gay men marry. gays are already only 4% of the population, so integrating 15% of 4% would be rather easy indeed.

what this is actually about, as another poster has said, is normalizing homosexuality and ramming it down our throats, so that we can't object to literally anything some gay guy wants to subject us to.

we're not far at all from complete gay penetration (LOL) of the public school curriculum. it's guaranteed to happen, and only a matter of time. our kids will definitely be required to watch videos of men having sex with men, to learn about tops and bottoms and anal sex toys and methamphetamine "party and play" and men running trains on men and all that. i'm totally dead serious.

this WILL be a part of "sex education" and all kids will be required to take tests on it for a grade. how can it not be? it would be blatant discrimination by straights against gays to teach only about straight sex in public schools.

objection by anybody will be considered outright bigotry and hatred. almost a hate crime, and certainly a punishable offense. gays can defend america and fight for their country but they can't teach others about normal human sexuality?

ah, see that. what do you think that gays in the military thing was about? again, few gays want to serve. they serve at a much lower rate than the straight population, and they are again, only 4% of the population to begin with. the US military can easily, EASILY function with zero gays, ever.

what gay activists wanted, and what they got, was total cultural victory over the strongest remaining bastion of normal culture, the US military. once gays can die for their country, how can you possibly deny them anything else they want? LOL. and all it took was 1% of the US military being openly gay. probably only 10000 of the troops in a 1 million person volunteer military are gay, but in the culture wars, that's about all it takes.

Anonymous said...

"Prof. Pizer actually has a point in that gay marriage is easier to integrate than polygamy."


Ahh, but many of us have a point when we argue that polygamy can help remove welfare moms and kids from dependence on the taxpayers.

Some really rich bloke may like having around a bunch of lusty, sexy breeders, and if he's rich enough, he won't mind paying for them. That'll take them off the welfare rolls.

jody said...

"If you read the formal rulings of courts"

i've read the formal rulings of the courts on several controversial HBD related topics which we have discussed here, and they're often no different at all from what steve addresses here. this subject is the same. it's pure favored group versus unfavored group stuff. often the lawyers and judges and language of the laws do not even make an attempt to be intellectually honest or rigorous from a law perspective.

not only that, but sometimes what the judges say doesn't even make sense, like in the recent michigan decision to strike down a ban on affirmative action in the state. the judges are essentially nearly reduced to babbling pure bullshit, because they're trying to find some way, any way, that 2 + 2 does not equal 4. straightforward interpretation of very simple law leads to the wrong outcome from their perspective, so, mental gymnastics mode is engaged.

there's no intellecutally honest, law rigorous way for a court to rule against arizona sb 1070, yet two courts already have. the judges have to deliberately contradict themselves if they rule that the most important, most contentious language in law is not legal. especially, the first judge to rule on it sounded like a complete idiot. she couldn't even explain why she struck it down. she couldn't put into words ANY good reason!

i don't take these court cases very seriously anymore like i used to back when i assumed many of these judges were sagacious far beyond the common man's perspective. today it's naked politics half the time. liberals deliberately contradict themselves and go into mental gymnastics to rule why one thing is OK and another is not.

Anonymous said...

"think Steve has the who-whom calculation just right. Mostly, people support gay marriage and oppose Mormon sect polygamy because of their feelings about gays and Mormons."

I do too.


To confront the bias--no, the downright prejudice-- the polygamyphobia the Mormon gentleman and his partners face, I suggest the following:

1. Enlist the aid of just one HW moviemaker or one of the remaining tv soap opera producers to write a script that is sympathetic to their cause.

2. Find at least one popular HW or NY celebrity that will act as a sympathetic spokeperson.

If "sympathetic" doesn't cut it, if anti-polygamyphobes don't jump to his defense, go another route.

Find a HW celebrity, an articulate person who seems to know something about biology and anthropology and the natural desire of men to mate with more than one woman, and urge him to speak of how uncool, outdated, and priggish monogamy is.

He might even be able to find at least one feminist spokewoman who agrees that, yes, monogamy is very uncool, that that is why she has chosen to a have a child outside of wedlock, while she carries on her many affairs.

3.) Go on as many Colbert and Stewart shows as possible, and stress the hipness of polygamy.

4.) Go on shows like "Ellen" and on Oprah's new network and show the kids, the very well adjusted kids that are the product of polygamous marriage.

5.) Find a big city mayor or big state governor (no, not Arnie--he cheated by not being honest about it) who is on his way out and will testify to the sense that polygamy makes.

6.) Show interviews with some gay males who are married but who are in polygamous sexual unions w/in their marriage. Hey, they say it works for them.

7.) Do hundred, thousands of YouTubes. What kind? Hell, I don't know. Do some funny ones, some serious ones. Use good music.

8) Oh, yeah, music, yeah. Get some pop group or individual to write a song about how hip your way of life is.

There are all kinds of ways to normalize this thing. If you can normalize gay marriage, you can normalize anything if you try.

Anonymous said...

"Polygamy harms society; gay marriage does not."


1.) Many attractive black women can't find a mate because so many black men are in prison or are poor providers.

I suggest that some men of other races would love having more than one wife (assuming they have a lot of money) and polygamy would give these women a chance for marriage and having children with a father.

Also, you simply can't say that gay marriage does not harm society. It hasn't been around long enough to analyze its consequences.

Anonymous said...

Let's also not forget that there are women who are well off these days and would love having a couple or three men around. One, for intelligent discourse and companionship, one for doing manual labor around the house, both for sex.

Anonymous said...

"Prof. Pizer actually has a point in that gay marriage is easier to integrate than polygamy."


WAit until the first divorce proceedings for a gay couple who've verbally agreed to multi-sexual unions hits the courts.

It's bound to happen that some judge will break new legal grounds because of those verbal contracts and that legal ruling will, down the road, affect the law regarding heteros in their marriage.

I think the best argument I have ever read against gay marriage is that realistically speaking, because gay men do not have the same expectations/goals for their marriage that straights do for theirs, "gay marriage" and the characteristics of it will eventually define hetero marriage as well.

Anonymous said...

"we're not far at all from complete gay penetration (LOL) of the public school curriculum. it's guaranteed to happen, and only a matter of time. our kids will definitely be required to watch videos of men having sex with men, to learn about tops and bottoms and anal sex toys and methamphetamine "party and play" and men running trains on men and all that. i'm totally dead serious."

You've good reason to be dead serious. After all, Obama's School Czar, Kevin Jennings, wanted school texts to include an explanation of sexual practices such as fisting (as a perfectly "normal" practice, of course.)

http://biggovernment.com/jhoft/2009/12/07/fistgate-barack-obamas-safe-schools-czars-2000-conference-promoted-fisting-to-14-year-olds/

Maya said...

Prof Turley is absolutely right. The law shouldn't dictate the correct way to lead one's private life, as long as it's not violent and concerns those who are able to consent.

I've always supported gay marriage, and I support polygamy. Personally, I'd like to have a lasting legal relationship with one man, and I wouldn't appreciate someone else pushing his/her differing views on me with the force of law. I think it's reasonable to treat the gays and the polygamists with the same consideration I believe is owed to me.
Steve, the effect of polygamy on men is academically interesting, but irrelevant. In a free society, men and women can't be paired up by force.

Truth said...

"Couple that with the female disdain for Beta Males. Women really HATE HATE HATE Beta Males,"

Dude, do you EVER come up with any new material?

eh said...

I'd rather see polygamy legalized than gay marriage.

LBK said...

It is unlikely that the "extra" men would overthrow society, since a bunch of beta males would be not be able to organize a successful revolution. By definition, anyone capable of doing so would be an alpha, not a beta. A beta revolution is a contradiction of terms, like a convention of hermits.

The main weakness of polygamous cultures is that the rulers often have huge numbers of children, which leads to power struggles for succession. Suppose the sultan has 200 sons. Chances are the official heir (the oldest son) is mediocre. The chances are also good that among the other 200 sons there will be several that are above average in ability and ambition. So, they struggle for power, and the conflicts often destroy the dynasty and the state.

Saudi Arabia has a unique setup that so far has prevented this. The rule is that the kingship passes between brothers of one generation of the Al Saud family before descending to the next generation. After Ibn Saud died, his oldest son became king. When that king died, the next oldest son of Ibn Saud became king, and so on. Since Ibn Saud had 37 sons, the country has been ruled for a long time by them, resulting in a "gerontocracy" where some kings did not ascend the throne until they were in their 80s.

Bad Dude said...

Polygamy might not be bad, since not all men want to get married. Some are gay, some are players, some just like to keep life simple. As marriage becomes riskier and more burdensome for men due to the feminist-dominated anti-male legal system, fewer men will choose to marry. Polygamy would allow more women to marry the dwindling number of men foolish enough to get married.

Carl said...

In a free society, it does not make sense for the government to be involved in peoples personal lives. So lets abolish civil marriage altogether. The government should not recognize any kind of marriage. Let marriage be a purely religious institution, with no significance to the government.

Anonymous said...

Now married guys will have to marry their mistresses too.

Rohan Swee said...

Underachiever: Polygamy harms society; gay marriage does not. What more do you need?

Anybody having any success lately with conservative "harm to society" arguments? Hell, you can't even get people to admit that abetting fatherlessness is a really bad idea.

By modern lights, the only thing that can "harm society" is lack of diversi-tay, the legal system having been unmoored from any coherent cultural tradition, leaving nothing but a vacuous utilitarianism. (Exquisitely exemplified, as a matter of fact, right here by Maya at 7/12/11 11:13 PM.)

The judges who are shortly going to be legalizing polygamy (because of Muslims, not Mormons) won't even be reduced to "babbling pure bullshit", as jody so aptly described the recent Michigan AA decision. They can by this point make straightforward, logical precedent-supported arguments in its favor. (You don't have to babble pure bullshit, legal-logic-wise, once you're able to work from an already-laid-down foundation of pure babbling bullshit.)

Anonymous said...

Holmes wrote that the life of the law has not been logic but experience. Yet the cognitive trick that the law forces on us, if it is to have usefulness, is that it be seen as a logical structure. Hence conflicts are inevitable between new experiences brought about by historical change over time and rationally-based "principles".

I can see that many commenters here don't like gay marriage, and are welcome to that view. It is not hard to conclude, however, that Americans overall are shifting in their opinions about gay marriage, and that this is a real phenomenon. (Please spare me the argument, expounded upon my one anonymouser, that all you need is a simple PR campaign to change anyone's belief about anything--the logical conclusion of such thinking is total cynicism and the impossibility of self-rule).

So if opinions are changing with respect to gay marriage but not with respect to polygamy, what is a well-intentioned citizen, or jurist, to do? To paraphrase Keynes, when conditions change I make distinctions. What do you do?

This site is devoted to seeing things as they are, not as people want them to be. It typically welcomes all manner of explanations that are otherwise impolite to discuss, explanations involving genetics, Darwin or evolutionary psychology. So I'd think this place would be more likely to agree with recent thinking to the effect that the role of reason is argumentative (Mercier and Sperber) or that most decisions are after-the-fact rationalizations of emotional responses.

Looked at this way, the law presents a conundrum: to operate it, one must think of it in terms of principles, but as a practical matter it continually devises distinctions, in large part to fit the square peg of the law into the round hole of experience.

This does not mean there is no slippery slope problem--the need to consider law in terms of abstract principles gives those principles real force. But this is not a law blog so much as a social science one, and for iSteve readers to get all hot and bothered about the law to some extent puts the cart before the horse.

We seem to be headed toward a public acceptance of gay marriage but not (for now) polygamy. The law will have to deal with it and so, I suspect, will you.

Anonymous said...

"Some Mormon beliefs are pretty wacky. For example, Jesus lives on the planet Kolob and every Mormon who lives a righteous life will become a God of their own planet too."

I was raised Methodist. My question: the above differs in what substantive way from the Christian concept of heaven? Or hell? Or from reincarnation? Or from any other concept of the afterlife?

JSM said...

I support polygamy. Personally, I'd like to have a lasting legal relationship with one man, and I wouldn't appreciate someone else pushing his/her differing views on me with the force of law. I think it's reasonable to treat the gays and the polygamists with the same consideration I believe is owed to me."

You being okay with polygamy is EXACTLY going to gain you somebody pushing their differing views on you:

When polygamy is legalized and a hot redhead comes looking for new golddigging prospects and wants to marry your successful husband, and you get nothing to say about it, and that hot redhead's sprogs get a sizable chunk of YOUR kid's inheritance.

Ha ha ha. Joke's on you.

(At least today, with the sort-of assumption that marriage means the man will be faithful, and the act of dumping his wife for a younger version gets a man a modicum of social ostracization, you have SOME hope your kids will get all the provisioning of your successful husband. With polygamy, it's just institutionalizing infidelity.)
Stupid broad.

Anonymous said...

"I think it's reasonable to treat the gays and the polygamists with the same consideration I believe is owed to me."

A libertarian notion is always fine on the surface until you consider that we don't live where our neighbors' actions have no effect on us and our actions have no effect on them.

Sure, if we all lived in a sparsely populated territory in a sparsely populated nation, our actions would have little to no effect on others except our nuclear family. That's not the case.

My money from my labor is taken from me and mine against my will by an increasingly distant and powerful state and federal government (and local government, too) to pay for what are called social services to others. I am told those social services are necessary to their pursuit of happiness, and I am told they can't provide for themselves so it's only fair that and my fellow taxpayers must do it.

Thus, I am burdened by any social policy that contributes or actively promotes the sloth, the criminality, the unproductiveness of others and their children (who, not unexpectedly, become even more slothful and criminal and unproductive and bratty and entitled as those who produced them).

When a society can no longer see the social institutions that served them well in the past, when they throw out the baby with the bath water rather than trying to save the baby, it's doomed--and I don't want to have to pay the price of their idiocy.

Anonymous said...

"on another slight tangent, note the hostility liberals exude towards modern mormons, who are really pretty good citizens and the kinds of people you want in your nation, their peculiarities not withstanding. from a raw mathematical "hate facts" HBD perspective, as a group they are superior contributors to society from almost every metric, when compared to homosexuals."

So very true, Jody.
If my school had had more Mormon kids, I'd still be teaching. I had a number of Mormon kids, and I have to tell you how grounded they seemed. They were polite, studied hard, came to class prepared and were a delight on a personal level as well. I chalked that up to the fact that they had strong group structure that helped with the teen angst that hits during those years.

Anonymous said...

It's really simple:

The Homosexual Agenda will accelerate the destruction of the white race (via lower birth rates as homosexuality becomes normalized), so it's okay.

Polygamy, while problematic, won't accelerate any such destruction, so it's not okay.

Anonymous said...

Prof Turley is absolutely right. The law shouldn't dictate the correct way to lead one's private life, as long as it's not violent and concerns those who are able to consent

Why shouldn't it?

The trouble with you goofy libertarians is your habit of making these Grand Pronouncements as if they are some universal truth when all they are is your own irrational opinion.

I've always supported gay marriage, and I support polygamy. Personally, I'd like to have a lasting legal relationship with one man

And how do you imagine that such a thing would come to pass in a polygamous society?


the effect of polygamy on men is academically interesting, but irrelevant.

Dear God, you're stupid. Look to the history of all those societies which have (or still do in some cases) practice polygamy and then repeat that "irrelevant" crack.

Of all the many stupid ideas bringing down the West, the foremost has to be this fiction that everybody should be able to do what they want short of inflicting physical injury on another.

Anonymous said...

I can see that many commenters here don't like gay marriage, and are welcome to that view. It is not hard to conclude, however, that Americans overall are shifting in their opinions about gay marriage

I suppose it is not hard to "conclude" that if you ignore all the evidence against it. Here in the real world, gay marriage is advanced in the most cynical and underhanded ways possible. Whenever the people are given a chance to express their opinion gay marriage goes down to defeat.

Anonymous said...

If you read the formal rulings of courts, not just press reports and an occasional bombastic Scalia dissent, you'd see there is no way the gay marriage decisions can be used to allow polygamy.

Your knowledge of legal matters is laughable. There is more than enough in court precedent to permit a ruling in favor of polygamy, if the courts want to rule that way.

Court decisions are not based on precedent alone though. The judges rule the way they want to rule and use precedent as justification.

I suspect that not many judges want to declare polygamy a constitutional right - at present. So they won't. At present.

Jack Aubrey said...

"It is not hard to conclude, however, that Americans overall are shifting in their opinions about gay marriage, and that this is a real phenomenon."

Until gays win a statewide referendum on gay marriage (how many have they lost, like 30?) then your claim is all just theoretical. It wouldn't shock me if gay marriage winds up winning via referendum in the future, but it hasn't happened yet. They've lost in every single state, leftist ones included.


"a bunch of beta males would be not be able to organize a successful revolution. By definition, anyone capable of doing so would be an alpha, not a beta."

"Beta" is not synonymous with "passive," or, for that matter, "stupid." Most men in prison and jail are betas, not alphas. In sexual terms they are bottom-feeders. You wouldn't be the least bit attracted, phsyically or otherwise, to the women they're shagging while on the outside. And there are probably a lot of smart but sexually deprived men who'd be capable of organizing a "revolution."

Civil society relies on men having a reasonable chance of getting married and having progeny. IF the single women disappeared - assuming large numbers of women or men want polygamy - such illusions would evaporate for a lot of men.

SouthernAnonyia said...

"When polygamy is legalized and a hot redhead comes looking for new golddigging prospects and wants to marry your successful husband, and you get nothing to say about it, and that hot redhead's sprogs get a sizable chunk of YOUR kid's inheritance.

Ha ha ha. Joke's on you."- JSM

This is exactly why I don't support polygamy. It's not so much that I'm worried about my future husband doing this sort of thing, it's more that by the time my children grow up and polygamous behavior is normalized somewhat, that this scenario could potentially happen to a daughter of mine.


Are people thinking of the next generations when they throw in their support for polygamy and gay marriage? Most definitely not. I wouldn't want my future children getting involved with either mess.

SouthernAnonyia said...

"Polygamy, while problematic, won't accelerate any such destruction, so it's not okay."

Polygamy won't lower the overall birth-rate but it's just as harmful to society considering that if it were normalized a significant (even larger than currently) percentage of white men might not father any children at all. Are you okay with your sons potentially not having a fair shot at reproductive success because all the women are flocking to the wealthiest/most charismatic men?

Politics_Right on Twitter said...

As I just tweeted, gays said that the approval of same-sex marriage would "never" be used to argue for polygamy... Conservatives had it right all along. Gay marriage was the "camel's nose under the tent." Polygamy -- if allowed to stand -- may well speed the end of Western Civ., courtesy of the Mormons and Muslims. I can't understand why people needlessly complicate their lives? One wife (or one husband) is usually PLENTY to deal with.

Anonymous said...

"Women really HATE HATE HATE Beta Males"

So women's way of showing they hate beta males is to have lots of kids with them?

Female psychology is really confusing!

Eric said...

Ahh, but many of us have a point when we argue that polygamy can help remove welfare moms and kids from dependence on the taxpayers.

In practice that's not how it works. Rather than "Big Love"-style stable, productive families, polygamists tend to pump out hordes of children on the taxpayer dime. Why would official recognition of their status change anything?

Sword said...

LBK said...
It is unlikely that the "extra" men would overthrow society, since a bunch of beta males would be not be able to organize a successful revolution. By definition, anyone capable of doing so would be an alpha, not a beta. A beta revolution is a contradiction of terms, like a convention of hermits.
-------

2 points:
1. Even if the extra men are betas incapable of organizing rebellion, the alpha organizer does not have to one of them - the organizer(s) may well be foreign alphas who use the million-strong beta group as a tool to harm USA.
2. Even if the betas can not organize an overthrowal of the govt., they can still mess up a lot of stuff on a smaller scale. Remember - without families they have more free time, and less to lose. For starters, they could vote for even more antichild measures, since that would not harm their nonexistent kids.

Thousands of horny, young, strong, angry men with no one to answer to except themselves is not what I look forward to. Imagine the rape stats!

Anonymous said...

It is unlikely that the "extra" men would overthrow society, since a bunch of beta males would be not be able to organize a successful revolution. By definition, anyone capable of doing so would be an alpha, not a beta. A beta revolution is a contradiction of terms, like a convention of hermits.

Dude, you might want to read some history some time, particularly the history of the one-quarter of humanity that is described as "Han Chinese". The last thousand years of Chinese history is full of bloody dynastic rebellions (which killed tens of millions) that started among the huge numbers of men that were condemned to celibacy by Chinese polygyny.

Anonymous said...

We have sort of polygmay in that you can have as many girlfriends as you want and get them pregnant just as long as you don't marry them. You probably don't even have to support them. These people aren't even criticized in society. How may actors and athletes do this?

NOTA said...

Anon 7/13 9 am:

Mostly, you're taxed to pay for old folks and our gold-plated military. In dollar terms, at least, welfare to people who can't or won't provide for themselves is a small fraction of your tax bill. Sort-of like foreign aid, eliminating it entirely wouldn't really save all that much money, though in both cases it might be worth cutting for policy reasons.

And your argument seems to me to allow the state to intervene in every possible personal decision. Smoking? Overeating? Too much TV? Reading the wrong stuff? In every case, your choices affect me, and potentially affect my tax bill.

NOTA said...

Eric:

Seems to me the problem there isn't with the polygamy part of the equation, it's with the taxpayer's dime part of the equation.

Anonymous said...

a bunch of beta males would be not be able to organize a successful revolution. By definition, anyone capable of doing so would be an alpha, not a beta



Wonderful. This sort of definition is why terms like "alpha" and "beta" are so utterly useless. They mean whatever the speaker wants them to mean at any instant, and not a second longer.

Can everyone please shut the hell up about alphas and betas?

Anonymous said...

"Are you okay with your sons potentially not having a fair shot at reproductive success because all the women are flocking to the wealthiest/most charismatic men?"

Sometimes you people rush to extrapolate. The rest of the time you don't go far enough.

The US won't have polygamy without also allowing for polyandry. I don't think either type of plural marriage will be stable, especially once it involves people outside the Mormon and Muslim cultures. I'd predict that a few women with strong personalities will end up with small harems of beta males of various ages.

We may even get to the point that marriage is so complicated and unstable that only formal legal arrangements get recognized by the courts.

Anonymous said...

Ahh, but many of us have a point when we argue that polygamy can help remove welfare moms and kids from dependence on the taxpayers.

No, you're misreading the situation. Gay marriage and (if it comes) legal polygamy are signs of the collapse of marriage, not of a transition to some new, strong marriage norm.

To some degree, they push or (in the case of polygamy) would push the process of disintegration along a little faster.

But the end result is likely to be more rather than fewer single mothers.

Cennbeorc

Anonymous said...

While we're on the subject of polygamy... from an HBD point of view, shouldn't polygamy be a eugenic practice? And yet, where's the evidence for this in the Middle East and other polygamous regions?

Cennbeorc

Anonymous said...

"Ahh, but many of us have a point when we argue that polygamy can help remove welfare moms and kids from dependence on the taxpayers."

"No, you're misreading the situation. Gay marriage and (if it comes) legal polygamy are signs of the collapse of marriage, not of a transition to some new, strong marriage norm."

It was my attempt to show that polygamy made more sense than gay marriage.

I think both--polygamy, gay marriage--will have deleterious effects on marriage.

Elder Cunningham said...

While we're on the subject of polygamy... from an HBD point of view, shouldn't polygamy be a eugenic practice? And yet, where's the evidence for this in the Middle East and other polygamous regions?

Cennbeorc


Combined with first cousin marriage, this would select for the most selfish, ruthless and uncooperative blood-based tribes.

Relatively little rule of law could be established upon which great civilizations are built and progress depends upon.

Anonymous said...

No, Mormons are a branch of Christianity
Mormons are not Christian - they reject the trinity, the divinity of Christ, have their own prophet, and holy book which take precedence over the new Testament- its no more Christian than Islam, which also recognizes Christ as a great prophet *but not as great as Muhammad) ...and its founder had underage brides ... come to think of it is more like islam.... sad to say its the only sound culture/movement that is running a serious counter to the Jewish/liberal/Marxist dominant culture. ..

Christianity at this point is pretty weak an ineffective, and its cultural products tend to be sterile whilst the mormons seems to have an edginess (napoleon dynamite)

The Obvious Solution said...

"Women really HATE HATE HATE Beta Males"

Whiskey/EvilNeocon and everyone else here is missing the obvious solution here.

With polygamous marriage, there will an excess of unwed males. This can be balanced out by pairing the single beta near-men like Whiskey into gay marriages.

Problem solved, crises averted and civilization saved.

Anonymous said...

>If the definition of marriage is open, then why can't 3 or more people get married? Why can't a man marry his mother? Why can't a brother marry his sister?<

Anyone still laughing at the prediction of human-animal marriages?

How long before the campaign of sob stories begins? "I always loved Fido, in a special way...why can't society be more compassionate and understanding? Why is there such fear and hatred? Jesus is for love, not for hate." Etc.

Hate the Game said...

I'd predict that a few women with strong personalities will end up with small harems of beta males of various ages.

Is this what a feminist looks like?

Few woman, especially a highly motivated/successful ones, get turned on by one simpering beta much less a gaggle of them.

A hard driven woman may settle for a "nice" guy once past her prime (aka wild years) spent trying and failing to to snag the exciting guys. Nice guys usually make better providers, fathers and partners than hot jerks.

But why any woman would want a harem of betas makes no sense except in theories of inexperienced 19yr old lesbian feminists majoring in woman studies.

Anonymous said...

from an HBD point of view, shouldn't polygamy be a eugenic practice?

No. Why should it be?

Truth said...

"With polygamous marriage, there will an excess of unwed males. This can be balanced out by pairing the single beta near-men like Whiskey into gay marriages."

OK, that was my belly-laugh for the week.

The Obvious Solution said...

FYI, the US military has publicly admitted to considering developing a Gay Bomb.

No doubt they have done more research than they acknowledged. Here is a report this year about the
First Test of the Gay Bomb.

The Obvious Solution said...

Bad link in last post:

Here is the solution to polygamy creating too many single men, gay marriage normalization and getting Whiskey/EvilNeocon off his beta HATE HATE HATE bender:

FOX reports US tests Gay Bomb

Anonymous said...

"... why any woman would want a harem of betas makes no sense except in theories of inexperienced 19yr old lesbian feminists majoring in woman studies."

You obviously aren't familiar with hippy culture. I've seen this exact arrangement in the making more than a few times. Woman's beta steady bf or husband and his entourage of beta friends who live vicariously through his relationship and occasionally score a home cooked meal. The woman often tries to parent these guys/or build their self esteem so that they can get a better job then attract a mate.

It's just easier if they become jr husbands.

ben tillman said...

Steve, the effect of polygamy on men is academically interesting, but irrelevant. In a free society, men and women can't be paired up by force.

Who in the hell wants a free society? Is such a thing even possible? There have to be rules, and rules have to be enforced, for the good of the society.

ben tillman said...

As I just tweeted, gays said that the approval of same-sex marriage would "never" be used to argue for polygamy... Conservatives had it right all along. Gay marriage was the "camel's nose under the tent."

No, racialists had it right all along. Interracial marriage was the "camel's nose under the tent".

ben tillman said...

Besides the excess of single guys with no pussy, what are the downsides of legalizing polygamy?

Tribalism and the concomitant end of the "market" interactions discussed by Kevin MacDonald in What Makes Western Culture Unique?
. As MacDonald explains, Europeans "are groups with high levels of cooperation with strangers rather than with extended family members, and they are prone to market relations and individualism."

The capacity for this sort of cooperation produced a staggering array of positive externalities and public goods. When tribalism replaces cooperation with non-kin, those goods will disappear.

Anonymous said...

"No doubt they have done more research than they acknowledged. Here is a report this year about the
First Test of the Gay Bomb."

Thanks. That link was hilarious. Scanning the comments shows just how little a sense of humor libs have.

I say, if the Silly Boy Parades fits, wear it.

Anonymous said...

Most wealthy alpha males get married 2,3,4,5 times. And the ones that don't, usually have long term mistresses.

I've read that they can go after you for bigamy for that - supporting a second woman.

Svigor

Anonymous said...

Whis, I watched Big Love. It's about what you'd expect from a show about Mormon polygamy; the idealized middle class family is used as a cover to bash mainstream (creepy 50s) and fundie (creepy American Gothic dust bowl) Mormons. There is no sexiness to the cult leader, at all. None. And there are a couple of episodes dealing directly with lost boys, though of course the other side of that coin, the child brides, suck up most of the attention with a long-running subplot. Paxton's (not Pullman's) character mentions several times that he's a lost boy himself. Your theory predicts a full court press for polygamy (how better to dis' betas?) that just isn't there.

Is the crime calling it polygamy?

You're gonna love this; the crime is supporting multiple women. Yep, I've heard of at least one case where they went after a guy for bigamy for supporting a mistress.

(I don't expect to see Muslims or fundamentalist Mormons doing this anytime soon, though.)

I expect just that. Sperm-washing isn't that big a hurdle.

Polygamy harms society; gay marriage does not. What more do you need?

"Indeed. Open the borders, married people aren't producing enough kids!"

Are these "sister wives" actual sisters? That's the kind of thing I find interesting, but nobody else seems to wonder about.

I don't know about any particular "sister wives," but no, "sister wife" just means "fellow wife." It's like an in-law title.

I also predicted that within a decade, and probably much sooner, they'd be calling anyone agin' it bigots and some-kind-of-phobes, and making MLK and Civil Rights analogies with straight faces.

I believe they did that in the first episode of Big Love, what? Six years ago? But they it was a toss-away line and they didn't make any hay out of it on the show, obviously.

there's no intellectually honest defense against this avaliable for the liberals, i'm afraid. the polygamists are totally correct on this topic. so it's gonna just be one group's opinion versus another.

There's one; marriage is between two, and only two, consenting adults. But they did away with one essential characteristic of marriage (one man, one woman), so there's no good reason to rule out throwing out another. And besides, polygamists have an answer for that, too: "my marriage is just two consenting adults! And so are my other two marriages!" And as you say, there's infinitely more precedent for polygamy. It's written into the Bible for God's sake. Religious freedom alone is enough, now that Homosexuals have blazed the trail.

In a free society, it does not make sense for the government to be involved in peoples personal lives. So lets abolish civil marriage altogether. The government should not recognize any kind of marriage. Let marriage be a purely religious institution, with no significance to the government.

It took a while, but Carl finally mentioned something close to my thinking. Trouble is, we currently incentivize real marriage because married people produce children, and society needs new taxpayers.

By modern lights, the only thing that can "harm society" is lack of diversi-tay

Sounds about right.

(Please spare me the argument that all you need is a simple PR campaign to change anyone's belief about anything--the logical conclusion of such thinking is total cynicism and the impossibility of self-rule).

Why would we spare you the truth?

Svigor

NOTA said...

So clearly, the bigamist just needs a child support judgment against him from wife #2. Then, his supporting her is required by law. (Though I wouldn't put it past a prosecutor or judge to put someone in jail for something he was required to do.)

Anonymous said...

from an HBD point of view, shouldn't polygamy be a eugenic practice?

"No. Why should it be?"

Because the richer a man is, the more wives (and therefore children) he's likely to have. Even in totally screwed-up countries, an ability to get rich is likely to correlate with some positive characteristics like intelligence, self-control, etc. Meanwhile, losers who can't make a decent living are less likely to reproduce.

Another advantage might be that, under polygamy large fortunes will tend to be dispersed among large numbers of heirs. Of course, customs like cousin marriage and primogeniture may diminish this factor.

However, my point is that despite these theoretical advantages, no race of supermen has yet arisen in the polygamous regions of the world.

Cennbeorc

Anonymous said...

http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=228736

The whole notion of monogamy is not an essentially Jewish one, Sopher stressed. “This [polygamy] is very acceptable in our religion, it’s religious coercion from the establishment under the influence of Catholicism that prevents about 15 percent of women in their fertile age from marrying,” he said.

“It’s cruel. And the Jewish nation is harmed by it. We think national fertility could rise by at least 10%. This is national discrimination, where the state turns a blind eye to Beduin, who freely take more wives. If Jews do, they are thrown into prison. And if a law is implemented in a discriminatory manner, it doesn’t have to be heeded,” he said.


Svigor

Anonymous said...

Someone who approves of the slippery slope to polygamy, but says it should be kept hush-hush to avoid rousing the masses.

Anonymous said...

"Polygamy harms society; gay marriage does not."

If that's the logic, let's outlaw sodomy(a good way to spread disease), divorce(bad for children), premarital sex(teen pregnancy), adultery(ruined marriages), etc.

Btw, 'gay marriage' does harm to society, much more than polygamy ever could. Marriage is the fundamental core of society. Degrading it by associating it with gay sex and lifestyle is ugly indeed. It is like elevating bazooka comix to the level of Mona Lisa.
Suppose we made witch-doctor the equivalent of real doctors. Real doctors will continue to ply their trade but what does it do to the whole meaning of rational modern medicine?
If we equate an A with a C, an A student may continue to excel but what is the worth of the grade A when it's handed out to C students?
Gay marriage equates F with A in the realm of sexual moarlity.