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[Polygamy] Will it legally stand or fall before the charter
Posts
See, as I understand it, the idea is that legalizing will just increase the instances of abuse happen. And yet, I don't really know that there's a precedence for that belief.
If anything there's more reason to believe it will decrease, given the greater scrutiny and light put on more legitimate models of marriage of which polygamy would be one, keeping the eye of law on the marriages proper, rather than blanket condemnation.
I mean, I think we've concluded rather conclusively that legalization of marijuana wouldn't result in some wild increase of use, while it would certainly result in a decrease of real crimes surrounding it. that is, counting more than just the obvious drop (to zero) in crimes of possession.
I'm not sure how it's used as a prosecution tool right now. I'm not sure if, in places where polygamy is most common, there are firm policies in place about enforcing that law. And I'm not sure what the actual punishments are, and whether they are an actual deterrant.
Could part of the problem be because the people actually talking about polygamy in any serious fashion are, for the most part, the religious nutjobs? As you're familiar with, most of society doesn't have a very good understanding of what a healthy polygamist is, let alone the fact that they can exist outside of the religious nutjobs. I'd have to wonder, if this kind of healthy polygamy were better understood - and accepted - by society, what kind of impact would that have on the nutjob side of things?
Edit - Yeah, I pretty much just restated (poorly) what JK pointed out.
If polygamy is legalized perhaps then people wouldn't have to live in isolated communes away from civilization and thus abusive situations will be noticed and reported?
I'm pretty sure that this is my stance on the issue.
I dunno. There's kind of a chicken-and-egg issue with a lot of statistically unusual sexual habits. Labeling, stigma, taboos force things underground and when you force things underground you get a higher possibility of bad shit happening. So then you have to figure out if the bad shit was due to it being underground or if it's just inherent to the activity. NAMBLA would certainly like to argue that the Platonic form of pederasty is closer to homosexuality than it is to rape, for instance, and that the current laws against it are analogous to mid-20th-century anti-sodomy laws, but divorcing a sexual activity from the cultural context is pretty close to impossible. Whether we err on too much enforcement or too little somebody gets hurt so we have to take conservative steps forward and hope that we don't look too brutish in 20/20 hindsight.
So what stance are you taking here on the problems of polygamy?
Or are you just waiting for us to link you a news article or something before you'll believe it's true?
We're not discussing whether it's legal to have open relationships, or engage in polyamory. People can legally do that to their hearts' contents.
What we're discussing is granting the existing legal arrangement known as "marriage" to groups of people larger than two. Honestly, I'm not sure of a single good reason for allowing this outside of possibly hospital visitation rights and related issues. You want to arrange contracts allowing for ownership of possessions and transferral on death and the like? Fine, custom-build your own. I can't even imagine what sort of fucked-up one-size-fits-all brand of property transferal rights you'd cobble together to allow for an arbitrary number of spouses. It'd pretty much have to be done case-to-case, anyway.
Health benefits? Yeah, clearly there's no problem at all with forcing a company to provide benefits for Bob Mormon's thirty wives.
Really, someone give me an advantage outside of "free love olol".
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
Religious cults have plenty of reasons to isolate themselves socially. Legalizing polygamy might bring some such communities out in the open, but certainly not all.
I'm arguing for it (as in it should be legal), but in the process hoping to find some information against it, to be honest.
I'm pretty sure that was a rhetorical affirmation.
Edit: Nevermind, seems like it wasn't.
That has nothing to do with the law today. Bigamy laws are almost never enforced, except in situations where abuse is reported. People know that polygamy's going on in the shootoff LSD sects, and they could have tried to go in at any time and shut them down, but they didn't.
The real problem with polygamy is that in any society where it is actually practiced on a large scale, it's always justified by the fact that women are viewed submissive to men, and as property to be bought and sold. Legalizing it would only give tacit approval of that notion.
I mean outside of a legal context, more of a social one. If, as part of a comprehensive sex ed program, kids were taught about polyamory along side homosexuality, how much of an impact would that have on cases of polygamists moving away from society in order to feel comfortable with their own lives? Wouldn't that help to remove some of the stigma associated?
I can't remember who said it before, but if the polygamists stopped living out in isolated communes, cases of abuse could (potentially) be easier to spot and stop.
Hm yes, this and your last post are legitimate thought foodstuffs.
I restate that I prefer to think in ideals most of the time, and hold some noble belief in erring on the side of those ideas, but I'd also much prefer, truly, to be pragmatic about the issue.
So yeah, I don't know.
Wouldn't that imply that the problem is within religious communities instead of polygamy and we could expect the same behavior in those closed societies without regard of the actual word of law?
Actually, I think this needs further clarification.
I'm not totally sure, but I think that some anti-polygamy laws, at least in the US, don't just make it illegal to obtain multiple marriage licenses, but also illegal to call yourself 'married' and act as though you're married with multiple partners. Some states recognize common-law marriages, so you don't necessarily need a license to be legally married - and allowing people to essentially exercise common-law marriages with multiple partners would allow them to exercise their legal rights in all of their concurrent marriages whenever it was convenient for them.
Plus I think we can be pretty certain that whatever form of poly relationship was used as a template for state recognition, it would not be of the form "One old white guy and his thirty psychologically browbeaten wives". The religious nutjobs would still be shut out, so they'd probably continue to isolate themselves.
On top of that (and I don't have the knowledge in this area to back it up) I would think that a degree of isolation is necessary to maintain social control of many people at once, which seems like it would be a prerequisite to constructing this particular type of "marriage".
Of course not, for some of the groups. I'm just curious what impact it would have on the groups who live separately because of polygamy laws.
And damn if I didn't wish we had more data on this.
chicken meet egg meet chicken meet egg...
If it's a fact, cite it, please.
I'm tired of speculating.
From the LA Times
The reason these people live in isolated communities (and I'm talking about FLDS since nobody has offered up an example of a polygamous community that lives as separated from society as those people) is because they know what they're doing is abuse, and they know that their women who find out about the real world want nothing to do with FLDS polygamist crap.
Bottom line is, I haven't seen any evidence yet of any polygamist communities or relationships (beyond a few individual stories) where the situation isn't men domineering women.
Hmmm.... interesting.
I think the idea of common-law marriages is kind of silly. If you've lived together for ten years and haven't bothered to get "married", I fail to see why we should just decide you are anyway. You wanna be married, get married. You don't wanna get married, hey, guess what, you're not.
Clarifying that would eliminate most of the problem, it seems, though I'm hazy on what's meant by "acting like you're married." Hell, my daughter does that with her stuffed puppy. I trust she's not a felon. I think you should be allowed to call yourself whatever you please and act however you please, provided you're not using your pretend status to illegally acquire benefits not granted to you.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
Still reading through the article (thank you for posting it), but I have a question on this section in particular. If these women were single, would their births be paid for anyway? I'm not sure what relevance this has to polygamy. I'm not saying it has none - it might - I just can't see the connection.
I explained this a while back - there was a big scandal a while back in BC history where the provincial authorities wrongfully persecuted a small religious sect. Because of that (and the ensuing backlash) they're a little gunshy when it comes to people breaking the law in the name of religion.
Edit: More info on the Bountiful folks.
That's because I'm hazy on it, too. Just living with somebody for a long time doesn't make you married to them, otherwise I'd be married to my cat. There are other criteria too and I'm not well-schooled enough on this subject.
You charge what you can prove. If you can't prove that a man married any of his wives when they were underage, but you can prove multiple marriages, that's what you charge.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure the fact that half these sects marry girls off at eleven will still keep them nice and deeply underground. Especially when they have kids at twelve, making sure they have to stay underground (as little things like birth certificates can be, you know, used as evidence in a criminal trial).
EDIT: This was a big issue in the case in TX, IIRC, because a lot of the "wives" didn't have birth certificates, nor did their children. These sects aren't great about filing paperwork with the state, and for good reason. Birth certificates can show than Jane is 18, and thus she had her 3-year-old child at 15, and then a paternity test can show that the father was 50, thus proving a case for stat-rape. So instead they're all largely anonymous as far as the government's concerned. Legalizing polygamy won't change this.
States that have common law marriage usually require things like holding yourself out to the public as married in any manner of ways, including living together, going by the other person's name, buying property together, etc etc
Think of it like this:
Polygamists marry multiple women, and are expected to support their wives and children from all of their marriages financially.
Maybe this flies when you're a Saudi tribal leader and women don't have rights, but your average polygamist can't pay for all the children and wives that the their beliefs say they should have.
Tremendous rates of welfare, tax fraud, and nonsupport of children and spouses ensues, and creates a degeneracy spiral as many male children are abandoned in order to allow the polygamy to perpetuate. It's simply unhealthy for modern western society.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygamy_in_North_America#Polygamy_today
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
1. That article doesn't include all the details of the prosecution, I'm sure
2. Common law marriage is state by state so some states may have different factors. Looking it up in the Utah statute would give you more information
Sort of like exploring the mating habits of furries.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
I'm not sure I agree with the idea of prosecuting purely because they have multiple partners. If there are marriage licenses between each, ok, prosecute since that's illegal. If you can prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that one or more of the parties involved were married before the age of 18 (or whatever the age of consent for marriage is in the state in question), go ahead. If there is child abuse, neglect, etc., lock 'em up.
But just because someone's living with more than one sexual partner doesn't make them nutjobs.
I bet somebody somewhere has common-law married their cat.
Don't grab the tail unless they specifically ask for that.