Prop 8 is to get a ruling today

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

This one is the easy one - we have nearly 200 years' worth of rulings that there is a rational basis for banning polygamy and communal marriages, mostly based on the potential for abuse and the difficulty of legally sanctioning (and enforcing) those contracts (for example, how can we be sure that the first wife is "OK" with the second marriage, free of coercion?). Now, if things have changed enough that polygamy will equal something other than "one man, many wives, starting from age 14" then I'd be for it, presuming the contractual difficulties could be sorted out - after all, what do I care, and once we've eliminated that harm that is the rational basis for the ban, who is getting hurt?

Close relatives is dicier, but rooted in science - in many places, first cousins are fine, for example.

Either way though, "slippery slope" is a terrible reason to fight something, particularly when your worst-case scenario for falling down the slope is brothers/sisters or bigamy - I'm not exactly sure those are apocalyptic consequences.

Since it's my cause du jour, I want to make a distinction between religious polygamy and other forms of consensually non-monogamous relationships. The latter is entirely different from the former.