Quote:
Originally Posted by KSig RC
I guess I'll just take another step beyond Kevin's point ... historically, the two main legal reasons for outlawing polygamy have been:
1 - The high incidence of multiple marriages and marrying extremely young women, along with the attendant pressures to marry; and
2 - The difficulty of creating a legal accord between more than two people in the same sense of marriage.
Additionally:
-The Christian definition of "marriage" as one man and one woman.
So considering that we have considerably more resources to protect children, and we are in a position to open legal definitions of marriage across the board ... is it time to rethink polygamy?
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I respect that the legal issues might be beyond complex to work out, but I'd rather appreciate being able to be somehow legally recognized as having a stake in my relationships. That said, simply the decriminalization of both adultery and polygamy would be fine. They rarely are able to arrest FLDS polygamists for polygamy anyway, but instead for welfare fraud or child abuse.
Both of those are still illegal, child abuse in particular. Since manipulation and abuse occur in monogamous and heterosexual relationships it's hard to lay the blame at the feet of polygamy even if that is its historical existence in the US.
I'm not pro religious fundies, but the antipolygamy law was primarily an anti-LDS law. As much as they're on my shitlist and I think their religioun is, um, out there, that's not a really good reason to target them. Child abuse is though, and that should be prosecuted.
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