Wow, this thread took off today.

Elwed:

I shall take this:

One problem....is that Consi argues like a German

as the ultimate compliment coming from you.

With regards to:

I don’t believe I am confused about this.

I’ve never seen you confused in your writing.  That holds true here.

Neon:

Anyway, Consi,...why don’t you take a moment and tell everyone here why government should be in charge of deciding what constitutes a legitimate marriage despite the (clear to me, anyway)words of the First Amendment.

As a point of interest for me, I would like to know what portion of the First Amendment you believe expressly precludes government from deciding the conditions for what consitutes a marriage amongst its citiznery?

That aside, every society has to organize itself.  Typically, even from the earliest of times, man has orgainzed around the familial unit.  Defining what constitutes the familial unit defines each society. 

Why not clans?  Why not 2 wives, 3 wives, 4 husbands?  Well, let’s look at the suggestion of clans that got OB all excited.  Specifically, let’s look at some of the issues that may arise.

For my example I’m going to take some liberties with zilch, because he isn’t here.

Now, zilch, he fancies himself as an attractive chap.  And for the sake of this example, let’s say that he is a looker.  The women and the men love him.  zilch the Stud, puts together his little clan and in it, he has 8 wives and 2 male wives.  (As a disclaimer, I don’t know if zilch does, did, or will ever swing that way, but for purposes of this discussion, he did, does, and will).  zilch’s wives are:  Bambi, Candi, Jasmine, Chastity, Porsche, Bunny, Jami, and Cherry.  His male wives are: Bruno and Tex.  zilch is blessed with offspring, 10 in all.  zilch’s children are: Johnny, Jimmy, Joey, Jacob, Jordan, Jamie, Julie, Janice, Jezebel, and PZ (in honor of zilch’s hero PZ Meyers). 

For 17 years the clan is happy as can be.  Then trouble hits River City.  Bambi, Bunny and Bruno, all file separately for divorce.  The question now arises as to how to divide the familial assets.  zilch really just kept Bruno around as eye candy and Bruno has done nothing in the way of work.

Bruno seeks full custody of 4 of the kids, none of which he biologically fathered, and partial custody of the rest. Bambi requests full custody of her kids, and Jasmine’s too, and partial custody of the rest.  Bunny wants to sever her parental rights to her children and forget this portion of her life.  zilch and (the remaining) Co. file for full custody of all the kids.

Chastity’s child, Jamie, has had problems in school.  Chastity wishes to home school Jamie.  zilch is against home schooling.  The rest of the wives and Tex are split on what is best for the child, including a split amongst those in favor of public schooling on what public school Jamie should attend.

Jordan is Cherry’s child.  Jordan has developed medical problems that require blood transfusions.  zilch and Cherry want the child to receive a blood transfusion.  Tex, as a result of his religion, is adamantly opposed to blood transfusions.  He seeks to enjoin zilch and Co. from allowing any blood transfusions on little Jordan.

In the meantime, zilch wants to liquidate the family compound.  That property was acquired after the big all day wedding ceremony in which he married all parties at the same time. The real estate agent insists that the listing agreement must be signed by all the parties.

And then there is Porsche.  Porsche ran a business selling Jesus rugs on e-bay.  The company was never incorporated.  The company has gone bankrupt.  Porsche has filed for bankruptcy, but the company debts far exceed any assets.

Maybe I’m overly concerned about what might happen.  That said, I don’t see the good outweighing the bad if we were to attempt to sort through the problems above.

I have to agree with Consi here.

I’ve got nothing against you marrying multiple people, personally. Just like I don’t have a problem without you driving without insurance. The more partners you take on, the more of your resources must be divided. There is a potential risk to the welfare of others, that may or may not depend on the number of partners. As Consi points out with his hypothetical, things can get hairy. IF polygamy is comparable to car insurance, there might by good reason to make monogamy mandatory. That’s a big if, though. At least for now.

I knew a guy by the name of Zamil. Well-paid chef. Had three (four?) “wives”.. he had to devote time to each of them seperately because he couldn’t get them to get along. Too stiff competition for his time. So he divvied his money amongst the likes of them all. Last I had contact with him, he was still happy with the arrangement after 10 years. He rarely had much money to spend on himself, except if you consider the finances devoted to his brides, who in turn supported him in other ways.

As Consi points out with his hypothetical, things can get hairy.

Wait… you mean things might get ugly in a divorce??  Really?

Divorce court has a pretty long list of things that are wrong with it, the big one being how custody cases are settled, but that is a separate argument.  I’m not about to refuse someone a contract based on how bad things get IF it falls apart.  You might as well say no one should get married because they might get divorced, and divorces can get UGLY.  We already have a problem when two people stay together because of what they fear will happen to the children.  That potentially compounds the problem.  Do we make them separate because they can’t stand each other and it might lead to abuse or do we make them stay together to provide stability for the children?  Neither.  We let them choose.

Just because something causes a problem doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be allowed to do it.  A lot of our freedoms would be revoked if we thought that way.

Consigliere:

Total lurk post here.  But your argument against polygamy makes no sense to me.  Are polygamists somehow naturally predisposed to soap-opera drama and the inevitable lawsuits that follow?  On a grand scale, yes; people DO fight, couples DO break up, children DO get fucked.  But the blame there lies on the whole of humanity, not merely the portion whom you choose to poke at with your moral majority BS.  Here’s an example, near and dear to my heart; my grandmother.  Every one of her 10 children is a confirmed roman catholic.  And yet, four of them have been divorced.  Six of them are problem drinkers, and at least five are addicted to nicotine.  Oh noes, catholicism should be fucking ABOLISHED!

And that’s a true story.  Just think about the kind of bullshit I could make up about a group of people I don’t respect.  The way you did.

Consi: Maybe I’m overly concerned about what might happen. That said, I don’t see the good outweighing the bad if we were to attempt to sort through the problems above.

Overly concerned? Over active imagination more like it.
Cons, ya gotta tell me ... do you write scripts for soap operas full-time or in your spare time?
Shit you’re good.
I was trying to come up with something even more preposterous but there’s nothing I could think of to top it.
I’m not saying that if the marriage laws weren’t discriminatory, such a thing wouldn’t or couldn’t happen but the way you make it sound, it’s something that could be happening daily or weekly; as if it would be the norm.
Let’s face it, if something like that did happen they could sell their story for a motza; gossip addicted, sexually repressed Americans would lap it up … it’d become a larger grossing movie than Da Vinci Code.
May I respectfully suggest that for something like your example to actualise there’d have to be some pretty stupid people about.
I must lead a sheltered life; I don’t know anyone that stupid.
I hate to say it but I’d suggest there’d be more murderers about than the type of wankers you are holding up as examples of inanity.

I knew a guy by the name of Zamil. Well-paid chef. Had three (four?) “wives�?.. he had to devote time to each of them seperately because he couldn’t get them to get along.

There was a spcial on polygamous relationships recently, and I recall the poor husband saying something in the line of:  “Everybody thinks this would be a lot of fun for the husband, but it isn’t. You think life is tough when one wife is mad at you, try it with four mad at you at once!”

Seriously though—the “polygamy will be next” is a really weak argument against gay marriage.

Consi, first: damn, you are funny. 

Not sure if you are going this way, but it would be correct to say that the multiplier of divorce-proceeding complexity is not the number of participants but maybe the square of the number of participants.  But that is a better argument for pre-nuptual agreements than it is against government forbidding exceptional people from having exceptional living arrangements.

Life is simplest when you live alone. Why not require that?

Typo correction - it should read:

But that is a better argument for pre-nuptual agreements than it is for government forbidding exceptional people from having exceptional living arrangements.

Oops.

Consi, you can take that any way you want to

To quote from Georg Herwegh, Das Reden nimmt kein End (1848), on the (first) German Democratic Republic:

Zu Frankfurt an dem Main -
So schlag der Teufel drein!
Es steht die Welt in Flammen,
Sie schwatzen noch zusammen,
Wie lange soll das dauern?
Dem König Schach, ihr Bauern!
Dein Parla - Parla – Parlament,
O, Volk, mach ihm ein End!

I think this debate suffers from a definitional problem. Marriage is an umbrella term used to describe a lot of things, just as marriage probably has taken many different forms throughout human history.

The two most obvious meanings of marriage are a contract spelling out property ownership (often including women and offspring, with rather nasty implications) and a component of a child-rearing environment.

Clearly, you can dice and slice things in many different ways. You don’t have to be married to have sex, you don’t have to be married to procreate, you don’t have to married to own property, you don’t have to be married to be part of a family (another fuzzy term), you don’t have to be married to be a caregiver, and so on.

I don’t believe there is a single best form of marriage. Traditionally in the U.S., society awards benefits to married couples, but does not punish the unwed. As opposed to that, the public debate seems to arrive at a consensus that if the couple happens to be the same sex, not only can’t they receive benefits, they must be explicitely punished by constitutional amendmends. That just ain’t right.

The stupid thing about marriage is that if it were just a legal contract, we probably wouldn’t be having this argument.  If the whole religious wedding thing had absolutely nothing to do with legally joining incomes, taxes, property and such, then possibly there wouldn’t be such a fight over all that stuff when and if the marriage falls apart.  Look… If you have decided that you love someone enough to spend the rest of your life with them, then what the hell does the legality of it mean to you?  Sure, the legal arrangement of marriage solves some things (especially when there are kids involved) but it isn’t necessary.  The problem comes when you mix the legal and emotional committments.  Like people who can’t separate sex and love, some can’t separate finances and love.  That’s how you get ugly divorces.  Take the religion out of it and what you have is a legal contract.  If the religious people insist that the wedding MUST go hand in hand with the legal contract, then what does that say about the ‘sanctity’ of marriage?  The wedding is for God to bless the union.  The marriage is for the state to recognize it.  If one can’t exist without the other, then we have to admit that God is a lawyer and the state exists in service to the church, and if you’re going to say that.... I’m outta here.  That is not what I signed on for and it isn’t what our leaders have been telling us since I was born, and it certainly isn’t what they were thinking when they created this nation.

And if you DO separate the religion and the marriage, then you’ve just got domestic partnership.  You’ve got no reason to prohibit gays from entering into it or more than one man or woman.  There’s no detriment to the state in any case until and unless there’s a split at some point AND a fight over it.  Religions can bless whatever sorts of unions they want and condemn others, make any sort of wedding ceremony they want to.

In all fairness to Consi, his example isn’t far-fetched or at least it’s not beyond the realm of possibility if poly-marriages were allowed.

That said the fact that the breakup of such relationships would be complicated and messy isn’t necessarily a valid reason not to allow them. It also doesn’t mean the laws related to marriage contracts couldn’t be modified to take into account polygamy marriages. Had polygamy been the norm from the beginning I’m sure the laws surrounding the breakup of such relationships would already be in existence.

In all fairness to Consi, his example isn’t far-fetched or at least it’s not beyond the realm of possibility if poly-marriages were allowed.

That said the fact that the breakup of such relationships would be complicated and messy isn’t necessarily a valid reason not to allow them. It also doesn’t mean the laws related to marriage contracts couldn’t be modified to take into account polygamy marriages. Had polygamy been the norm from the beginning I’m sure the laws surrounding the breakup of such relationships would already be in existence.

I agree 100%.  The problem with Consi is that he frequently is right, but he brings up examples of how society is screwed up, but instead of providing a solution to the particular problem, he uses it as an argument for or against something else.  He’s like Microsoft marketing: 100% right and 100% beside the point.

As you say, the fact that divorce court’s slinky is kinked is NO reason for or against marriage of ANY sort except the particular sort that causes messy divorce: STUPID PEOPLE, but if you did that, then we would have psych tests for marriage, because let’s face it, we all know someone who probably shouldn’t have made their vows.

Yes, I DID have my coffee first this time

LJ:

...do you write scripts for soap operas full-time or in your spare time?

Neither. I do think most soap opera chicks are hot.  Does that count for anything?

DF:

But that is a better argument for pre-nuptual agreements than it is for government forbidding exceptional people from having exceptional living arrangements.

Sure, if you ignore the issues the children will face.

Elwed:  I think I’ve been tagged and don’t even know it.  I want a translation.

I think this debate suffers from a definitional problem.

So do the states that are constitutionally defining marriage.

SB:

As you say, the fact that divorce court’s slinky is kinked....

Good Lord, I thought I was the only one whose brain has been warped by ovrcrowding from useless songs from commercials. 

“What walks down stairs, alone or in pairs, and makes a slinkity sound? A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing! Everyone knows it’s Slinky. It’s Slinky, it’s Slinky, it’s fun, it’s a wonderful toy. It’s Slinky, it’s Slinky, it’s fun, it’s a wonderful toy. It’s fun for a girl or a boy.”

Sure, if you ignore the issues the children will face.

I am not ignoring those issues - it’s one of many issues to be folded into a prenuptual agreement. 

If you looked at the record of heterosexual, monogamous marriages in raising children, you could make an argument from adverse consequences against it.  It would be no more valid than yours.  You have a pretty rosy view of the norm, and a pretty high anxiety level about different arrangements.

Consi, fair enough.

I’ll spare you the history lesson, which you dig up without too much trouble. In a nutshell, what is today known as Germany had a revolution back in 1848, resulting in a republic that soon fell.

The parliament was located in Frankfurt a.M. and while the counter-revolution raged across the country, the parliamentarians were busy debating, perhaps quite literally while their parliament burned down on top of them. The sentiment expressed by the poem amounts “stop talking and do something, for crying out loud - good riddance, otherwise”.

Actually, what seems to have endangered marriage the MOST was that radical, deconstructing move to allow women to own PROPERTY.  Consi, I’ll bet if you roll that back you’ll do more to “preserve marriage as an institution” than any other single thing.

Just for the fun of it, I would point out that there is some interesting reseach that compares polygamous and monogamous marriages—they looked at a nice-sized sample of Bedoin-Arabs and found significantly higher rates of marital distress, lower life functioning, and higher psychological distress in the polygamous relationships. There’s fuel for you, Consigliere.

However, if the issue all boils down to “What about the children?”, then no one should marry whatsoever—simple unemotional parings for procreation should be the rule. 

It seems likely that Consig will cite the data on the consequences of divorce, so before he does so, I’ll point out that there is strong data to suggest that even controlling for parental warmth and caring, the strongest predictor of childhood distress is the parents’ interparental withdrawl and hostility. (Mother’s distress and hostility is particularly problematic.)

A number of excellent studies demonstrate that it is parental conflict and hostility toward one another that are the most problematic. (Kids from intact distressed homes look about the same as kids from divorced homes—the evidence suggest that the hostility mediates a relationship between poor outcome and divorce.)

So, if you really want to protect kids, come up with some way to keep couples from hostility. (Lots of luck!)

I have a hunch that sampling of Bedoin-Arabs was an extreme imbalance of power between women and men, tilted in favor of men.  That’s probably a bigger factor than the exact complexities.

Back to what GM said.

Shelley, I’d bet you that women in polyandrous relationships would have a much lower rate of marital distress.  Would I love to have a stable of husbands to support me in the style to which I would like to become accustomed?  You betcha. 

But the whole marriage thing has ALWAYS been about men’s desire to control the procreating activities of women.  That ain’t gonna change any time soon.

And all this time I thought marriage was about having someone around to tell the men what to do and when to do it.  Without wives, men are useless, having neither motivation nor direction.  At least, that’s what my wife tells me.

p.s.Just kidding, she doesn’t usually actually say it.

I have a hunch that sampling of Bedoin-Arabs was an extreme imbalance of power between women and men, tilted in favor of men.  That’s probably a bigger factor than the exact complexities.

I don’t know if this is relevent, but similar studies done in southern Africa showed a higher likelihood of adultery in a polygynous marriage than in a monogamous one.  I guess there are some things you can never get enough of.

I have a hunch that sampling of Bedoin-Arabs was an extreme imbalance of power between women and men, tilted in favor of men.  That’s probably a bigger factor than the exact complexities.

Unlikely, DoF—Remember that the marriages sampled were ALL Bedoin-Arab. Consequently, while it is likely an extreme power difference exists in the population, it exists in both the married-polygamous and the married-monogamous samples. Consequently, differences cannot be attributed to extreme power imbalances. (That’s one of the reasons the study is interesting—it was able to control for number of things including power imbalance, religion, and a number of cultural factors.)

Shelley, I’d bet you that women in polyandrous relationships would have a much lower rate of marital distress.  Would I love to have a stable of husbands to support me in the style to which I would like to become accustomed?  You betcha. 

it is likely an extreme power difference exists in the population

That’s what I meant - that the balance of power in that culture generally was heavily tilted in favor of men.  I didn’t mean it would only apply to the polygynous marriages.

Consi: Good Lord, I thought I was the only one whose brain has been warped by ovrcrowding from useless songs from commercials.

“What walks down stairs, alone or in pairs, and makes a slinkity sound? A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing! Everyone knows it’s Slinky. It’s Slinky, it’s Slinky, it’s fun, it’s a wonderful toy. It’s Slinky, it’s Slinky, it’s fun, it’s a wonderful toy. It’s fun for a girl or a boy.�?

You’re mind isn’t warped....

What falls down stairs
tears out your hairs
and makes an annoying sound
a thing! a thing! a hateful thing!
Everyone hates a slinky

A slinky A slinky
you’ll want to kill your bro-ther
A slinky A slinky
Mom can make ano-ther

--------

Oh I wish I were a fuzzy ball of plasmaaa…
that is what I’d truly like to beee-eee-e
for if I were a fuzzy ball of plamsaaa…
then I wouldn’t have to take a peeeee.

------

Oh-oh-oh Ice cold beer and an oreo cookie.....
They should never go together,
it’s a scary combination
When a dark, delicious cookie
meets an alcohol sensation
Like the one and only creamy, crunchy, chocolate,
>BAM<
>SNORE<

--------

Here’s a quote from Pinker’s the blank slate I kept meaning to look up. From the introduction to the hot button topic:

Some debates are so entwined with people’s moral identity that one might despair that they can ever be resolved by reason and evidence. Social psychologists have found that with divise moral issues, especially those on which liberals and conservatives disagree, all combatants are intuitively certain they are correct and their opponents have ugly ulterior motives. They argue out of respect for the social convention that one should always provide reasons for one’s opinions, but when an argument is refuted, they don’t change their minds but work harder to find a replacement argument. Moral debates, far from resolving hostilities, can escalate them, because when people on the other side do not immediately capitulate, it only proves they are impervious to reason.

That just about sums it up for me.