Posted on 02/06/2014 5:26:06 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
For this week's Cross Swords column by Terry Donnelly and Mike Young, we asked this question: After gay marriage is legal, is polygamy next?”
Take a moment to participate in this week's poll in the left column that asks you to weigh in on this topic.
Mike Young’s Sword
The seemingly steamroller of approving gay marriage across our country begs the question - is polygamy next? It may seem a strange question, but it is a very valid question and needs to be asked in the light of the outward rise of gay marriages.
Back through history gay relationships have never been approved and in most of history the penalty for a gay relationship was death so we’re certainly breaking new ground here. The argument for legitimizing gay marriage is that it is a love relationship and who is to say a man can’t love another man or a woman another woman.
Yet somehow through time this has been forbidden. It’s just in the last generation or two that same sex relationships have become commonplace in the western world. We used to define marriage as two people of the opposite sex and now the definition is just two people.
But who defined it as two people anyway? It was in our Judeo-Christian principles that guided our country’s founding. But so was the definition of the oppose sex. However, now that those values are being discarded shouldn’t we reconsider the number, now that we have put aside the sex of the participants?
Polygamy has been around for a long, long time. We have it referenced too in the Bible and of course it is still practiced in some parts of the Islamic world. And there were some good reasons for it, the regeneration of the population after a war killing off most of the men and farmers needing more hands to work the land.
Those conditions don’t apply today but we still must ask why not a group of three or four? Certainty there have been two men in love with the same women and I’m sure two women with the same man. Through history they have had to choose, but why?
The men don’t necessarily have to love each other or the women the other women. This is getting more complicated as we progress through the possibilities. Here in America we have had a large number of people practice polygamy as a religious doctrine. In most places they were prosecuted for their beliefs but now that the Judeo-Christian principles are being swept aside and a live-and-let-live attitude seems to be prevailing. Should we not consider re-thinking our position?
Communes were somewhat along these ideas, share and share alike. Now not all men shared all women and visa-versa. But there were definitely some multiple relationships going on. Did society collapse over it? Of course not. But to a large extent the communes have passed in history and we might ask if the relationships did them in? I think not, but you never know unless you were there.
In any event, it only seems logical that the next big push to liberalize our society will be the push for multiple partners. Since we already have men and women changing partners frequently and now with same sex partnership it only seems like the next step. The only ones who would be against it would be the young boys who would be thrown out so all the old guys could have the young girls. Oh, isn’t that what is happening right now is some places?
Terry Donnelly’s Sword
For once our Cross Swords column is entirely progressive. The question is, “After gay marriage is legal, is polygamy next?”
That is taking a leap of faith that the 33 states that still ban gay marriage for one reason or another, will overcome that prejudice and will soon begin providing equal rights to yet another group who has to suffer bias because of someone else’s perception. Illinois just joined the ranks and Utah is trying, but is currently in limbo with a court stay until a state appeal can be heard.
We can even limit the discussion to Nevada. Sevick v. Sandoval, the case that will be adjudicated in November, challenges the constitutional amendment banning gay Nevadans from legally taking marriage vows. Let’s have some fun and pretend the court overrules the amendment and Nevada hops onto the right side of history and begins ringing wedding bells for anyone in the state.
Wait, there is yet another group who could step forward and demand their civil liberties. Those people who choose to marry more than one person at a time.
Polygamy is front and center on the minds of folks in this part of the country due to the Mormon hub of faith being so close at hand.
Mormons no longer condone polygamy as a mainstream practice, and it is illegal in all states. But, should it be?
First, we’ll need to set some ground rules. In my opinion, the reason polygamy is so polarizing isn’t because it is far out of the norm; it is because of how polygamists have created their tribe. There needs to be regulations attached, just like there are to any marriage. First, any multiple marriage would, by definition, have to be between people of majority age. The Mormon sects often arranged marriages for children to older men. Making children marry is not a civil right.
Another perceived problem is that, because the union is not recognized under state or federal law, the parties choosing polygamy can arrange their cooperative in any style they choose. Often that choice is to register one legal marriage and have the others live in the home as roommates. These roommates often have no source of income, and because they are not legally married, they are listed on welfare rolls. If polygamy were legalized, the number of legally wedded partners would have to abide by government regulations about how families get government assistance, pay taxes, inherit estates, and are privy to private medical processes.
The final acid test is whether or not people living in groups as husbands and wives will have an effect on any other marriage or living arrangement. The answer is “no”, polygamist lifestyles will not have one iota of influence on anything any of the rest of us choose to do.
There are those living within polygamous situations now and the only effect they render is when the parties are caught and news coverage ensues. We get to point and tsk-tsk at them because we think they are wrong.
Different never has been the single criterion for wrong. It wasn’t that long ago that inter-religious marriages were widely frowned upon–still are within some religions. Fortunately, frowning isn’t the same as legal estoppal. Loving v. Virginia in 1967 made banning interracial marriages illegal. And, in the more normal fashion in which America solves civil wrongs, slowly but surely, inch by clawed inch, states are overriding archaic laws against gay unions. There is no good reason that law-abiding lovers in packs should not be able to wed as well.
One’s plenty to cope with. Any guy daring to take on multiple wives deserves what he gets. (?)
Unless you marry sisters you get multiple Mother-in-laws. There’s the stumbling block for me. LOL
Polygamy is the sideshow, the real feature is lowering age of consent, as of course, the gays want at our children. So while news outlets are peppered with polygamy stories, the gays are storming the state legislatures to lower the age of consent.
Unless you marry sisters you get multiple Mother-in-laws. There’s the stumbling block for me. LOL
Indeed. However, “The only men who become gods, or even sons of gods, are men who enter into polygamy.” Attributed to Bringham Young, Journal of Discourses. Vol 11 page 269. Consider THAT before you decide. (Oh heck. I didn’t want to stir up the anti-LDS contingent. I’m just having a little fun is all. Lord protect us all and keep us off their mailing list!). Smile smile. Humor is the best medicine, It may even cure obamacare.
Someone one asked me what I think about “gay marriage”. I asked her to define “marriage” before I answered. She replied “it’s when two people...” And I cut her off and asked: why only two? <>
I find if you don’t accept their premise, and keep answering their questions with questions, they’re quickly reduced to blithering idiots.
That was quite the nasty little post against the Christians at FR, that you don’t approve of.
I would support polygamy before I would support gay “marriage”. Polygamy has a long history in our culture while gay “marriage” never has.
Enjoy the slide America !
“I would support polygamy before I would support gay “marriage”. Polygamy has a long history in our culture while gay “marriage” never has.”
You can make a better case for polygamy using the Bible than you can divorce. You can’t make a case in any religion for homosexual marriage.
Indeed, as it exposes their absence of a transcendent objective standard which defines marriage. And without which mamal-marriage can be considered valid. And as sodomites, fear the Bible as being that objective standard , thus such have spent inordinate amounts of labor trying to negate and use it, as examined here .
The late Walter Wink exampled such most speciously.
Then there is the poem if you don't mind:
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Freedom not Sodom!
There's freedom in America, the land of the red white and blue; but there still must be laws, things you just can't do.
You can't marry your sister, your brother, or the family pet; a sheep, or a goat - at least not yet!
That how is it with homosexuality, what the Bible calls sodomy; men lying with men as with women, is perversity!
That they're not designed that way, tis easy to perceive, but yielding to sinful desires, man is soon deceived.
A moral wrong is not a civil right; like the sin itself, that's confusion; calling evil good and exchanging light for darkness, is sure delusion!
History tells us where this will lead, from societies now in dust, When a nation casts off the laws of God, and follows it's own lusts.
Promoting a sin which sends one to Hell from an early grave, dishonors God and robs man of the Life He gave.
There's but one answer: the Risen Jesus gave Himself for our sins; Repent and believe, then truly follow Him! |
What was Mark Twain’s response to Mormon polygamists? “A man cannot have more than one master.”
If my Wife wants another Wife... I wouldn’t say no...
Love my Wife, get along better with my In-laws than my Parents. I’m an anomaly... May as well make it a trend.
Ha! Mark twain also said that the Mormon men who married the “ poor, ungainly, and pathetically homely creatures” he claimed to have seen in Salt Lake City deserved praise not censure, see http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080129225247AAIlkFQ. Of course he was a humorist and such a comment was probably seen as unacceptable even In his day except only as his effort at sharing a humorous slant on things perhaps.
Well said on your blog, which i responded to there. Thank God for His grace to reprove what is becoming the United States of Sodom.
Polygamy is preferable to homosexual “marriage”. They make it sound like polygamy is the beast and homosexuality is the lesser.
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