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Posted on 06/24/2005 8:00:10 PM PDT by wagglebee
(AgapePress) - In comments at an Ivy League school, the president of the American Civil Liberties Union has indicated that among the "fundamental rights" of people is the right to polygamous relationships -- and that the ACLU has defended and will continue to defend that right.
In a little-reported speech offered at Yale University earlier this year, ACLU president Nadine Strossen stated that her organization has "defended the right of individuals to engage in polygamy." Yale Daily News says Strossen was responding to a "student's question about gay marriage, bigamy, and polygamy." She continued, saying that her legal organization "defend[s] the freedom of choice for mature, consenting individuals," making the ACLU "the guardian of liberty ... defend[ing] the fundamental rights of all people."
The ACLU's newly revealed defense of polygamy may weaken the pro-homosexual argument for changing the traditional definition of marriage. Proponents of same-sex "marriage" have long insisted that their effort to include homosexual couples in that definition would only be that. However, conservative and traditional marriage advocates predict "other shoes will drop" if homosexual marriage is legalized -- perhaps including attempts to legalize polygamy and to changed current legal definitions of child-adult relationships.
Crawford Broadcasting radio talk-show host Paul McGuire concurs. He says in his opinion, the ACLU "has declared legal war on the traditional family."
"Now the ACLU is defending polygamy," he continues, in response to Strossen's comments. "You know, there are male and female lawyers who wake up in the morning and are actually proud of being ACLU lawyers. But I think the majority of Americans view ACLU lawyers as people who hate America and who want to destroy all Judeo-Christian values and beliefs."
McGuire summarizes by saying that Strossen's organization seems "to only defend things that tear down the fabric of society."
National Review correspondent Ramesh Ponnuru provides some additional insight. "It could be that the ACLU has defended a right for people to set up households in this way without necessarily fighting for governmental recognition of polygamous 'marriages,'" he says.
"Even if so," Ponnuru concludes, "it is hard to see how the ACLU, on its own principles, could stop short of demanding a change to the marriage laws to allow for polygamy."
Strossen has been president of the ACLU since 1991. She is also an acting professor of law at New York Law School and the author of the book, Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex & the Fight for Women's Rights (Scriber).
Whorehouses? Oh, wait...already being used for that.
Ya, it isn't my bag. But different strokes for different folks.
Of course, the cat can file for divorce. Then (s)he'll take the whole kit and kaboodle!
Samuel Johnson said, "The realisation that one is to be hanged in the morning concentrates the mind wonderfully."
Monogamy is like that. It helps you stay focused. More than one mate, you have congress, not wedlock. And we all know what a mess congress is.
No, pedophilia is not a crime everywhere. And how can you know if a young girl or boy is or is not capable of experiencing pleasure from such? If everybody has a good time, who are you to judge?
I doubt that there's any anti-pedophilia gene in human beings that would naturally predispose us to regard it as an abomination.
No, our revulsion of it comes from something outside of us, and it is the same that prohibits us from acceptance of polygamy.
That's the moral argument.
Then there's the political argument: polygamy, allowed in any form, will destroy what remains of this country.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. You can have as many ersatz marriage ceremonies as you like. However, if your second, third, etc. "wife" is unaware or you existing marriage(s), she is termed a "putative" spouse (those in the male cohort of the Guild enjoy misstating the word as "punitive" spouse), and has certain property rights in civil law.
Pedophilia is a crime everywhere in the US, and most other places. And in the US, it is rather strictly enforced to the degree it can be. But then you already knew that.
Destroying this Republic from within was the chartered purpose of the ACLU. When Bob Barr joined them, I spat in disgust upon reading of it.
Libertarian ping.To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here
How about 'phydeaux'? Make you feel better?
Beautiful Eyes!
How about the sex ratio being just the opposite ... three men married to one woman? It would fit the 'service' notion more aptly at certain ages.
In the early days of the ACLU, almost every member (over 80%) had communist affiliations and over 90% of their cases were defending communists.
http://www.acluprocon.org/pop/History.html
You don't have to go to muslim societies to see the awful results of polygamy. Just look at the teen-age "lost boys" of Utah and Arizona polygamous sects driven out and dumped alongside the highway so as to eliminate competition for the women. Taxpayers pay the tab for these kids. Highly destructive stuff.
"Marriage" is defined in my 30-year-old dictionary as "an legal state instituted for the protection of women and children."
What we would call pedophilia is not a crime in certain places in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. In those places children are contracted to older men as brides. Consumation of such arrangements would, in our country, be pedophilia. Also, in Afghanistan, for example, older men take younger boys as concubines; this was the practice in the recent past and probably persists. I'm not aware that anyone interviewed these children to determine if they enjoyed the activity, but then there's no evidence they didn't. If some did enjoy themselves, your blanket denunciation of it denies them their freedom to receive their particular form of pleasure. How cold!
What age is the age or consent? 14? If a parent, desperately hungry, consents to whore their child for money to buy food, then we have parental consent. In this case, couldn't we move the line a little earlier, from thirteen to say 12 or 11?
I love the way libertines talk their way into these quanderies: "we should allow polygamy but not "child abuse", in other words "this far but no further."
She was confirmed because GOP senators did their Constitutional duty, she was qualified and should have been confirmed (don't get me wrong, I DESPISE her political views). I may be in the minority on this opinion, but I don't think the fact that the 'Rats have no principals gives us an excuse to abandon ours.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. You can have as many ersatz marriage ceremonies as you like.
I didn't say "ersatz" marriage cerimonies, and neither did you in the comment I responded to.
You can have all the girl friends and pretence cerimonies you figure you can handle, good luck to you.
The fact remains however, bigamy (multiply "licensed" marriages) remains on the statutes of all 50 states and is indeed a felony in most thme. Ignore that fact at your own risk.
Polyandry is virtually unknown in human history because men are aggressively territorial and have a tendency to violently dispose of other men who sleep with their women, regardless of what social arragnements are in place.
Polygyny is, on the other hand, common in human history - largely for economic reasons. Women could assure a far better life for themselves and their children being one of a wealthy and powerful man's five wives than by having a stableboy all to themselves. ;)
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