Now that we are talking about gay marriage and polygamy between consenting adults,

[Cleita]

how about religious bans on marriage like Catholics must marry Catholics and Jews must marry Jews? There are also religious bans on divorced people marrying. Of course none of those bans have been made into law, just the gay marriage and polygamy laws. If the churches are allowed to make a ban on gay marriage into law, how much longer will it be before they attempt to make laws to ban divorce and marriage between people of different faiths? This has to be stopped now, just like keeping them from overturning Roe vs Wade. Because if they can do that, then the next thing that they will attempt will be laws banning birth control.

Now if people want to live their lives according to the rules set out by their faith and their churches, let them but please don't allow them to pass laws forcing the rest of us to do the same. This is why these laws banning gay marriage must be stopped and overturned.

[ColoradoMagician]

1. Wouldn't it be weird if we had to stick to the laws of our various religions?

Catholics would be legally bound to abide by the Catholic laws. No divorce, no contraception. (From what I understand, there is a whole bunch of Catholics out there. They could probably vote in a no divorce law for all citizens, no matter the religion. They could do what the Mormons have done.)

Christens would have to abide by the 10 commandments.

Mormons would still have to be bigoted. (Oh.....sorry. I guess that is a reality.)


I am not a religion expert, so I won't mention any others.

[Cleita]

3. I lived in a Catholic country that had no divorce at the time.

I led to a variety of crazy domestic arrangements with the entanglement of children. Often the children were never told who their real father was. One day when they were all grown up mom would take them to meet her real husband and their father. The man they grew up with and thought was dad was really only a common law husband. It happened to my mother and when I was old enough I was taken to meet grandpa, a man I always thought was dead. You see when he left my grandmother and his children by her he hooked up with another woman after my mother married and had me, having eight girls who were my aunts but younger than me. When my grandmother died, he was free to marry again legally, but it was very strange and hard to explain to my American friends as to how that worked out.

[Cleita]

5. I think the consenting adults things needs to be legalized.

For one thing I believe in no states are children under eighteen considered adults even though they are allowed to marry. This should be made into law. Also, I have known in one case where a coworker of mine, a moslem, was forced into an arranged marriage even though she was twenty three. There needs to be a litmus test for the consenting.

[Warren DeMontague]

2. In regards to the "but gay marriage is prohibited by my church" argument, you are correct.

100% correct. I've been making that point for a while, too. Catholics complain that gay marriage would go against their Church and claim to fear that somehow Catholic Churches would be "forced" to perform gay marriages. But divorce is legal, yet Catholic Churches aren't "forced" to marry divorced people.

So you're absolutely right.

The only things I would say vis a vis polygamy, because really I could give a shit what consenting adults choose to do amongst themselves, as long as everyone is a consenting adult:

One, I think polygamy as it has played out in this country has often tended to be, in my opinion, something of a coercive cultural affair. Now if, say, an 18 yr old woman wants to enter into a marriage situation with a 90 yr old man, that's one thing, because by most yardsticks she's an adult. But in many states I think kids as young as 15 or younger can get married. I would be concerned about those sorts of situations.

Also, I know that married people benefit from different treatment of communal assets and the like; I would be concerned about groups wanting to "marry" to engage in financial shenanigans free of government oversight or paying taxes, say the corporate board of Enron decided they all wanted to get "married". I'm not an expert, but that would strike me as a potential pitfall with allowing large groups to "marry" one another.

[Cleita]

7. As for the corporate argument, there is a consensus among liberals

that corporations shouldn't be regarded as persons. This is a corruption of the law. I think that if we change the laws about the personhood of corporations, it would nip any of those shenanigans in the bud.

[Warren DeMontague]

8. Right, but hear me out: The laws, as I understand them, for xfer of assets between spouses

are very different than the laws that apply to everyone else.

It generally doesn't make that big of a difference when you're only talking about 2 people marrying each other; but now imagine if 100, 200 people could all get collectively "married"...

see where this is going?

[stray cat]

4. Consenting siblings and direct cousins marriage is also illegal isn't it?

[Cleita]

6. Yeah, but is that a religious thing?

I think it's civil because first cousin marriages in the church were allowed up until the last century. It's the government that started to cast a legal eye towards incest.