If we allow gay marriage then we are opening the door to legalization of polygamy and humans marrying animals or inanimate objects. Of course, studies show polygamy has a strong negative effect on society, hurting basically everyone (children, women, and young poor men) besides rich older men and marrying non-humans has absolutely no value to the state since people will not spend and save differently as opposed to the marriage of two humans. I'm not exactly sure how either those relate to gay marriage but I'm sure there is some connection....

Or you can go the sanctity of marriage route. In that case I'm pretty sure The Bible makes it perfectly clear that gays should not be allowed to marry at any cost and we should just forgive adulters. I mean...its not like the "sin" of adultery was written in stone or anything like that...I think. Sorry, I always get confused which particular religious doctrine we are imposing on the population.

I've always wondered why people think that the only thing stopping the polygamists is that it's illegal.

Doesn't seem to have stopped them at all, really.

Obviously, having three wives at the same time is wrong. If you want to have three wives, you have to do what Gingrich did and dump them one at a time.:right:

It's called serial monogamy

Or, more importantly, a woman marry a woman. ;)
Many of god's chosen were polygamists. If you support the ban on uni-gender marriage based on the bible argument, you'd be hypocritical to oppose polygamy.

I'm not sure of the connection - where polygamy comes in to it - anyway.

Frankly, I think it’s plausible that Jesus was gay.

This polygamy question is interesting to me.

I support gay marriage. I think it's ridiculous that the government would let some consenting adults enter into a legal contract but not others.

But I oppose polygamy, because everything I've heard says that, in practice, it is bad for women and children. Basically, it's only good for men rich enough to take on several wives. And those wives live in virtual poverty.

So how do I, from a legal standpoint, embrace gay marriage and oppose polygamy? How can I say that adults can only enter into a contract with one adult and not more than one? If I'm entering into other contracts, I can do so with multiple people. I can divide my plot of land into smaller plots and sell them to multiple buyers. I can go into business with a bunch of friends and create one partnership with all of them. The government recognizes those contracts. If marriage is opened up to gays because they are consenting adults with equal rights, why wouldn't marriage be opened up to all consenting adults, including polygamists?

reductio ad absurda or ponzi scheme is the argument.

In a finite population, if some males have multiple spouses then other males are lacking.
In small polygamous communities, such boys are driven out by one means or another.

I'm not following you on either point. Can you flesh those out at all?

I think there are two approaches you can take. The first is kind of a 'cherry picking' approach. There is more than enough studies that strongly show that polygamy is, overall, bad for society. It hurts everyone besides rich old men. Then, we can ban it the same way as we banned other things that are bad for society. Those reasons do not apply to gay marriage therefore it should not be made illegal. I would even make the argument that gay marriage is good for society. The downfall of this approach is that it is biased and someone make an argument how gay marriage or interracial marriage, etc are bad for society and should be banned.

The second approach is to step back and ask why the government should recognize marriage in the first place. Marriage is a contract that tends to make couples more stable and more likely to invest, bettering society. As long as a certain type of marriage does that, it should be legal. Polygamy and marriage of non-humans doesn't have the incentive to invest and stabilize, therefore it should be treated differently. I prefer this way since it is more objective.

well, we don't even have to talk about those or even children. If you aren't a consenting adult, you can't enter into a contract. Dogs can't sign contracts. And children have very limited rights under the law.

Good point. I just wanted to cover the entire slippery slope argument.

Support the reduction of the human population = support for gay marriage.
GO GAY for the PLANET!
They should start their own PAC like moveon.

I was making the argument against polygamy, not gay marriage,
in a finite (small) population... and assumed there were "multiple wives"

If there are 100 men and 100 women, and 30 men have a total of 60 wives,
there would be only 40 single women left to wed among the remaining 70 single men.
The married men (in power) see this problem coming,
and so force the excess males (boys) out of the community.

Of course, gay marriage would be one solution to this situation. ;)
as would reversed polygamy where those 40 women have multiple husbands.
Don't laugh, supposedly the latter happened in isolated Eskimo families

In other (very large) cultures this "ponzi scheme" kind of problem is not as apparent,
particularly if the polygamous males are only a minority among the male population.
The bachelors probably still aspire to polygamy, so they are content with hope and dreams :rolleyes:
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