Gay Marriage

[ponderingturtle]

No. TM is talking about treating all matings equally.

Person A is Person B's mate. They can function as a combined unit in many ways, such as medical decisions. They have both agreed to this, and notified the state.

Why does the state retain the power to ignore some matings and recognize others?

So wait, how is this any different from the legalization of homosexual marriage which everyone in this thread is now for?

 

[toddjh]

Bigamy is a crime.

Well, "bigamy" in the sense of being married to two women should be a crime, in my opinion. Such a marriage is not legally recognized, and so presenting yourself to the public in such a manner would constitute fraud, in my opinion.

Sleeping with two women, on the other hand, should definitely be legal, and in fact encouraged!

 

[ponderingturtle]

A law against inter-racial or homosexual marriages means that there is some x which is available to marriage to some members of the population but not to others. A white woman is available for marriage to a white man, but not a black man. A man is available for marriage to a woman, but not to a man. This is discriminatory.

A law against polygamy creates no such x that is available to one segment of society but not another. Hence, no discrimination.

So blocking you from ordering your life the way you want is fine as long as everyone is blocked from ordering their life that way?

The discrimination is that you are letting some people have the legal recognition of their relationship and are blocking others because their relationship has more than two people in it. This is a difference.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Not all choices are available, but the same choices are available to everyone (or should be, once we get this gay marriage thing worked out). This is not discrimination.

And if everyone had to marry someone of the oposite gender and same race it would not be discrimination becuase not all choices are available but everyones choice is constrained in the same fashion.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Well, "bigamy" in the sense of being married to two women should be a crime, in my opinion. Such a marriage is not legally recognized, and so presenting yourself to the public in such a manner would constitute fraud, in my opinion.

Sleeping with two women, on the other hand, should definitely be legal, and in fact encouraged!

No no no, being married to two women is not a crime it is a punishment.

 

[Rasmus]

So blocking you from ordering your life the way you want is fine as long as everyone is blocked from ordering their life that way?

You can order your life any way you want. UIn most place it is not illega lto live with whomever you chose to. You can have sex with hover feels like it, too. (Or should, for places where that is not possible.)

But a marriage is not only between you and who you marry. It's between the couple and the state if not the rest of society.

The discrimination is that you are letting some people have the legal recognition of their relationship and are blocking others because their relationship has more than two people in it. This is a difference.

Yes. And they are fundamentally different kinds of relationship, too. So it simply does not automatically follow that allowing one should entail allowing the other.

A guy has a patch of land and is granted permission to build a wooden hut on it. Another guy has a reasonably similar patch of land and is denied permission to build a 70-storey high skyscraper on it.

Is this unfair discrimination because only one of them has permission to construct the building of their choice?

 

[Marquis de Carabas]

Are those compelling enough or do we need something stronger like not making the majority feel uncomfortable?

[tangent]
Actually, just the opposite.

Sadly, what is actually needed to effect change in the status quo is not compelling arguments, but making the majority feel uncomfortable.

Blacks were not granted civil rights because everyone was reasoned into seeing that they should have them. The negroes just got so uppity they left no choice but to grant them.

Homosexual marriage will become legal not when everyone is convinced it is right to extend to gays the same freedoms others enjoy, but when listening to the homos clamor for it becomes just too much to bear.

Same with polygamy, then. I'd enjoy hearing compelling arguments for it. As I said earlier, I wouldn't be fighting against it if legalisation was being heavily pushed. But compelling arguments won't actually get anything done legally. Tell your polyamorist friends they need to be more whiney.

Or maybe I'm just cynical.

[/tangent]

 

[ponderingturtle]

You can order your life any way you want. UIn most place it is not illega lto live with whomever you chose to. You can have sex with hover feels like it, too. (Or should, for places where that is not possible.)

But a marriage is not only between you and who you marry. It's between the couple and the state if not the rest of society.

I have issues with the idea of the state as an invested party in these cases. Well it could make divorce more interesting claim that the state is sleeping around.

THe state recognises these thigns but in doing that I would not grant it the status of an invested party, or is the state responcible for say giving someone a drivers licence and they they hit a pedestrian?

The state sets the rules but is not involved in the sense that it has its intests so effected as a real involved party.

 

[Upchurch]

So blocking you from ordering your life the way you want is fine as long as everyone is blocked from ordering their life that way?

The discrimination is that you are letting some people have the legal recognition of their relationship and are blocking others because their relationship has more than two people in it. This is a difference.

well put.

Not all choices are available, but the same choices are available to everyone (or should be, once we get this gay marriage thing worked out). This is not discrimination.

Let me elaborate. Person A is available for marriage. Person B is available for marriage. Together, the three of us constitute a relationship unit (x). To block this relationship unit while allowing other relationship units to become legal marriages is a form of discrimination.

On the bigamy, correct me if I'm wrong, but we're talking about one person who is in two separate, but concurrent, marriage contracts. Right? If so, we're talking about breach of contract and that should be illegal.

By polygamy, I'm referring to a single marriage contract that multiple people enter into.

 

[Marquis de Carabas]

So blocking you from ordering your life the way you want is fine as long as everyone is blocked from ordering their life that way?

Fine? Maybe, maybe not, but that's a separate question. My point is not that it is fine. It is that it is not discriminatory.

The discrimination is that you are letting some people have the legal recognition of their relationship and are blocking others because their relationship has more than two people in it. This is a difference.

It's not discrimination, no matter how many times you say it is. Nobody is being denied what anyone else is being allowed. Rights are not accorded to "relationships", but to individuals. In the case of polygamy, every individual has the same rights (none, in this case).

 

[Marquis de Carabas]

Let me elaborate. Person A is available for marriage. Person B is available for marriage. Together, the three of us constitute a relationship unit (x). To block this relationship unit while allowing other relationship units to become legal marriages is a form of discrimination.

"Relationship units" do not have rights. Individuals have them.

Person A is a heroin addict. Person B is an alcoholic. Both persons A and B are allowed by law to drink alcohol. Neither is allowed to do heroin. Is it discriminatory against person A that his drug of choice is illegal? If no, then the same applies to polygamy/monogamy. If yes, then we're using two different ideas of what constitutes discrimination, and your idea necessarily entails that every law prohibiting an action is discriminatory.

 

[Upchurch]

It's not discrimination, no matter how many times you say it is. Nobody is being denied what anyone else is being allowed. Rights are not accorded to "relationships", but to individuals. In the case of polygamy, every individual has the same rights (none, in this case).

You are drawing a completely arbitrary line in the sand.

The line use to be: You can marry anyone you want as long as they are the same race, the opposite gender, and there is only one of them.

Then the line became: You can marry anyone you want as long as they are the opposite gender, and there is only one of them.

The line will soon become (probably): You can marry anyone you want as long as there is only one of them.

Why draw the line there?

I'm not saying there aren't non-arbitrary lines we must draw. Mutual consent is one, for example, and there are very compelling reasons for it. But why cut off certain mutually consensual relationships when other mutually consensual relationships are fine and dandy?

You say it is not discrimination, but I think you are looking at it though a very narrow lense. The very same argument you are making could have been made for any of arbitrary lines I outlined above. All you have to do is narrow the definitions of who is "available" to an individual.

 

[Upchurch]

"Relationship units" do not have rights. Individuals have them.

Whew. I'm glad I didn't say they did.

Person A is a heroin addict. Person B is an alcoholic. Both persons A and B are allowed by law to drink alcohol. Neither is allowed to do heroin. Is it discriminatory against person A that his drug of choice is illegal?

Yes. Drug laws are notoriously inconsistent.

If yes, then we're using two different ideas of what constitutes discrimination, and your idea necessarily entails that every law prohibiting an action is discriminatory.

No. I'm taking a very libertarian stance on this. Every law that prohibits an action that harms no one other than (possibly) the person or persons electing to participate in the action has the potential to be discriminatory. Laws that prohibit one party from infringing on the rights/life/property/whatever of others are not inherently discriminatory. (unless there is some other factor going on, but I'm generalizing)

 

[drkitten]

The line will soon become (probably): You can marry anyone you want as long as there is only one of them.

Why draw the line there?

Adminstrative convenience alone would be a legitimate reason.

 

[Upchurch]

Adminstrative convenience alone would be a legitimate reason.

As I said before when that was put forth, that is just being lazy and not an excuse.


eta: here

 

[toddjh]

As I said before when that is put forth, that is just being lazy and not an excuse.

There's no excuse required. Without any discrimination issues involved, "because we don't want to" is all the justification the government needs.

What you're saying is that the government should go to great trouble, rewriting large chunks of property and custody law (and most likely creating a real legal and tax headache in the process), and bloating its bureaucratic overhead to keep track of it all, on account of a tiny fraction of people who want to get married in a way that the vast majority of people don't support, and with no legally compelling reason to allow it.

That's an anti-libertarian viewpoint, if you ask me. You're looking to make the government bigger, not smaller. Pass more laws, not fewer.

 

[ponderingturtle]

It's not discrimination, no matter how many times you say it is. Nobody is being denied what anyone else is being allowed. Rights are not accorded to "relationships", but to individuals. In the case of polygamy, every individual has the same rights (none, in this case).

And in the regard of interracial marriage everyone had the same rights, in that case none.

 

[Marquis de Carabas]

You say it is not discrimination, but I think you are looking at it though a very narrow lense. The very same argument you are making could have been made for any of arbitrary lines I outlined above. All you have to do is narrow the definitions of who is "available" to an individual.

No, it couldn't. My argument is that a law is discriminatory if it prohibits certain actions to one group, but not to another.

Laws against interracial marriage prohibit the marrying of a white woman to black men while allowing it to white men.

Laws against homosexual marriage prohibit the marrying of a man to men, while allowing it to women.

Laws against polygamy prohibit the marrying of more than one person to everybody*.

What you are trying to define the certain action as whatever someone happens to want to do, as in "Laws against polygamy prohibit polygamists from doing what they want to do while allowing monogamists to do what they want to do. This discriminates against polygamists." The problem is that what they want to do is not a constant. You are not denying and allowing the same thing.

To accept this as discriminatory, you would have to accept all prohibitive laws as discriminatory, at which point the word loses any useful meaning. "Laws against stabbing puppies prohibit puppy-stabbers from doing what they want to do while allowing puppy-petters to do what they want to do. This discriminates against puppy-stabbers."

*I suppose you could say that polygamy laws do disciminate against the already married, as they are in fact prohibited from marrying, whereas single persons are not, but by definition married persons are already exercising their right.

 

[drkitten]

As I said before when that was put forth, that is just being lazy and not an excuse.

Yes, and you were wrong then, too. Especially for a small-government proponent, the idea that the government's default position should be to offer a service unless there is an active reason prohibiting it is somewhat odd.

 

[ponderingturtle]

As I said before when that was put forth, that is just being lazy and not an excuse.


eta: here

But the problem is that people are lazy, or poor, or not very bright. By having marriage simple you do not have a very high bar to get into a marriage. With a more complicated system you would be raising the bar, and there are people who would fail to take advantage of their rights because of the bureaucracy created by such a system.

So you are costing people rights, at the benefit of granting others rights. This is not nessacarily a poor trade off, but there is a trade off involved.