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If you consider system oppression to be a form of validation for bigots, then it follows that removing that validation would result in reduced bigotry.

• drocer88 7y ago
  We need to legalize polygamy now. Anti-muslim and anti-mormon bigotry has gone on too long.
  • dashundchen 7y ago
    Why not? In a secular society marriage is just a legal contract, regardless of the participants' religion or lack thereof. If there is an appropriate legal structure, all participants are freely consenting, and are not causing anyone harm, why shouldn't they be allowed?
    • greygatch 7y ago
      Historically speaking, monogamy and civilization seem to go hand-in-hand. Undermining the former might undermine the latter.
      • TomMarius 7y ago
        Historically speaking horse was the only mean of transportation, hygiene was nonexistent, disease spread quickly and killed millions, warlords owned nearly everything for most of the recorded history, people used to believe in gods... (all these factors could contribute to monogamy) That something was valuable and important in the history doesn't mean is it today. Do you seriously think our world is in any way similar to the world even just 100 years ago?
      • lovich 7y ago
        Historically speaking, slavery and civilization go hand in hand. Undermining the former might undermine the latter. That's not to say that not having access to legal polygamous marriage and owning people are equal but to show that the argument doesn't really stand on it's own. The correlation between monogamy and civilization isn't necessarily causitative. Also I'm not sure that monogamy is as paired up with civilization as you claim. Haven't Kings and leaders for large portions of history been known for their harems?
        • Freak_NL 7y ago
          Not just harems, but also marriages between high-born men and women made for political reasons, with the both of them having their own lovers on the side.
        • bryanlarsen 7y ago
          Revolutions are fueled by angry young men. Young men get especially angry when they don't have access to the opposite sex.
          • Brometheus 7y ago
            Nonsens
          • dashundchen 7y ago
            I think a lot of these comments about single men are assuming way more men would be poly than woman. I'm wondering if that would hold true were it more culturally acceptable. I think it also discounts that many people do have some bisexual tendencies.
      • SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
        For a period of time, so did some form of monarchy. I believe this may be a correlation and causation issue.
      • mfoy_ 7y ago
        That had more to do with "who owns what, and who gets what when they die" than anything else. (Citation needed...) In a modern society with strong property rights and gender equality monogamy would be unnecessary from a purely "maintaining civilization as we know it" point of view. ...No comment on an emotional / psychological point of view.
      • nerdjon 7y ago
        Do we actually know this for certain? We have a very curated view of many past civilizations and in many (most?) cases it is a very heteronormative view. I have seen plenty of arguments that monogamy did not become "normal" until religion entered the picture and the idea of woman as property became a thing (ironically the fact that some religions reinforce this by a man having multiple wives). There is absolutely no reason to believe monody and civilization matters in the slightest. At best you could argue (and I would agree) years ago needing to be concerned about a woman getting pregnant, but that does not hold any weight in a modern society.
      • DoreenMichele 7y ago
        Historically speaking, rich men having multiple partners so long as they could support them all (plus any resulting children) was the norm. Maybe the real problem is we now think even rich men should tightly comply with expectations of monogamy when that was never the norm. /Devil's advocate
    • marcoperaza 7y ago
      By guaranteeing that just about every man is matched with a woman, monogamy brings harmony and social order. Having millions of single men with no prospect of marriage would lead to more crime, resentment, strife, and so forth.
      • nerdjon 7y ago
        Please for the love of god tell me you are missing a "/s". Assuming not.... I forgot about how only single men (ignoring any woman that commit crimes) commit crimes. How you can only be happy if you found "the one". That a single person will give you every single thing you ever need. Which... is bullshit.
        • DoreenMichele 7y ago
          That all men are heterosexual and only want a woman. (In a discussion of an article about gay marriage no less.)
          • nerdjon 7y ago
            Even better... in a comment written by a gay man >.> (myself) That also though :p
      • Freak_NL 7y ago
        Why would polygamy change the balance? Are polyamorous relationships where the women outnumber the men significantly more common?
        • marcoperaza 7y ago
          Thanks to dating sites and hookup apps, there is plenty of data on how men and women choose partners when there is no restraint other than the willingness of the other. It’s not symmetric at all.
          • Freak_NL 7y ago
    • ummwhat 7y ago
      Typically polygamy has been asymmetrical and part of an undeniable patriarchal power structure (one man, as many wives as he can afford). But if we're talking about symmetrical polygamy (multiple husband's and multiple wives), I see no reason why a modern secular society should care. Of course if everyone is married to everyone, is anyone married to anyone? I vaguely recall a species in startrek that was like this.
      • nerdjon 7y ago
        There was a poly society in season 1 of TNG. I think it was episode 2 or something like that? It is the episode where Natasha has to fight another woman for her life.
      • dashundchen 7y ago
        Agreed that some religions use marriage as a power structure, poly or not - but that was the case even for many secular monogamous marriages in the US until relatively recently. Marital rape is legal on the books of many states!
      • sDlEzAtyoNAz 7y ago
        >But if we're talking about symmetrical polygamy (multiple husband's and multiple wives), I see no reason why a modern secular society should care. A modern secular society should care because of the nature of the distribution of women's sexual attraction toward men. Even if the marriages are symmetrical such that men and women are equally likely to be married, men's sexual access to the women will not be equal unless the women are compelled to behave otherwise. When women are free to choose which men they have sex with, the vast majority of women choose the same small minority of men. The wives will choose to have sex with some of husbands far more than others, resulting in a minority of the men having the vast majority of sexual access to the women, and a majority of men having little or no sexual access to their wives. The best way to ensure men other than that small minority have sexual access to women is to discourage sex outside of marriage and to prohibit men from having multiple wives.
    • dmurray 7y ago
      It's not just a legal contract between the participants, it confers certain legal privileges (you could say the government is also a party in the contract). A lot of people would be unhappy with InfoSys's CEO marrying all of its H1B applicants, or a pro-immigration activist marrying hundreds of refugees. This is not to say that polygamous marriage couldn't work, or that nobody abuses monogamous marriages for tax or immigration purposes. But if only a tiny proportion of people want to see their real loving polygamous family relationships approved by the state, the downsides could outweigh the positives.
      • Swizec 7y ago
        > It's not just a legal contract between the participants, it confers certain legal privileges (you could say the government is also a party in the contract). This is the part that needs to change imho. Marriage should have zero legal meaning outside of some sort of contract all parties sign at the time of marriage. You are essentially cofounding a business and that’s what it should stay at. The government doesn’t make special amends (afaik) if two random people say “We are business partners” so why do it if two random people say “We are married”. Who cares, you do you.
        • dmurray 7y ago
          This isn't a completely ridiculous or inconsistent viewpoint, but it's not a popular one. Most people favour at least some of the benefits of marriage (whether it's in immigration, tax, inheritance, healthcare, parental rights...) so the government really should keep them around.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • sDlEzAtyoNAz 7y ago
      What benefits do married homosexuals provide to society such that society should reward homosexuals with the legal benefits and social recognition associated with marriage? Married heterosexuals provide children to society which have the highest chances of leading successful and productive lives.
  • nerdjon 7y ago
    No reason to tie poly to either of those religions, since at least in some cases for those religions it comes from a very misogynistic mindset instead of any of the positive in any "real" poly community. Instead of legalizing poly, how about we just get the government out of marriage in the first place. (Incase it isn't clear, I am advocating for poly acceptance. Just not that it needs to be "legal")
    • Freak_NL 7y ago
      > get the government about of marriage Out of marriage you mean? Marriage bestows a number of desirable benefits to spouses, in terms of property, taxes, and kinship (having the ability to speak for your spouse in case of severe illness and sudden hospitalisation is definitely something married couples tend to want). It is reasonable for governments to award such constructs, as they are the one type of institution that can grant them. Opening up this civil marriage construct to polyamorous lovers is probably fine, as long as there are safeguards to prevent abuse of that construct. Like a maximum of n people perhaps (but I'm no expert on this topic). This is of course separate from any religious marriage which a secular government already stays well away from.
      • nerdjon 7y ago
        Yes, fixed that. Thank you I think there should be an alternative too married when it comes to the government. (As in, the government is not involved in marriage at all. not "Separate but equal") What we consider "marriage" should not be a thing the government should be involved in. I think questioning why the government should view 2 (or more) people together should change how taxes work. Instead of just having each person file taxes separately. At one point we needed tax incentives for procreation, but I don't think that is necessary anymore. Property is an interesting one, but break this assumption that just because you are with someone that you should immediately all own everything. Kinship is valid, but we need alternatives too that anyways for anyone that chooses never to marry. No reason 2 best friends cannot enter that specific agreement for each other and have it legally recognized. I just think there are better ways to handle these issues than tying them all to a marriage. Allow 2 people to still get married obviously... but the government does not care anymore, but these other benefits grant in other more meaningful ways.
  • caprese 7y ago
    Could a Family Limited Partnership accomplish much of the same goals? Default treatment from the state of course would help, and to your point of people looking to government for consent or acceptance.
    • dragonwriter 7y ago
      > Could a Family Limited Partnership accomplish much of the same goals? Since a marriage is effectively a general partnership, and a Limited Partnership is a legal structure with overlapping but not identical effects to a general partnership that involves more involved goverment rules, sure, the State could create a “Family Limited Partnership” having the a similar relation to marriage as a regular limited partnership has to a general partnership, but simply legalizing the existing family system with more than two partners would be the less intrusive, simpler approach (and a lot of the problem areas that people raise with that already have fairly obvious solutions from generalizing the multipartner handling in the law of general partnerships back to marriages.)
  • TomMarius 7y ago
    I agree completely
  • dragonwriter 7y ago
    While it may have initially been under duress, the LDS Church seems to have long been fully invested in monogamy; associating the current Church with polygamy is more an example of anti-mormon bigotry than any current law against polygamy is.
    • stochastic_monk 7y ago
      To be fair, they only ceased practicing polygamy because it was an untenable position in their quest for statehood. Just like they stopped keeping black people from the temple or the priesthood in 1978 because it was no longer an acceptable practice.
      • dragonwriter 7y ago
        Sure, but in both cases they backed the pragmatic policy change with the full weight of the doctrinal power of the Church institutions, which over time (and the monogamy thing has had lots of time, the full admission of blacks less so yet) turns it into a lot more than a position of political convenience.
• steve76 7y ago
  Politics exist to reduce conflict, bring two opposing sides to the negotiation table and avoid violence. Often I find the opposite is true, contention just for the sake of contention, spreading everywhere. To do the most basic things today, like live in a home or feed yourself, you have to move one step short of murdering one another. No thought is provided to mutual sociability, just selfishness and coarseness. You are supposed to be happy with nothing. When you are unhappy, go ahead and do something. Then return to being happy without needing anything or anyone. It's backwards today, because everybody chases one thing to another, just to avoid confronting their own emotions and behavior. The natural philosophy is one that stands for nothing. It runs from any conflict, often in a horrible horrible response against whatever stumbled upon it and brought disruptive contention and conflict. Celebrity is not a good thing. Bringing disruptive social change by setting forth your own downfall is a horror story that often results in hundreds of cities burnt down, and hundreds of thousands unknown victims following into your demise. Today's martyr is tomorrow's monster.