Notice that this article is directly self-contradictory in connecting this issue to same-sex marriage. Look at this pair of statements:

But Oppal’s own legal advisers have warned him that Canada’s century-old anti-polygamy law would probably be overturned by the protection of religious freedom enshrined in the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

With four legal opinions already in hand pronouncing the polygamy law constitutionally unenforceable because it violates religious freedom rights, Oppal commissioned a fifth one this summer,

These very clearly states the legal argument being used to defend polygamy—and it has nothing to do with the legal decisions and legislation establishing same-sex marriage. The case for polygamy is being made as a free-exercise-of-religion argument; that is not the argument that was used to allow same-sex marriage. To claim that the polygamist argument somehow results from the same-sex marriage decision is somewhere between disingenuous and dishonest.

Now in the US this is a matter of pretty clearly settled legal precedent; in the late nineteenth century the courts explicitly stated that because laws against polygamy were based on a valid state interest, these laws could not be considered an infringement on the right to exercise one’s religion. This was around the time that Utah had to outlaw polygamy before it could be admitted to the union.

“No,” they said, “That’ll never happen. There is no slippery slope from same sex marriage to polyamory. It’s all in your head.”

#1—If I remember my American history, the move to make Utah outlaw polygamy was part of a larger current running after the civil war during which the Federal Government became less likely to let states “go their own way.” Since congress was the bar to admission to the union, Utah had to submit. I think that the “valid state interest” you mention is the desire on the part of the Federal government (northern representatives & southern carpetbaggers) to minimize the chance for regional conflict. I don’t remember there being any moral arguments made against polygamy.

Marriage has been defined as one woman, one man because there are two sexes. If the gender of persons involved no longer matters(gay marriage), why on earth should the number(polygamy) or age(pedophilia) of persons matter either? It’s common sense that one would lead to the other. Gender is easily observable, and (mostly) an objective thing. If that goes out the window, why should the number of persons involved matter, either? Once you get rid of the gender requirements, the number two seems arbitrary.

Once sexuality is reduced to mere copulation, there are unlikely to be any limits to human ingenuity and the capacity for sin.
But here we are, in the Brave New World of Human Rights: the world of the farmyard.

Homosexual activists have opened a Pandora’s box.

#1 Tegularius Every body that apposes constitutional amendments to define marriage says it is a matter of denial of people’s personnel rights.  Well here is a quote from the article, and I am sorry if it busts your bubble. “If you can break down the laws guarding heterosexual marriage between a man and a woman, then anything can happen,” said Landolt. “If you can have a partner of the same sex, then logically you can have two or three of the opposite sex.”  It has been my argument that once same sex “marriage” is allowed we are open for just about anything and with the crasy judges and laweyrs we now have the envelope will be further pushed.  I am so sorry that the the defense of marriage act was not passed, at least in Georgia we now have a constitutional amendment!

God never condoned polygamy.  When it occurred, disaster always followed.
Similarly, God has never, ever condoned homosexual activity ...or as it was referred to ‘man laying down with man’.
However, God created man and woman, with marriage as a sacrament which bound them together as man and wife.  Nowhere in the Bible, Not or Old Testament, has God rescinded that definition. 
Homosexual ‘union’ is a modern, innovative concept, blessed nowhere in the Holy Scriptures and aggressively pursued by a relatively tiny percentage, possibly equal to the Episcopal Church mambers.

Homosexual activists have opened a Pandora’s box.

Socially available & accepted divorce opened the box. The gays simply tugged it a bit further.

Too true, Nate (#9) and it cannot be said often enough.

There is no Scriptural warrant for monogamy unless we believe Jesus when He said that His Father got it right from the beginning and that is the example we must follow - one man, one woman, life union, holy union for His purposes, not ours.

Everything else is against God’s plan.

I agree with you Nate and echo MJD’s further comment.

Well here is a quote from the article, and I am sorry if it busts your bubble. “If you can break down the laws guarding heterosexual marriage between a man and a woman, then anything can happen,” said Landolt.

My comment was addressing the underlying legal issues, and pointing out that the legal reasoning used to defend polygamy is completely unrelated to the legal basis for permitting same-sex marriage.  Landolt, quoted here, is speaking as an activist and not actually addressing the legal arguments at all.

I would bet, in fact, that the fundamentalist Mormons who are practicing polygamy would argue that their case has nothing to do with same-sex marriage, and that they would be perfectly happy if same-sex marriage were not permitted.

There is actually a good case to be made that the opponents of same-sex marriage in Canada, by arguing that their religious faith should give them an exemption from nondiscrimination laws where sexual orientation is concerned, are actually thereby supporting the cause of polygamy.  Once you advance the position that designating a belief as “religion” gives you an exemption from the civil laws, you open yourself up for cases like this one.

Exactly as predicted by Justice Scalia in Lawrence v. Texas.

The new case wil not be argued on these grounds, but on the grounds of civil rights. Both homophiles and polygamists willssss refer to the constitution, and the precedent has already been set in Mass by the Supremes who made homosexual marriage a civil rights issue. To be sure, the Mass Supremes spoke of marriage between two people quite explicitly, but this declaration is not a matter of law because the number so engaged has not been tested: e.g., can three homosexuals marry? But of course, sooner or later this will indeed be tested. If the issue is civil rights, than numbers here cannot count as to the rights of the individuals involved.
 
  It is not a civil rights issue of course. Civil unions are precisely that because they are civil. But marriage is in its most important aspects now a spiritual affair, if love can be properly called spiritual. If it can, then the 1st Amend. will forbid the courts settling this issue on the basis of civil rights. I have said this often before, of course, and no one seems to think this facet is of the essence - and for reasons I cannot fathom, the US Supremes don’t listen to me. Well.

Nate, if I recall my history reading correctly, a large measure of the Mormons’ being forced out of the Midwest was the outrage of the local population at their daughters being converted and then placed in plural marriages, which the Illinois and Missouri farmers viewed as just plain immorality.  Only the Mormon revelation disallowing polygamy made entry into the Union possible.  The moral aspect of the issue was still live when I was a child in Arizona and the polygamous splinter groups up at the Arizona-Utah border were in the news—and this is still true.

RE: “Nate, if I recall my history reading correctly, a large measure of the Mormons’ being forced out of the Midwest was the outrage of the local population at their daughters being converted and then placed in plural marriages, which the Illinois and Missouri farmers viewed as just plain immorality.”

Ah, but Katherine, the Illinois and Missouri farmers merely viewed this new and inclusive vision of consensual, mutual, affirming relationships with their own primitive and irrational “ick” factor.

They could not articulate the legal and scriptural arguments against such a practice, but merely based their dissent on their bigoted, primitivistic, and dare I say it, fundamentalist distaste over the practice. 

Like I said . . . “the ick factor”.

; > )

Exactly as predicted by Justice Scalia in Lawrence v. Texas.

Also as predicted by Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae.  It’s all a woven whole.

Socially available & accepted divorce opened the box. 

Actually, it was the breakdown of the nuclear family in western society. In democratic states such as the U.S., ready access to divorce is the natural result.

The enemy is us.

Tegularius you are correct.  There will be a two front legal battle.  One front will be based on individual rights such as is being advanced for Gay ” Marriage”.  The rights of the individual to enter into the contract called marriage is a matter of freedom.  The state has no right to deny these people thier freedom, it is an equal protection. The second front will be religious.  Freedom of religion should aford multiple marriages if that is the beliefs of that faith.  The opening salvo will be same sex “marriage” redefining the meaning and institution of marriage.

Mormans declare Missouri the New Cana and made an effort to run other people out of the state, the mormans were meet by the state mailitia and forced out of Missouri.  The Mormans then went to Kirtland Ohio.  It was in Kirtland that polygamy really started.The Mormons then moved to Nuavoo.  In Nuavoo Illinois Smith started the “Non Bank” that ended when he was arrested and subsequentialy killed in a mob action.  The Church divide with the reformed group lead by Smith’s wife (1st) and children going to Independance Mo. and the other group lead by Brigham Young going to Utah.

The important question is when will we have our first gay-bisexual triade (or more) clergy unit?  I mean being open and inclusive and all that.

Tegularius: The situation between same-sex marriage and polygamous marriage are very closely intertwined.  The existing legal tradition, common across all common law jurisdictions until the last decade was that marriage means “one man and one woman”.  Period.  End of story.  Marriage was recognized due to its social utility of being the only place where children could be conceived and raised.

The same-sex marriage legal precedent has overturned the legal meaning of marriage.  Out of necessity, the concept of procreating children had to be removed from the definition of children.  Marriage had to be redefined into a relationship that was solely partner-centric.  Marriage has been redefined to be a legal right that anyone has to have his/her choice of love affirmed by the state. 

So now we look to the same-sex and polygamous marriage arguments.  Under the traditional definition of marriage, both same-sex and polygamous arguments could be refuted easily.  Under the new liberal definition, neither can be.  The same-sex adovcates are arguing that they need access to marital recognition out of “equality” rights - their love should be recognized and affirmed by the state just as others is.  To accept this argument, the courts had to redefine marriage as stated above.

The polygamists will advance the equality argument, but will also bolster it with the religious one.  The religious one will NOT be “we should be exempt from the law because we are religious”.  No, the religious argument will be that the government has NO RATIONAL REASON to prohibit polygamy given the new definition of marriage (i.e. why shouldn’t the state accept multiple love interests instead of just one), and that the only reason they maintain the ban on polygamy is religious discrimination.

It was pretty obvious to anyone who has studied legal and constitutional law, that polygamy would follow same-sex marriage.  I personally, also believe that another over-looked consequence of same-sex marriage will be the commodification of children.  I believe (and the evidence of this is there in same-sex marriage jurisdictions) that same-sex couples will demand government enforce their “right” to have children, and that this will take two tacks: one being the prohibition of discrimination against homosexual couples in adoption and the other will be state-sponsored and funded surrogacy programs.

I would bet, in fact, that the fundamentalist Mormons who are practicing polygamy would argue that their case has nothing to do with same-sex marriage, and that they would be perfectly happy if same-sex marriage were not permitted.

Probably - until the religious argument fails and they must go with what they have - sexual freedom.  Those who understand the law a little better than the Mormon practitioners seem to have no doubt that that is where the legal argument will lead.  It is, after all, the only logical direction that the argument can go.  Jamesw beautifully lays out the case - the rest of us will watch it unfold over the next few years.

Those who understand the law a little better than the Mormon practitioners seem to have no doubt that that is where the legal argument will lead.

Or, more accurately, those who have been saying all along that the arguments for same-sex marriage would lead to polygamy now use this polygamy case—based on a completely different legal claim—to argue that they were right.

Here’s the thing—unlike the case of same-sex marriage, legalized polygamy would require significant changes to the legal system in which marriage is defined—not just to the identities of the folks allowed to marry.

For example, assume Joe is married to both Sally and Barbara.  Short of a substantial change to the law, there is no way to answer questions like:

What is the legal relationship between Sally and Barbara?

Is Barbara a legal parent of kids fathered by Joe and borne by Sally? Does this depend on whether Barbara married Joe before or after the kids were born?

If Joe has an accident and is in the hospital unconsious, normally the spouse is next-of-kin and can make medical decisions; who has the decision-making authority if Sally and Barbara disagree?

Spousal health insurance can be purchased tax-free through an employer; can Joe legally purchase tax-free insurance for more than one additional adult? Can Sally purchase tax-free insurance from her employer for Barbara, or only for Joe?

If Sally’s pension includes spousal survivor benefits, and if Barbara lives on after Joe and Sally have both died, does Barbara collect those benefits?  Conversely, some surviving-spouse benefits end if the widowed spouse remarries; does the pre-existing marriage to Barbara prevent Joe from collecting any surviving-spouse benefits from Sally’s pension?

Assuming the “freedom” argument allows multiple partners for both men and women, what happens if Barbara decides she also wants to marry Mark?  What is then the nature of the legal relationship between Mark and Steve?  What about between Mark and Sally?

Note that none of those questions arises in the case of same-sex marriage, and none has an obvious or unambiguous answer. So I think it’s pretty clear that allowing polygamy would require a much greater change to the laws surrounding marriage than has the decisions to allow same-sex marriage.

24, you are just in denial.  That fact that the legal system may be unsettled by expanding civil liberties is no reason not to expand them it required by the constititution or other fundamental law of the land.  The arguments that the homosexual lobby has unleashed cannot be stopped at the point they want them to.
Personally, I want to see them try to stop what they have unleashed.  I want to see them make the argument that they only wanted what they want, but no further.
Quite frankly I see no argument that you have raised is a bar to polyamory, if it is a civil right.  If you think it is a legal nightmare it is one they have created.

#24: Theproblems you pose are in fact not complex or hard to answer. Civil unions have already solved most of the problems, and the states have extended protection to unmarried partners in inti-discrimination legislation. Increasing the numbers will require lawsuits, but they will be troublesome only in the case of divorce. If Sally, Joan and Fred have a child, the parents are the biological mother and father. If they adopt a child, the parents are whoever is in the union at the time of adoption. The adoptioon papers will make this clear. If they add ten more people to the union, the new members are step parents. In the case of a civil union, the members are all member of a partnership with all the legal rights and responsibilities of any legal partnership. The numbers are irrelevant. If the issue is true marriage and not a civil union, marriage will have to legally redefined, but this is as true in the case of any polygamy. The cases are exactly the same.

  The problem with a standard church is quite different. This offers the church a mess I do not see how it can resolve if it intends to call itself Christian.

#19: “The state has no right to deny these people their freedom.” Do you freedom to marry? The state cannot intervene. See my earlier entry. Marriage is a spiritual undertaking, and the first amendment denies congress the right to make laws governing religion. I am of course assuming that a “spiritual endeavor is what religion is, for the constitution speaks of religion in general, not particular sects.
In short, the state has no power to enforce homosexual marriage insofar as it is beyond the civil elements of civil unions which ARE under the constitution.

(I shouldn’t respond to Sarah. My apologies to you all. I will not do it again.) The families whose daughters became Mormons were offended by polygamy because it violated Christian standards; it did then and does now. Moreover, what in fact happened was that many girls became Mormons and only then were coerced into polygamous marriages, an arrangement they were unable to leave even when they wished. It was these cases that stimulated legal action against such marriages.
To call this bigoted, primitivistic and fundamentalist is itself a piece of bigotry (qv in dictionary) only it is liberal bigotry. And these are, as Hayakawa properly called them, snarl words, expressions that tell us nothing about the respondent, but everything about the speaker, for they are without denotation, but are used merely to express the speaker’s emotional state.  LM

When polygamy is discussed I love what Mark Twain said, ” Of course polygamy is not supported by the scripture because Jesus said a man can only serve one master”

“Civil unions have already solved most of the problems, and the states have extended protection to unmarried partners in [anti]-discrimination legislation.”

(1) Civil unions, in states and localities that have them, are—like marriages—limited to two persons per civil union and one civil union per person; the latter limitation counts marriage as a civil union, so someone cannot be in both.  The law there does nothing to clarify what would happen in the web of relationships surrounding three or more people.

(2) The protections that have been extended to unmarried partners are more like the protections of common-law marriage than to the situation of polygamy—again as a baseline, they are extended to a single pair of individuals, and a married person does not get to have another partership also recognized.

Tegularius, as one who works with such benefits, I can tell you that we already had to redefine a lot of these things with the advent of serial monogamy several decades years ago.  We are having to redefine them for same-sex unions.  Redefining them yet again is just the logical next step.

Thanks, Dave B., I wasn’t aware the Reorganized LDS included Smith’s legal (first) wife.

I believe a challenge to the marriage laws in the U.S. has been filed by polygamists based on Lawrence v. Texas.  I don’t know its status.  However, as Scalia’s dissent points out, this is an argument that may succeed.  I am watching to see when Muslims begin joining this battle.  There are a lot more of them than these little pockets of break-away Mormons.

Larry Morse, Sarah was writing satire.  She does that from time to time.  She was parodying liberals who have portrayed conservatives in much these same terms on the same-sex issue.

Thank you Katherine.

You can read about the pro-polygamy movement here:
http://www.pro-polygamy.com/

They basically believe they have prevailed on the fundamental legal right to polygamy based on Lawrence v. Texas and the state same-sex marriage decisions.  They are just biding their time until more courts establish same-sex marriage, at which point they will begin filing their suits. 

I don’t see how legally the states can defend against such suits once their courts have dismantled the traditional legal definition of marriage.  The arguments for polygamy are identical, and frankly, stronger than for gay marriage.  We will have polygamous marriages within ten years.

27 - Dave.  Now THAT’S funny.  Thanks.  Love Mark Twain.

Hold on a minute elves! What’s the point of closing to comments the two entries posted above? What’s the point of posting if no comments are allowed. This doesn’t make sense - indeed, seems counterproductive because it seems to violate the very purpose of a blog. I really object to this practice. What do the rest of you think?  Larry

You know,  Tegularius, what you are saying and arguing is much like a lot of us said as to why marriage would never be re-defined and why the state wold never approve same sex marriage.  We have seen the impossible happen and the rationale for making that impossible happen, as others have pointed out, is the same rationale that will support polygamy or polyamorus relationships.

You can say it won’t happen all day long, as we did, but you can’t guarantee it.  Civil unions and same sex marriage has increased the financial burden on the state by allowing people to receive spousal benefits who would not otherwise be entitled to them.  Such financial burden is irrelevant when a fundamental right has been declared.

It is of course, possible, that the states will do away with all spousal rights and privileges.  There should be no constitutional violation if marriage and civil unions, equally, get nothing, as they are being treated equally.  As society degenerates and the financial burden on the States and Federal Government increases this is what may, in fact, happen.

Oh Tegularius:  Tell me you are not as naive as you sound:

Here’s the thing—unlike the case of same-sex marriage, legalized polygamy would require significant changes to the legal system in which marriage is defined—not just to the identities of the folks allowed to marry….

...Short of a substantial change to the law, there is no way to answer questions like:

Is Barbara a legal parent of kids fathered by Joe and borne by Sally?

Nope, there never were these sorts of questions to be addressed after same-sex marriage.  No way.  Never any questions about the relationship of Bob to the children that his partner Larry fathered with surrogate Sally.  Nope.  Luckily no such questions came up.

Tegularius - you missed the whole point!!!  Same-sex marriage is what started this whole circus.  You can’t say “oh, yes, we’ll redefine a, b and c, no matter what the cost.  But no, we won’t redefine x, y and z.  That would be too much trouble.”

Same-sex marriage has required significant changes to the legal system.  Believe me, polygamy can, and will be adjusted to.  But it will also lead to the new “marriage” becoming an unwieldy monster that will eventually collapse under its own weight.  Just as a family with 10 children could add them all to the working parent’s health insurance, so could the polygamous family add wives, husbands or whatevers.  The issue will be that at some point this will overtax the system and at that point, employers will no longer offer health insurance.

Tegularius - you missed the whole point!!!  Same-sex marriage is what started this whole circus.

Nope.  Divorce is.  It came much earlier, is much more widespread, and can potentially end up applying to anyone who gets married.
Compared to divorce, same-sex marriage is nothing.

Nope, there never were these sorts of questions to be addressed after same-sex marriage.  No way.  Never any questions about the relationship of Bob to the children that his partner Larry fathered with surrogate Sally.

I assume a case like that—if Larry and Bob were legally married by the state—would be identical to the relationship of Bobbie Sue to the children that her husband Larry fathered with surrogate Sally.  It’s a pretty obvious extension of existing law.

Isn’t ANYONE bothered by Kendall’s shutting down comments?  LM

Hey, it’s his blog; he can do what he wants. If we don’t like it, we don’t have to visit here.

Seriously, he often shuts down comments on threads that have the potential for vitriolic ad hominem attacks. I’ve wanted to comment on some of those, but I don’t think even my comments would be “helpful,” as Kendall puts it.

It’s a holiday, I think he wants the Elves to enjoy at least part of the day rather than having to police the threads.

Tegularius raises the valid point that easy divorce and remarriage have been disastrous for society.  A renewed Anglican church is going to have to do a much, much better job with marriage.

It’s so easy to blame outside forces, such as a change in the law easing the path to divorce.

It’s not quite so easy to look within, to discover our own turning away from God and turning to the me-first religion of our own generation. You and I are part of the generation and society that produced easy divorce. The enemy is not easy divorce. The enemy is us.

My point ws that there are maters of real importance in the blogs he closed. Thee was no reason for the responses to be more vitriolic than they are now in matter of less substance. Indeed, my impression is that the less substantial the blog is, the more the responses are personal and bitter. Someone remarked that the reason academic fighting is so bitter is that it is about so little. Sp it is here.

  There were real ideas at stake is the first case - or was it the second? - and these were what we should be talking about. I know it is Kendall’s blog and he can indeed do what he wants, but he shouldn’t want to shut the discussion of ideas out.
Blogging should be about transparency that otherwise might not occur; closing a blog to comments contravenes all blogging’s basic purpose.
  Larry

If it bothers you that much, go start your own blog.  I warn you, though, it’s very VERY time consuming!