Politics

This article in the World Net Daily blows the big scare horn on gay marriage being legalized in America.  Evidently some groups are concerned that gay marriage is a slippery slope to legalizing polygamy.  Lets take a closer look.

1. Currently, polygamists do live in America and practice polygamy, a large majority of them being Mormon, a modern offshoot of Christianity.  The multiple wives of these polygamy families claim single parent status on their taxes and welfare.  This results in the polygamy families receiving thousands of tax payer monies to pay for their many children’s welfare on account of all but one wife being single with little or no income. It is well known that a handful of mormon polygamy families live soley off this government money, the husband of all the wives collecting their government paychecks and acting as a stay-at-home father to all his wives and children.  If the United States made polygamy legal,  it would not have to pay the welfare checks of these polygamy families.

2. For the Christian readers, we have a bit of polygamy in the good old bible.  You don’t have look too hard to find all the many wives of so and so and of god bestowing the plunder of wives upon a conqueror.  Here is just one obvious example:

“And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul; 8: And I gave thee thy master’s house, and thy master’s wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things” (2 Sam. 12)

If polygamy was good enough for the heros of the bible, why should we turn our noses up at those who choose to practice polygamy in the silence of their own private lives?  As an Atheist I could care less whether something is or is not in the bronze age storybook, but to some it could be difficult evidence  to pass up.

3.  The last thing this article tries to do is beg the question.  They say, well if people can have sex with someone of the same genitalia or with more than one person, what is to stop the law from granting incest or bestiality to be constitutional? To answer this we back up a few steps and recognize that people in the gay rights groups and pro-polygamy groups are not asking permission to have sex in the manner in which they choose.  They are asking for equal rights between legal adult citizens of the USA.  In the context of granting equal rights for men and women (human beings) who are members of the society of the USA, we recognize that animals are not included in this criteria of consideration for legal status.  An animal is not a human being of consenting age and could therefore not be considered a valid partner in the legal status of a civil union.  For two human beings to get married requires a few basic things: legal citizenship, consent, and declaration of intent.  An animal cannot meet these requirements.  It is not required however to show your genitalia in order to obtain a civil union, and such a requirement of showing sex or sexual preference is discrimination (as society has deemed today) and hence the reason for the gay rights movement.  Incest on the other hand, is performed in this country already, mostly through rape.  Consensual incest could be made legal if we again changed the criteria for marriage by not requiring consenting adults to be unrelated.  This would be a decision made by society if it deemed  that was something of value to the society.  Which leads me to my final point:

4.  Marriage and Civil Unions are not RIGHTS.  They are statuses that our society has devised to provide a set of privileges to consenting adults who agree to enter these legal agreements together.  For example: the speed limit for Highway XZY is 55 mph.  This law was enacted by President Eisenhower during an oil shortage.  It was thought that if everyone would drive slower they would conserve fuel.  This law made sense at the time and society agreed to it by enforcing it and obiding by it.  Since then, cars have become more efficient and often are more fuel efficient when cruising at 70mph. We have also made them safer so as to sustain accidents at these higher speeds.  The top speed limits on Highway XYZ hence are changed to 70 mph reflecting the new societial and technological circumstances.  Society agrees by enforcing the new speed limit and abiding by it.  Likewise when civil union was devised in the early workings of the USA, the opinion of society was that such a priviledge was between a human with a penis and a human with a vagina.  Today, society disagrees with the criteria of the 1800s and votes to change the law to reflect new societal and technological circumstances.  We understand now through the use of MRIs that the brains of gay men show similarities to those of heterosexual women. We also understand that the people who institutionalized marriage back in the 1700s also thought that slavery acceptable.  As a society, we make the law.  If society finds reason to believe that consensual incest is a benifit to the group, then it will change the critieria for the priveledge of marriage to reflect such an agreement of change.  There are no absolutes.  If the entire population of the world was killed off and the only remaining survivors to populate the earth were blood relatives, I’ll be damned if they don’t have some incest right then and there.  Heck, if Adam and Eve really were the first and only humans on this planet, who do you suppose Cain and Able had sex with?