Legal contracts must be open to all consenting adults, or none. - Edit 2
Before modification by Joel at 22/10/2012 03:15:45 PM
Before you get up in arms and think that I am trying to argue that legalizing gay marriage will lead to a slippery slope (polygamy, people marrying animals or kids, etc...), that is not my point. I am not trying to argue against gay marriage. I really want to get a sampling of opinions. Should polygamy be illegal? If not, why? If so, why?
It should not, primarily (though not solely) for the above stated reason. Whether marriage itself is a right or privilege is irrelevant to the Fourteenth Amendments Equal Protection Clause; the law must sanction all or no marriages between consenting adults, because it can neither be restricted to nor exclude any one group.
For a little devil's advocacy and to get your hearts appropriately bleeding, let's say a loving muslim family (I almost said couple, then I almost said threesome hehe) of one man and his two wives comes from Saudi Arabia to live in the US. Only they find that they cannot remain legally married here due to our anti-polygamy laws, and to their horror at least one of the loving soul mates must leave the marriage. All three are devastated. Assume they wouldn't be prohibited from entering the US in the first place.
And please don't say it should be illegal because the supreme court has already ruled on it. If laws banning gay marriage had come before SCOTUS like polygamy did in the 1800s they would have upheld those too.
The reason this question is not directed to opponents of gay marriage is because I think I already know what they all would say anyway.
And please don't say it should be illegal because the supreme court has already ruled on it. If laws banning gay marriage had come before SCOTUS like polygamy did in the 1800s they would have upheld those too.
The reason this question is not directed to opponents of gay marriage is because I think I already know what they all would say anyway.
We cannot assume they would not be barred from entry in the first place, because they would: Section 212a10 of the Immigration and Nationality Act specifically states, "Practicing polygamists.-Any immigrant who is coming to the United States to practice polygamy is inadmissible."
I wish those debating this made more effort to distinguish marriage as religious rite from marriage as legal contract, because the First Amendment bars any government role in the former. "Civil unions" should be the sole legally recognized marriage available to anyone (and thus everyone, via the Equal Protection Clause.) Religious rites may or may not go further at the discretion of those involved, but that cannot include government, which the Constitution bars from establishing religion.
As religion, it is none of governments business how consenting adults choose to worship (or not;) government can no more regulate marriage than communion, baptism or any religious rite. As law, "no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."