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Polygamous Montana Trio Applies For Wedding License

So that's what marriage is all about? It's just about a bunch of legal "benefits"? Then why was everyone so opposed to civil unions?

If the right hadn't been so opposed to civil unions at the get-go, the fight for marriage might not have happened.

People should have given them that very simple option when they were begging for it. But no, people had to be ugly about it.
 
Serious question:

Who cares if three people are married, and why?
I care. One reason: I don't know that we can afford it.

What's this going to do to welfare? How do you calculate survivor benefits for SS?

At this point there are just so many unanswered questions, isn't it foolish not to at least care about the issue?
 
I care. One reason: I don't know that we can afford it.

What's this going to do to welfare? How do you calculate survivor benefits for SS?

At this point there are just so many unanswered questions, isn't it foolish not to at least care about the issue?

So freedom should be limited to the POSSIBILITY that these marriages may require assistance of Welfare or Social Security?
 
Do you have an issue with more freedoms?

What would be great would be the freedom to elect judges, rather than having them appointed for me by my benevolent government. Democracy is the best kind of freedom.
 
What would be great would be the freedom to elect judges, rather than having them appointed for me by my benevolent government. Democracy is the best kind of freedom.

Only if you are in the majority..

Democracy is Mob Rule.

The Republic is the way to go.
The Republic protects the rights and liberties of the individual. Democracy is subject to the whims of the majority, with the power to remove the rights of the minority upon popular decision.
 
Well unlike gay marriage, which is supported by the majority of Americans and most Americans know a gay person, polygamy is a uniquely conservative Christian issue.

Along with incestuous relationships, and relations between humans and animals, these are unique family set-ups that mostly apply to conservatives in the "car on the lawn states." Most Americans don't know on a personal level incestuous or polygamous couples, therefore the fight for their rights won't be in the forefront of American politics.

Since it is a uniquely conservative issue and phenomenon, conservatives will have to chalk up the arguments for pro-incest and pro-polygamous marriages. You can start with the OT, which is a unique selling point among our nations most religious and might win you sympathy in the courts.

Actually, it isn't just a conservative Christian thing. The most common type of polygamy we normally see usually involves conservative Christian types, involving one man with many wives. However, polyamorous people, which is more likely to be a mutually agreed upon group marriage, is generally a much more liberal/progressive concept.

Now, the interesting thing is that the group marriage thing is much more appealing and acceptable to most people, since it generally doesn't involve cult-like followers or any practices that are seen as skirting the law (such as involving very young girls and shunning young men or simply kicking them out of the community). But out of those actually wanting polygamy legal (not just "supporting" it now because of same sex marriage bans being struck down), one many having multiple wives is the most common and fought for type of polygamy.
 
I do have a question for anyone who opposes it to answer....


What is inherently wrong with polygamy? On what grounds do people oppose it?

I only oppose striking down the bans or repealing them without any changes to marriage/spousal laws because many of the concerns that we use spousal laws to address, are completely turned on their head when a person has more than one legal spouse. Plus, what is to stop someone from using this to their advantage. At the very least, it would cost the government more money. Such a thing would make immigration laws pertaining to spouses a nightmare. And in that one area alone, it could increase some huge costs for investigations almost overnight because a person could just marry 40, 60, 100 other people at a couple of thousand dollars a piece then retire with more money than Bruce Wayne. And all those investigations would cost the US a ton of money to deal with, even if the person didn't get away with it.
 
I only oppose striking down the bans or repealing them without any changes to marriage/spousal laws because many of the concerns that we use spousal laws to address, are completely turned on their head when a person has more than one legal spouse. Plus, what is to stop someone from using this to their advantage. At the very least, it would cost the government more money. Such a thing would make immigration laws pertaining to spouses a nightmare. And in that one area alone, it could increase some huge costs for investigations almost overnight because a person could just marry 40, 60, 100 other people at a couple of thousand dollars a piece then retire with more money than Bruce Wayne. And all those investigations would cost the US a ton of money to deal with, even if the person didn't get away with it.

So, again we limit freedom because it will cost us money.
 
Oh, really? Exactly which "people" are you talking about? Apparently NOT the majority of citizens who support the decision, (which includes myself). Nor the minority of citizens who, as with any other decision of SCOTUS, might not agree with it but are willing to accept and adapt to it as the price of citizenship.

I am not surprised that someone who knows as little about the questions of constitutional law involved in this decision as you do would support it. Apparently President Lincoln, unlike you, did not know that accepting any decision the Supreme Court may happen to make is "the price of citizenship." He considered Dred Scott v. Sandford unconstitutional and declined to enforce it, and he spoke in his First Inaugural address of how the people of this country cannot be the subjects of the Supreme Court.

You must mean that OTHER minority of people, like yourself, who think either your religious-based objections OR non-religious personal prejudices make your claim that this decision is "unlawful," true?

My objections to Obergefell are based neither on religious belief nor on personal prejudice, but on my strong belief in democracy and the rule of law. It was also clear to four Supreme Court justices that this decision had no constitutional basis--i.e. was nothing more than a lawless expression of several lawyers' policy preferences--and I agree with those dissenters. Arbitrary decrees are not law.

if opposite sex marriages want to retain all the legal privileges and immunities of marriage granted to them no matter where they reside in the USA, then same-sex couples legally married in one state MUST have those same privileges and immunities protected in ALL states too.

Obergefell did not involve either the Privileges and Immunities Clause in Art. IV or the one in the Fourteenth Amendment. If you know of any Supreme Court decision that describes the right to marry as a privilege or immunity, please cite it--I'd like to read it.

The Full Faith and Credit Clause, Art. IV, sec. 1, does normally require each state to give full faith and credit to "the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state." But the next sentence gives Congress power to make general laws to "prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effects thereof."

That is just what Congress did in section two of the Defense of Marriage Act:

SEC. 2. POWERS RESERVED TO THE STATES.

‘‘No State, territory, or possession of the United States, or
Indian tribe, shall be required to give effect to any public act,
record, or judicial proceeding of any other State, territory, posses-
sion, or tribe respecting a relationship between persons of the
same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such
other State, territory, possession, or tribe, or a right or claim
arising from such relationship.’’

This provision, which Obergefell has made meaningless, had allowed states where majorities did not want to include same-sex couples in their marriage laws to decline to recognize same-sex marriages which had been performed in other states. So, contrary to what you seem to be suggesting, there was no constitutional reason whatever why same-sex couples MUST have their marriages recognized in ALL other states.

That is a perfect application of the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the 14th Amendment under the Incorporation Doctrine.

Obergefell is a substantive due process decision, pure and simple, with all the faults which have made that doctrine notorious--and then some. Chief Justice Roberts was exactly right to compare it to Lochner, the quintessential case from the Supreme Court's "Substantive Due Process Era," which is usually taken as the period between 1904 and 1937. The only real difference is that in Lochner in 1905, it was an imaginary liberty of contract the Court read into the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause, while in Obergefell in 2015 it was an imaginary liberty of homosexual marriage.
 
So, again we limit freedom because it will cost us money.

It is a lot of state money, which is in a government interest, and it doesn't do a whole lot for those involved, nor does doing so offer many protections to the spouses, given the nature of marriage laws and their point. Part of the reason for marriage is to protect the spouse. They get some say in various decisions in the other spouse's life, say that is automatically set up with the marriage license, but set up with other legal paperwork when there is no spouse and that paperwork limits people to only having one person identified as that legal representative. This is at least one law that revolves around a two person only marriage. There is also the matter of parental rights. People in the child's life from pretty much birth do get some rights concerning a child they helped raise, especially if they want to adopt, which legal marriage gives them the right to do. There is also the matter of if there is no limit on how many spouses a person can have, theoretically everyone on Earth could be legally married to everyone else. Also how much privacy within the marriages must be mandated by the law? Can a spouse simply separate from the "family"? Can a spouse with multiple spouses keep the other spouses secret? What then happens if they die? Which spouse takes precedent? If one spouses has 20 other spouses, all hidden from the others, how is the first spouse's assets calculated? As a married person, it is the joint amount between both spouses. What if there is not a will? Does each spouses now get 1/20th of the money? What about the children? What if one or more spouses bring children from previous marriages into the relationship?

These are but a few of thousands, if not more, questions that pertain to polygamy laws.
 
If anyone wants to get married they should- be it man, woman, multiples, plants or beasts. I dont see how its anyone's business but themselves.
 
So freedom should be limited to the POSSIBILITY that these marriages may require assistance of Welfare or Social Security?
He was only asking who cared--it seems to me it has the potential to affect everyone in the country, including me, so of course I care.

How the issue should be handled is whole 'nuther question!

My default position is that people should certainly be free to enter into such marriages, but it's probably not in the best interest of the state to recognize them legally. Unfortunately, the SC seems to have created a fundamental right to have marriage relationships recognized by the government, so maybe our hands are tied.
 
If anyone wants to get married they should- be it man, woman, multiples, plants or beasts. I dont see how its anyone's business but themselves.

It's not. I'd love to know how these people who are saying "no" to non-traditional marriages would feel if somebody came up to them and said, "Nope. Not gettin' married today. We don't like your choice of partner. Find somebody else and come back later. We'll revisit the conversation then." :roll:
 
It is a lot of state money, which is in a government interest, and it doesn't do a whole lot for those involved, nor does doing so offer many protections to the spouses, given the nature of marriage laws and their point. Part of the reason for marriage is to protect the spouse. They get some say in various decisions in the other spouse's life, say that is automatically set up with the marriage license, but set up with other legal paperwork when there is no spouse and that paperwork limits people to only having one person identified as that legal representative. This is at least one law that revolves around a two person only marriage. There is also the matter of parental rights. People in the child's life from pretty much birth do get some rights concerning a child they helped raise, especially if they want to adopt, which legal marriage gives them the right to do. There is also the matter of if there is no limit on how many spouses a person can have, theoretically everyone on Earth could be legally married to everyone else. Also how much privacy within the marriages must be mandated by the law? Can a spouse simply separate from the "family"? Can a spouse with multiple spouses keep the other spouses secret? What then happens if they die? Which spouse takes precedent? If one spouses has 20 other spouses, all hidden from the others, how is the first spouse's assets calculated? As a married person, it is the joint amount between both spouses. What if there is not a will? Does each spouses now get 1/20th of the money? What about the children? What if one or more spouses bring children from previous marriages into the relationship?

These are but a few of thousands, if not more, questions that pertain to polygamy laws.

And nearly all of those questions are still at issue before the court during a typical Divorce or Estate proceeding. And each and every one today with typical marriages are completed on a case by case basis, and it will be no different with polygamy marriages. There is no law set in stone on these types of decisions that has to be re-created due to polygamy.
 
It's not. I'd love to know how these people who are saying "no" to non-traditional marriages would feel if somebody came up to them and said, "Nope. Not gettin' married today. We don't like your choice of partner. Find somebody else and come back later. We'll revisit the conversation then." :roll:

My state, despite the Republican Governor's veto, decided to overrule him and enact a "Religious Freedom" bull**** law for magistrates to refuse to issue marriage licenses based on "deeply held religious beliefs"..

Im waiting for that one troll magistrate to refuse to issue a marriage license based upon "deeply held religious beliefs" to a man/woman couple attempting to get married......

That **** would make my day.
 
My state, despite the Republican Governor's veto, decided to overrule him and enact a "Religious Freedom" bull**** law for magistrates to refuse to issue marriage licenses based on "deeply held religious beliefs"..

Im waiting for that one troll magistrate to refuse to issue a marriage license based upon "deeply held religious beliefs" to a man/woman couple attempting to get married......

That **** would make my day.
Why? All he needs to do is say, "yes, we can take care of that for you today" then switch places with the person standing next to him who has no such belief. Then everybody crosses their fingers and hopes that the world doesn't suddenly end.

If that's the sort of thing that makes your day, just wait till you finish painting that first room and then get watch it all dry.
 
So that's what marriage is all about? It's just about a bunch of legal "benefits"? Then why was everyone so opposed to civil unions?

I think it was. Inheritance, and hospital decisions required a couple to be married. That was a big problem for Gays during the AIDS epidemic.
 
My state, despite the Republican Governor's veto, decided to overrule him and enact a "Religious Freedom" bull**** law for magistrates to refuse to issue marriage licenses based on "deeply held religious beliefs"..

Im waiting for that one troll magistrate to refuse to issue a marriage license based upon "deeply held religious beliefs" to a man/woman couple attempting to get married......

That **** would make my day.

Would certainly make the news, wouldn't it? :lol:
 
And nearly all of those questions are still at issue before the court during a typical Divorce or Estate proceeding. And each and every one today with typical marriages are completed on a case by case basis, and it will be no different with polygamy marriages. There is no law set in stone on these types of decisions that has to be re-created due to polygamy.

No, most of those questions are not any significant issues for the court in most divorce cases or estate proceedings. If there is no will, assets go to the spouse, so long as there is no evidence that it should go to somewhere else (something shady going on). There is little question about who is supposed to have the right to medical decisions or death decisions for a married person. These are things set in place with a legal marriage, that are only changed, vary for certain people because those people want specifically to have them changed.

Hell, one of them is absolutely specific to only being necessary to know if we did allow people to have more than one spouse. Would each spouse have to agree to a new spouse their spouse takes on?

In the military, if I plan to leave anyone else besides my spouse my base pay, death/missing benefits, life insurance, my husband has to agree to it because I'm married.
 
Why? All he needs to do is say, "yes, we can take care of that for you today" then switch places with the person standing next to him who has no such belief. Then everybody crosses their fingers and hopes that the world doesn't suddenly end.

If that's the sort of thing that makes your day, just wait till you finish painting that first room and then get watch it all dry.
Look.... maybe you haven't been to North Carolina.... but pretending that every county has 2-50 Civil Magistrates working on any particular day is a stretch of the imagination.

In Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro, Durham.... yeah maybe.

But we should NEVER base law on the MOST availability, but on the LEAST availability.
Many counties in North Carolina have 1 magistrate that handles both Civil AND Criminal matters at the same time.

Pretending there is a long line of Magistrates just sitting around waiting for work, rather than a long line of citizens waiting patiently (and impatiently) for their opportunity to come before one is laughable.

Also, pretending that in the rural parts of North Carolina (which is most of it) that there will be a Magistrate who DOESN'T have this "deeply held religious belief" is also quite laughable.
 
Would certainly make the news, wouldn't it? :lol:

I almost wish I could get the job.... just so I could claim that the Flying Spaghetti Monster has determined that man/woman marriages are not in the best interests of our overpopulating world, and thus it is against my deeply held religious beliefs to grant their marriage.
 
No, most of those questions are not any significant issues for the court in most divorce cases or estate proceedings. If there is no will, assets go to the spouse, so long as there is no evidence that it should go to somewhere else (something shady going on). There is little question about who is supposed to have the right to medical decisions or death decisions for a married person. These are things set in place with a legal marriage, that are only changed, vary for certain people because those people want specifically to have them changed.

Hell, one of them is absolutely specific to only being necessary to know if we did allow people to have more than one spouse. Would each spouse have to agree to a new spouse their spouse takes on?

In the military, if I plan to leave anyone else besides my spouse my base pay, death/missing benefits, life insurance, my husband has to agree to it because I'm married.

And so... I ask again..... rights and liberties of the individual are contingent upon the convenience of the government?????
 
My objections to Obergefell are based…on my strong belief in democracy and the rule of law...
Obergefell is a substantive due process decision, pure and simple, with all the faults which have made that doctrine notorious--and then some.

Yes, the decision states…

“The right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person, and under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment couples of the same-sex may not be deprived of that right and that liberty. Same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry.”

Now I recognized that the Slaughterhouse Cases (83 U.S. 36 (1873) ruling created the principle under stare decisis that the 14th Amendment did not protect the various privileges or immunities incident to citizenship of a state. This is what compels the SCOTUS majority to use Due Process, even when the argument contains a significant basis in State privileges and immunities.

So examining the following excepts from the majority decision:


"Held: The Fourteenth Amendment requires a State to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-State…

....States have contributed to the fundamental character of marriage by placing it at the center of many facets of the legal and social order. There is no difference between same- and opposite-sex couples with respect to this principle, yet same-sex couples are denied the constellation of benefits that the States have linked to marriage and are consigned to an instability many opposite-sex couples would find intolerable. It is demeaning to lock same-sex couples out of a central institution of the Nation’s society, for they too may aspire to the transcendent purposes of marriage...”

…showing the Justice's reference to privileges and immunities. The determination continues…

“(3) The right of same-sex couples to marry is also derived from the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection… The challenged laws burden the liberty of same-sex couples, and they abridge central precepts of equality. The marriage laws at issue are in essence unequal: Same-sex couples are denied benefits afforded opposite-sex couples and are barred from exercising a fundamental right. Especially against a long history of disapproval of their relationships, this denial works a grave and continuing harm, serving to disrespect and subordinate gays and lesbians.”

So, while the decision does state (as you insist) basis under the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause, reading the arguments show that the support for that use is clearly based in significant amount on state sanctioned privileges and immunities granted married couples but denied to same-sex couples under State laws. Further, the decision categorically includes the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the arguments in support of that.

I stand by my previous posts.
 
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Well unlike gay marriage, which is supported by the majority of Americans and most Americans know a gay person, polygamy is a uniquely conservative Christian issue.

Along with incestuous relationships, and relations between humans and animals, these are unique family set-ups that mostly apply to conservatives in the "car on the lawn states." Most Americans don't know on a personal level incestuous or polygamous couples, therefore the fight for their rights won't be in the forefront of American politics.

Since it is a uniquely conservative issue and phenomenon, conservatives will have to chalk up the arguments for pro-incest and pro-polygamous marriages. You can start with the OT, which is a unique selling point among our nations most religious and might win you sympathy in the courts.
As far as I am aware, no mainstream Christian group has ever advocated polygamy or tolerated it among their followers. That's about 2,000 years of history we are talking about.

Yes, polygamy did appear in OT times and perhaps we could have a Biblical exegete explain to us the development of Christian and Jewish doctrines on monogamy, in the light of OT history.
 
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