If - and this is one huge hypothetical if that I will carry through for the rest of my post - polygamous marriages were allowed then polyandrous marriages would be as well (equal protection, male cannot be the only one to choose to take on more than one spouse). This opens a whole new range of complications, especially if it were legally defined as multiple individual marriages. We have male spouse A with 5 marriages and 5 wives, we have Female spouse B with 5 marriages (one wife and 4 husbands), female spouse C who has 5 husbands (one of which is also married to female D) ect. This is just one nightmare tangled web of marriages that could potentially increase exponentially until there is some crazy 6 degrees of separation issue - kind of like a pyramid scheme for marriages. Everyone is intermarried and households are completely muddied and blurred. There just would just be one huge tangle of interwoven chainmail-esque marriages - entire communities all intermarried, and potentially infighting (screw potentially - inevitably). There is no way to keep track of this and to deal with it.
First off polygamy automatically includes polyandry. You are mistaking polygamy for polygyny. Polygamy is multiple marriages period and has no implication as to what the gender combination is. However you are correct, there are many logistical issue that would need resolving prior to instituting polygamy. Most polys recognize that. While our end goal is indeed the re-legalization of polygamy, the immediate goal is to not have negative consequences visited upon us for entering into social/religious marriages which are not controlled by the state. Also one needs to note the difference between polyamoury and polygamy. The former are more likely to form the kind of complicated chains you have shown. There might be a few marriages there, but not everyone would seek the legal recondition.
In the one huge happy blanket marriage scenario we would have all current individuals under one umbrella marriage who would have to come to a consensus as to whether or not to take on a new spouse into this arrangement (contract). This would at least serve to encourage limits to the size of the marriages, but what is to stop one group, one organization, or one community to decide to have one monstrosity of a marriage that covers thousands of individuals? If there were to be multiple individuals allowed under one blanket marriage it would have to be unlimited as to how many this could be - how is it that it could be legally argued to instate some arbitrary upper limit on this without also encountering the counterpoint that if this is to be the case that the arbitrary upper limit should be set to 2 people?
This is the type of arrangements that one would typically find in a Heinlein novel. I have to agree that to set any kind of limit invited the question of why not 2? Again I would have to simply say look at the community. We are not likely to form such large groups looking to be a single family in that manner.
If you are saying that you think incestual couples should be able to be married, then you are supporting it.
I say that abortion is wrong, but I don't support anti-abortion legislation. But that is still beside the point. One can agree with your conclusion but still tell you that you arrived at it through faulty logic. And that is what Oscar was doing. Simply because you do not want to accept that people in the past found inbreeding as acceptable does not mean it wasn't. We are not saying that ALL people found it acceptable, but your argument was that ALL found it unacceptable even though they practiced it. And BTW it was not just limited to royality. Much of the nobility (which is not considered royality) also practiced it as well as some of the more wealthy gentry. Then you had clans which were the same thing but over a larger range of people. For some of them you were not allowed to go outside the clan to marry.
You go back to post #351 (I think). Roguenuke posted a very informative article about it. There is scientific evidence that even when people grow up separately, there is "something" that turns them off in a normal situation.
Saw them. I'll admit that I've only scanned through them so far, but they still support what I said; that the taboo is a learned trait and not an automatic repulsion. Here's a couple of example:
As mammals, human mothers nurse and care for their newborn infants, so seeing your own mother care for a newborn is a reliable cue that this baby is your sibling. Our data show that if you are older, and are present in the home when your biological mother is caring for a new baby, the mind tags that baby as a sibling—leading to high levels of altruism and sexual aversion toward that particular younger sibling, regardless of how long the two of you subsequently co-reside in the same household.
So what happens when one's mom is a wet nurse? Or for that matter when one's mother is caring for an adopted child. There is no blood relation but that taboo still arises. It's not a blood thing, but because of the nature of how most kids grow up, the likelyhood of their developing the taboo towards a blood related individual is higher than towards the non blood related individual. Again I point back to the India example.
Pioneering archival studies by Arthur Wolf and others provided support for this view, by showing that the fertility rates were lower and divorce rates higher among Chinese marriages involving non-siblings raised together from childhood.
Exactly what I just said. They weren't blood relatives but they still develop the taboo because they were raised together.
Perhaps, but if they found out? They would most likely be immediately disgusted. Because some things are just WRONG.
You completely disregarded the first part of that statement. Incest stories are quite popular among porn stories. They make movies about it even though the actors are not usually actually related, at least by blood.
Child sex abuse is more common to happen by a child's own family member. THAT is a fact. I also mentioned the grooming idea. When abuse has happened for a child's whole life, this would carry over into adulthood too. They would be messed up people by then.
We're still at correlation is not causation. Why is child sex abuse more prevalent by a family member? Maybe because the opportunities are easier and the power they hold over a relative is stronger than a non-related child. It's easier to commit their crime and cover it up. What you fail to show is whether the individual would or would not sexually assault a non-related child if there were no related children available to them. In other words, you cannot claim that the blood bond is the problem when the problem is actually that the individual is a pedophile and is simply taking the easiest route. When a dog chases a cat, is it because "dogs hate cats" or because the dog would actually chase any small animal but cats are the only ones around to chase?
Straight, gay and any couples can be sterile. That is a pretty WEAK argument.
The birth defect argument is the weak argument. Aside from the fact that you would still ban couples who could not produce a child you would also allow a non-related couple who would have a 30% chance of creating a child with birth defects while denying a related couple who would have a 20% chance of creating a child with birth defects (Disclaimer: numbers are for example sake only and are not intended to reflect the actual chances). For the birth defect argument to be valid, then the line has to be set a a certain risk level (say 25% chance or higher) and
applied to everyone.
Look again. I pointed out your hypocritical statement on supporting the right of consenting adults to make choices by noting that you had made arguments counter to that statement. You said:
...I think consenting adults SHOULD be able to make their own choices regarding personal matters such as marriage and things like that.
But you don't. Everything that you have argued here proves that you only support the right of consenting adults to make choices as long as they are choices you agree with.