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Polygamous Montana Trio Applies For Wedding License

But it does. The argument made (by SCOTUS) was for any two people, not any two people who are not related.

It is always interesting to see people who claim to be for equality now saying related people cannot have that equality. Really shows you that there is no marriage quality difference in republicans and democrats.

If your argument had any real merit then incest was legalized long before SSM sex. Man and Woman. Brother and Sister. Mom and son. So you bringing up this apparent new inclusion for incest couples because of the SSM Ruling is weird.
 
If your argument had any real merit then incest was legalized long before SSM sex.

There was a constitutionally protected state interest in keeping marriage away from gays and incest couples prior to the 26th.
 
There was a constitutionally protected state interest in keeping marriage away from gays and incest couples prior to the 26th.

And at one point blacks away from whites in marriage. And women from voting... etc... etc.

Arguments for homosexuality have proven that there is no damage to society or the individuals involded in such a relationship. Therefore government prejudice towards homosexuals has been removed through specific court orders.

None has happened for incest.
 
No, the rights only existed, were only recognized to exist when we said they did. Otherwise, we wouldn't have had to say it. Doesn't matter what others believed/believe.
People recognized the right to defecate long before the concept of rights was conceived. It exists to this day, and is certainly recognized despite never having been formally named. The right has long been heavily regulated, but no government has ever tried to do away with the right altogether, which is probably why we've never really had to declare it.
 
Only prior to the 26th of June.
This ruling didn't legalize incestuous marriage; it did set up a framework that makes it much easier to achieve. However, I don't see how you get there without first decriminalizing the act of incest. You can't do that without a bunch of people challenging the laws in high profile cases, publicly saying "I want to legally have sex with my brother/mother/uncle" etc.

Personally, I don't see that happening anytime soon.
 
From a value judgement perspective, it excludes some people from marriage. Wealthier men can horde wives at the cost to less prvileged men creating a societal imbalance. At least same-sex marriage was largely inclusive since gays and lesbians were not particularly likely to form lasting marriages with opposite sex individuals.

And wealthier women could likewise horde men. And that is a lot more likely to happen in this day and age.
 
This ruling didn't legalize incestuous marriage; it did set up a framework that makes it much easier to achieve. However, I don't see how you get there without first decriminalizing the act of incest. You can't do that without a bunch of people challenging the laws in high profile cases, publicly saying "I want to legally have sex with my brother/mother/uncle" etc.

Personally, I don't see that happening anytime soon.
You start with handling the stupidest aspect of many of the incest laws, the non-blood legal relationship. Using the Brady Bunch as an example, because they are probably the best known blended family, what real reason would there be to prevent Greg and Marcia from marrying? Especially given the age they were when they became legal siblings?
 
From a value judgement perspective, it excludes some people from marriage. Wealthier men can horde wives at the cost to less prvileged men creating a societal imbalance. At least same-sex marriage was largely inclusive since gays and lesbians were not particularly likely to form lasting marriages with opposite sex individuals.

Actually there is a lot more wrong with this argument than I initially thought. Not only does it dismiss women having many husbands, but it ignores that polygamy, as opposed to polygyny as per your description, can easily consist of both multiple wives AND husbands. My poly family has two wives and two husbands. We are not the only ones out there.
 
You start with handling the stupidest aspect of many of the incest laws, the non-blood legal relationship. Using the Brady Bunch as an example, because they are probably the best known blended family, what real reason would there be to prevent Greg and Marcia from marrying? Especially given the age they were when they became legal siblings?
I don't know of any states that prohibit Greg from marrying Marcia. Most "non blood incest" laws are of the step-parent/step-child variety, which boils down to someone having sex with their spouse's child. The best course of action there is not to challenge the law, but to get a divorce.
 
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I don't know of any states that prohibit Greg from marrying Marcia. Most "non blood incest" laws are of the step-parent/step-child variety, which boils down to someone having sex with their spouse's child. The best course of action there is not to challenge the law, but to get a divorce.

Connecticut:"Any person related within degrees specified in 46b-21; No man may marry his mother, grandmother, daughter, granddaughter, sister, aunt, niece, stepmother or stepdaughter, and no woman may marry her father, grandfather, son, grandson, brother, uncle, nephew, stepfather or stepson" No mention of blood related status. Refers to marriage.

Delaware:"Without regard to legitimacy or adoption, male & his child, parent, brother, sister, grandchild, niece or nephew, father's sister or brother, mother's sister or brother, father's wife, wife's child, child of his wife's son or daughter; female & her parent, child, brother, sister, grandchild, niece or nephew, father's sister or brother, mother's sister or brother, mother's husband, husband's child, child of her husband's son or daughter." Refers to sexual intercourse

Kentucky:"Known ancestor, descendant, brother, or sister without regard to legitimacy, adoption, whole or half blood, or stepparent and stepchild" refers to sexual intercourse or deviate sexual intercourse (whatever that may be)

New Mexico:"Persons known to be parents and children (including grandparents and grandchildren of every degree), brothers and sisters of half and whole blood, uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews" Refers to marriage or sexual intercourse. With the bold part it is to be noted that it comes after the mention of blood, Which I actually find strange. Maybe a copy error from the law itself or over looked wording. But as is it implies any relation not just blood.

New York:"Persons known to be related to him or her, whether through marriage or not, as an ancestor, descendant, brother or sister of either the whole or the half blood, uncle, aunt, nephew or niece" refers to marriage, sexual intercourse, oral sexual conduct, or anal sexual conduct. Again the whole/half blood qualifier is only on the siblings further enforcing the implication that it is any relationship for what is in bold.

North Carolina:"Person that is grandparent or grandchild; parent or child or stepchild or adopted child; brother or sister of whole or half-blood; uncle aunt, nephew or niece" Refers to "Carnal intercourse" however that may be different from regular intercourse.

Rhode Island:"No man shall marry his mother, grandmother, daughter, son's daughter, daughter's daughter, stepmother, grandfather's wife, son's wife, son's son's wife, daughter's son's wife, wife's mother, wife's grandmother, wife's daughter, wife's son's daughter, wife's daughter's daughter, sister, brother's daughter, sister's daughter, father's sister, or mother's sister; No woman shall marry her father, grandfather, son, son's son, daughter's son, stepfather, grandmother's husband, daughter's husband, son's daughter's husband, daughter's daughter's husband, husband's father, husband's grandfather, husband's son, husband's son's son, husband's daughter's son, brother, brother's son, sister's son, father's brother, or mother's brother." Refers to marriage. Boy they detailed this one down. There is a lot there that I have to wonder about since if a man divorces his wife and then marries the woman's mother or daughter (assuming the daughter is not his own, which is why they put it in the law) does that violate the law since the first woman is no longer his wife. Same with stepmother, if she is no longer married to his father, does she still count as the stepmother. A lot of these seem moot given that one cannot have more than one marriage, currently. I also note a lack of steps. For example a man may not marry his brother's daughter, but if his brother has a step daughter is that allowed? Still there is no mention of blood being required thus step is out I would say, although it's a tough call from a layman's perspective.
 
Part 2:


South Carolina:"(1) A man with his mother, grandmother, daughter, granddaughter, stepmother, sister, grandfather's wife, son's wife, grandson's wife, wife's mother, wife's grandmother, wife's daughter, wife's granddaughter, brother's daughter, sister's daughter, father's sister or mother's sister; (2) A woman with her father, grandfather, son, grandson, stepfather, brother, grandmother's husband, daughter's husband, granddaughter's husband, husband's father, husband's grandfather, husband's son, husband's grandson, brother's son, sister's son, father's brother or mother's brother." Refers to carnal intercourse. See Rhode Island. Although it is interesting to note that incest, by law, in some of these states does not cover same sex relations. Looking at SC here as an example technically a man and his son or his brother is legit, unless they are defining intercourse as only penis/vagina penetration


South Dakota:"Marriages between parents and children, ancestors and descendants of every degree, and between brothers and sisters of the half as well as the whole blood, and between uncles and nieces, or aunts and nephews, and between cousins of the half as well as of the whole blood, are null and void from the beginning, whether the relationship is legitimate or illegitimate and include such relationships that arise through adoption." refers to mutually consensual sexual penetration. I find it strange to not whole and half blood and then claim that adoption counts too, but it is still another example of where the non linear non blood relationship is prohibited.


Texas:"Person known to be ancestor or descendant by blood or adoption; current or former stepchild or stepparent; parent's brother or sister of the whole or half blood; brother or sister of the whole or half blood or by adoption; children of the actor's brother or sister of the whole or half blood or by adoption; the son or daughter of the actor's aunt or uncle of the whole or half blood or by adoption." Refers to "Sexual intercourse (any penetration of the female sex organ by the male sex organ), deviate sexual intercourse (any contact between the genitals of one person and the mouth or anus of another person with intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person)"


West Virginia:"Engaging with his or her father, mother, brother, sister, daughter, son, grandfather, grandmother, grandson, granddaughter, nephew, niece, uncle or aunt." Refers to "Sexual intercourse (any act between persons involving penetration, however slight, of the female sex organ by the male sex organ or involving contact between the sex organs of one person and the mouth or anus of another person) or sexual intrusion (any act between persons involving penetration, however slight, of the female sex organ or of the anus of any person by an object for the purpose of degrading or humiliating the person so penetrated or for gratifying the sexual desire of either party)." Again no specification of blood ties being required so step is covered.

Reference:http://www.ndaa.org/pdf/criminal_incest chart _2010.pdf


That's 11 states whose incest laws cover non blood non linear relationships. I do find it interesting to note that some states only have incest laws against sex but not marriage, meaning that should they wish to push the issue a sibling pair could get a legal marriage in some states and never consummate it and it would not be illegal. Other states apply the incest law only to marriage and thus do not forbid the sexual relationship. I also have a feeling that many of these laws will have to change to accommodate same sex relations, either in marriage or sex as per the state, as they are not actually covered by law.
 
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Of course it can be stopped, and it should be. As far all who think the state has no business in the marriage business, what a silly incomplete impractical notion. The state has a role in the marriage business because many marriages fail and each spouse has legal responsibilities to the other party (possibly) and definitely to any children. Since in these cases, given the anger involved in splitting up, or just the moral weakness of people, without laws that spell out in detail what responsibilities each spouse must fulfill, the responsibilities would not be fulfilled. Experience has shown that the state MUST be involved in dissolving marriages, so the state can and should define how they get set up so they can reasonably be dissolved.

Suppose a man married 10 wives, has kids with each, then decides to divorce all 10 and start over. The 10 wives no longer want to live together, they each want their own place. Can the man afford the alimony to support 10 households, plus his own new one? What is the law here?

Suppose a man has 10 wives, he's in his 50's and he dies unexpectedly. Can all 10 wives collect Social Security, although only the one man paid in? Would the man have to pay a much higher social security tax during the years of his employment to cover that possibility. Or would we all have to pay higher social security premiums to cover payments to all the surviving polygamist wives out there?

Of course we are already paying for the polygamist households through welfare:
You may or may not agree with polygamist Warren Jeffs' lifestyle, and you may or may not think he is indeed the dangerous criminal the FBI says he is, but would you believe Jeffs and his followers are costing you money?

"Their religious belief is that they'll bleed the beast, meaning the government," said Mark Shurtleff, Utah's attorney general. "They hate the government, so they'll bleed it for everything they can through welfare, tax evasion and fraud."

It makes some sense. Polygamists have multiple wives and dozens of children, but the state only recognizes one marriage. That leaves the rest of the wives to claim themselves as single moms with armies of children to support. Doing that means they can apply for welfare, which they do. And it's all legal.

"More than 65 percent of the people are on welfare ... compared with 6 percent of the people of the general population," Shurtleff said.
CNN.com - Anderson Cooper 360° Blog

Regarding incest and possible marriage within the family, there are legitimate health concerns.
https://eccentricscientist.wordpress.com/2007/04/12/why-shouldnt-you-marry-your-sister/

The state may not need to be involved in setting marriages up, if we also don't expect it to be involved in the end of marriage. However, all marriages end, either from divorce or death. Nobody is going to vote that they don't want the state involved in ending marriage, therefore the state gets a say in how marriages begin.
 
Really? Spending a trillion dollars on a fighter plane that barely works and we don't need, and you're worried that the .01% of the population that might choose to be polygamous will break the bank? Laughable.
That's a trillion dollars over 50 years.
How many hundreds of trillions will we spend in that amount of time on entitlements? What's the cost in fighter planes fir a very small uptick?

If it were legalized, there would be much more than .01% of the population taking part.
 
That's 11 states whose incest laws cover non blood non linear relationships. I do find it interesting to note that some states only have incest laws against sex but not marriage, meaning that should they wish to push the issue a sibling pair could get a legal marriage in some states and never consummate it and it would not be illegal. Other states apply the incest law only to marriage and thus do not forbid the sexual relationship. I also have a feeling that many of these laws will have to change to accommodate same sex relations, either in marriage or sex as per the state, as they are not actually covered by law.
You've highlighted brother and sister, but that wouldn't refer to stepbrother/stepsister, so the only non blood relationships I see have to do with adoptees. I don't know that it makes sense to highlight "nonlinear relationships" as if there is less of a relationship there than with a linear relation. Genetically speaking, the amount of DNA you share with a half-sibling, grandparent, grandchild, aunt/uncle or niece/nephew are all equivalent.

But yes, overall there are definitely some oddities!
 
Of course it can be stopped, and it should be. As far all who think the state has no business in the marriage business, what a silly incomplete impractical notion. The state has a role in the marriage business because many marriages fail and each spouse has legal responsibilities to the other party (possibly) and definitely to any children. Since in these cases, given the anger involved in splitting up, or just the moral weakness of people, without laws that spell out in detail what responsibilities each spouse must fulfill, the responsibilities would not be fulfilled. Experience has shown that the state MUST be involved in dissolving marriages, so the state can and should define how they get set up so they can reasonably be dissolved.

Suppose a man married 10 wives, has kids with each, then decides to divorce all 10 and start over. The 10 wives no longer want to live together, they each want their own place. Can the man afford the alimony to support 10 households, plus his own new one? What is the law here?

Suppose a man has 10 wives, he's in his 50's and he dies unexpectedly. Can all 10 wives collect Social Security, although only the one man paid in? Would the man have to pay a much higher social security tax during the years of his employment to cover that possibility. Or would we all have to pay higher social security premiums to cover payments to all the surviving polygamist wives out there?

Of course we are already paying for the polygamist households through welfare:

CNN.com - Anderson Cooper 360° Blog

Regarding incest and possible marriage within the family, there are legitimate health concerns.
https://eccentricscientist.wordpress.com/2007/04/12/why-shouldnt-you-marry-your-sister/

The state may not need to be involved in setting marriages up, if we also don't expect it to be involved in the end of marriage. However, all marriages end, either from divorce or death. Nobody is going to vote that they don't want the state involved in ending marriage, therefore the state gets a say in how marriages begin.

You have great argument on whether and what benefits are given within a marriage, but not necessarily against polygamy. Your argument presupposes these benefits are carved in stone. Neither condition of the argument is. We can say there really shouldn't be all these benefits are not needed so we can have polygamy or we can't have polygamy so we can have all these .

As for your health link, this does not address why we should not allow same sex incest pairs or couples where one or both are sterile. I have no problem saying that any risk of birth defects over X% needs to be banned but it needs to apply across the board not just to consanguineous couples. After all the law must apply equally. To target only consanguineous couple with a birth defect limitation is discrimination based upon a factor they cannot control, much like skin color and orientation.
 
You've highlighted brother and sister, but that wouldn't refer to stepbrother/stepsister, so the only non blood relationships I see have to do with adoptees. I don't know that it makes sense to highlight "nonlinear relationships" as if there is less of a relationship there than with a linear relation. Genetically speaking, the amount of DNA you share with a half-sibling, grandparent, grandchild, aunt/uncle or niece/nephew are all equivalent.

But yes, overall there are definitely some oddities!

The point was that there are states that indeed ban non blood no linear relationships, however pointless it may be.
 
You have great argument on whether and what benefits are given within a marriage, but not necessarily against polygamy. Your argument presupposes these benefits are carved in stone. Neither condition of the argument is. We can say there really shouldn't be all these benefits are not needed so we can have polygamy or we can't have polygamy so we can have all these .

We have had the discussion over what benefits should be provided, and we decided long ago we would have social security and welfare. The funding for this has always been based on a married couple (2). The laws have always been figured on 2 people, inheritance law, divorce law, family law (child custody). So, we shouldn't have polygamy. You are welcome to live with as many women as you can convince to move in with you, but they are not all entitled to benefits that I fund through the govt. If you want to marry them all, then you should pay higher social security taxes if you expect them to all get equal benefits. You would have to pay higher "family coverage" health insurance at work, since you would have a bigger family. A whole lot would have to change in many social and legal systems, and then a man could not usually afford to have 10 wives.

maquiscat said:
As for your health link, this does not address why we should not allow same sex incest pairs or couples where one or both are sterile. I have no problem saying that any risk of birth defects over X% needs to be banned but it needs to apply across the board not just to consanguineous couples. After all the law must apply equally. To target only consanguineous couple with a birth defect limitation is discrimination based upon a factor they cannot control, much like skin color and orientation.

To determine this for non-consanguineous couples would require testing, which is expensive and unnecessary in most cases, and is an invasion of privacy. In the case of consanguineous couples, based on the relationship, it is a mathematical formula, based on genetic science; no testing or invasion of privacy is necessary.

I could see some relaxation of existing law when the known risk is much smaller, however it appears that some marriage relationships should remain illegal.
 
That's a trillion dollars over 50 years.
How many hundreds of trillions will we spend in that amount of time on entitlements? What's the cost in fighter planes fir a very small uptick?

If it were legalized, there would be much more than .01% of the population taking part.

Would you marry more than one person? How many of your friends would? How many of your family members?
 
With the way things are going, I think there will be plenty of wealthy women happy to snatch up the cuter ones. Just look at who's graduating college and getting advanced degrees these days, and who in the younger generation is having a harder time finding a job. ;)

Unsupported counter. Look at the number of billionaires and millionaires who are men compared to women.
 
We have had the discussion over what benefits should be provided, and we decided long ago we would have social security and welfare. The funding for this has always been based on a married couple (2). The laws have always been figured on 2 people, inheritance law, divorce law, family law (child custody).

We had the discussion on slavery before and decided to allow it. Then we had a discussion and decided to abolish it. You can apply that argument to any number of things that have changed in the US over it's life span. What always has been is not necessarily what will be. History has proven this.

You are welcome to live with as many women as you can convince to move in with you, but they are not all entitled to benefits that I fund through the govt. If you want to marry them all, then you should pay higher social security taxes if you expect them to all get equal benefits.

Yes they should all be covered, but the question then is should we still be providing all these benefits that are currently. Those are two separate debates, although starting the poly debate could well be the impetus for starting the debate on benefits

You would have to pay higher "family coverage" health insurance at work, since you would have a bigger family. A whole lot would have to change in many social and legal systems, and then a man could not usually afford to have 10 wives.

So why should I have to pay one cost for a spouse and 9 kids and a different one for 9 spouses?
 
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