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Mycroft
Skeptic Friend
USA
427 Posts |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
 Posted - 03/29/2007 : 21:15:52 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Mycroft
quote:
Originally posted by Vegeta
I'm not saying there's a problem, I'm just escalating the topic because it didnt seem controversial enough for me
I'm less comfortable with polygamy. I've known several couples to have experemented with it, but I found that in each couple there was one that really wanted to be monogamous, but went along with it because they feared losing their s/o if they didn't.
Anecdotal, yes, but I'd be very surprised if this wasn't more typical than not.
Not that I would legally ban it, as I think such matters aren't the business of government, but I think that trying polygamy is a fine way to wind up in zerogamy.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 03/29/2007 : 21:18:08 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Ghost_Skeptic
Not quite as funny as Creation Science 101 but still good
Roy Zimmerman on Defenders of Marriage
Wonderfful! I had not seen that song. Zimmerman is really sharp! He needs a bigger venue than just a college classroom, though.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 03/30/2007 : 02:25:26 [Permalink]
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I think polygamy should be legal and we should address the specific problems that arise rather than condemn consenting behavior between adults.
For example, bigamy which to me refers to a person having two spouses but they don't know about each other, is unfair to the parties who are being deceived. And the Jim Jeffers stuff with marrying off the underage girls in the clan does not meet the consenting adults definition.
Democracy Now! had an excellent interview today with the gentleman who started 'Act Up'. This man's story is simply incredible. It is well worth reading the entire interview. Here are some excerpts for those of you who don't have the time to read the whole thing.
Larry Kramer on the 20th Anniversary of ACT UP, the Government's Failure to Prevent the AIDS Crisis and the State of Gay Activism Today
quote:
Twenty years ago this week, 250 AIDS activists traveled to Wall Street to protest the high price of antiviral drugs and the Reagan administration's failure to address the AIDS crisis. The date: March 24, 1987. Activists lay down in the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway, blocking traffic. Some held cardboard tombstones. Seventeen of them were arrested. It was the first of many actions led by a newly formed group called the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP. The group's motto was “Silence equals death.”
ACT UP would go on to invade the offices of drug companies and scientific labs, storm St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, cover the home of Jesse Helms in a giant condom, and conduct die-ins at the FDA.
In October 1992, members of ACT UP headed to Washington, where the AIDS quilt was on display. They decided to throw the ashes of loved ones who died of AIDS onto the grass of the White House. The event was captured in the documentary, The Ashes Action. ...
AMY GOODMAN: What did you understand it was at the time?
LARRY KRAMER: Well, I mean, he said he thought it was a virus. He said the same thing that the government refused to say: I think it's a virus, and I think you should stop having sex, and I think you should cool it, certainly. And no one wanted to hear any of that. And, of course, the virus wasn't discovered officially until 1984. So people didn't want to believe that terrible news. ...
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean the president was in the closet?
LARRY KRAMER: The president of Gay Men's Health Crisis, whose name was Paul Popham, now dead. He was an executive with what was then called Irving Trust Company. And he was in the closet at work, so he would not appear in public....
...there isn't anybody running for public office now who would not sell gay people down the river given half a chance. And so, I brought a piece in the LA Times recently saying this is hate. You know, this is hate, that we're so treated this way....
...We had success from the very beginning, I must say. The very first demo that you talked of, that night a bunch of guys infiltrated the Evening News on CBS with Dan Rather, and he's making his news -- you know, he's reading the news, and suddenly there are all these ACT UP kids in the back with signs....
LARRY KRAMER: Yes. Well, now there's 70 million people with HIV, who have died or have it. An awful lot of people helped that happen. It takes a lot of government inaction to allow 70 million people to get infected. My particular -- I have a letter in the New York Review of Books. I have never appeared in the New York Review of Books before. They actually published a letter of mine about Ronald Reagan being a monster and that he was responsible for more deaths than Adolf Hitler, because his entire seven-eight years in office, next to nothing was done on HIV, on AIDS. They didn't even put out a public health warning to say “Be |
| Edited by - beskeptigal on 03/30/2007 02:33:15 |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 05/07/2007 : 03:46:20 [Permalink]
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MyCroft wrote: quote:
I'm less comfortable with polygamy. I've known several couples to have experemented with it, but I found that in each couple there was one that really wanted to be monogamous, but went along with it because they feared losing their s/o if they didn't.
If in a threesome one of the people wants to be monogamous, it is their responsibility to get out of the relationship. Why should we as outsiders automatically side with the person who wants monogamy? Isn't it just as unfair to demand that the people who want some form of polyamory confine their commitment, love, and affections to only one person? Kinsey worked hard to show us that people are incredibly diverse when it comes to sexuality. Given that the most prevelant form of "marriage" in human history has been polygamy between one man and multiple women, and given how recent is the cultural development of monogamous and equal love-based marriages, dismissing polygamy outright seems a tad ignorant and narrow-minded to me. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 05/07/2007 : 08:43:30 [Permalink]
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| A look at each culture where polygamy was the norm, should be considered. For example, there may have been structural reasons for why polygamy worked that does not exist here and now. It is too simplistic to argue that human history sets a kind of president and assume that it will work in this culture based on that. Not that you are saying that Marf. But we do need to look at why it worked or works in the context of individual cultures social and economic structure where polygamy is or was the norm. |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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nob_dammit
New Member
2 Posts |
Posted - 05/31/2007 : 20:37:05 [Permalink]
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In regards to the military pushing for desegregation, it would be nice if they could be as forward thinking when it comes to the separation of church and state. We have seen recently in the news with the Tillman case the level of atheist bigotry in the military.
Concerning polygamy, in many historical cases polygamy and harems were more a form of ownership or slavery than a mutually beneficial, consentual relationship. |
Candygram for Mongo |
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JEROME DA GNOME
BANNED
2418 Posts |
Posted - 05/31/2007 : 21:12:38 [Permalink]
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The real question is why does the State have the right to bestow benefits on any grouping of people based on how they organize their households?
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What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way. - Bertrand Russell |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 05/31/2007 : 21:18:46 [Permalink]
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The real question is why does the State have the right to bestow benefits on any grouping of people based on how they organize their households?
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Infiltration of the government by organized religion.... bet you there is a conspiracy there! Go find it Jerome...
Or, it is a precedent from the old common law system that our legal system is descended from, in which the king was chief exec, head of state, and head of church, and had the authority to organize your household for you. The religious institution of marriage became a function of government because the two (religion and government) used to be the same thing.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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JEROME DA GNOME
BANNED
2418 Posts |
Posted - 05/31/2007 : 21:25:58 [Permalink]
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Dude I know the history. I was asking why are we still allowing the State to manipulate our familial arrangements?
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What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way. - Bertrand Russell |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 06/01/2007 : 04:01:10 [Permalink]
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Jerome wrote: | Dude I know the history. I was asking why are we still allowing the State to manipulate our familial arrangements? |
Don't get married then if you don't like it! Sheesh, no one is forcing you to involve the State. Common law marriage is defunct in almost every state. You could just live with a life partner, have a symbolic marriage ceremony, and trust yourselves to not need any legal contracts, right? If you want health insurance benefits for your partner from your employer, then deal with your employer without state intervention. Nobody is stopping you from doing it that way.
Of course, if you want your partner - who is unrelated to you except by private commitment - to have next of kin rights, hospital visitation, etc., now you have to go get contracts drawn up. I mean, regular old streamlined marriage will take care of all of that in one fell swoop, plus give you the right to not testify against each other in court and if one of your is a non-citizen, allow you to stay in the USA, but gawd-forbid we let the state be involved. Oh, wait! If you have contract drawn up to give your partner and you any rights, then you are telling the state to be involved (such as if one of you dies, the other now has LEGAL rights to own the stuff left behind, or to prove your have joint custody of children). So no contracts. Oh well, I guess you can just trust each other and all your relatives and society at large to just recognize your relationship for what it is and treat it as you want them to without all that legal stuff, right? Or better yet, go live out in the middle of some remote forest, where no one can hurt you or disturb your precious precious individuality. Precious, precious...
OK, sarcasm off. Jerome, obviously couples who are going to function as a family unit need to be legally recognized as each other's next of kin. Marriage or civil union is a streamlined way to do that. What harm does legal marriage inherently cause? What is the downside of state recognition of marriages? |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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Boron10
Religion Moderator
USA
1266 Posts |
Posted - 06/01/2007 : 07:07:42 [Permalink]
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Welcome to SFN, nob_dammit!Originally posted by nob_dammit
In regards to the military pushing for desegregation, it would be nice if they could be as forward thinking when it comes to the separation of church and state. We have seen recently in the news with the Tillman case the level of atheist bigotry in the military. |
I would say that "atheist bigotry" is the least of the military's mistakes dealing with Cpl. Pat Tillman. That being said, however, there are many points regarding the military and religion that should be discussed. Care to open a new topic about it in, say, the Religion or Politics fora? | Concerning polygamy, in many historical cases polygamy and harems were more a form of ownership or slavery than a mutually beneficial, consentual relationship. |
Very true. Mongo like candy.... |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 06/01/2007 : 07:13:23 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by JEROME DA GNOME
Dude I know the history. I was asking why are we still allowing the State to manipulate our familial arrangements? |
Well, there are legal reasons. Marriage is a contract. It grants you special benefits. If I died tomorrow, my girlfriend doesn't have any right to my car or house. But that same woman, were she my wife, would have legal rights to claim those things.
We might rightly ask why the government only sanctions certain types of such arrangements-- one adult male and female-- and not others, such as two males, or two females, or a male and three females, or what have you. But I don't think it's wrong for the state in general to sanction marriage per se. |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 06/01/2007 : 20:58:13 [Permalink]
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Jerome had asked: | I was asking why are we still allowing the State to manipulate our familial arrangements? |
This question was answered by Cune and myself. So are you going to answer my question about what you find to be harmful about marriage as a legal institution? |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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JEROME DA GNOME
BANNED
2418 Posts |
Posted - 06/01/2007 : 22:21:17 [Permalink]
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Marfknox---I find that less interference of the State with personal relationships allows the natural compassion of the human; on a one to one base, extend fairness and happiness upon the parties involved.
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What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way. - Bertrand Russell |
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Same-sex Marriage
Topic Locked
