Leftists have been telling us for years that legalizing gay marriage won't open the floodgates and lead to acceptance of polygamy, beastiality, pederasty, and so forth. Maybe they're right! But in Canada at least, some polygamists think otherwise.
Canada’s decision to legalize gay marriage has paved the way for polygamy to be legal as well, a defense lawyer said Wednesday as the two leaders of rival polygamous communities made their first court appearance. ...“If (homosexuals) can marry, what is the reason that public policy says one person can’t marry more than one person?” said Suffredine, a former provincial lawmaker. Canada’s Parliament extended full marriage rights to same-sex couples in 2005.
Yes. Someone who supports gay marriage please explain to me why polygamy should remain illegal.
Well, one step along the way was brought up just the other day at work. One of my co-workers is living with a woman whom he occasionally has sex with, I am told. He wants to call her a domestic partner, and extend his own health insurance to cover her. But he can not do this because she is the wrong sex. IF he was living with a man, there would be no issue at all with signing this man up as a domestic partner and extending to him insurance benefits.
This, in my view is biased, sexist, and unfair. What if a male employee's same sex domestic partner considers himself to be female? What if this individual is trans-gendered and occasionally wears a dress? Does he not get to go to the doctor on the days he wears pumps?
What I find most irritating about this situation in our society is that so many people can support gay marriage and then turn around and deny all the clearly logical eventualities that are certain to result from taking that path.
These are the same folks who scoff at all 'slippery-slope' arguments and consider the term 'gateway-drug' to be a scare tactic of the religious right.
Should polygamy remain illegal?
The slippery slope argument fails at the next hurdle though, because I can explain very easily why beastiality and pederasty should remain illegal.
Furthermore, the interested student can find out if incidence or calls for leglasation of beastiality and pederasty is greater in a culture where polygamy is where, eg. in Utah.
Oh, please, do so. Look throughout history and show us how sexual relations between grown men and relations between men and boys age 12 to 17 do not go hand-in-hand.
Plato wrote on the subject as being a problem. I don't see a lot of people claiming he was a religious nut job. (A nut job, but not a religious one).
You might be able to make an argument, but show us historical examples of societies that actually chose the path you are arguing. The best predictor of the future is the past.
(Disclaimer: I am not claiming that ALL people who engage in sexual relations with members of their same sex are at some level in favor of pederasty.)
History is perhaps not such a good guide since the average age of heterosexual unions has only recently risen above what by today's standards would be considered pedophilia. We would be foolish to ignore it obviously. The lesson that history teaches us is that there is a demand for juvenile sex, and if we want to rid that sort of thing from our society we require laws and guidelines to do it -- human nature is not our friend in this area.
However, my argument is based on my observation that the standard for legal, acceptable sexual union in our society is informed, adult consent. While polygamy and homosexuality can meet that requirement, pederasty and beastiality are by definition unable to.