Can gay marriage lead to an acceptance of polygamy?

Does the legal and social acceptance of gay marriage mean that at some rational point we accept that a man , or woman, could have two or more adult spouses ? If we accept that gay love is a legitimate form of love why not allow two or more adults to express love their own way?

Not any time soon, no.
There are practical problems with polygamy that don't emerge with same sex marriage rights. For instance, how do you dispense social security payments to widows if there are 5 of them? If an entire town gets married? Someone could travel to Guatemala and marry 4000 people and suddenly they're all legal citizens of the US. If members of an organized crime ring all marry each other, they can't be forced to testify against each other in court. People are free to live in groups with each other, call each other wives and husbands, but for the government to recognize such relationships presents a host of practical problems that simply don't exist with ssm.
Don't feed the trolls, DL denizens.
Canada has had gay marriage since 2003 but they still don't have polygamy, OP. Denmark has had something close to gay marriage since 1989, and they still don't have polygamy.
First comes interracial marriage, OP. It's a slippery slope from there. Before we know where we are, people will be marrying their pets and their mailboxes.
Lets be honest, freeper OP. As you clearly think that anything but heterosexual marriage is the path to any number of perversions, you should realise that most heterosexuals have partners outside of their marriage, even though they pretend otherwise.
[quote]Does the legal and social acceptance of gay marriage mean that at some rational point we accept that a man or woman could have two or more adult spouses? No more so than "the legal and social acceptance of [heterosexual] marriage." [quote]If we accept that gay love is a legitimate form of love why not allow two or more adults to express love their own way? Because they have nothing to do with each other? Because each of them will rise or fall on their own merits? Because the "slippery slope" argument was explicitly dismissed in Supreme Court rulings?
Sorry, one to a customer. That's fair and equal.
When you hear them compare gay marriage to the beginning of polygamy and human/animal marriage etc, just tell them that our fight is for same sex marriage only. When the other types of marriages comes up, they can fight them then. But this time its gay marriage only.
The same argument was also used against interracial marriage. Unsuccessful then, unsuccessful now. Try again, freeper.
If there were legal polygamous marriage, would the 1st and succeeding spouses have exactly the same rights and responsibilities? How would we know that all parties are in equal agreement, without being financially or emotionally coerced? I could see a hornet's nest brewing.
[quote]How would we know that all parties are in equal agreement, without being financially or emotionally coerced? Oh the irony.
R12, I'm very familiar with old-fashioned "shot-gun marriages." I still say there are serious issues when there are more than 2 people involved; ask anyone from a country that allows 2nd wives.
R11
Polygamy is nice in theory, but in the real world it equates to serious abuse of women. Many polygamous wives are not actually consenting adults, it's common for Mormon or Islamic families to force girls into marriage, sometimes when they are below the age of consent. Of course, the "consenting adult" standards work completely in favor of same-sex marriage, which benefits individuals and society.
R14 is correct, and polygamy has also been statistically shown to increase the incidence of incest. Marriage equality is really quite simple - any two consenting adults, one per customer. Fuck off, trollerina.
OP's a freepertino who just wants to legally marry his dog.
R14, R15, R16- I am talking about two or more adults entering into a marriage of their choice. Not about some Mormon nests of incest and sexual abuse. If same sex marriage is accepted why not accept three adults who are willing to enter a marriage together?
OP
OP, nice try freeper. Go and comfort loser Mittens! Maybe you can have sex with Mitt and Ann!
HBO did more to normalize polygamy that gay marriage ever will. I still miss Big Love and all the relationships and personal histories it explored. Niki has to be one of the most complex characters ever written, and Chloe sevigny nailed it every week.
Would the OP Cunt stop equating equal rights for gay people with polygamous marriage? It just leads to another version of the gay sex = bestiality ploy. We want our rights. If the world later on works its way towards other expressions of legal relationship contracts, it's a separate issue.
OP, you're just being a cunty troll. One person marrying one other person is marriage equality. Everyone who wants to can get married to one person at a time. That's it. Marrying more than one person is a completely separate issue and as far as I know it's an exclusively straight people's issue. Litigate that one when "Sister Wives" take over Nevada, nobody here gives a fuck about it.
R18, 20,21. I love how you can miss the logical, and legal questions that connect gay marriage to polygamy, but you can call me a troll. I asked a serious question. Believe me the issue has been raised before. If you want society to accept gay love that might be a sign of the acceptance of the love between three or more adults. Polygamy is not just about old men with child brides, just as gay marriage is not about two fags wanting to put on a lavish wedding. If the American legal system accepts same-sex love then that might invoke polygamists to want rights of their own. Just go back to debating if Justin Timberlake is gay. It suits your thoughtful, intelligent feedback better.
OP
So there!
The freepers are really pathetic when they start this old argument along with marrying sisters and pets. They sure think about incest and bestiality a LOT.
There are reasons for society to reject polygamy while embracing same sex marriage. Serious objections have already been raised -- pensions, inheritance, benefits -- but OP doesn't engage them. (Leading me to think he's a troll.) But there are further issues: The practical effect of polygamy is that there are fewer available women. Rich, upper class men will be able to marry as many women as they want. Poor men will be forced to remain single. This puts dangerous strains on civil society. Just look at what happens in countries where polygamy is legal -- Saudi Arabia has a very difficult time dealing with the large population of unmarried males. A large police state is necessary to maintain order. American society has many logical reasons for wanting to avoid polygamy. None exists for outlawing marriage equality for gay people.
Personally, I don't think Polygamy is a problem with these caveats: 1. One must be a hard 18 to marry, no underage person may be allowed to enter into polygamy, even with parental consent. This hopefully would curtail the abuse seen in the fundamentalism sect. 2. Everyone involved must be agreeable and knowledgeable about the situation. No man (woman) getting married in Texas, California, etc. without the other spouses knowledge. 3. They may not partake of governmental programs to take care of their large family. This means no abuse of the welfare system that takes place now, because the other wives are considered single and unmarried currently. I personally wouldn't like to share my husband with other men or women, but that is my personal choice not to enter into that type of relationship.
I you are against polygamy, don't marry more than one person. Seriously, thats been (one of) our arguments. So they can be treated fairly, they can split the inheritance, they all have to agree on health decisions, and they get the divide up the 1.0 dependent across all spouses for tax purposes.
There are probably a lot of non-religious threesomes going on we don't know about. Most of those people don't want to marry. Nobody would care about polygamy if it wasn't attached to weird religious cults wanting young girls and children to marry old male perverts. These guys always are the ultimate word in their households, and if their wives and children question them, they can be beaten or thrown in the street regardless of age. They're just religious nuts using a patriarchial lifestyle as an excuse to abuse women and children. Currently, religious leadership forces senior wives to submit to adding unwanted wives to the family. There's probably a lot of child abuse and wife abuse linked to that. If polygamy was made legal, it would have to follow the existing secular law that makes it illegal to force someone to marry somebody they don't want to marry. All parties would have to participate in the ceremony, not just the poly husband and new wife. My guess is the religious leadership wouldn't like the government giving wives an equal say, even if they felt obligated to go along. Their whole message is based on the idea that wives are like children who have no responsiblity and can't consent to anything. Extremist religious cults even believe women should not be allowed to vote. That's the level of people we're talking about here. The good thing would be that these guys couldn't put their second and third families on welfare. I'd like to see these guys pay for every wife and kid, not just the first set. But straight guys don't do that now, so why would polygamous guys be any different?
Good points, r28.
There are many countries in which polygomy is legal or at least cultrally accepted and gay marraige isn't. Tying it to gay marraige ignores history. The idea of polygamy in the traditional sense (one man with a harem of wives) will probably not be accepted in any way because the abuse and the fringe behavoir of the people practicing polygamy. I do think that as people are more honest with their sexuality due to the lessening of homophobia and heteronormative pressures people will be more honest about having Open Marraiges.
So many knee-jerk responses, yet none of them in the balls.
No, the responses were answers to the question. Will gay marriage lead to acceptance of polygamy. The answer is no, obviously. Polygamy has a long historical record of exploitation to overcome. Yes, it is "traditional" in the sense that Biblical marriage was usually polygamous, but neither our laws (nor our religion) has ever been based on the bible.
Will gay marriage lead to an acceptance of polygamy? No. Will it encourage people who wish to legalize polygamy? Well, hell yes it will. Will it succeed? Eventually, yes, with all the issues raised above covered by law.