Hoover calls O'Reilly's fear-mongering over same-sex slippery slope "totally disingenuous"
July 27, 2009 9:55 pm ET
From the July 27th edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:
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I've heard the argument that it leads to underaged marriage, or forced marriages, but that irrelevant: FORCED ANYTHING is ALWAYS wrong.
But there is simply no crime being commited by a bunch of people who want to live together. Period.
That's where the slipery slope ends: CONSENTING ADULTS.
There are issues, but they're not insurmountable. They can be dealt with. I truly believe that the only real reason we don't allow it is that a lot of people think it's icky.
Something else I don't think you've realized is the definition of "custodian". If you have multiple children by multiple wives, any abuse that occurs by the hand of one parent means that all the children have to be taken out of the house. One supervising adult in the house would be considered dangerous to all of them, so the children of good mothers would be put through hell even if the situation was eventually resolved.
There may possibly be some way of hammering out every single problematic scenario that arises here. As I've said many times, there's no necessity being shown. If there was, then I could see making the effort, but someone can have one marriage and have other partners in their own arrangement. What benefits are there supposed to be here? Is a man married to five wives supposed to get health benefits through his employment for all of them? That's not going to happen. Should I be able to bring in twelve women from Mexico by giving them automatic citizenship through marriage?
And if there's a problem with inheritance rights, where the first wife gets the estate and decides to leave out everyone else, too bad. That's their choice to enter into that situation, and they have the obligation to protect their own interests. With gay marriage there's not any choice there, where you could say "marry a woman instead".
So I fail to see the rationale for going through all this trouble, because there are no "rights" that are being denied. They can voluntarily live in that arrangement without it being legally recognized.
And you bring up many good questions. I'm not sure custodian/abuse laws would need to change at all, but I'd have to do a little more reseatch and think on it more to knwo for sure. Employer health care... Now THAT'S a good one! (But as you know - I'm all for gov't financed, single payer health care anyway, so to me that's just one more reason NOT to stick with our current system! LOL.) Immigration / Citizenship could be more rife for abuse if plural marriage was allowed, but it can be investigated basically the same way 'citizenship marrigaes' are now. Anf you still need divorce. Divorce happens for more reasons that just to marry someone else. You would still have need for divorce laws and rights.
But it's your fourth paragraph that really bothers me. Sounds pretty conservtive, and pretty heartless, compared to a lot of your other points and posts. I guess I'm just not willing to accept "take your chances" just becuase constructing or re-constructing a few laws to accomodate the situation might require a little work. Fact is, although plural marriage is rare (and I imagine it would remain very uncommon) we don't really know how many would choose to live this way. The demand may be 10 times what is under the "take your chancesa" legal model. That would still be a very tiny minority, but I just can't accpet that they can't (or shouldn't) be legally accomodated and protected.
Well, either it's legal or not. You can voluntarily live in such an arrangement, but there's no need for legal recognition of it. I want to know what people are missing out on because you can't legally marry more than one person at once. Otherwise I have no idea what the "rights" argument is supposed to be about.
Not really. The whole idea is based on how well you know your spouse. Are you going to remember your 19th wife's birthday, or what her favorite song is? What if you have a huge ranch and you have a couple of hundred wives? Surely you would have to put some sort of cutoff point there, but then someone could argue that such a line violates their rights, since what's going on is between consenting adults.
Perhaps I should say you don't necessarily need it. I was referring to specific situations.
The factor of "choice" can't be overlooked. Society is simply not obligated to accommodate people who choose to behave a certain way. I've said the same thing about gay marriage. That's exactly why opponents claim that homosexuality is a choice, because that makes granting of any legal recognition much more difficult to justify. So I don't get what's "heartless" about this. There's no "need" for someone to enter into a multiple marriage. It's not a sexual orientation. They can protect themselves through legal contracts or by entering a two-person union.
Perhaps it's my own issues, but I'm inclined to show very little sympathy for "society" so long as the people in question are not hurting anyone. I don't mean this to personally apply to you, but this statemet always brings up images (in my mind) of the stuffy, supressed, buttoned up types from the 1950's decrying the sexual revolution as somethign awful. I just can't being myself to view these things as a big deal. :)
Now If there is a real cost to society? Sure there's obvously a limit to what we should be willing to bear. Absolutely. (And you totally got me on employer subsidize health care - on that one? I got nothing. I'm nailed... aside from the fact that I was already advocating for single-payer! ;P)
But you're making a well-reasoned argument. (I'm still not buying it, but I can't honestly refute it eihter.) BUT: Do really think the likes of O'Rielly & Co. care about any of that? Or is it more likely that they just want to 'outlaw the icky'?
I agree completely. People have the right to live in polyamorous arrangements.
But you already seem to agree that working around all the different scenarios that arise from legal polygamy could be difficult. Shouldn't there be some compelling reason to change things, then? What is anyone missing out on by having polygamy illegal? Does this sort of relationship not work unless legally recognized, or what?
Both of us can advocate that all day long, but as long as that system isn't in place that complication would remain.
I have no idea what their rationale is, but I would criticize them for not having a well-thought out position if that were the case.
I do understand where you're coming from. People should have as much freedom as possible. I just think there's a very clear line between allowing something because morality shouldn't be legislated and legally sanctioning someone's chosen behavior.
On the other hand, Brabantio brings up a good point; logistically, multiple marriages create legal complications not inherent in two-partner marriages.
But then, that would create more work for lawyers, therefore lowering the unemployment rate.
I'm kidding, but that's basically what I'm saying above. Plus - an imperfect legal structure, within which people can at least make informed choices, is better than NO SYSTEM within which people just take their chances.
The definition of a free country is not "I don't like that so -nobody- can do it." The definition of a free country is CHOICE. Bill, if you don't like pluralism or polyamory, then don't do it. That simple, okay? Just like Bill Hicks said about burning the flag: just because the law says that you shouldn't necessarily have to go to jail for burning the flag doesn't mean you -must- burn your flag.
I understand you'd be a lot more comfortable in a society where everything not compulsory is forbidden, and will helpfully point out that they have just such a system in China.