Polygamous families protest bigamy law in Utah: 'If we were gay, we'd be OK'

[DonViejo]

Source: Associated Press


By MICHELLE L. PRICE, Associated Press · Sunday, February 12, 2017

A group of pro-polygamy protesters rally at the state Capitol Friday, Feb. 10, 2017, in Salt Lake City. Several hundred people in polygamist relationships say they want Utah lawmakers and law enforcement officials to know that they're not going away and should be allowed the freedom to practice their plural marriages. AP Photo/Rick Bowmer

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The family on the TV reality show “Sister Wives” and several hundred other protesters in polygamous relationships and their supporters said Friday they won’t stop fighting for the legal right to plural marriage.

Holding signs that read, “I love all my moms,” and “If we were gay, we’d be OK,” the group rallied in the rain on the steps of the Utah Capitol on Friday afternoon.

“I am not a criminal,” proclaimed Joe Darger, a Utah man who has three wives and helped organize the rally. “If you commit adultery, that’s not a felony. It’s only a crime when you have a family and you pretend to be married.” The demonstration comes a month after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case from Kody Brown and his four wives on the TLC show “Sister Wives” challenging Utah’s bigamy law.

The high court left Utah’s law in place, but state legislators are considering changes this year that would leave those convicted under it facing harsher penalties if they’re also convicted of other crimes such as domestic abuse.

Read more: http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2017/02/polygamous-families-protest-bigamy-law-utah-gay-wed-ok/

[oberliner]

1. What's your take on this?

Do you think polygamy should be legal?

[Crowman2009]

3. No, because your going to have a lot of wifeless men go crazy.

[getting old in mke]

12. I dunno

I've thought about it.

I am uncomfortable with saying that any committed relationship among adults should be illegal. That would mean of course that not only polygamy should be legal, but polyamory in general, whatever the membership.

As with all relationships there should not be a coercive quality to the relationship, which can be present in monogamous relationships too.

Certainly people shouldn't be punished for it.

But how and if the relationship should be recognized by the state, I don't know. Being recognized as family for health visitation seems a no-brainer, but how do you handle children legally? Do all non-biological parents adopt all children? In cases of a member of the relationship leaving, how does child support get handled?

On another front, do we now have a maximum number of people covered under a family health insurance plan? Would we have to say "for 10, you need two plans"? Then what about the odd "quiver full" movement of having lots and lots of kids. Why should they be treated differently. Of course, we should be under a medicare for all system, but sadly I don't see it happening soon.

So I guess I'm saying that as a concept (again, not "one husband, many wives" but "more than two adults&quot it shouldn't be outlawed.

But as to how it might work pragmatically in American society, it's beyond me.

[wordpix]

15. no, b/c most men can't support several wives with 30 children

also, there's a lot of marrying 13 y.o. and such, which is sex slavery.

[DeminPennswoods]

18. If all are consenting adults, it's ok with me

Technically Kody and Robin Brown are the only legally married couple, the other 3 wives just have a commitment bond or whatver it's called. The wives all seem to have married knowing what they were doing. The interesting thing is the kids are being allowed to decide if they want polygomous marriages or not and so far, the older kids don't want a plural marriage.

[sofa king]

24. I'm cool with it, but women get multiple husbands, too, right?

Right?

RIGHT?

(crickets from the direction of Utah....)

[Crowman2009]

2. So is dumping undesirable sons and letting them fend for themselves OK as well to these people?

[starshine00]

21. yep they run the younger males out of communities because they are competition for the females

that the older pervs want. Gays communities don't exist to enshroud covert child rape like polygamous communities do and they don't coerce female children from birth to endure polygamy like the plyg communities do. I support polyamory between consenting adults but religious polygamy is depraved.

[onenote]

4. Logic Fail

No, if they were gay it would not be okay. One gay person can't be married to two other gay people, or to another gay person and a straight person, or to two other straight persons.

Dumbasses.

[yurbud]

6. I would say, "You may have a point. Go out and have some gay relationships, then come back & ask...

how many women you can be married to."

[metalbot]

30. That's essentially a re-wording the right's reasoning against gay marriage as a "special" right

They argued, in essence, that gay people do NOT have fewer rights than straight people, because gay people are still allowed to marry someone of the other gender, just like straight people.

[Thor_MN]

7. What is their opinion of a woman with multple husbands?

[CanonRay]

8. As long as all participants are adults

and government benefits are not used to support the additional wives/children (often the case), who cares. I'm tired of the government getting into the bedroom, for whatever reason. I spent a lot of time in Utah (not just Salt Lake) and have met people in polygamous relationships. Some got in as young as 12 (3 kids by 18), which is completely wrong, and some were abused, which is also wrong, and some let AFDC support the extra wives and kids, all bad. But some were legitimately and happily families. Polygamy itself is not the problem, it's polygamy being underground which is the root cause of the problem. Just my humble opinion.

[cstanleytech]

9. To be honest I dont care what two or more consenting adults want to marry or screw

but thats just my opinion.
Yes, there are potential downsides to polygamy but alot of the same downsides exist with traditional marriage as well with abuse potentially happening in both as well as child abandonment.

[starshine00]

22. religious coercion from birth is not consent in my opinion

polyamory is one thing, polygamy is a one way street that always leads to child rape and inbreeding, the FLDS out west have inbred themselves into their own genetic disorder, Fumurase deficiency, which causes mental retardation, from being so inbred https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fumarase_deficiency

[Dallasdem1988]

26. The problem with that

Is these nuts will argue ideological and political coercion from birth is not consent.

Always think of how they will weaponize our arguments against us.

Imagine if they used a photo of a child in a pride parade or even a parents social media posts to slander them.

[arithia]

10. f*ck that guy AND his nutjob wives

My mother has a fondness for what she calls "trainwreck tv", which has resulted in her watching that asshole's family on television on occasion. I've caught bits and pieces over the years and it ain't pretty. He treats the women like crap, actively fucks with their heads and plays them against each other. It's a study in dysfunction and psychological abuse.

Polygamous sects the world over have a history of sex trafficking of minors and of adult women. There is a reason Utah lawmakers are looking to make penalties worse if other crimes like domestic abuse are present- it's too damn common.

women in polygynous communities get married younger, have more children, have higher rates of HIV infection than men, sustain more domestic violence, succumb to more female genital mutilation and sex trafficking, and are more likely to die in childbirth. Their life expectancy is also shorter than that of their monogamous sisters. In addition, their children, both boys and girls, are less likely to receive both primary and secondary education.

http://family-studies.org/the-problems-with-polygamy/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703806304576234551596322690

Enough of that false equivalency bullshit about gay marriage. Two loving people who want to marry isn't the same as one person marrying 6 of the opposite gender.

[Oneironaut]

11. Honestly, I don't know if I care about polygamy. On the other hand,

"polygamy" seeks to be a code word for "control freak male convinces young women to sign their life away to him so that he can discard his previous wife to servant duty."

I don't know if polygamy should be illegal per se, but I think polygamy is a sexist and backwards practice.

[mpcamb]

13. Anybody making book as to whether the crowd is being paid to be there?

[Buckeyeblue]

14. Bad logic

Multiple gay people are not allowed to marry. It is a one on one contract. Polygamous marriages would introduce complications with regard to property rights and other shared obligations.

[kimbutgar]

16. If they make polygamy legal then woman should be also able to have multiple husbands

One who likes to cook and clean, the stud lover and the loving cuddle like partner and the money man.

[DeminPennswoods]

17. There's a new show

Brother husbands on TLC now where 1 woman is married to 2 men.

[EllieBC]

19. The polygamists aren't being that honest about their marriages

Their wives have few rights. In the more fundamentalist sects the wives are often still girls married to much older men.

Comparing their brand of marriage to two consenting adults is being disingenuous.

[jmowreader]

20. I have a big problem with polygamy

In Biblical times, polygamy sounded like a good idea at the time: a society that needed to produce 10 to 15 children to get one adult had a better chance of survival if the handful of men with the best success at impregnating women were allowed to marry as many women as they wanted.

Six thousand years ago, no one knew what an inherited disease was, but they had to have noticed all Efraim's daughters bled to death through their vaginas the first time they menstruated, or all Jacob's kids with fifteen of his eighteen wives went blind and deaf and lost the ability to swallow at the age of three. It was then that the elders of the town figured out that spreading out the fathering duties so every man had only one wife eliminated the possibility one man's defective seed could lead to the town dying out.

That scenario won't happen again - there are enough people who aren't polygamist Mormons to preserve the species - but there's no sense risking it. It would be Religious Discrimination! to require any man seeking a polygamous marriage to undergo genetic testing and cruel to the kids to not do that, so marriage needs to be between two, and only two, people. Gender mix up to you.

[starshine00]

23. I don't think it was every anything but what it is

essentially perverted creeps' excuses to marry children. It seems to accompany herding cults for whatever reason historically but plenty of advanced societies have avoided it or managed not to inbred or practice child rape, it is always a sign of a depraved society.

[mr_lebowski]

29. Well, up until 200 years or so ago (and even less in many societies) girls being married off ...

Basically as soon as they were of child-bearing age, very often to considerably older men ... was considered perfectly normal and reasonable ... 'polygamy' as such had nothing to do with that phenomenon. It was simply a case of men thinking that by starting w/a young female, they would, in the end, end with up with more progeny overall. And of course by 'starting young', they were unlikely to have to care for another male's offspring from a previous marriage or at least pregnancy.

Was it 'cool'? Of course not. It was downright 'primitive' and animal-like behavior. But it was a very different time, and human's lives were much closer to those of animals. The decision seemed reasonable and normal to them. And if a girl was brought up their whole life to believe they'd be married at 12 or 13, and all the girls around them experienced the same thing ... I doubt it had quite the same negative psychological impact it would have to someone growing up in our present, western society, experiencing the same thing.

It's easy to 'project' our way of thinking onto people of the distant past, but it's probably quite often inaccurate. We don't have much clue how brutal 'life' was for people hundreds of years ago. Being a 13 y.o. girl married to a 30 y.o. man was not necessarily the hugely traumatic 'thing' we imagine. Fact is, you had a lot more serious 'stuff' to worry about back then.

Again,not saying it was 'right' (and is obviously TODAY ... wildly inappropriate and indefensible, given modern life and our level of knowledge, and mobility), but ... 200 years ago life was way different than nowadays. To US, 'older dude was a perv' ... to them ... it probably seemed a reasonable calculus. Some of them undoubtedly were 'pervs' by our 21st Century definition. Others just wanted a ton of kids.

[geek tragedy]

25. Not this shit again.

People can already have as many romantic and sexual partners as they want. Polyamory is always an option.

But the legal system is premised on marriage being between two people at a time. It literally can't function if 5 people can marry each other then divorce one at a time, etc.

And the comparison to same-sex marriage is as offensive as it is nonsensical. A same-sex marriage works just the same as an opposite-sex one, and the injustice was denying it to same-sex couples when doing so wouldn't change any straight marriage anywhere.

[HassleCat]

27. Bunch of crazies.

Gay persons are not allowed to do bigamy, either. If they can be married in the eyes of their "church," why isn't that good enough? The government should get out of the marriage business.

[Stargleamer]

28. Men getting off on having a harem. . .

and women to hesitant to ask deep/uncomfortable questions about the meaning of this gendered arrangement.

[Judi Lynn]

31. Horrifically delusional people. How can they all stand each other? Yuck. n/t