While I understand the legal reasons for differentiating between relationships and common law marriages (for example, a common law partner can seek spousal support), I was upset that the investigation could lead to the prosecution of freely consenting adults. All five were over the age of 18 and each consented to enter into this kind of relationship. With so many larger issues affecting society, why should the State care about what happens between consenting adults? By maintaining the ban on polygamous marriage, we are continuing to force these families to be closeted and to leave non-legally married spouses without important rights and protections that come with marriage.
Bring people out of the shadows. This will bring more protection to those who are being abused, and more people will see that most are not being being abused, but having a warm family life.
For the majority of states, a marriage license can be given to any male and female couple over the age of 18.
Almost true, but not quite. Some states prevent first cousins and any relatives closer than that from marrying. Virtually all states prevent all closer relatives from marrying, and most of them even prosecute them for having consensual sex. But I understand the focus of the write-up is on poly.
There have previously been sodomy laws and even adultery laws used to prosecute the behavior of consenting adults, but over time we've matured to see these as personal matters and not matters for the State to intervene on. So why can't we extend that to all sexual minorities?
We can and we should.
Until then, the State should stop playing morality police. Utah and other states should leave alone what consenting adults choose to do and focus their time and money on more important issues. There are an estimated 38,000 fundamentalist Mormon polygynist marriages currently in Utah today, many who are closeted and live in fear of being outed. We don't have to necessarily like these kinds of relationships or choose to enter into one ourselves, but we should let them live freely.
I urge you to read the whole write-up. It displays clarity and intelligence that is so rare in today’s discussion of marriage.
No comments:
Post a Comment
To prevent spam, comments will have to be approved, so your comment may not appear for several hours. Feedback is welcome, including disagreement. I only delete/reject/mark as spam: spam, vulgar or hateful attacks, repeated spouting of bigotry from the same person that does not add to the discussion, and the like. I will not reject comments based on disagreement, but if you don't think consenting adults should be free to love each other, then I do not consent to have you repeatedly spout hate on my blog without adding anything to the discourse.
If you want to write to me privately, then either contact me on Facebook, email me at fullmarriageequality at protonmail dot com, or tell me in your comment that you do NOT want it published. Otherwise, anything you write here is fair game to be used in a subsequent entry. If you want to be anonymous, that is fine.
IT IS OK TO TALK ABOUT SEX IN YOUR COMMENTS, BUT PLEASE CHOOSE YOUR WORDS CAREFULLY AS I WANT THIS BLOG TO BE AS "SAFE FOR WORK" AS POSSIBLE. If your comment includes graphic descriptions of activity involving minors, it's not going to get published.