A man from Montana wants two wives. I think he should be allowed to have two wives, he will be the one taking of them.
I don't care who anyone else marries, so long as they are entering that marriage on their own free will. With that said, I think the issue for me lies within the legal issues it could create. What would this mean for immigration? Can a man marry x amount of women to bring them into the country? What about divorce? What happens with custody of children (seems simple, biological mother and father but can you imagine) , assets, etc? What about benefits? Tax breaks? There would have to be a large change in the legal aspect of marriage.
My concern is more with system issues than social or religious. People should, generally, be able to do what they want. But in its current state marriage seems so tightly knit to social services that opening the door to multiple partners also opens the door to exploitation of a system designed around a single partner. My issue, I think, is that this is such a debate of passion that people will gloss over the debate of practicality and not address the system. That's the only real reason I have for approaching this with any kind of caution.
Edit: complaint fixed, blocking this part out. The title of the link asks about multiple wives but the text of the post beneath the photo was about non-violent drug offenders instead of marriage. I would've liked the link to explain the story of the Montana man you mentioned, who I'm guessing is pictured. My question about the marriage would be could women also take two husbands? I am not personally a fan of the style of polygamy where only men may have extra spouses but I think consenting adults should be free to structure their romantic relationships in whatever way they agree to so long as nobody is harmed.
I fixed the article. I think it should be allowed if it all people involved want it. I am against forced marriage as well.
Thanks for fixing the article. I've got multiple friends who are polyamorous so this lawsuit will probably be big news in that community. I'm not sure the case is so cut and dry though, there are a lot of government benefits such as certain tax breaks that come along with marriage and I'm afraid the government might think that allowing multiple spouses to one person is taking advantage of that. Divorce in a larger party like that will be a complicated issue to work out as well, whereas gay marriage doesn't require any major reworking of the legal structure underlying marriage besides possible custody issues from the outside biological parent.
I think that freedom of being able to marry who and what you want is important. I think that multiple parties in a consensual agreement should have every right to be in whatever state of relationship that they want. However, I also think that if a system were put in place where polygamy were freely allowed, many people would be convinced, coerced or forced into being in such a marriage. I believe that some people would enjoy the "power" of "controlling" multiple people, that we could very easily end up with a place where people are subdued into being a secondary wife, and that it could quickly devolve into having a type of polygamous slavery. PS, the link you linked is about drug users and black men in prison, not polygamy. I'm not sure which you intended....
I fixed the article. I think the government should implement lie detector test to determine if a person is being forced into polygamy.