Should there be love and marriage for all people (over legal age)?

Alright, so people don't like my duck example. Then let me give another example.
Why not be able to marry more than one person ? Same arguments, just that you love more than one person and all them love you too. They are consenting human beings (and adults). Why not ? Because it isn't natural either, it isn't for the children and it isn't a stable relationship then. BUT if they truly love each other and want to get married ? Then I'm still against it and don't think it should be allowed.

Like I said, the duck was an extreme example and if you want you can just change all my posts to polygamy instead. Less of an extreme example and even accepted in some societies already.
 
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I suppose if someone wants multiple wives or husbands I don't object on a moral basis, however, it would make legal matters very messy, deceased estates, child support if the marriages end, and how would you work out the settlement if a person has two wives and divorces one? Would she be entitled to a third of the assets? What if the other wife was the main income earner? I think rather than being an ethical issue it would just be too messy. Who in their right mind would want two women asking if what they are wearing makes them look fat or telling them if they don't know what they have done wrong they are not going to bed told?
I don't agree with animals being married to humans. I love my cats but if some sicko wanted to marry them (or worse) I would be very concerned. Animals cannot give consent (except to other animals) and I don't think it is right. Also, the majority of animals are smaller than humans and could be seriously injured by interspecies breeding, although I do remember reading a report in a newspaper of a man having sex with a horse (the man was the receiver) and he perforated his bowl and had other internal injuries. No sympathy. Horses are to look pretty, not to mate with.
 
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But they all love each other, the man and the two wives. They should be allowed to marry as long as they don't hurt anyone, that is what most people here are saying.
A lot of paperwork doesn't stop people from loving each other.
About having to say if someone looks nice in this or that, I don't care as long as I would love them. Love would engulf all those pesky little problems.
 
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Alright, so people don't like my duck example. Then let me give another example.

It's not a matter of liking; it's that it's a fallacious example.

Why not be able to marry more than one person ? Same arguments, just that you love more than one person and all them love you too. They are consenting human beings (and adults). Why not ?

Again, you're conflating the legal concept of marriage with the personal concept of love. My argument is that the state should stay out of the business of love and stick to the business of legislation. That's why I proposed discarding the term "marriage" for a more neutral term. Let's call it "civil partnership."

So, why not be able to form a civil partnership between more than two people? No reason that I can think of.

Because it isn't natural either, it isn't for the children and it isn't a stable relationship then. BUT if they truly love each other and want to get married ? Then I'm still against it and don't think it should be allowed.

That's fine, but unless you can come up with a better argument than "but... it's... not... NATURAL," you're not going to convince me (or most other people capable of rational, abstract thought).

Like I said, the duck was an extreme example and if you want you can just change all my posts to polygamy instead. Less of an extreme example and even accepted in some societies already.

Exactly. So why not allow civil partnerships between more than two consenting adults? How is parallel polygamy fundamentally different from serial polygamy (which is accepted everywhere divorce is accepted?)
 
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But they all love each other, the man and the two wives. They should be allowed to marry as long as they don't hurt anyone, that is what most people here are saying.
A lot of paperwork doesn't stop people from loving each other.
About having to say if someone looks nice in this or that, I don't care as long as I would love them. Love would engulf all those pesky little problems.

Again, why bring love into it? Love is not a legal requirement for marriage even now, and if it were, it would be extremely hard to test for it.

I'm sure the contract could get quite complicated if more than two people were involved, but that's a practical matter more than a matter of principle. I'm all for allowing civil partnerships between more than two consenting adults.
 
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Wow ... talk about LTTP ... some excellent stuff here that I agree with and disagree with!

My wife and I just passed our 15th anniversary, married with both a minister and priest there to cover both of our backgrounds. Our boys have been baptized in a Protestant church but we are now members in the local Catholic church and they go to CCD (church school) there and my wife and I have taught classes.

So based on that you might have an idea of my opinion - but you would be wrong.

I agree almost entirely with Prime Junta on this one. Some thoughts:
- I think that the term 'marriage' gets all screwed up between the romantic, religious and contractual matters and that makes things more difficult to separate.
- I believe that any people who are in love should feel accepted as a loving union - but the reality is that people are excluded and ostracized for many reasons, polygamy and homosexuality are only two.
- I believe in the sanctity of religious marriage and feel that divorce and particularly annulment are affronts to that. But I think it is to be expected because of the confusion of terms.
- I believe that the state should only be concerned with contractual obligations, leaving religious contracts to churches. State contracts should have much better term definitions, allowing for termination of contract and so on.
- Because of the usual amount of fraud, I think that the contracts need some forms of limitation - I think that two people is reasonable. Again, if three people are in love, that is a romantic affair. And if a church wants to recognize a marriage of three it is a religious affair.

I really think that separation and definition of terms is the best way to make this all work. Otherwise it becomes a subjective and emotional mess, and there is enough of that in human relations already.
 
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You want other arguments?
Think of the children...
Well, I can understand parents loving each of their children the same way, but I can't see how wife #1 will love a child from wife #2 the same way as she loves one of her own children, nor do I see how they can be treated the same way by all guardians involved. There will be jealousy, envy and maybe even hate amongst the children. There will be even more trouble if someone decides to divorce, not only legally, but emotionally.

What, my father doesn't like me but he loves my half-brothers ? He divorced my mother because he hates me ?!?
Kids these days have enough trouble without needing to think that their half-siblings are more important than them.
Also, how long do you think someone who believes he can marry as many people as he wants can last with just two wives ? Why not get thirty and see how those kids will grow up.
But we're not only talking about men marrying a lot of women here, why can't women marry more than one man ?
They should be able to, right?
Oh, so my mother likes me and my two brother, but she prefers my stepfather's sons.

Oh and wait, why stop there ?

X (woman), Y (man).

Y1 wants to marry X1 and X2, they all love each other and there's no one saying it's not right or bad. So they marry. BUT X2 loves not only Y1, but Y2 and Y3 too. So they marry too. Y2 likes X2 too. Then there's Y3 who also likes X3 and X4. ... See where I'm going with this ?
You're saying why not ? I'm saying because limits should be set, otherwise norms will keep on changing until we spin out of control.

Kids of homosexual couples have trouble too, young men and women are questioning themselves and their parents. What happens when homosexual parents divorce? There mostly isn't even a biological parent, what are they supposed to do ?
 
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That's fine, but unless you can come up with a better argument than "but... it's... not... NATURAL," you're not going to convince me (or most other people capable of rational, abstract thought).

...and the reason it's a really bad argument is that naturality is subjective and not objective. I believe (though I don't acually know) that there are tribes in Africa (or at least have been) who walks around naked all day (and night) with no problems at all, but if I were to walk around naked downtown I'd feel really uncomfortable, and I suspect a lot of the pepole I'd meet would as well. I get a bit uncomfortable when I see two men make out, but I get uncomfortable when a man/woman who's not my parents make out as well. If it happened all the time though I'd probablly get used to it, and that's the case with most things. Unless it's way out of lines with what you're used to (think WW II) you'll get used to it.

On the other hand, given this, that it feels natural doesn't mean it's right. Just take slavery, most pepole thought that was pretty natural (I think).

PS:
according to Erich Fromm every human has 5 basic needs:

1. Relatedness - relationships with others, care, respect, knowledge;
2. Transcendence - creativity, develop a loving and interesting life;
3. Rootedness - feeling of belonging;
4. Sense of Identity - see ourselves as a unique person and part of a social group.
5. A frame of orientation- the need to understand the world and our place in it.

A good start to read is his book The Art of Loving (1956).

What about food, water and air? Without those we'd DIE (not that eating, drinking water and breathing saves us in the long run, but life certanly would be a lot shorter without them).

And on my view on marriage, my life filosofy is "do what you want, as long as you don't hurt other pepole".

Übereil
 
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I was going to say something profound about how, in theory, polygamous relationships are no different than monogamous relationships but that , in practicality, it is mostly only practiced in cultures where the gender in plural is considered more as the property of the gender in singular (sp?) rather than the love interest and that it kind of fails the test when it turns out the all but a very very few polygamous partnerships is one man and 2 or more women ... but I can't seem to concentrate since the immensely unpleasant imagery of a screaming, pale 150 lbs naked male getting molested by a huge stallion keeps protruding in my thoughts :puke:

Thanks a lot Kayla ;)
 
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Kids of homosexual couples have trouble too, young men and women are questioning themselves and their parents. What happens when homosexual parents divorce? There mostly isn't even a biological parent, what are they supposed to do ?

I think that children are an excellent and very important reason to think about all of this. The stuff you cite is all true, but there are plenty of problems in hetero marriages as well - divorce happens in the lives of ~50% of kids now, there is substance abuse, mental and physical abuse and so on.

And let us not forget about the fact that kids brought up in 'traditionalist' households have to struggle ... if a kid wants to sing and dance and his father expects him to play football ... there are layers of implicit abuse.
 
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I can tell you it is not so in my family. Not at all. First off my father loves my mother and vice versa. My parents love me and my siblings equally and tries to care for each of us as much as he can. My sister works in banking, but she studied Political Science and European Law. My brother went to Shangai to learn Chinese for a year (Mandarin) and now he's studying International Business Management at HKU in English. And I'm going to Nottingham to study Electronic Engineering. Traditionalist as in a marriage with a husband and a wife is in my eyes the best of what we now know and have. (Like democracy as we know it today is the best form of government, even though it is flawed as well)

Yes divorce happens now a lot more often than it used to, but mostly because of these hyper-liberal ideas that everything is alright.

People marry nowadays just because they fall in love (but it's not the same kind of love) and they divorce once that 'love on first sight' is gone. Or they think everything is going to be perfect and divorce after their first fight about the baby's clothes or the wallpaper. Traditionalist ideas say that you're supposed to stay with your partner in sickness and in health, which means even after fights about the wallpaper. Except in cases of abuse or other really bad things.
Traditionalism isn't always a bad thing, you know.
 
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You want other arguments?
Think of the children...
Well, I can understand parents loving each of their children the same way, but I can't see how wife #1 will love a child from wife #2 the same way as she loves one of her own children, nor do I see how they can be treated the same way by all guardians involved. There will be jealousy, envy and maybe even hate amongst the children. There will be even more trouble if someone decides to divorce, not only legally, but emotionally.

How would parallel polygamy be any different in this respect from serial polygamy? That is, how is this different from a situation where two divorced people (with children) remarry and then have children of their own?

What, my father doesn't like me but he loves my half-brothers ? He divorced my mother because he hates me ?!?
Kids these days have enough trouble without needing to think that their half-siblings are more important than them.

So, do you think divorce, or remarriage after divorce, should be outlawed? If not, how is this different from a three-adult household?

Also, how long do you think someone who believes he can marry as many people as he wants can last with just two wives ? Why not get thirty and see how those kids will grow up.

You do know that polygamy is permitted in a number of societies, right?

Did you also know that in almost all of these societies, polygamy is actually very rare, and the societies in which it isn't rare, the reason is that women lack basic civil liberties and are considered property?

Even if parallel polygamy was legal and accepted, it would still be very rare, assuming a society where one sex is not treated as chattel. It's hard enough to find *one* person you're willing to share your life with; it's even harder to find three willing to share a life, finding more than that gets exponentially more difficult.

But we're not only talking about men marrying a lot of women here, why can't women marry more than one man ?
They should be able to, right?

Correction, you're only talking about men marrying a lot of women. I've been talking about people forming civil partnerships with each other irrespective of gender or sexual preference. In fact, I want to leave sex entirely out of the discussion -- sex is not the state's business.

So yes, absolutely, if civil partnerships were permitted between more than two people, absolutely the rights should be exactly the same for either sex. That's the whole point, really.

Oh, so my mother likes me and my two brother, but she prefers my stepfather's sons.

Sounds like a recipe for a soap opera.

Oh and wait, why stop there ?

X (woman), Y (man).

Y1 wants to marry X1 and X2, they all love each other and there's no one saying it's not right or bad. So they marry. BUT X2 loves not only Y1, but Y2 and Y3 too. So they marry too. Y2 likes X2 too. Then there's Y3 who also likes X3 and X4. ... See where I'm going with this ?

Not really. A civil partnership contract would have to be one that includes all parties involved. So if Y1, X1, and X2 have already formed one, X2 would not be able to form another such contract with Y2 and Y3 without the consent of Y1 and X1. If everybody agrees, I don't see any problem with that either.

You're saying why not ? I'm saying because limits should be set, otherwise norms will keep on changing until we spin out of control.

That's know as the "slippery slope" fallacy. Look it up.

Kids of homosexual couples have trouble too,

No more than kids of heterosexual couples. This has been extensively researched; you might want to look that up too.

young men and women are questioning themselves and their parents.

My, you don't say?

What happens when homosexual parents divorce? There mostly isn't even a biological parent, what are they supposed to do ?

If the laws were the same for everybody, a homosexual divorce would be no different from a heterosexual one.
 
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Traditionalist ideas say that you're supposed to stay with your partner in sickness and in health, which means even after fights about the wallpaper. Except in cases of abuse or other really bad things.
Traditionalism isn't always a bad thing, you know.

Oh, I agree entirely. I'm happily married myself; I don't cheat on my wife, and I do my damnedest to stay happily married to her. I know I'm much happier married to her than I ever was when I was single, and the idea of polyamory makes me acutely uncomfortable.

I got to where I am by doing some extremely dumb things as a teenager, then having lots of sex with lots of women as a young adult, and then committing to a lifelong monogamous relationship with one woman. I believe that all of these things were *necessary* -- I would not have been able to commit to a monogamous lifelong relationship without the extremely dumb things and the casual relationships. (It was fun too, hee hee. OK, other than the alcohol poisoning.)

However, and here's the crux of the matter, these are my personal preferences, and my personal life choices. It would be absurd to enforce this sequence of choices on everyone -- just as absurd as it is to enforce any sequence of lifestyle choices on any person.
 
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AHA! So that's where I failed. I started out doing the same dumb things but then I seem to have skipped the part about having lots of sex with lots of women and moved straight to wanting the lifelong monogamous relationship ... only without the lots of sex with lots of women they don't seem to know where I live. :wall:
 
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How would parallel polygamy be any different in this respect from serial polygamy? That is, how is this different from a situation where two divorced people (with children) remarry and then have children of their own?So, do you think divorce, or remarriage after divorce, should be outlawed? If not, how is this different from a three-adult household?


I don't think it would be any different, but I do believe divorce shouldn't be as easy to have as it is now in modern society. Divorce shouldn't be outlawed, but harder to get, it shouldn't be just something that can happen like that, there should be valid reasons for it, not : "I'm not in love with you anymore, so lets give our kids a bad life as long as I'm happy with myself". Polygamy and homosexual marriages (in the traditional sense, which means I agree with you about them having a civil contract) should be outlawed I believe. Marriage is about staying together, like I said, in sickness and in health, if you don't believe you can stay together then don't marry. Get some kind of contract stating you are living together, but if you want to have kids and raise them well, be sure or almost sure you're gonna stay together otherwise you'll not only ruin your life but theirs as well.

You do know that polygamy is permitted in a number of societies, right?

Yup, I do, I states it as such earlier.

Did you also know that in almost all of these societies, polygamy is actually very rare, and the societies in which it isn't rare, the reason is that women lack basic civil liberties and are considered property?

Seems quite logical, but in the societies where it does happen (even though it is rarely), do women also have the right to be polygamous ?

So yes, absolutely, if civil partnerships were permitted between more than two people, absolutely the rights should be exactly the same for either sex. That's the whole point, really.

Sorry the whole point about the women being able to was supposed to relate to the paragraph with X and Y...

Correction, you're only talking about men marrying a lot of women. I've been talking about people forming civil partnerships with each other irrespective of gender or sexual preference. In fact, I want to leave sex entirely out of the discussion -- sex is not the state's business.

Well, the US is a bit behind on civil liberties I believe (even removing some of them), but I think that in France and in Belgium as well, people are allowed to live together and form civil contracts of conditions and what would happen with property and so on, regardless of sex and/or sexual preference.

And I didn't understand what you meant by : "Correction, you're only talking about men marrying a lot of women."

Not really. A civil partnership contract would have to be one that includes all parties involved. So if Y1, X1, and X2 have already formed one, X2 would not be able to form another such contract with Y2 and Y3 without the consent of Y1 and X1. If everybody agrees, I don't see any problem with that either.

You don't see a problem with the children ?

That's know as the "slippery slope" fallacy. Look it up.

I hope you don't mind Wiki.
But it says not all slippery slopes are fallacies : "The slippery slope can be valid or fallacious."

Some people use it others argue against it. I, on this matter argue for it.
Yes, you're right, I can't be sure it will run down the slope, but I'm not willing to risk it.
"As an example of how an appealing slippery slope argument can be unsound, suppose that whenever a tree falls down, it has a 95% chance of knocking over another tree. We might conclude that soon a great many trees would fall, but this is not the case. There is a 5% chance that no more trees will fall, a 4.75% chance that exactly one more tree will fall, and so on. There is a 92.3% chance that 50 or fewer additional trees will fall. On average, another 14 trees will fall. In the absence of some momentum factor that makes later trees more likely to fall than earlier ones, this "domino effect" approaches zero probability."
This is one of their examples for slippery slope as a fallacy. Yes, it's true, it won't keep slipping, or the trees won't keep falling down. But is it worth the risk ? I prefer building a scaffold around the tree to support it than taking the risk of letting it fall.


No more than kids of heterosexual couples. This has been extensively researched; you might want to look that up too.

I don't know where to look this up, so if you have a source for that, I'd be glad ot check it out.


My, you don't say?

I don't know what you mean by that.

Sounds like a recipe for a soap opera.

That's because it's all it is supposed to be, a soap opera, nothing more.

If the laws were the same for everybody, a homosexual divorce would be no different from a heterosexual one.

It's not, seeing as many courts favor the woman except if the woman is an abuser or if the woman accepts shared custody. Courts also favor biological parents, so if one of the two mothers of a child got the child by insemination, then she would be favored over the other mother. If there are two fathers, both moving to different countries but only one can take the child, what happens then ?
In a normal marriage, the mother would take the child, but here we stand blocked at an impasse which can't be broken.
 
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Marriage is about staying together, like I said, in sickness and in health, if you don't believe you can stay together then don't marry.

I agree. However: if this is the case, then why do you rule out homosexual marriage?

Übereil
 
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I don't think it would be any different, but I do believe divorce shouldn't be as easy to have as it is now in modern society. Divorce shouldn't be outlawed, but harder to get, it shouldn't be just something that can happen like that, there should be valid reasons for it, not : "I'm not in love with you anymore, so lets give our kids a bad life as long as I'm happy with myself".

Two questions:

(1) Would you be ready to apply the same standard to a multiple-person civil solidarity contract? That is, not outlawed, but harder to get? If not, why not?

(2) Do you believe that life for children is necessarily worse following a divorce than inside an unhappy, loveless couple? If so, why?

Polygamy and homosexual marriages (in the traditional sense, which means I agree with you about them having a civil contract) should be outlawed I believe. Marriage is about staying together, like I said, in sickness and in health, if you don't believe you can stay together then don't marry. Get some kind of contract stating you are living together, but if you want to have kids and raise them well, be sure or almost sure you're gonna stay together otherwise you'll not only ruin your life but theirs as well.

(1) Do you believe that divorce necessarily ruins your life and the lives of your children? If so, I believe I could produce evidence to debunk this belief -- that is, pretty well-adjusted adults whose parents divorced.

Seems quite logical, but in the societies where it does happen (even though it is rarely), do women also have the right to be polygamous ?

In general, no, because most such societies treat women as chattel. As stated, I object to that. (There are some polyandrous societies, though, where women are permitted several husbands but not vice versa. I'm not in favor of that either.)

And I didn't understand what you meant by : "Correction, you're only talking about men marrying a lot of women."

You said that we're talking about men marrying a lot of women. As far as I can tell, you're the only one on this thread doing this.

You don't see a problem with the children ?

Certainly I see a problem with the children. I just don't see that the problem is necessarily any greater than with serial polygamy (i.e., divorce and remarriage).

I hope you don't mind Wiki.
But it says not all slippery slopes are fallacies : "The slippery slope can be valid or fallacious."

Quite, but unless you can present some evidence showing that "trees are likely to fall," the slippery slope *is* a fallacy. You haven't; you've simply asserted this to be the case.

I don't know where to look this up, so if you have a source for that, I'd be glad ot check it out.

Big topic, but Wikipedia is a good place to start: [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_parenting ].

I don't know what you mean by that.

I meant that questioning yourself and your parents is all part of growing up. Almost everybody does it.

It's not, seeing as many courts favor the woman except if the woman is an abuser or if the woman accepts shared custody. Courts also favor biological parents, so if one of the two mothers of a child got the child by insemination, then she would be favored over the other mother. If there are two fathers, both moving to different countries but only one can take the child, what happens then ?
In a normal marriage, the mother would take the child, but here we stand blocked at an impasse which can't be broken.

In my book, this treatment is in and of itself unfair. If the parents are unable to agree on custody arrangements, the courts should do their level best to determine which one can be the better parent, and give custody to them. Biological parenthood or gender should not enter into it at all.
 
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(1) Do you believe that divorce necessarily ruins your life and the lives of your children? If so, I believe I could produce evidence to debunk this belief -- that is, pretty well-adjusted adults whose parents divorced.
Of course, any data not from a balanced study with statistically significant findings is just hearsay, since I could cite screwed up people *and* well adjusted people, and screwed up people from parents that should have been divorced that didn't and on and on and on ...

But even so I think that such study data would be severely confounded with multiple societal factors ...
 
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Very hard to take the emotional context out of marriage, isn't it? Once it indeed was a purely contractual arrangement to ensure the legitimacy of the heir and the proper disposition of property, but now?
As stated earlier in the thread, Eleanor of Aquitaine and those minstrels of Courtly Love began the revolutionary process of permitting people to conceive of emotional laisons that transcended a contract, and look where we've ended up--people marrying dolphins. :)



This is not to say I disagree at all with the concept of a purely civil union. The practical side of relationship needs to be recognized and people's rights and obligations need to be adjudicated by someone besides Jerry Springer.

@Prime J: If you can stand another reference from the ubiquitous wikipedia, here's some info on Memnoch
 
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