Reply #6: venturing off topic here (apologies for a derailment on a subthread)

[noamnety]

but I want to comment on this: "If a man wants to commit to more than one woman so be it. BUT, that "family" as a whole should be self-sufficient. Too many of the polygamist families I have read about or seen on the news count on the government to support their multiple wives and children. THAT is the moral problem I have with them, not their polygamy per say."

First, I think it's heading into dangerous territory to tie polygamy with government assistance in the way that you did - because the implication is that people living in poverty shouldn't be allowed to get married or have kids. That's problematic for a whole host of reasons.

Second, polygamy doesn't fall into current marriage laws for contractual reasons. The contract has to do with all kinds of shared responsibilities among the two people who entered into the contract, including things that fall apart when you have a number of people suddenly entitled to make decisions, and they can't agree amongst themselves. (Next of kin medical decisions come to mind.) The contractual relationship doesn't hold up with things like one wife accruing a debt, the husband by marriage co-owns that debt - but then suddenly so do other wives who never entered into that contractual agreement with the first wife.

Again, many apologies for being lured into addressing that, because I don't feel the point should even be debated in the GLBT forum. Mostly I found the notion that marriage should be denied to people based on income level to be too objectionable to hold my tongue.