What if I dislike them because they keep women shrouded in sheets from head to toe or stone a woman to death for a charge of adultery because they believe that god said that was what they should do? Can I dislike them for that or is that an illogical dislike and makes me a bigot?

If people think a group like Heaven's Gate is a religion and they believe that a mass suicide is necessary to get to heaven, am I wrong for not liking them solely because of that belief? Am I not being logical when I dislike them for having that religious belief?

What if one of the religious teachings of your religion is that homosexuality is a sin and you are against gay marriages for that reason? Are you a bigot because that is illogical to be against gay marriage when your religious leaders teach you it is a sin?


I think that the possibility that bigamy will at least be de-criminalized is high unless we get a constitutional amendment defining marriage as one man and one woman given that the arguments used for gay marriage can be used to support polygamy and there is no good way to argue for one without also arguing for the other.

I also think that there are men who are not religious and who would engage in polygamy if it were legal. A good example is Francois Mitterand, who had a mistress that essentially was his second wife. He had a child by her and he financially supported that family and treated her and the child as his second family. She attended his funeral and was welcomed by society as a life partner of his. She was constructively his second wife regardless of whether she was called "wife" or not.

The Public Trough
 

I don't have stats on this but I would think polygamy as currently practiced is certainly harmful to the tax-paying monogamists in states like Utah as I have always understood the M.O. of these ...er...extended famlies...is to pool the welfare money the polgamist "wives" get from the state. I suppose legalizing polygamy would no longer make the welfare recipients single-women-with-kids (NTTAWWT),....but...recognizing one's polygamist status would sure seem hard to manage. How would one file their taxes as marrieds? And the laws of inheritance would be damn hard to interpret.

Not that I'm conceptually against polygamy. Hell, with all those fellow wives it could probably solve my child care woes (if you can't trust your husband's wife with your kid, who can you trust?). Only problem is.... these polygamist men tend to be butt ugly. That would be a tough, tough pill to swallow.

Vietmom (invited here by Atticus, my pal from a forum down under; where beer does flow and men chunder)

In this case you are disliking them for the heinious actions undertaken in the name of religion, not because they are religious. Your dislike is rational - hence not a bigot.

Not sure why you would dislike people for committing suicide.

Tougher question because you've essentially taken away any intent on the part of the alleged bigot, which is a cop-out for those people. I would say you are not a bigot but your religion is.

Your point seems to be that we must prohibit gay marriage because if we don't we can't prohibit polygamy. That seems to be somewhat backwards to me. If there are not sound reasons for prohibiting either, then both should be permitted. This constant reliance on the marriage definition is a farce to begin with, given that 56% of all marriages end in divorce. Marriage in not the societal underpinning that its advocates make it out to be.

Encouraging News
 

http://www.nationalreview.com/docume...0402121818.asp

[Link to letter from Al Qaeda operative]

The Public Trough
 

I'm calling sock.

The Public Trough
 

I've read her before. She's cool. Read what you will into that as a response to your call, monogamy-boy.

Slouching Towards Gomorrah
 

U.S. Plans to Escalate Porn Fight

Hate to say I told you soooooo . . . .

The Public Trough
 

Sarge, Viet_mom has been around for quite a long time.

aV

The Public Trough
 

She's no sock. Vietmom, welcome, and I hope you stick around.

The Public Trough
 

Can any of us who post on this board truly claim to not be a sock?
Is not the main motivation of a sock to convey amusement or ire, and not embrace the simple exchange of information so endemic of, say the parent board or Fashion?
Given that in the entire history of the Politcis board, not one concession (well one) has ever occured, could you really dispute that the sole purpose of posting here is to bother the other side, or at best amuse?
I say to you Ty, ich bin ein Sock!

The Public Trough
 

POTY

(Note that hokey-pokey signature line is not a reference to John Kerry)

The Public Trough
 

I agree that as many fundamentalist mormons practice polygamy, there are too many children and not enough income to support them and that means a burden on the state.

However, have you ever been to an inner city public housing complex? There are too many children and not enough income to support them. Some women have 4 or 5 children all with different fathers. Yet there doesn't seem to be a push to criminalize that kind of behavior.

I honestly don't know which is worse - one man with multiple female partners breeding out of control or one women with multiple male partners breeding out of control. I am leaning toward the former as being less repulsive because in that situation, at least the man sticks around to be a father to the kids.

I don't think that would change the welfare situation since the total number of kids would still far exceed the parent's ability to provide for them. I think most welfare programs don't automatically stop AFDC simply because a man is in the house. If he is employed full-time and there are just too many kids for the income generated, I believe they can qualify for AFDC and medicaid.

The way to stop this is to put a limit on how many kids you can get AFDC for. But the liberals would scream at that one because the inner city mom with 7 children by 7 different men would be affected by that and they like her.

I don't see this as a problem. The laws would just treat all of the members of the plural marriage as being one tax entity.

Not any harder than when there are multiple children. They would just divide up the spousal share of the estate among the wives as they divide up the children's share among the children.

But increase your risk of STDs.

Slouching Towards Gomorrah
 

So are you for keeping polygamy illegal but alowing unfettered porn?

Have any of you ever watched hard-core porn? The stuff by Max Hardcore and the like. I am sure that there is even worse stuff out there, but I just came across his stuff because of a documentary I saw on the porn industry that he was in.

Can anyone defend that kind of hard core porn? Especially when so many of the women who are in those films are strung out on drugs and mentally ill and more than a few of them end up killing themselves.

The Public Trough
 

Unless you believe that there are many times more men than women available in "public housing complexes," you must recognize that both men and women are having children with multiple partners. Do the math.

I generally share your dislike of this situation, where people are having more children than they can support. (Even though I'm a liberal -- your standard vitriol that "liberals like people like that" is just so much right-wing, knee-jerk stupidity, but I suppose you can't help yourself.)

On the other hand, having known plenty of people on welfare, I'm not sure that anyone makes a reasoned decision to have more children, with the thought that they'll pick up another whopping $200/month or whatever to support them. And I don't particularly favor the idea of having lots of people around with no legal means of financial support.

Personally, I would make contraceptives and abortion widely available, and perhaps even mandatory in some circumstances. Of course, conservatives seem to be against those kinds of stips -- perhaps you are the ones who like the "welfare moms with 7 kids"? Maybe for the easy target it provides?

The Public Trough
 

I know that you've been advocating inter-species marriage to combat the abuses of polygamy, and while I will acknowledge that inter-species marriage does solve all the breeding and tax related issues (we just treat the human part of the marriage as unmarried/head of household, right?), I remind you that it was inter-species sex that brought us aids.