More than a year ago, when states began to legalize gay marriage, I argued that polygamy would be the natural result. If love between humans of legal age is the only condition required to have the state issue a marriage license, then it is irrational to assert that two men or two women can have such feelings for one another, while three women and a man, or two men and a woman, cannot.
I have met would-be polygamists who cohabitate as groups and I can tell you that they seemed to be very committed to one another, to be very intimate and to be “in love.”
Gay rights groups criticized me for suggesting that their bid for marriage rights would lead to polygamy being green-lighted.
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I received threats of being raped and being killed from gay people who didn’t like the point I was making and seemed to think I should be brutalized or die for it.
Well, now U.S. District Court Judge Clark Waddoups has found parts of Utah’s anti-bigamy law unconstitutional. His ruling comes in a case brought by Kody Brown and his four wives, who are featured in the reality TV show, “Sister Wives.”
I believe the U.S. Supreme Court will uphold that finding, if Utah challenges it.
As I predicted, this will officially make marriage the Wild West, in which groups of people can assert that they are married and should have all the benefits of that status, including family health plans and the right to file taxes as married people.
It will also, eventually, lead to test cases in which a few unusual sisters and brothers insist that they can marry, because they are in love and promise not to procreate, but, instead, to use donor eggs or sperm.
And, I predict, the courts will agree with them.
Given this dissolution of support for society’s vested interest in providing children with a mother and father they can point to with certainty, in households where both genders are equally represented, it is very clear that government should get out of issuing marriage licenses, entirely.
People who wish to create special partnerships of the heart and home should sign prenuptial contracts with one another and then exchange vows at their churches or temples or in front of gatherings of family or special friends.
No different status or privilege should flow to married people, whatsoever. All individuals who earn income should file taxes, separately.
The truth is that government never had a defensible role in marriage. It should always have been the exclusive domain of the individuals and institutions that choose to recognize such interpersonal unions.
Churches should be allowed to define marriage as they wish and offer marriage certificates only to those who comply with their definitions. Temples, just the same. Communes can do it, for all I care. Any organization, in fact, should be able to award the status to anyone they like. But, states and the federal government should have no part in it, whatsoever.
Only child support should be mandatory, because the state has a legitimate interest in ensuring that minors not be without financial resources.
Marriage is over.
It was always at least a little funny that a huge percentage of people swore to stay together until death, then divorced and remarried.
But, now, it is, officially, judicially, a joke.
If two men can marry, and three men can marry, and five women and a man can marry, and three men and two women can marry, then marriage has no meaning.
It’s over. Go get rings, go get lawyers, go rent a nice hall, but City Hall should bow out.
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