(no subject)

[theweaselking]

Mormons: once again, ruining things for everyone.

(Short version: Plural marriage remains illegal among consenting-adults-as-equals because Mormons insist that trafficking children for sexual purposes is a religious obligation *and* that it's the same as plural marriage, and the Mormons themselves were the test case before the court.)

Comments

[aeduna.livejournal.com]

I still feel the answer is to persecute the specific harming actions, such as carnal knowledge of a minor, etc, rather than to have a blanket approach against one of their practices that overlaps those actions. In the article, most of the arguments of "this is bad" were being applied to behaviour that is incidentally related to polygamy, but actually sourced from the religious nutbaggery.

It reads like "we can't actually ban you from being Mormons and being creepy, so we'll go after the thing that makes you different".

I'm all for punching brainwashing cults in the exuberance, but I'm also not keen on blanket laws that don't actually address the problems that purport to be put in place to solve. (See our local "people are stabbing and machetteying one another, so we'll make it really hard to have ornamental swords".... Obviously).

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

If it was just a coincidence that polygamy and child abuse were showing up in the same places, I'd agree with you. But I argue (see comment below) that there's a causal link. If you took a completely atheist community and convinced them that "two wives for each man, one husband for each woman" ought to be the norm, you would see similar problems emerging.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Yup. The fact that this law *also* prevents non-gender-weighted non-general plural marriages is a side effect: Those people were not the plaintiffs.

[aeduna.livejournal.com]

Sorry, are you arguing that child abuse comes naturally out of a multiple-adult-relationship situation? woops, read comments out of order, will reply to the other one.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

It's cool, I had exactly the same reaction, and would probably have tried to bite a hole in someone or something if your comment hadn't been helpfully edited to clue me in to the fact that what was being said was not only more but different.

ETA: Much love for the phrase I'm all for punching brainwashing cults in the exuberance, by the way.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I am actively poly myself, so I certainly wouldn't argue that :-)

But to me, what matters is that people get to make their own choices, according to a 'consenting adults' principle. FLDS-type polygamist groups offer less choice than vanilla monogamous society; the fact that the relationship they happen to enforce has some superficial similarities to the one I and my partners chose doesn't make them My Brothers In Oppression.

If anything, more like Those Arseholes Who Spoil It For The Rest Of Us.