(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

[elmo-iscariot.livejournal.com]

I have to run now to family Thanksgiving, but very briefly:

My concern is with the judge's explicit acceptance of the Amicus brief holding that

the harms associated with the practice are endemic; they are inherent. This conclusion is critical because it supports the view that the harms found in polygynous societies are not simply the product of individual misconduct; they arise inevitably out of the practice. And many of these harms could arise in polyandrous or same sex polygamous relationships, rare as those appear to be. Here I mention, without limitation, harm to children (for example, from divided parental investment or as a result of less genetic-relatedness of family members), to the psychological health of the spouses, and to the institution of monogamous marriage.
...
When one accepts that there is a reasoned apprehension that polygamy is inevitably associated with sundry harms, and that these harms are not simply isolated to criminal adherents like Warren Jeffs but inhere in the institution itself, the Amicus’ complaint that there are less sweeping means of achieving the government’s objective falls away. And it most certainly does when one considers the positive objective of the measure, the protection and preservation of monogamous marriage. For that, there can be no alternative to the outright prohibition of that which is fundamentally anathema to the institution. In the context of this objective, there is no such thing as so-called “good polygamy”.

Not to say another court won't ignore his ruling or interpret it out of existence, but this judge seems pretty clearly to have accepted the premise--not that specific cultures with plural marriage are bad and must be suppressed--but that plural marriage itself causes the ills of those cultures.

I have a feeling Canada will eventually recognize plural marriage (and almost certainly before the US does), but this ruling? I have a hard time believing it's a good sign for the short term.

I hope you're right, and look forward to being proven wrong.