The procedure is more likely to be this:
Two loving women (or two loving men) apply for a marriage license. They are denied. They bring it to the courts. The judge promptly orders the office to obey the law. And then, if the people in the office do not obey the order, they are declared in contempt of court. One can be jailed for being in contempt of court-- judges do not take kindly to having judicial orders disobeyed.
Polyamorous rights advocates see marriage equality coming for them, too.
^^ Probably not for a while, but tell me again – how exactly are you harmed by other peoples’ marriages?
In an earlier post someone was talking about people using derogatory terms about people who are religious, it is things like this that have painted a broad body of people of faith as a bunch of knuckle dragging idiots, and it is sad. Though I will say one thing about more than a few churches, when faced with this kind of thing, they tell you that you shouldn’t criticize people saying things like this, that this is their heartfelt belief, etc.
I think this is indicative of something very important about same sex marriage, which also applies to things like anti discrimination laws protecting gays and lesbians “We’re facing something even worse now, the civil government taking a new step and actually requiring the approval and sanctifying by the state of an evil behavior”
In that world view, the issue isn’t about all the things they claim is the reason they oppose things like same sex marriage or discrimination protection, their real agenda is having the state not make being gay ‘normal’, they basically want to use the state as a weapon against gays, forget all the crap about love the sinner and hate the sin. There is a documentary I saw a bit of, about the government’s war on gays over the years, it is pretty chilling, to say the least.
If you are referring to me, I’m not. But it didn’t take long for other types of relationships to now advocate for their right to marry also. A polyamorous marriage affects me not at all, neither does a gay one.
Polygamy would be a nightmare to legalize. Same sex marriage is simple: let two people of the same sex get married, and everything else is the same.
But if someone proposed to legalize plural marriage, they’d have to change zillions of laws. Would marriage still be between two people, but one person could enter into more than one marriage, or would everyone in the initial marriage have to agree to bring in another person? What if A, B and C are married, and A wants to divorce B and still stay married to C, but C wants to stay married to both A & B? Would everyone in the plural marriage be legal parents of all the children of the marriage? What about Social Security-- would the working wife provide Social Security benefits to all three of her at-home husbands? What if two of the wives don’t agree about the medical care for their incapacitated husband? Would the military be forced to provide health insurance to the whole family, including the two husbands, two wives and eleven children of the service member? How would the plural marriage file tax returns?
It’s not impossible to imagine that someone could come up with a legal scheme to allow plural marriage, but I certainly wouldn’t agree to legalizing plural marriage until I heard what it was.
@ tatin:
Polygamy will probably get taken into court by someone, there is no doubt, where it will be judged on its own merits. Having same sex couples legal is not the same thing, for one thing, allowing same sex couples to marry actually simplifies things legally, the same laws that cover straight marriage cover it, in terms of how you get divorced, custody of kids, alimony, etc. About the only thing they would need to do is change the forms so it says instead of man and woman’s names, simply have person 1 person 2 (no need to waste forms, they can easily cross out and notate the form so it is offical, and write in person 1, person 2:).
With Polygamy, if the only valid arguments they can give are the old “the Bible says so” (well, at least the NT, the OT says marriage is between a man and one or more women) or 'tradition", then the bans should fall. With Polygamy, there have been some serious questions raised about it, that given the nature of many polygamous marriages, that it can lead to abuse of women, that often it ends up being some sort of arranged marriage thing with daughters sold into marriage (this would be more common I would guess among new immigrants or people coming in from foreign countries) (I am not an expert on this, won’t claim to be, this is based simply on what others have posed as possible arguments in banning the practice).
The other factor that could delay this would be that we would need to develop new laws covering polygamy, same sex couples didn’t require much other than allowing them to wed, polygamy will open a lot of cans of worms that the law will answer. What happens if one person wants out of the marriage, do the other two pay alimony? How does child custody go if all three split up, will the law have to designate primary parents, or will it have to arrange for custody among 3 people, it is not trivial from a legal standpoint, and there would be inevitably even if they rule in favor, a time period for states to modify their laws for this kind of thing.
Polygamy may turn out to have real issues with it, that can be proven using facts, not the Bible, or it may turn out to be something that simply weirds a lot of people out, which is no reason to ban it.
I imagine that there would be just a few hundred of these arrangements that would be worked out in the case law as the issues arise. But those wanting to marry multiple partners will say that the right to marry is separate from the details on benefits etc. Not advocating just saying.
I can’t imagine the Supreme Court legalizing plural marriage without knowing what, in law, they are legalizing. They won’t legalize something without knowing what it is.
I think the limit should be 700 wives and 300 concubines. Nobody should live more than 969 years. More than that, too much laundry.
Many countries have legal polygamy and cope with the complexities, such as they are, just fine.
As a matter of religious freedom, I think it is a huge affront to Islam in the US that polygamy is banned.
IANAL, but I thought the rationale to permit SSM was the 14th Amendment, not the Bible. The 14th Amendment was for equal rights (broadly speaking), which has nothing to do with how many people are in a marriage. If a state were to permit more than 2 in a marriage, I think they could. But for all the reasons cited by Cardinal Fang and Musicprnt, I can’t imagine a majority of any state ever choosing to do that. Or am I missing something?
What first world country has legalized polygamy?
I am going to donate $500,000,000 to Williams. But there is a catch. Williams has to accept 1,000 of my wives. 
"Public officials are ministers of God assigned the duty of punishing the wicked and protecting the righteous. If the public officials decide to officially approve of the acts of the wicked, they must logically not protect the righteous from the wicked. In fact, they must become protectors of the wicked. You cannot serve two masters; you must pick – God or Satan.
The criminal laws against homosexual sodomy are for the protection of the righteous, particularly the young, the weak, the vulnerable, who need the law to teach them right from wrong when in a vulnerable state. The U.S. Supreme Court, although it claims to have done so in 2003, cannot take something that God calls a crime and declare it not a crime."
This is the kind of thing - that when places like the U of Alabama invest heavily in building facilities and offering tempting amounts of money to young, smart kids - still makes those of us elsewhere think twice about sending our kids there to places in the Deep South. The concept that someone who says something like this isn’t immediately removed from his position or laughed at mercilessly.
Meh, I couldn’t care less if people in plural relationships get married. Doesn’t change my life.
If plural marriages were legally recognized, it would be a nightmare as a financial aid counselor having to work with multiple parents in getting tax documents submitted (and that is just one part)…it can be hard enough for two parents to get it together as it is when their kids go to college. I don’t even want to imagine the headaches that would cause me at work. Like Cardinal Fang mentioned - nightmare.
I was curious how the US courts have dealt with multiple marriages of immigrants from countries where it is ok to have more than one spouse. An interesting article by a UCLA law professor came up:
It looks like money and property can be dealt with by means of contracts. That’s the easy part.
@pizzagirl:
Yep, there were several good schools down south and in Texas my son wouldn’t even think of applying to, because of things like this, or fear of them, and a lot of his friends were the same way. Whether fair or not, people in those states have to realize that the Roy Moore’s or Rick Perry’s as elected officials are the face of their state, and saying that has nothing to do with the way the people in the state think is naive. Put it this way, ask people around the country what they think of Chicago, and you will often hear words like “corruption” come to mind, because of the many 'interesting" things that happen there (Studs Terkel, a native, hit the nail on the head,he said Chicago isn’t more corrupt than other places, it is just more theatrically corrupt:).
The 14th amendment applies to polygamy if they are denying a right to citizens they offer to other citizens. Polygamist or people wishing to be in polygamous marriages are citizens with rights, and unless they can show cause why doing so would hurt society or have some real harm, the 14th would apply the way it did with same sex couples, even though there are obvious differences between the two things. In one sense, you could also argue the 1st amendment, since for example if a muslim, or an orthodox Jew (they could argue, if they wanted to, that their scripture allows polygamy, though I don’t know what Rabbis think of it) wanted multiple wives, and their religion allows it, banning it would be putting one faith (Christianity, which banned polygamy) over another, and that is a no no. They could have argued the same thing with same sex marriage, since more than a few faith groups allow same sex marriage, that the government has no right putting one faith above another…
The Mormons were once polygamous, and they were forced to ban the practice so that Utah could enter the union.