{"id":59,"date":"2008-12-07T22:18:10","date_gmt":"2008-12-07T22:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/comment-of-the-weekend-1.html"},"modified":"2008-12-07T22:18:10","modified_gmt":"2008-12-07T22:18:10","slug":"comment-of-the-weekend-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/comment-of-the-weekend-1.html","title":{"rendered":"Comment of the Weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"

To my post regarding Zach Lind’s support of SSM<\/a>, over against the arguments Dan Kimball noted that it may lead to the legalization of polygamy, Dr. Science<\/a> writes,<\/p>\n

\n

Civil marriage is a legal contract between two persons. Same-sex
\nmarriage acknowledges that the two persons in a civil marriage are
\nlegally equal, and things that are equal to the same thing are equal to
\neach other.<\/p>\n

SSM will not lead to legal polygamy because 2 is not equal to three.
\nThe thousands of laws that apply to married couples can apply to any
\n*couple*, but they cannot be readily translated to sets of 3, 4, or
\nmore. The issue is a red herring.<\/p>\n

Similarly, the issue of “man+dog” is a red herring, because dogs cannot enter into contracts.<\/p>\n

So why do people keep dragging in these up herrings? IMHO it’s
\nbecause truly traditional marriage (from 1919 back to the dawn of time)
\nis *not* a contract between legal equals. It’s an arrangement between a
\nperson with full human and legal rights (the “man”) and a person with
\nless than complete rights (the “wife”). Once a woman has the same legal
\nrights as a man — the right to own property, to sue for divorce, to
\nvote, whatever — old-fashioned, traditional is already dead. SSM is
\njust the nail in the coffin, making explicit what had been only
\nimplied, and *that*’s why traditionalists feel it undermines their
\nmarriage — because it does, because any demonstration that married
\npeople are legally equal partners undermines tradition.<\/p>\n

People who bring up Man+Dog are revealing that to them marriage
\nisn’t a contract, it’s a sex license. You can only imagine replacing a
\nwoman with a dog if the woman was not truly a human being in the first
\nplace.<\/p>\n

Polygamy is also a red herring, because traditional polygamy, like
\nother traditional marriages, is *not* a contract between equals.
\nHistorically, the line between traditional marriage and polygamy has
\nbeen a fine one, because a man (a fully-featured legal person) can have
\nlimited contracts with a number of partial legal persons (women). <\/p>\n

When marriage becomes a fully reciprocal contract between 2 complete
\npeople, it’s much harder to extend that to 3 people or more. Who gets
\nto make medical decisions? Who’s the default heir? There’s no legal
\nprecedent or structure to deal with these issues, to see how they would
\nwork in practice — and given how many hundreds of years and millions
\nof lawyers it’s taken to develop the marriage law we have, I don’t
\nexpect to see legal polygamy any time soon.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Spot on, Dr. Science.  I’m becoming more and more convinced that the defense of “traditional marriage” (as if there were such a thing) is really just a foil for the continuation of patriarchy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To my post regarding Zach Lind’s support of SSM, over against the arguments Dan Kimball noted that it may lead to the legalization of polygamy, Dr. Science writes, Civil marriage is a legal contract between two persons. Same-sex marriage acknowledges that the two persons in a civil marriage are legally equal, and things that are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment-of-the-day","category-same-sex-marriage"],"yoast_head":"\nComment of the Weekend - The New Christians<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/comment-of-the-weekend-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Comment of the Weekend - The New Christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"To my post regarding Zach Lind’s support of SSM, over against the arguments Dan Kimball noted that it may lead to the legalization of polygamy, Dr. Science writes, Civil marriage is a legal contract between two persons. Same-sex marriage acknowledges that the two persons in a civil marriage are legally equal, and things that are…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/comment-of-the-weekend-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The New Christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-12-07T22:18:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Tony Jones\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Comment of the Weekend - The New Christians","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/comment-of-the-weekend-1.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Comment of the Weekend - The New Christians","og_description":"To my post regarding Zach Lind’s support of SSM, over against the arguments Dan Kimball noted that it may lead to the legalization of polygamy, Dr. Science writes, Civil marriage is a legal contract between two persons. 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