Federal Judge You Know 'Traditional' Marriage Was Polygamy,

[doggie]

got to love this judge says it like it is. Plus since marriage was not about love and people did not have a choice who they married often the wife was for having kids and the mistress was about sex.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/0 ... 62356.html

WASHINGTON -- The federal judge who struck down Wisconsin's gay marriage ban thinks state officials have a thing or two to learn about the history of marriage as a social institution.

In defending their same-sex marriage ban, state officials claimed that "virtually all cultures through time" have recognized marriage "as the union of an opposite-sex couple."

But as U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb wrote in her 88-page ruling on Friday, that's simply not true.

"As an initial matter, defendants and amici have overstated their argument. Throughout history, the most 'traditional' form of marriage has not been between one man and one woman, but between one man and multiple women, which presumably is not a tradition that defendants and amici would like to continue," Crabb wrote in her opinion.

[DGayle]

Yes!!

[bumblebee]

So much this. Whenever someone uses the Bible to justify their anti gay/anti gay marriage stance, I always bring this up. So much of the Bible is about as far as you can get from 1 Man 1 Woman for Life. Not just polygamy, but non married concubines, slave women, any virgin they fancied as long as they pay her father, rape as a spoil of war are all marriages or might lead to marriage like situations. Funny that people obsessed with "living and marrying Biblically" aren't (publicly) advocating any of these. Is it because *gasp* they actually do pick and choose what they care about? Also optional: sharing Jesus's compassion.

Plus since marriage was not about love and people did not have a choice who they married often the wife was for having kids and the mistress was about sex.

Yep. In so many o the past societies many fundies think are romantic many men in the upper classes (the only ones worth mentioning obviously :roll: ) would court a suitable virgin whilst at the same time keeping a mistress, visiting brothels, having affairs with merry widows or bored wives etc, all of which was if not approved of by the girl's family was often expected, in exchange for what was essentially a good business deal.

[Rescinded and Mended]

Funnily enough, I once bought an old diary at a flea market. The diary is 99 years old, and was kept by a young, middle class man. It's not too terribly detailed, he mainly writes about his daily routine, work, his gymnasium sessions, etc. But there's just enough in there to put two and two together - he was courting a young woman in the interest of marriage, and spending his nights with a completely different girl. :shhh:

[lawlifelgbt]

I find this argument really interesting, because a few weeks ago, I met a real-life, non-fundie Christian (and not Mormon, either) polygamist. Well, I should say I met him again!

We were close classmates in college; we both studied German in a department with only two professors and one half-time prof for it. So, you always end up in the same classes. He's kind of attractive, in a scuzzy-looking way, but really smart and loves debate. He was a huge flirt and about 8-10 years older than most of the students, but somehow not creepy.

When I was in college, one year, my parents were gone over Easter, so I couldn't go home. I was bummed at having to stay at school, but before the last German class before break, he announced that anyone who couldn't go home for Easter was welcome to join him and his family at a nice restaurant in town.

Then I found out that, at that time maybe 5 years earlier, he and his wife were in an open relationship. They both dated, and he, especially, did that a lot, still, though he had two preschool age twins and spent the most time with them. But, it was only his wife and kids that came.

I went to a couple more of his parties; he also liked to hold dinners at his home, and invite the other German-speaking students. Seemed like a normal family, except for the dating. Then, after moving up here, I find out he's living nearby and wants to have a dinner like in college. I asked if my wife could come, and how his sons were. He said they were fine, he now has three, and (I'm translating literally from the German here): "The adults are also now three. Do you think that would bother [your wife]?" I said no, and asked if it was polyamorous or what. He said, sort of.

We go over, and since we loved to discuss things and he's very straightforward, I quickly figured out both of the women (C1 and C2 here, as they both have very similar names), were his wives.

The boys (8 or 9 year old twins and a 2 year old), are all C1's. C2 is younger, about a year less than myself, so she doesn't want kids yet. They have no problem with contraception, and my friend loves kids, but would never make a partner have them.

Apparently, they all sleep in the same bed- C2 is quite small, and C1 likes to sleep really near the husband, so it works.

My friend thinks it's good for his kids, the youngest especially, because with three adults, there's always someone home with the youngest, as he's too little for pre-K and they struggle to afford daycare, and there's always someone to keep the older two doing their homework and not killing each other.

Both had weddings and consider themselves married. I asked C2 about what they did for it, and apparently they did find a church (with major ties to an African country where polygamy is common, so there are some practictioners in the congregation), that would marry C2 to him. C1 and the kids were there, but not much of anyone's family. C2's mom was shooting death glares the entire time. I thought this was very different of them, but I really felt for the family when C2 said "Just don't say my marriage to R [the husband] isn't valid, because we believe they both are." I have my doubts about this kind of arrangement, but as a gay person, I've heard the same criticism of my marriage, so I guess I empathized there.

It makes me rethink the arguments about polygamy a bit. While what the FLDS and similar are doing is wrong, and I also think not allowing contraception if any person wants to use it is wrong, I can't see major problems stemming from the arrangement I saw. All of the adults were 21 or older when they married, had lived mainstream lives (and still do), plan the family, and don't rely on welfare- they all work. I also think the children benefit from more attention. All of them were extremely articulate, even the 2 year old, and fluently bilingual, curious, intelligent, and really well-behaved (through non-spanking discipline).

Just my two cents, and I thought people here might like to hear about my encounter with modern polygamy. Sorry if this makes a threadjack.

[bumblebee]

I know of one polyamorous (not polygamous) group and apparently some form of open relationship and/or relationship that consistently has more than 2 people is not that uncommon. Looking around the internet it there are many different forms it can take and its often entirely unreligious. It wouldn't be for me but I don't care how consenting adults arrange their lives. Trying to change the law to allow them to get legally married would be a insane headache though. They'd have to rewrite some from the ground up.

[chaotic life]

Traditional marriage in Kenya involved an option where if an older woman had no children, she could take a "male" position and take a wife. The younger wife, usually still fertile but something that would have left her socially ostracized from male-female marriages, would then be responsible for getting herself pregnant so that the couple could have children and the older wife was considered the father of the child.

Traditional marriage in India had one tribal culture where women had husbands who never lived in the family compound. Society was matriarchal and while a woman took a husband and he most commonly (but not always) was the father of the children, he lived outside the social family unit and she remained with her mother and female relatives. She was also free to divorce him, and if she desired to have sex with men not him.

Traditional marriage looks very different from society to society from age to age. Any cultural anthropologist worth even part of their training can tell you that there's really no such consistent understanding of "traditional marriage" the way these people keep arguing.

[Antimony]

Nonreligious polyamory is very interesting to me (and to be honest, if I found the right group of me and partners that all got along and communicated well, I think we could have a jolly good time. I've certainly come close but distance, man.)

Anyways, my professor of Asian history was telling us about this ancient form of Korean marriage. It was apparently typical for a wealthy Korean man for have his wife, a couple to several concubines, and a male concubine. They didn't, apparently, have a word for bisexuality because it was so widespread this way that they didn't really say anything about it. And occasionally, the male concubine would run off with a female concubine he had fallen in love with (which I always imagine was a sort of "Aw, shucks, now I gotta find two more concubine problems!"). According to my professor, the only reason we know this is because an American sailor came over and wrote his diary about what was going on with a lot of disgust/confusion. It is still really obscure (and also difficult because old school translators between Asian languages and European languages would intentionally cut any references to homosexuality so many of those are lost forever.)

As well, according to the book Microtrends (economic analyses of culture trends) we might be starting to lose marriage. Young couples (my generation) are getting married less and less often for several reasons. We aren't always as religious, we've seen our parents get divorced, enough of us have seen our parents get divorced in such a way that we're okay with the idea of having unmarried parents, we have troubling getting into the job market and marriages (as well as tax laws regarding depending on location) are expensive, and we just don't revere it as much. The book says we might be experiencing a shift towards "committed cohabitation" and more and more non-legal marriages, which is just really interesting.

[J'ean Skirt]

Young couples (my generation) are getting married less and less often for several reasons. We aren't always as religious, we've seen our parents get divorced, enough of us have seen our parents get divorced in such a way that we're okay with the idea of having unmarried parents, we have troubling getting into the job market and marriages (as well as tax laws regarding depending on location) are expensive, and we just don't revere it as much. The book says we might be experiencing a shift towards "committed cohabitation" and more and more non-legal marriages, which is just really interesting.

I'm in my 40s and some of my peers are in committed relationships without the marriage license. The SO and I got married, but it was as much about immigration and legal benefits as it was about us wanting to formalize our relationship. If we weren't from different countries, I'm not sure we would have done the formal marriage thing. As it is, we call the marriage license the "magic bit of paper" as it gave us a lot of legal benefits.

Marriage is a LOT more political now than it was 15 years ago when we got married. A number of people I know have said they won't get married until same-sex marriage is legal. I can get behind that and were we not already married we might.

I think "kids these days" are even more liberal about marriage than my generation. And, overall, I think that's a good thing. But, it really pisses the religious right off, and they react to that by trying to impose their values on us. And that's bad.

[Mama Mia]

Traditional marriage in Kenya involved an option where if an older woman had no children, she could take a "male" position and take a wife. The younger wife, usually still fertile but something that would have left her socially ostracized from male-female marriages, would then be responsible for getting herself pregnant so that the couple could have children and the older wife was considered the father of the child.

Traditional marriage in India had one tribal culture where women had husbands who never lived in the family compound. Society was matriarchal and while a woman took a husband and he most commonly (but not always) was the father of the children, he lived outside the social family unit and she remained with her mother and female relatives. She was also free to divorce him, and if she desired to have sex with men not him.

Traditional marriage looks very different from society to society from age to age. Any cultural anthropologist worth even part of their training can tell you that there's really no such consistent understanding of "traditional marriage" the way these people keep arguing.

That is so bizarre - my daughter was talking to me about that Indian group today! She said there was another group ( or maybe it was part of this same group?) where the tradition was for a woman to marry all the brothers in a family. If her grown son married, but his mother had more sons after his marriage, the baby brother would be sent to be raised by the older brother and his wife. At maturity the wife had the option of continuing to treat him as a son, or to marry him. It's amazing all the variety of relationship structures people think of!

[chaotic life]

One woman, many husbands, all brothers. That was Nepal. Iirc, the institution still exists. It's called polyandry. It was actually only practiced in the Nepalese middle and upper classes, specifically those who owned land. It was a way to keep the land tracts intact. If all the brothers in a family were married to the same woman, then only one woman had offspring for the family, and thus there was only ONE line of inheritance to pass the land onto. Daughters did not inherit land, and thus no matter how many sons the family had, they all remained on the land and passed it to the next generation because once again only one woman married all of the brothers of the next generation and therefore only one lineage to pass the land down yet another generation.

It was never practiced by those too poor to own land, and from what I have read it wasn't terribly common in families that could afford to provide land for all of the sons. However, for the families that owned land but understood that diluting that ownership by splitting it between multiple sons, polyandry was a better option than the European oldest son inheritance, which left all of the other sons unlanded gentry and nothing to support themselves.

[FloraKitty35]

:clap: