Global Breaking News - Monday, December 23, 2024

One Man, One Woman. Or More.
In a recent column, the law professor Adam Winkler writes about a court’s rejection of a law aimed at Mormon polygamists. He asks whether, “like so many other laws regulating sex and marriage,” polygamy bans are “built on fear and misunderstanding of people who make different choices about their intimate relationships.” Should courts go further, recognizing a right to plural marriage among consenting adults?
* Mormon = 모르몬교도/ polygamist = 일부다처론자/ polygamy = 일부다처제/ intimate = (흔히 성생활과 관련된) 사적인(은밀한)/ plural marriage = 일부다처(제)/ consenting = 동의(승낙)하는

 법원은 동의하는 성인들 사이에서의 일부다처제의 권리를 인정해야만 하나요?

1. Legally, No Different From Same-Sex Unions
Liberals should not let themselves be manipulated into only caring about one kind of marriage discrimination.

2. Enough With the Scare Tactics
Like same-sex marriage, plural marriage should be debated on its merits. Let public policy concerns, not sloppy moralizing, guide the law.

3. Polygamy Is Bad for Women
In polygamous societies, marriages are frequently arranged, early widowhood is likely, child custody rights favor the father and women are often isolated.

4. We Are a Nation of Boundary Breakers
Permitting consenting adults to engage in polygamy may, perhaps, make all our families freer to be as we choose.

5. A Step in the Wrong Direction
Anyone who hopes the American family will respect women and children should be wary of plural marriage.

6. Understanding Who ‘They’ Are
Ultimately, we must ask ourselves: Are polygamists deviants who should be repressed, or are they as deserving of respect and dignity as anyone one else?

Sample Essay

Enough With the Scare Tactics

Conservative fearmongers have long warned that same-sex marriage will send the nation down a slippery slope to polygamy, and they’re pointing to the recent Utah decision as evidence. The marriage-equality movement does indeed have a connection with recent challenges to polygamy bans — just not the connection that fearmongers contend.

There are two versions of the slippery-slope argument from gay marriage to polygamy, and as I’ve argued at length elsewhere, they’re both bad. One version claims that because procreation requires one man and one woman, that’s the only logical arrangement for marriage, and once you reject that standard, anything goes. But whatever its merits as an argument against same-sex marriage, the physical complementarity of the sexes makes a terrible argument against polygamy: Human biology makes it quite possible — which is not to say desirable — for a man to impregnate multiple women or for a woman to bear the children of multiple men.

A second version contends that acceptance of same-sex marriage will lead more people to accept polygamy, whether or not it logically should. But this “causal” version has problems too. After all, most polygamy proponents are religious fundamentalists who strenuously condemn homosexuality. Many gay-rights advocates (myself included) are wary of legalized polygamy, which seems much more likely to foster a sexist polygyny — where high-status males “acquire” multiple wives — than egalitarian polyamory. Polygamy raises a number of public-policy concerns that same-sex marriage does not.

That said, the gay-rights movement has bolstered the polygamist-rights movement in one key way: by insisting that finding a practice weird or icky or religiously anathema is not sufficient reason to make it illegal. While I’m skeptical about extending state recognition to plural marriages, a free society has no more business outlawing “cohabitation” — as the Utah law did — than it has outlawing consensual romantic relationships. Instead of fearmongering, it’s time we debate polygamy on the merits.