Marriage, Back door laws and policies, and tolerance issues

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First off, if the women involved were underage, then there were already laws in place that would call for the prosecution of the husband. Secondly, if the woman really didn't agree to the arrangement, then it would be rape, which was also highly illegal (and excommunicatable under Church doctrine). This means that the two abuses you site were already illegal, and nothing could impair prosecution of the violators. Further, I would be skeptical of the examples you would site because of the suspected agenda of the people sharing that information.

For such a law to be constitutional, the definition of Marriage as between ONE MAN AND ONE WOMAN would have to be deemed to be of paramount importance that the First Ammendment would be ignored to curtail the practice of one religion. What was paramount 130 years go is still paramount today. Remember that there are other laws that should have protected the women in question if the abuses you speak of were verifiable. A conviction of Joseph Smith or Brigham Young under such charges would be a damning indictment against the Chruch to this day...

But the Supreme Court REFUSED to change it to accommodate a group supposedly protected by the constitution, therefore the precident is set and to change the definition now would be admitting that the previous court was wrong.

Your open contempt for the early Prophets and some of the members you knew taints your opinions on the church. In the social sciences they call it conceptual baggage.

And What one judge said in 1970 or whatever doesn't mean a damned thing when a judge 35 years later says something else. Considering the potential for one Judge to overturn the ruling of a previous judge, you'll have to see why I have no confidence in Judges...

The point is that with such loopholes built into the charter of rights and freedoms, politicians can do anything they want and we really don't have the rights we're promised.

It's common sense, really.

They can if they get the operation. When in doubt refer to the equipment present...

That sounds like a mental health issue to me. If there are male genitals presence, then the person is male, regardless of how they identify themself.

Actually, the evolution of the term marriage is not as complete as people here tell me it is. There are people trying to change marriage to mean something else, but many more people are resisting this change. So far, when the people actually get a say in the matter, the change is rejected. I'm just trying to ask that a different term "evolve" to accommodate this group.

Prophets have described sexual sin as an abomination. Scribes and Pharisees defined eating Shellfish as an Abomination. It's the Church vs State issue 3500 years ago. For Religious purposes, yes, homosexuality is an abomination. Shellfish escape this, but some shellfish do look like they cane from an ox's nose (I'm sorry, but clams and oysters look disgusting)...

By putting laws in place determining who can marry, who can perform the ceremony, how to disolve the marriage, and how many spouses a person can have, the government has been regulating marriage from the beginning. Now there is a movement to change one of those regulations to allow for it to be used in ways that are offensive to the religious faithful. Because the government has been regulating the practice from the beginning, do we now lose the right to oppose the prospective change?

However, when the law attempts to redefine a term that is important to the faith (in this case, marriage and family are on the block), do the faithful not have the right to support their religion and resist the change? Further, how do these rights fare against a determined lobby? It's obvious to me that this is not a question of gay rights, but rather an attempt to bully religious organizations into accepting an unacceptable modification to social norms. How long before religion's right to deny the sacrement to homosexuals is challenged, and a court rules that the first ammendment does not allow religious organizations to refuse to marry homosexuals? How long before preaching that homosexuality is a sin becomes hate speech?

But you say that the organization formed by likeminded faithful is not protected? How long before the failure to protect the organization trickles down to interfere with individual adherents to the faith? You can't truly protect the rights of the individual without protecting the organization that accommodates them.

You have faith in the law. I don't. A line has to be drawn somewhere that will ultimately protect both groups from activists on either side, but forcing them together only intensifies the inherent friction between the opposint groups...

 

Wow, Gnarff, just... wow. How can you so ignorantly attempt (and fail) to counter some of these points?

Operations are expensive. Not everyone has the money to change themselves into the person they feel like. Also...

And you get to decree what people are by whose authority? People are what they want to be. If they want to be a man, and they act like one, then they are a man, regardless of whether or not they are male.

If I do all of the thing society declares that a woman is supposed to do, then I am a woman. That is gender. Gender is subjective and based on the societal perception of how you act, not on your biological parts. That is sex. Which means, since you keep claiming marriage should be between a MAN and a WOMAN, anyone who identifies as a man can marry anyone who identifies (and is identified by society) as a woman, regardless of sex.

Perhaps those laws you keep quoting should have said between a male and a female?



Also, are you saying that intersex people have mental health issues?

But the prophets and the scribes both wrote it down in the same book for you to read, why do you choose to only listen to one? And why do shellfish "escape" the abomination classification for religious purposes? Because it doesn't have to do with a touchy subject?

I don't understand the relevance of bringing up what shellfish look like, either.

 

Wow, did you even read my comments? My great grandfather never questioned the church, only the way his father treated his mother (and the majority of my family is still active). The journals and stories came from Latter Day Saints living at the time, active members with temple recommends. I read these excerpts and heard the stories in seminary and institute courses -- the curriculum of which is entirely controlled by the Church. Gnarff, even the leadership of the Mormon church recognizes there were abuses.

No. Simply no. You're way off base here for reasons explained many times by many different posters. The law was protecting against abuses -- it was the right thing to do given the stories (admittedly, some were untrue) coming out of the Utah territory. It would only have taken one such story to enact the law; the lawmakers were quite content to make laws restricting the Mormons. Their motivations may have been biased, but they wrote the law in the right way to make it valid under the Constitution.

First of all, Joseph Smith was dead by this point. Second, why do you think Brigham Young's personal secretary challenged the law instead of Brigham? Reynolds turned himself in to challenge the law. Brigham Young may have been power hungry and egotistical -- but he was not stupid.

No. Again, simply no. Read the opinion. It's clear from your comments you have not bothered to look up any references on the issue. Once again, the law was written to protect women from being exploited (motivations behind the law are inconsequential, it was well written). The law was correctly upheld. No definition of marriage was required in either the law or the court opinion (other than to say no person could have more than one spouse).

Wow, I must be a prophet too. Because I had a vision you would jump on that. I don't have contempt for the early leaders of the church, I just find their motivations ... suspect. Non-belief is not contempt.

One of the great things about studying institute in a University setting was the thorough examination of the issues. Both sides were presented -- of polygamy, of Mount Meadows, of the genocide of the Utah Native Americans. I would recommend the courses for any Mormon.

 

Like I said...every time we have a discussion related to this issue, the thread ends up being about Gnarff with everyone trying (in vain) to explain why he just doesn't get it, and the actual topic fades quietly into the sunset.

Thanks a pantload, Gnarff. You suffocate rational discussion so much its a wonder we even attempt it at all.

 

Is this meant as a directive from a moderator, or just as a simple request from a mere mortal? (My fingers are crossed that it's the former.)

 

I would say that the "please" makes it merely a request, but that's just my opinion, and I eagerly await the official verdict.

I'll post more on the actual topic in a little while.

 

Come on, guys - of course its not an official verdict. There isn't a forum rule against talking out of your ass*, which is what dmc was advising Gnarff against continuing to do, and he certainly has the professional authority to say so.

* If it were, most of us would be long gone.

 

You're absolutely right on this point. Have you ever consider why this may be the case? Maybe... because.... (wait for it)... The government does not consider marriage to be religious in nature?

In the US, we have a pretty good track record over the past 230 years of not minding what the religious faithful do. It is not blind faith - it has a couple of centuries of history to back it up.

 

Of course you don’t. Because the law dictates how society operates. And without the law, we’d have, well, MAG (Mormonism According to Gnarff)

"Yay" for the law!

 

But to most people, Man = male and Woman = female. It is only in the last few dacades where Science has been able to say anything to the people who identify themselves as a gender that does not match the body parts that didn't sound like "sorry about your luck"

Because the Prophets spoke for God. It's church and state--3500 years ago...

As should priesthood authority. Abuse and/or neglect of spouse and/or children shouldn't have been tolerated, even back then. Of course that could have been the reason if she was the last wife that he was allowed to marry...

But rather than allow the church to grow and learn from the problems they faced, the government interceded and slapped down a renegade group. Once there were no longer armed mobs killing off the men, the practice of polygamy would have faded from what it once was. Even if it wasn't criminalized, it would still become rare in modern economic conditions for a man to have additional wives.

First off, Polygamy would have been illegal during the days of Joseph Smith, so he could have been charged. If they had pinned such abuses on Smith, that could have been a damning blow to the then fledgeling faith. Secondly, I thought we were talking about the abuse of the wives in question, not the polygamy laws in place with that comment you replied to. In a faith that preaches the value of marriage and family, court evidence that the early prophets violated the most important principles regarding marriage and family, it would have hurt efforts to preach to people around the world. Admittedly, I didn't know that Reynolds was a direct employee of Brigham Young, and that it was on Young's orders that he faced the law.

I think rationality goes out the window when an unpopular position is championed. Why must my position mean nothing and the position I am expected to take mean everything? And a number of questions go unanswered, and I get people assuming that I'm an idiot...

So that's why I don't seem to understand the law...

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I disagree with your conclusion. I have stated from the beginning that marriage predates all government, and that it is religious in origin. Because it is so important to society, it was regulated.

As long as they aren't praying in schools or taking a second wife. I've seen cases where a church has come into conflict with the state, and I have yet to see a church win...

And how can I laugh at drunks if we ban booze?

 

Gnarff, you aren't actually trying to argue that Joseph Smith wasn't a polygamist again, are you? Your own church acknowledges Smith's polygamy, so let's not walk down this road again, OK?

The problem, Gnarff, is that you are arguing that allowing civil marriages to homosexuals violates your right to practice your own religion. This position is demonstrably false and patently absurd, yet you still cling to it despite the fact that the single condition necessary to make that argument true* clearly has not happened. If your position were something along the lines of "I don't feel that society should condone homosexual behaviour by allowing gay marriage because it is disruptive to the social order," I doubt very many people would agree with your assessment, but I also doubt they'd be calling you irrational.

* In order for legalized gay civil marriages to violate your right to free practice of religion, your religion would need to be forced to perform and recognize them. Currently, your religion is not. Your faith is free to marry or deny marriage to whomever it chooses, and it is free to recognize or choose not to recognize any marriages it wishes. Your faith is even free to excommunicate members of the church that choose to have gay civil marriages performed.

 

But the fact is that now that Man != male and Woman != female, shouldn't the laws accordingly allow intersex and transgendered people marry?

If the whole book is the word of God though, then shouldn't you take it all equally? Regardless of if a scribe writing down the words of a prophet or the prophet himself wrote it?

 

And as usual, you're wrong. It's good to champion unpopular positions - like racial equality and women's sufferage (hint: that's how they ceased to be unpopular). In fact, it is rationality that allows unpopular ideas to penetrate the status quo. What is bad - and where rationality goes out the window - is clinging to an unpopular position in the face of facts and reality that contradict and/or illuminate the flaws in that position, especially by selectively ignoring the parts you don't like. But I shouldn't expect someone who takes the bible literally to agree with or understand that, should I.

Oh stop. Your position is not meaningless, Gnarff. But your arguments are, by your own doing, because you ignore contrary evidence and facts you don't like even when they come from people who are clearly more well-versed or educated on the subject than you. Hence, why your presence in debates related to this topic is poisonous to productive and civil debate.

 

Gnarff, I'm sure I've explained this to you before (or course that doesn't count for anything), but I'll try again: I am aware that you consider marriage to be religious in origin. I am also aware that others do not. Personally, I do not know, nor do I particularly care, if marriage is religious or secular in origin. While both positions cannot be correct, for the purposes of the discussion at hand, it does not matter which is correct. This is because the government (of the US) considers marriage to be a secular contract. Regardless of what came first regarding religious or secular marriage is irrelevant, as we are talking about how marriage laws are written today not how they existed in their original form 5,000 years ago.

You see, this is why I say you have no legal knowledge of what separation of church and state means in the US Constitution. The government does not get involved in religious matters - to do so would inevitably result in it favoring one faith over another. The reason why it gets involved in marriage is because the government does not consider marriage to be religious in nature. If the government only considers marriages secular, then it does not favor one religious faith over another (and it gives people married by a JotP the same legal standing as those married in a church).

Prayer, on the other hand, by definition has to be religious in nature. By allowing prayer in school, you are favoring one religion over all the others. (Of course, this only applies to public schools, which receive funding from the government. Any church can set up a parochial school, which is private, and pray in school as much as they like.)

Finally, taking a second wife is illegal because it violates bigamy laws, not because the government doesn't like Mormons. While the government does allow some wiggle room in the law for being able to conduct religious ceremonies (like Native Americans can get high - only during the religious ceremony), most laws cannot be legally circumvented by way of religion. (For example, if you follow the ancient Mayan religion that practices human sacrifice, it wouldn't be OK to sacrifice people in the name if your religion.)

 

Wow, Gnarff -- a new low. You have absolutely no clue about the situation or what his "worthiness" would have been. Perhaps she was his last wife to be taken bacause ... oh, I don't know ... maybe he thought nine was enough and he didn't need a tenth. Perhaps it was because he was on the run from the federal government and didn't want anyone else to be considered an outlaw as well. Perhaps he couldn't get it up anymore and didn't need another toy. The key there is "I don't know" and neither do you. But, since you obviously have a greater and more holy perspective on this, perhaps you can explain why he later became a bishop (in the ward President Spencer Kimball was raised) and a stake high council member if he was such a bad man.

To get back on track....

You have repeatedly brought up the dissolution of polygamy as a cornerstone of your argument against gay marriage. You made the laws and court cases banning bigamy as the main part of your validation to deny rights to gays. I would think that you would at least look up the information on the lds.org site so you could give valid arguments instead of rumors and half-truths. For example:

He was charged. There were outstanding warrants for his arrest in Illinois -- in fact, polygamy was one of three charges he was being held for in Carthage. Yes, it was a damning blow. Many of the early leaders of the church (such as Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon and William Law) abandoned Smith and the Mormon church because of it -- or more accurately because of Joseph Smith's aggressive pursuit of plural marriage.

This is, of course, a Mormon urban legend. The mob violence was never extensive enough to significantly alter the ratio of men to women in the Mormon church. By the time the Mormons went to Missouri and Illinois they numbered over 15,000. The Battle of Crooked River and the massacre at Haun's Mill only accounted for 22 deaths. The number of Mormon deaths in Illinois due to mob violence was quite small -- only Joseph and Hyrum are listed. Primarily, Mormons were beated, tar-and-feathered, homes and churches destroyed, and crops burned -- there was persecution, but not many Mormons were killed.

The "revelation" actually came in 1831 while the Mormons were still in Kirkland -- where no mob deaths occurred. In fact, the revelation came to Joseph Smith shortly after the death of their twins, by this point all three of their children had died (all three were born very sick and only lived a few hours). I've heard Emma went through a time where she did not want to try having children -- quite a normal response if you've buried three babies. The only birth control at that time was abstinence. It's one of those "amazing coincidence revelations" that entirely benefited Smith which I find disturbing.

Oh yes, and only the elite in the church were allowed to practice polygamy. In it's hayday, less than 5% of Mormons were in polygamous relationships, less than 20% of those involved more than two wives (i.e., <1% of the total populace). After Brigham Young died the practice dwindled to the point where less than 1% of marriages performed were polygamous.

The practice of polygamy did not start due to mob violence, it did not propagate due to mob violence, and the lack of mob violence would not have eliminated it just as it does not eliminate it in today's Mormon offshoots. QED.

Please come up with a valid, and researched, argument.

 

It is unfortunate that this thread has degenerated into a Mormon related thread -- Mormons are hardly the only group, religious or otherwise, to oppose gay marriage. Gnarrf's efforts to use the Mormon experience with polygamy as an example of how a society can override the desires of a small minority has been lost in a sea of irrelevant tangents.

IMHO, no one religion or religious persuasion is attempting to foist its views on the populace at large. What religious people are doing is exercising their right to have a say in what kind of society we live in and what rules the entire society will follow. As near as I can tell, they are doing it legally and they have every right to voice their opinions and seek to influence the government through political activity.

The bottom line is, as I have said so many times before, it is a matter of what sort of sexual deviations we wish to give societal acceptance to (marriage being, as I have said many times before, a symbol of societal acceptance of a union.) To many people (and I know Death Rabbit is gonna kill me here) the deviancy of homosexuality is too much to accept as a society -- in the same vein as bestiality. Now that might not be grounded in modern scientific studies, but that's still how some people see it. It is a deviation from the norm that is too radical for the society to officially accept. In that sense it is the same as polygamy, which I would also describe as a practice that society as a whole chooses not to accept.

Note that I am saying society as a whole, not just minority groups unduly influencing the government. It is not a matter of rights, as is so frequently asserted. To my mind, people are not allowed to have more than one spouse at a time. Fine and dandy. Society has placed a limitation on what a marriage is, and that is society's right. For the past several hundred years, society has also placed another limitation on what marriage is, and that limitation is that it must be between two people of opposite genders. That limitation may not have been entrenched in law, but it was firmly grounded in tradition -- I mean, show me how many gay marriages were performed in Canada, the US and England between 1800 and 1970 -- none, right? The de facto definition of marriage has ever been limited by the society. As the law and tradition currently stand (in some places, anyhow) you don't have the right to two wives, and you don't have the right to same sex marriage. Many people feel that these are fair limits because both practices are too "out there" for the society to officially sanction.

Now I understand that some people feel that the time has come for the definition to change, and even some dictionaries have made the change. Good for them. Doesn't change the fact that many others like the traditional definition just the way it is and believe that the institution should still be limitied to people of opposing genders. So we have two groups fighting about the matter. There's lots of groups fighting over all sorts of matters the world over.

But my problem comes in when people who never campaigned on a topic come into power and then slide some legislation through the back door (hence the title of the thread, pun subconsciously intended). People who value tradition and do not hold to the belief that all of our forefathers were raging idiots and bigots feel betrayed when the fellow who campaigned on financial reform and infrastructure repair makes it his first order of business to redefine marriage. If the tables were turned using a totally unrelated issue many on the liberal side would feel the same way.

Now I have made no bones about the fact that I don't know as much about the US system of governance and law, so correct me if I'm wrong, but anything not specifically spelled out in the Constitution is pretty well considered fair game, right? This is where the US system differs from the English one. Precedents and tradition and previously passed laws carry a lot more weight in the English system, whereas the Consitution is the last word to the Americans. Since it would appear that the Constitution of the US does not clearly spell out that marriage is between men and women only, we have a gray area, one where precedent and tradition exist but don't really matter. That being the case, it may well be a fait accompli that the whole nation legally recognizes gay marriage as the same as hetero ones. But that will take a long battle with both sides hammering away in the courts of both law and public opinion. Both sides will sometimes resort to some pretty low attacks and logical absurdities. I guess only time will tell.

 

Incorrect. Gnarff has chosen to use the Mormon experience with polygamy -- or more accurately the Mormon experience to abolish polygamy -- as the foundations of his definition of marriage. That for some reason, known only to him, this definition is the cornerstone of all arguments about gay marriage. Which is complete nonsense. Had he opted for your approach, the arguments would have gone somewhat differently (i.e., the words used over and over again to explain the issue to Gnarff and subsequently ignored would have been different) but the overall content would have been just about the same.

To your points....

You are absolutely right that people are allowed to voice their opinion and help to focus the values and morals of a society. However, once those values have been shifted by society, religion cannot decide to discriminate against people just because they don't like how things turned out. Homosexuality is now an accepted part of society. How this came about is of absolutely no concern to the matter at hand. It doesn't even have to be accepted by the majority of society, the majority can still believe homosexuality to be "deviant."

It was not that long ago a black man would be killed for having a sexual relationship with a white woman -- there are parts of America where that can still happen today (it's illegal, but can still happen). Interacial relationships were considered "unnatural" because black men and women were not considered to be truly equal. Those laws have gone away -- and not with a majority consent at the time. The same things said by you and Gnarff (and others) about homosexual relationships were once said of interracial relationships.

Values and ethics can change without majority consent. In the US, those changes are sometimes forced upon society by the Constitution. Occasionally, the Constitution must be amended to ensure the wording is fully understood. I don't believe it has to be amended in this case.

You put homosexuality on par with bestiality -- this is a horrendous comparison and completely dehumanizes the individuals. In a truly despicable tactic others have compared homosexuals to pedophiles. These comparisons are clearly unfair and only show how much extreme prejudice still exists.