If two people of the same sex have the right to marry, why can’t four people get legally married in America?
That was the question posed Tuesday by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito during oral arguments presented before the court on whether the Constitution grants a right to same-sex “marriage.”
“Would there be any ground for denying them a license?” Alito asked lawyer Mary L. Bonauto, who argued on behalf of same-sex “marriage.”
“Let’s say they’re all consenting adults, highly educated,” Alito said. “They’re all lawyers.”
According to Bonauto’s logic, states must allow same-sex couples to wed.
However, she argued, they can ban four people of different sexes from marrying.
Hear Supreme Court questions about same-sex marriage
Limbaugh joins the debate
Talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh
Talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh weighed in on the debate, declaring on his Wednesday show, “It’s fascinating. … Once you change the definition of marriage, where does it stop? It doesn’t just stop with people of the same sex getting married.”
Limbaugh said some people in the U.K. argue that they should be able to marry their dogs under the new definition.
“Everybody’s saying, ‘Well, it’s OK. We’ve changed the definition,’ and the same-sex marriage crowd says, ‘No, no, no, no, no. You can’t!’ Why not?” he asked. “You’re the ones that wanted the definition changed. Where does it end?”
Limbaugh argued, for millennia, there was an understanding that couples and government “needed to shape sexual behavior to promote the well-being of children.”
“In other words, marriage in the older view was always about the long term,” he said. “Marriage was about children and raising them properly. It also had a role in defining sexuality and sexual behavior.
“That old view is now called bigotry by the people who hold a new and different view of marriage. On the newer understanding, marriage is primarily an emotional union of adults with an incidental connection to procreation and children. The old version, the old view of marriage held that it was a long-term institution for the express purpose of creating families, holding them together, raising children, promoting the culture, keeping it solid and together.”
Polygamy in America
Don’t think a move to legalize polygamy could happen in America?
WND has reported that, while spouse collecting is still illegal in the United States, polygamy is apparently thriving – and not where most Americans might expect.
The mainstream media tend to focus on polygamists who belong to the Fundamentalist Church of the Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Utah, Arizona, Texas and Colorado.
Polygamy made national headlines in two high-profile cases in recent years: In 2007, FLDS leader Warren Jeffs was convicted of sex crimes charges. (Jeffs is estimated to have more than 50 wives and is reportedly issuing edicts from his prison cell.) And in 2008, authorities raided a Texas FLDS compound called the YFZ Ranch, and found six men guilty of child sexual assault.
But Muslim men in America are marrying multiple wives as well.
A 2008 NPR report estimated between 50,000 and 100,000 Muslims in the U.S. live in polygamous families.
WND’s 2012 search of a popular Muslim “singles” dating site revealed more than 1,000 results for married Muslim men – located in the United States – who were openly seeking additional wives.
For the parameters of WND’s search, only married Muslim men who lived in the U.S. and were interested in taking another wife were selected.
The search returned more than 1,000 results – so many, the site recommending refining criteria because there were too many matches.
WND found active profiles for married Muslim men seeking additional wives in every U.S. state (and Washington, D.C.) – except Alaska.
Most of the men were in New York, New Jersey, California, Virginia, Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Maryland.
Parallels to same-sex ‘marriage’
Homosexual activists may cringe when they hear polygamy advocates cite same-sex marriage decisions to argue for legalization of plural marriage, but it happens frequently.
Jonathan Turley, the George Washington University law professor who represented the “Sister Wives” polygamists in a widely reported lawsuit against Utah, based his arguments for legalization of polygamy on a 2003 Supreme Court decision on homosexuality.
“Both the Brown family and the people of Utah can now expect a ruling on the power of the state to criminalize private relations among consenting adults,” Turley wrote in a blog entry after a judge refused to dismiss his case against Utah.
In his 2003 dissent of Lawrence v. Texas, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia predicted that the Court’s ruling on sodomy laws would open the door to homosexual marriage and polygamy.
“State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest … are … called into question by today’s decision,” Scalia wrote.
And when the California Supreme Court ruled in 2010 in favor of homosexual marriage, a dissenting justice warned that it would not be illogical to expect that support for polygamy soon would follow.
California Supreme Court Justice Marvin Baxter explained:
The bans on incestuous and polygamous marriages are ancient and deep-rooted, and, as the majority suggests, they are supported by strong considerations of social policy. Our society abhors such relationships, and the notion that our laws could not forever prohibit them seems preposterous. Yet here, the majority overturns, in abrupt fashion, an initiative statute confirming the equally deep-rooted assumption that marriage is a union of partners of the opposite sex. The majority does so by relying on its own assessment of contemporary community values, and by inserting in our Constitution an expanded definition of the right to marry that contravenes express statutory law.
That approach creates the opportunity for further judicial extension of this perceived constitutional right into dangerous territory. Who can say that, in 10, 15, or 20 years, an activist court might not rely on the majority’s analysis to conclude, on the basis of a perceived evolution in community values, that the laws prohibiting polygamous and incestuous marriages were no longer constitutionally justified?
The trend can be seen in other countries as well.Canada’s decision to legalize homosexual marriage in 2005 became the basis for polygamists’ arguments for having multiple spouses.
In 2009, the Associated Press reported, “Canada’s decision to legalize gay marriage has paved the way for polygamy to be legal as well, a defense lawyer … as the two leaders of rival polygamous communities made their first court appearance.”
“If (homosexuals) can marry, what is the reason that public policy says one person can’t marry more than one person?” argued Blair Suffredine, a lawyer representing a man who was charged with marrying 20 women.
In the U.S., with the expansion of the legal definition of marriage to include homosexuals, now other groups are advocating for polygamy.After New York legalized homosexual marriage in 2011, Moein Khawaja, executive director of the Philadelphia branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, tweeted: “Easy to support gay marriage today bc it’s mainstream. Lets see same people go to bat for polygamy, its the same argument. *crickets*”
Kody Brown and his wives, Robyn, Meri, Christine and Janelle, cast of “Sister Wives” fled Utah for Las Vegas under the threat of prosecution for bigamy
The Muslim Link reported:
“While some choose to quietly live their lives as they please, married legally only to one woman but to others only through religious ceremonies, there are murmurs among the polygamist community as the country moves toward the legalization of gay marriage.
“Just as the gay community has fought for equal treatment under the law, polygamists argue the same. As citizens of the United States, they argue, they should have the right to legally marry whoever they please, or however many they please.
“In the same regard that the gay community faced stark opposition from religious organizations that diligently fought, and continue to fight the idea of gay marriage on religious grounds, polygamists communities face similar religious stigmas.”
John Witte Jr., Emory University professor and one of the world’s foremost experts on church and state relations, wrote a column on the subject of legalizing polygamy, “Can America Still Bar Polygamy?,” in Christianity Today.
He wrote:
“The harder question is whether criminalizing polygamy is constitutional. … Can these criminal laws withstand a challenge that they violate an individual’s constitutional rights to private liberty, equal protection, and religious liberty? In the 19th century, none of these rights claims was available. Now they are, and they protect every adult’s rights to consensual sex, marriage, procreation, contraception, cohabitation, sodomy, and more. May a state prohibit polygamists from these same rights, particularly if they are inspired by authentic religious convictions? What rationales for criminalizing polygamy are so compelling that they can overcome these strong constitutional objections?”
In March 2012, a WND/Wenzel Poll, conducted exclusively for WND by the public-opinion research and media consulting company Wenzel Strategies, indicated there is a surprisingly high level of support for polygamous marriage developing across the U.S.A full 22 percent of the respondents said there is no legal justification for denying polygamy, based on the fact that legislation and judicial decisions have affirmed the validity of same-sex “marriage” for homosexuals.
Another 18.7 percent were uncertain.
Further, 18 percent of the respondents said there was no moral justification for denying polygamy, and 14.5 percent were uncertain.
The scientific telephone survey had a margin of error of 3.72 percentage points.
While only 6.1 percent said polygamy is a “preferred” lifestyle, another 15.9 percent said it is an “equally valid lifestyle.” Across America, that would mean tens of millions accept the idea.
The following is an excerpt of Tuesday’s debate in the Supreme Court:
Justice Samuel Alito: Suppose we rule in your favor in this case and then after that, a group consisting of two men and two women apply for a marriage license. Would there be any ground for denying them a license?
Mary Bonauto: I believe so, Your Honor.
Alito: What would be the reason?
Bonauto: There’d be two. One is whether the State would even say that that is such a thing as a marriage, but then beyond that, there are definitely going to be concerns about coercion and consent and disrupting family relationships when you start talking about multiple persons. But I want to also just go back to the wait and see question for a moment, if I may. Because …
Justice Antonin Scalia: Well, I didn’t understand your answer. …
Alito: Well, what if there’s no – these are four people, two men and two women, it’s not – it’s not the sort of polygamous relationship, polygamous marriages that existed in other societies and still exist in some societies today. And let’s say they’re all consenting adults, highly educated. They’re all lawyers. What would be the ground under – under the logic of the decision you would like us to hand down in this case – what would be the logic of denying them the same right?
Bonauto: Number one, I assume the states would rush in and say that when you’re talking about, multiple people joining into a relationship, that that is not the same thing that we’ve had in marriage, which is on the mutual support and consent of two people. Setting that aside, even assuming it is within the fundamental right –
Alito: But, well, I don’t know what kind of a distinction that is because a marriage between two people of the same sex is not something that we have had before, recognizing that is a substantial break. Maybe it’s a good one. So this is no – why is that a greater break?
Bonauto: The question is one of – again, assuming it’s within the fundamental right, the question then becomes one of justification. And I assume that the states would come in and they would say that there are concerns about consent and coercion. If there’s a divorce from the second wife, does that mean the fourth wife has access to the child of the second wife? There are issues around who is it that makes the medical decisions, you know, in the time of crisis. I assume there’d be lots of family disruption issues, setting aside issues of coercion and consent and so on that just don’t apply here, when we’re talking about two consenting adults who want to make that mutual commitment for as long as they shall be. So that’s my answer on that.
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