Quote:
Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
If you keep repeating this someday someone may believe you.
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Back in the day when Bowers v. Hardwick was the law of the land, people thought gay marriage would never happen, either. Bowers said it was OK for a state to make it a crime for male homosexuals to have sex in their own bedroom. That was decided a whopping 17 or 18 years ago.
Didn't take long for the pendulum to swing from gay sex is a crime to not allowing gays to marry is unconstitutional.
I agree with Lawrence v. TX that Bowers was a bad decision. However, it does go to show you how quickly things can change in this arena.
Only time will tell, but I would not be surprised at all if the polygamists at least try to challenge the marriage statutes to recognize their plural relationships in those states that legalize gay marriage. If there aren't good arguments to justify not allowing it, I don't know how the courts are going to reconcile it.
The only way I can think of is to just state a bare conclusion that there is a fundamental right to marry one other person regardless of that other person's gender and that there is no fundamental right to marry more than one person. How you would explain why one is a fundamental right and the other is not once you have removed the one woman and one man requirement, I don't know. And I certainly haven't heard anyone here articulate how you would explain it.
Once you have removed the one women, one man requirement, I don't see how you can exclude polygamy under an equal protection argument, either, especially if this is a practice required by a person's religious beliefs. I haven't heard anyone explain that here either.
