Campus Dakota
The Union => Spout => Topic started by: Sal Atticum on September 21, 2007, 05:44:19 PM
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This article was in the Dakota Student on Tuesday. My comments are below, which I also posted at the DS website (http://www.dakotastudent.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticle&ustory_id=ce5a62e9-e47a-48c6-83fe-c5f83abd98a5):
A real threat to the ideals of marriage
Tom Sippola
Issue date: 9/18/07 Section: Opinion
It's a practice that challenges the conventional idea of marriage, it's tolerated in six states, and it is currently making headlines across the country …and it disturbs me deeply.
This practice involves one man joining in holy matrimony with, that's right you guessed it, a handful of women.
Although polygamy is not recognized as a proper marriage in our country, it is a widely known fact that those who practice this lifestyle live their day-to-day lives in peace, without government intervention.
But, just like that tribal tattoo you decided to get on your lower back while on spring break, when they allow a national audience a glimpse of their lifestyle, or in your case, when you finally break the news to your parents about the bulls eye you permanently fixed on yourself, our government feels the need to finally step in and take action.
This is where things get tricky.
I am fully aware that the issue of gay marriage is politicized on the base level by religious and moral views, but the stance on commanding a platoon of spouses is so weak that it begs the question, why doesn't polygamy fall under the same moral compass?
You can argue that by not recognizing the status of polygamous marriages and proposing laws against it alongside a gay marriage ban are steps our government has taken in order to fight this practice, but this does little (if anything) to stop it due to the "don't ask, don't tell" stance that is currently being championed.
The main problem with how polygamy is treated is that our government's moral "obligations" have clouded their view into what is, and what is not good for the crapshoot that is marriage. Our leaders want to lead us to believe that gay marriage is the number one enemy to one of the three most important events of everyone's life, even though it's now common for that number to reach a count of four or five, and that a union between two people with matching parts just doesn't make sense mechanically.
In reality it is just a union between two people who want to experience something that will cement their relationship.
Polygamy is a legitimate threat to not only all that is holy when two people tie the knot (knowing two men who have married women for a green card for themselves or another lessens the impact of the so called sanctity involved, at least for me) but it is also a tear in our moral fabric.
Young men are driven out of their communities, bound to fend for themselves like Leonidas, only they are expected to never return. Women with daughters are married due to the fact that they have offspring capable of being wed …to their pseudo father … or future husband …or fusband if you will and they are subjected to arranged marriages, a practice so archaic that it reeks of a time when a caste society was a fashionable way of running your country.
Polygamy is simply a lifestyle that corrodes all that is decent about romantic relationships. It throws back to an era where men ruled all matters of life and women were subjected to forced situations and stereotyped roles. It belittles them by grooming them into a system where they make up a small fraction of someone's life and in the end it does the same to the ideal of marriage.
With that said, why are our government's priorities so skewed when it comes to defending marriage? Why does a union between two people of the same sex scare people so much when there are those who force others to join their huddle? And most importantly, who is insane enough to try and handle having more than one significant other?
I love it! Now there are people who don't even go to this school who are ridiculing the DS for lack of editing skills!
As for the article: You had a decent start. You recognized that the government should have no say in what people choose to do with their lives . . . and then you jumped right into morality. I think you are misunderstanding yourself: The problem with the US government's moral obligations is not which moral obligations they choose to enforce--the problem is that the US government feels it has the right to have moral obligations _at all_.
So polygamy is a threat to you. I can accept that. In the way you have characterized all polygamists, I would probably agree that I don't find it thatb attracrtive. But, as you imply when you call marriage a "crapshoot," there are all sorts of people in the world, and even those women who don't mind sharing a husband (and themselves) with another woman. Why should the government be involved in telling people in a healthy polygamous relationship that this is wrong?
I'm sure that if pressed you would say the same problems exist in polyandry. Wouldn't you?
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Well, you have my support regarding the constitutional reaches of government!
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I personally think the government should be worrying about more pressing issues then who is getting married and how. Why should the government decide what is moral or not.
...Just a quick response.
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Is there a longer response coming?
By the way, is Ron Paul really going to stick to the Constitution if he gets elected?
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Is there a longer response coming?
By the way, is Ron Paul really going to stick to the Constitution if he gets elected?
I don't have any doubt he would - he hasn't shown any real wavering to my knowledge.
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I think having more than one wife would be hot. I still dont get why this is illegal
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I think having more than one wife would be hot. I still dont get why this is illegal
It's illegal on a state level and most people are still opposed for some reason or another.
Like Marijuana, I don't care what people do.