I'll take the other side of that bet David. They are in the 9th Circus. If Gay marriage is a constitutional right, this case is a slam dunk.

If the plaintiffs had a sense of humor they would have brought the case in state court so they could have given the Utah Supreme Court the chance to embarass Massacusttes.

Polyandry too, no doubt.

This is going to be fun to watch. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised to see the case get thrown out this time around, but it's only a matter of time before a case like it sticks.

If you say yes to gay marriage,you can't say no to any other kind of marriage.
This will bite the Left in the *** as gender feminists scream bloody murder.
The real fun,of course,starts when the pedo's and animal lovers get to the courthouse.

I believe Utah might be the only state where this case could not get a fairly respectful legal hearing, because of the conditions under which it was granted Statehood.

In Hawaii, your legal rights are slightly different from in other states, because of the provisions written into the Organic Act that brought it into the Nation. As in Utah, these exceptions are under attack by the grievance culture, but so far the federal district judges have not accepted their arguments.

From a Biblical/cultural and historical perspective these people have a more legitimate case than the Massachussetts case. I'm not saying I'm in favor of it of course.

J.H.

And that might be the very reason they have less chance of succeeding.

Utah is in the 10th Circuit, not the 9th.

You know what the penalty for bigamy is?

Two Wives.

I don't know what anyone is worried about. According to OJ, there is nothing immoral about polygamy.

It's not immoral, it's just a bad idea.

David:

Why a bad idea ?

David:

Exactly. Under the circumstances of our society.

But if those circumstances changed, what was once bad might become essential for long term survival.

Which makes polygamy an idea whose "goodness" is environmentally dependent.

THX --

Change is bad.

Unprecedented change is worse.

Unprecedented change to a fundamental societal institutional is catastrophic.

Plus, specific to multiple marriages: The junior wives are chattel, the bond between the father and children is attenuated, and it increases the number of unmarried young/poor men.

Jeff -- "Morality" is confirming to the commandments given to us by G-d in the Torah. Everything else is ethics, or culture, or social context. Of course it can change. Once the man-killing virus is unleashed and kills off 90% of the adult male population, polygamy will be required.

David:

So if I understand you properly, only the contents of the Ten Commandments constitute "morality." However, there aren't too many civilizations anywhere (none that I can think of) that don't adhere to this morality. Which seems to minimize the importance of any specific religion.

And, again if I understand you correctly, it calls into question the accuracy of a statement like "homosexuality is immoral."

David:

Hardly unprecedented globally, historically, or in the US.

Junior wives were chattel when the senior wives were. Why do you believe that large numbers of American women would voluntarily decide to become slaves ?

It may indeed increase the number of unmarried young/poor men, but that may not be a bad thing.
First, many men ought NOT be married. Fewer women might settle for an immature or abusive spouse.
Second, it should compel men to marry earlier, if they're serious, which can only be good for society, from our present condition.

The thought about men and their children is a good one, but, given the high rates of divorce and essentially paternally abandoned children now, it may not be worse than the status quo.

In any case, I don't expect large numbers of people to avail themselves of the opportunity to marry multiple spouses. Even in the Mormon community, back in the day, most marriages were between only two people.

THX -- What is unprecedented is the change from monogomy to polygamy.

We do have experience with the conditions of junior wives in polygamous marriages in the modern US. They are treated as chattel and suffer very high rates of abuse.

Luckily for us, India, China and Arabia are running experiments about the effect of large populations of young men with poor marriage prospects. Why don't we hold off 50 years and see how that turns out?

Jeff -- There are hundreds of commandments:

Traditional holds that the Torah contains 613 commandments. The Torah itself does not record this number; rather the Tannai'im (the sages who wrote the Gemara of the Talmud) are the source of the tradition that there are 613 commandments in the Torah. They taught that the 613 are comprised of 365 negative commandments (Thou shalt not's) corresponding to the number of days in the solar year because each day we are tempted to violate a commandment and therefore have the opportunity to refrain from violating the commandment by obeying God; and 248 positive commandments (Thou shalts) corresponding to the number of bones in the body (as they understood it) because this teaches that we can serve God with every part of our body and being. The Sages, for whom the world could be seen as a web of relationships, distinguished between mitzvot Bein Adam LaMakom (between a person and God, such as the commandments concerning Shabbat and prayer) and the mitzvot Bein Adam LeChavero (between people, such as the laws concerning business practices, marriage, divorce, and so on).

There are, however, only seven that apply to non-Jews.

David:

Those junior wives are in ILLEGAL and socially unaccepted marriages. You might just as well extrapolate working conditions and social interactions for the whole of society, by studying illegal immigrants and prisoners, respectively.

THX -- At best, that goes to the weight of the evidence, but it doesn't change the fact that the only evidence we have -- whether from the modern US, history or other polygamous societies -- is that it is bad for women, bad for children, bad for unmarried men and bad for society. Maybe this time it would be good for everyone, but there's no evidence that it would be.

In fact, I think the evidence still cuts my way: in a situation in which the junior wives have as strong a hand as can be imagined (no legal ties, the ability to rat out the marriage to the cops, no easy substitute), and they're still abused.