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Equality of marriage and love

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  • Registered Users Posts: 40,060 ✭✭✭✭ohnonotgmail


    recedite wrote: »
    According to the article these guys were bishops in a substantial community...
    "Bountiful in southeastern BC, a religious community of about 1,500 people founded in 1946"
    Police investigating since the "mid 1990s".
    Only getting the two prosecutions now? It seems more like a test case.

    the law was only found to be constitutional in 2011. and it is a test case if you want to call it that. it isnt finished either. this will probably end up in the canadian supreme court.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 13,993 ✭✭✭✭recedite


    If it was up to me, I'd make polygamy legal, and then redefine bigamy to make it clear that the offence only occurred if the first spouse was kept out of the loop, or withheld consent. In that way the first spouse could not be made an unwilling party to the arrangement. But after an official divorce, the polygamist could proceed with further multiple marriage partners, if they were willing.

    It might even be the case that these recent prosecutions are intended to spur a public debate in Canada, possibly leading to a change in the law.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 13,993 ✭✭✭✭recedite


    the law was only found to be constitutional in 2011.
    That's a misunderstanding of how laws work. The law was always constitutional. Just because somebody decided to question it's constitutionality in 2011, makes no difference at all. Unless of course it had been found to be unconstitutional, which didn't happen.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,685 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    recedite wrote: »
    According to the article these guys were bishops in a substantial community...
    "Bountiful in southeastern BC, a religious community of about 1,500 people founded in 1946"
    Police investigating since the "mid 1990s".
    Only getting the two prosecutions now? It seems more like a test case. A test of public reaction.

    It is a bit of an odd one as crimes go. I can understand bigamy as a crime where someone marries more than one person without letting them know they're married to someone else, but struggle to see the crime where all parties involved are fully cognisant of the fact and are happy to proceed on that basis.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 13,993 ✭✭✭✭recedite


    smacl wrote: »
    but struggle to see the crime where all parties involved are fully cognisant of the fact and are happy to proceed on that basis.
    Sometimes laws go through a stage where they still exist, but are rarely enforced, because society is willing to turn a blind eye. As attitudes in society change further, the law may be repealed altogether.
    It could be that Canada has reached this turning point, or somebody thinks it has.

    Something has happened anyway; either the authorities are clamping down, or they are getting more liberal minded.

    Given the trend in the last few years of Canada delighting in becoming far more liberal than its neighbour to the south, and generally trying to be the most liberal/multicultural place in North America, then the latter option seems more likely to me.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    smacl wrote: »
    It is a bit of an odd one as crimes go. I can understand bigamy as a crime where someone marries more than one person without letting them know they're married to someone else, but struggle to see the crime where all parties involved are fully cognisant of the fact and are happy to proceed on that basis.
    I think the issue is that marriage isn't a purely private affair. Legally, marriage doesn't just affect the relationship between the couple concerned, but also the relationship between that couple and the wider community.

    Right. So, if the wider community treats marriage, for legal and administrative purposes, on the basis that it is an exclusive relationship in which the partners undertake obligations to one another that they do not undertake to anyone else, then it's a problem if a couple enter into a marriage saying that they are undertaking these exclusive commitments when in fact they are not exclusive at all. For instance it's one thing for Irish immigration law to say that, if I am an Irish citizen or permanent resident, my spouse is also qualified for permanent residence; it's quite another to say that all my spouses, without limit, are so qualified. It's one thing to say that, if I die, my landlord must let my surviving spouse stay on in the house I have rented; it's quiet another to say that an indefinely large class class of persons may be so entitled. And so forth. These particular examples may seem fairly trivial, but they can be multiplied many times. The social welfare costs of recognising multiple marriages, for example, are significant, so taxpayers have an interest here.

    I'm not saying these problems can't be solved. But the solution might involve making significant change to the legal and administrative treatment of marriage, which might be quite disadvantageous to those in monogamous marriages. And, you might say, maybe that's a disadvantage they should have to put up with. But, the point is, they are affected.

    The other point worth bearing in mind here is that the only marriages the state can recognise are the marriages that people actually enter into. You can come up with an idealised egalitarian consent-based model of polygamy in which all the existing spouses in a multiple marriage agree to the addition of each further spouse, but the reality of polygamy as she is lived is different. Muslim men, fundamentalist Mormon men, etc, do not require the consent, assent or even knowledge of their existing wives in order to take further wives. Muslim and fundamentalist Mormon women are not free to take additional husbands at all. Undoubtedly there are egalitarian polyamory models of polygamy, but in reality I don't think they predominate, and I'm sceptical that any law could make them predominate. The state doesn't create marriage; it recognises it. and the only marriages that it can meaningfully recognise are those which people actually enter into.


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,544 ✭✭✭Samaris


    Polygamy isn't really a great idea in most of our societies. The place it works and works fairly well is if there happens to be a stark gender imbalance - as long as the poly-ing happens with one of the smaller group and several of the larger rather than the other way around. What -can- happen in these societies is that the higher-level (generally male) leaders can take as many wives as they like and gift wives to useful underlings regardless of the actual balance of genders so young men end up unable to start a family and the women in many cases don't get a voice in the matter because who cares what they have to say about it. That was a problem with Utah Mormanism, the same in various other sects that practiced polygamy.

    Polyamory does happen, but it's relatively rare and almost unheard of in western societies.

    Another issue it leads to is much larger groups of half-siblings of a generation and careful records need to be kept to sort out issues of inbreeding. These -tend- to be isolated communities as polygamy isn't readily accepted in many parts of the west, so the issue can quickly become a problem, particularly when these communities start around one family (and usually one patriarch).

    Also, what Peregrinus said :D


  • Registered Users Posts: 33,650 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato
    Restaurant at the End of the Universe


    Samaris wrote: »
    The place it works and works fairly well is if there happens to be a stark gender imbalance - as long as the poly-ing happens with one of the smaller group and several of the larger rather than the other way around.

    It took a while but I don't mind. How does my body look in this light?



  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,386 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Australians have voted heavily in favour, in a non-binding referendum, to legalize same-sex marriage:

    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-41992344

    Around 80% of eligible voters voted, and around 62% of them voted in favour. Neither David Quinn nor John Waters - currently on holiday together in Indiana - seem to have yet issued an predictable, if unpleasant and unnecessary statement.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,573 ✭✭✭Nick Park


    robindch wrote: »
    Australians have voted heavily in favour, in a non-binding referendum, to legalize same-sex marriage:

    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-41992344

    Around 80% of eligible voters voted, and around 62% of them voted in favour. Neither David Quinn nor John Waters - currently on holiday together in Indiana - seem to have yet issued an predictable, if unpleasant and unnecessary statement.

    I don't think I've ever heard a non-existent statement being condemned so roundly and with such approval. I'm particularly impressed by the number of posters who thanked your post, indicating how much they were also offended by the predictability, unpleasantness and pointlessness of the statement that David and John didn't make.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 27,942 ✭✭✭✭looksee


    Or maybe they were just appreciating the fact that the vote had happened, and the outcome.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,386 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Nick Park wrote: »
    I don't think I've ever heard a non-existent statement being condemned so roundly and with such approval.
    In fairness, given the last photo posted, there was this tiny part of my mind which couldn't help but wonder if our two buckos were planning to make a very unexpected announcement.

    Here's the happy couple:

    433564.jpg


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,386 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Bermuda introduces marriage equality. Now, it has become the first country in the world to unintroduce it.

    https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/bermuda-becomes-first-country-in-world-to-repeal-same-sex-marriage-1.3384748


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,386 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Any soccer supporters planning to visit the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don for the upcoming World Cup would be well-advised to avoid any same-sex activity. Over 300 horse-riding Cossacks will be patrolling the city "reporting" any instances of same-sex attraction to the local police:

    https://m.gazeta.ru/amp/sport/news/2018/06/04/n_11616829.shtml
    https://www.currenttime.tv/a/29257132.html


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 13,993 ✭✭✭✭recedite


    Things must be getting very lenient over there. Back in the day Cossacks would have carried sabres instead of pencils.


  • Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators, Regional South East Moderators Posts: 28,441 Mod ✭✭✭✭Cabaal


    robindch wrote: »
    Any soccer supporters planning to visit the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don for the upcoming World Cup would be well-advised to avoid any same-sex activity. Over 300 horse-riding Cossacks will be patrolling the city "reporting" any instances of same-sex attraction to the local police:

    https://m.gazeta.ru/amp/sport/news/2018/06/04/n_11616829.shtml
    https://www.currenttime.tv/a/29257132.html

    And after they've beaten the ****e out of any body they find the police will also beat the ****e out of them too,


  • Registered Users Posts: 33,650 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato
    Restaurant at the End of the Universe


    In fairness teh gheys are by no means going to be the only visitors to get the living sh**e beaten out of them...

    It took a while but I don't mind. How does my body look in this light?



  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 2,492 ✭✭✭pleas advice


    robindch wrote: »
    Bermuda introduces marriage equality. Now, it has become the first country in the world to unintroduce it.

    https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/bermuda-becomes-first-country-in-world-to-repeal-same-sex-marriage-1.3384748

    On again (possibly off again..)

    www.royalgazette.com/same-sex-marriage/article/20180606/court-rules-in-favour-of-same-sex-marriage


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,386 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    The Romanian government, bowing to church pressure and attempting to distract the population from a corruption scandal, ran a referendum to change the Romanian constitution's definition of a marriage from an institution involving two people, to an institution involving a man and a woman. Opposition called for a boycott and the turnout failed, at 20%, to meet the 30% threshold for validity.

    ]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45779107

    Still no laws in Romania to enable non-heterosexual marriages to take place though.


  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    robindch wrote: »
    The Romanian government, bowing to church pressure and attempting to distract the population from a corruption scandal, ran a referendum to change the Romanian constitution's definition of a marriage from an institution involving two people . . .
    This seems a little harsh. While the BBC report to which you link says that the orthodox church supported the "Yes" campaign, it doesn't say that it pressed for a referendum to be held in the first place, and there's no hint anywhere of the government "bowing to pressure" from the church. On the contrary, the governing Social Democratic party "strongly supported the referendum". All but one of the opposition parties seem to have been onside also. An NPR report I listened to ascribed the demand for a referendum to "a wave of nationalism and nativism" and a protest against the EU.


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  • Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators, Regional South East Moderators Posts: 28,441 Mod ✭✭✭✭Cabaal


    robindch wrote: »
    The Romanian government, bowing to church pressure and attempting to distract the population from a corruption scandal, ran a referendum to change the Romanian constitution's definition of a marriage from an institution involving two people, to an institution involving a man and a woman. Opposition called for a boycott and the turnout failed, at 20%, to meet the 30% threshold for validity.

    ]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45779107

    Still no laws in Romania to enable non-heterosexual marriages to take place though.

    Very, very risky to boycott the ref in the hope it didn't have a 30% turnout.
    But after two days of voting, it seems the No campaign's strategy - to boycott the vote in the hope the turnout fell below the 30% needed to validate the referendum - was successful.

    Surely it would have been safer to get the no people out to vote against the ref?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 13,993 ✭✭✭✭recedite


    Cabaal wrote: »
    Surely it would have been safer to get the no people out to vote against the ref?
    Not when you know they are outnumbered by the Yes people.
    A similar strategy (in a different issue) was used in Hungary not so long ago.
    It takes advantage of the low turnout experienced in most referendums, in most countries, especially when its some legalsistic/technical issue being decided.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,386 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    38 members of the US congress write to #45 to say that the LGBT protections built into the NAFTA trade agreement should be removed because they set a "dangerous precedent". All 38 of the men and women concerned are members of the Republican Party.

    https://www.newsweek.com/these-38-gop-lawmakers-want-lgbt-protections-removed-new-nafta-deal-1221751


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,386 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Two gay, male penguins set up together in Sydney zoo, acquire a discarded egg and become proud guardians for a completely healthy baby penguin:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/15/style/gay-penguins-australia.html


  • Registered Users Posts: 33,650 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato
    Restaurant at the End of the Universe


    https://news.sky.com/story/prominent-us-gay-conversion-therapist-david-matheson-divorces-wife-and-comes-out-as-gay-11616605
    Prominent US ‘gay conversion therapist’ David Matheson divorces wife and comes out as gay


    One of the most prominent "gay conversion therapists" in the US has divorced his wife and wants to start dating men.

    David Matheson, from Utah, was the creator of widely maligned and discredited courses that claimed to be capable of changing the sexuality of those who studied them.

    Now he has acknowledged that his work was hurtful to people, and blamed his previous views on the "shame-based, homophobic-based system" of the Mormon church in which he was raised.

    In a Facebook post published after LGBTQ charity Truth Wins Out revealed that he had quit the practice, Mr Matheson said had realised he "had to make substantial changes in my life".

    He wrote: "I enjoyed a happy and fulfilling marriage with my wife for many years. Overall, it was a beautiful relationship and being straight became a core part of my identity.

    "But I also experienced attractions to men. Much of the time these were in the background. But sometimes they were very intense and led to pain and struggle in my marriage."

    Mr Matheson said his desire to be in "an intimate relationship with a man" had become a "non-negotiable need" towards the end of his marriage, but admitted that he still found "too much homophobia in myself".

    The revelation from Truth Wins Out came via a private post made by another so-called conversion therapist.

    According to the group, Rich Wyler said that Mr Matheson - who was married to his wife for 34 years - was no longer part of the "ex-gay movement".

    Truth Wins Out founder Wayne Besen told NBC News: "When they wanted an expert, they would go to him.

    "When your expert is now coming out of the closet and dating men, I think that speaks volumes about how [the] therapy is damaging and ineffective."

    Despite the belief having been dismissed by the major health organisations including the American Medical Association, nearly 700,000 LGBTQ adults in the US have received "conversion therapy".

    According to a 2018 report by the Williams Institute, those who seek it out often suffer from poor mental health.

    The practice is completely legal to adults across the US, but last week New York became the 15th state to ban it from being carried out on minors.

    It took a while but I don't mind. How does my body look in this light?



  • Registered Users Posts: 7,796 ✭✭✭Calibos


    Thats the most surprising revelation I've ever read!


    ROTFLMFAO.

    I dont think I've ever read about, seen interviewed etc a gay conversion therapy proponent where I didnt ask myself the question....'Wonder when he's going to get caught with a male prostitute or divorce the missus and come out of the closet.


  • Registered Users Posts: 7,890 ✭✭✭Odhinn


    Gemma O'Doherty seems to have gone full 'Waters'
    Top of the perverted Irish Times agenda this week? Gay pornography. Ironic the second ‘news’ item is about the demise of globalism. Their masters’ sick plan to cause depopulation by relentlessly pushing homosexuality and abortion is backfiring. The public are wakening up fast!
    https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=740098149702520&set=a.155181611527513&type=3&theater


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,685 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    Odhinn wrote: »
    Gemma O'Doherty seems to have gone full 'Waters'

    Hmmm, John or John? :)


  • Registered Users Posts: 7,890 ✭✭✭Odhinn


    smacl wrote: »
    Hmmm, John or John? :)


    He who walks amongst us, and we too lowly to appreciate his wisdom.


    https://www.facebook.com/saintjohnwaters/


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  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,386 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Odhinn wrote: »
    Argh, *that* picture!


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