The Laws and Debate Surrounding Bigamy
August 3rd, 2011
The Laws and Debate Surrounding Bigamy
The Morrill Anti-Bigamy Law and Reynolds v The United States of America
Though the debate surrounding marriage is between is contentious however, the idea that it is a practice for two people, and only two people is unquestionably entrenched into the institution.
Bigamy, bi- meaning two and -gamy meaning marriage or union, is defined as the practice of entering into a marriage with a person who is already legally married to someone else. It would be the opposite of monogamy, which is being legally married to one person only. Polygamy, poly- meaning many, would be would be the practice of having many marriages.
In the United States the practice of bigamy is a misdemeanor and the practice of polygamy is a felony. This is defined by the Model Penal Code (Section 230.1), a tool used to assist legislators and lawmakers. The Bigamy law has a few interesting things about it. The first is that long, unexplained absences, usually five to seven years in duration, can annul a marriage. Should a spouse remarry only to have their previous spouse appear, they would not be convicted of a crime. However, bigamy is a strict liability crime. A strict liability crime is one that holds someone accountable whether or not culpability is found. This means that even if someone had a good faith belief that their divorce was legal and remarries only to find that it was done improperly and not recognized by the law, they would be subject to punishment.
In 1862, President Lincoln signed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act into law. The practice of polygamy had been going on in the United States for the previous ten years. Though it banned the practice, it was not initially enforced because the Federal Government was preoccupied with the Civil War.
It was in 1875 that Reynolds v The United States took place and the ban of bigamy was unanimously upheld by the US Supreme Court. Reynolds, on behalf of fundamentalist Mormons, was on trial for the crime of bigamy. He held that the ban on bigamy directly violated their first amendment right to practice their religion.
This law is still being contested today. In mid-July 2011, The Sister Wives clan and their leader, Kody Brown of Utah, have challenged the law on the grounds that marriage between consenting adults should not be limited. The group is hoping to see the practice decriminalized. Currently the state of Utah has an extremely stringent Anti-Bigamy Statute that bans even the practice of cohabitating with someone whom you are not married to. People are also banned from entering spiritual marriages with anyone other than their spouse. The ACLU of Utah feels violates the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment and by the outcome of the case Planned Parenthood v Casey which established that there were personal realms that the government has no place it. This case also builds on Lawrence v Texas, the case which struck down sodomy laws, because, they argue, the Federal Government should not be able to exercise control over intimate contact.
Should the Sister Wives Clan win the case it would not necessarily win state recognition of marriage however, it would be a stepping stone along the way as polygamy would no longer be punishable by law.
Wendy, deporting imnmgraits who break the laws is the proper course of action because they should not be the taxpayers’ responsibility to imprison like citizens who break the law. It’s not like we turn a blind eye when citizens break the law. The difference is that citizens are our problem and imnmgraits are here on a trial basis and if they can’t accept the law of the land they should get the boot. If you’re not a complete narcissist you should understand this, like if I wanted to contract 10 million strains of mosque foot fungus on my hands and face, you would require that I remove my shoes before entering the mosque. We require that you abide by our laws before you enter the country and if you’re not willing to do that then you should not be allowed in and if you should be so lucky as to be allowed in, even though 99.9% of the time you have absolutely nothing to offer us but parasitism and you still have the unmitigated gall to disregard the law of the land, yeah, ya gotta go. If you do not pledge complete allegiance to your country of immigration and you don’t completely obey all of our laws to the letter, then you’re a blight on the free world and you have no place in a civilized society, just like citizens who break the law have no place in civlized society. That’s why we lock them up and get them off the streets until they hopefully learn their lesson.Furthermore, polygamy is immoral. You obviously have no concept of morality, but here’s how it works: it is completely objective and cannot be proscribed. Morality is the Golden Rule. That’s why Islam has no morality. It has one set of rules for men and another for sex slaves, one set for Muslims, and another infidel apes/pigs-to-be-raped-enslaved-and-murdered. Allowing men one thing and women another is immoral. Obligating marriage in order for sexual relations, regardless of who does it, is arbitrary and amoral. It served a purpose before the advent of the DNA test, so that children knew who their fathers were, but it’s now completely irrelevant. That’s why Jesus never advocated marriage: because partners should, regardless of some stamp of approval from the Church or the State, simply be faithful to one another, and if you read between the lines of the Gospels, one can only reach the conclusion that he was against it. Furthermore, Jesus was very careful to define adultery in terms which have nothing to do with marriage. He expliticly defined it as polygamy, cheating on one’s spouse, a breach of loyalty. Cheating on one’s spouse, polygamy, and breaching the loyalty of a loved one ARE immoral because they run contrary to the Golden Rule. Polygamy is adultery. Romantic relationships indendent of incestuous Sharia sex slavery are not adultery, unless someone is being cheated on and their loyalty breached. Try really hard to wrap your head around it. That’s how it goes. You wouldn’t want it to happen to you so you shouldn’t do it to others. That’s the Golden Rule. That’s morality.Polygamy could theoretically be moral if women had the same right to marry multiple men and if all parties agreed and no feelings were hurt, but only under those circumstances can polygamy even theoretically fall under the heading of ‘moral.’ Furthermore, your between-the-lines, Islamic justification for polygamy as taking care of widows is because women have no rights in Islam. If they were on equal standing with men, had the same inheritance rights as men, had control over their own sex organs including their uteruses, were allowed to leave the home without the permission of the slave-owner muhrim who completely control their lives and fates, had the same opportunities as men, were free to travel alone or of their own volition, and could generally do whatever they wanted like they can in MORAL, FREE societies, there would be no reason for men to have to take care of women. I take care of myself just fine, thank you, and so could any woman with a backbone, a soul, half a clue, and equal rights, even without my fair share of my father’s and my MOTHER’s inheritance (they’re still with me anyway, thank God). Shoot, lots of women take care of men, like my mom did when she put my dad through law school before he reciprocated and put her through law school, and wenching herself to pay the bills was considerably more difficult than practicing law like he did. Again Wendy, circular logic. It’s Islam’s enslavement of women that ‘justifies’ the polygamy. You can’t justify evil with evil and have it come out moral, no matter how you parse, tu quoque, or kitman your way around it or try to divert attention from the issue by saying that people in civilized, free societies cheat on their spouses. Nobody ever claimed that doing so was moral, and they certainly have no fake-divine sanction to do so. It’s like how Muslims justify rape in Islamic marriage (i.e., out-and-out sex slavery) by saying that people in the West have consentual sex without some fake-moral stamp of approval from the Church or the State. That stamp of approval doesn’t moralize anything, rape is rape, and consentual sex is consentual. Violence justified by fake-morality is not comparable to sex, just like outright evil carried out with a fake-divine, fake-moral sanction is not moral. It’s crazy and it makes no sense, just like everyting you’ve written in here.