Wingnut extraordinaire, unindicted Abramoff crony, all around asshole, and Senate candidate J.D. Hayworth lowers the bar for Republicans yet again:
Former Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.) said Sunday that the expansion of state laws allowing gay marriage could lead to people marrying horses.
Hayworth, during an interview with an Orlando, Fla., radio station explained: “You see, the Massachusetts Supreme Court, when it started this move toward same-sex marriage, actually defined marriage — now get this — it defined marriage as simply, ‘the establishment of intimacy.'”
“Now how dangerous is that?” asked Hayworth, who is challenging Sen. John McCain from the right in Arizona’s GOP Senate primary.
“I mean, I don’t mean to be absurd about it, but I guess I can make the point of absurdity with an absurd point,” he continued. “I guess that would mean if you really had affection for your horse, I guess you could marry your horse.”
You have to work really hard to make John McCain look like a really compelling alternative that you would rush to vote for, but Hayworth has that special something that makes me feel that way. What about goats, btw?
Danton
Only if the horse says “Yes.”
Midnight Marauder
Sorry to break it to you, Cole, but Rick Santorum was busying lowering the bar into the Earth’s core back in 2003:
Dave S.
At least .A.D. Armstrong would be off the hook.
Rook
Only if the goat says yes.
Incertus (Brian)
What’s sad is that Hayworth isn’t in the extreme of his party when he makes that comparison. He’s not even that unusual.
Dave S.
At least A.D. Armstrong would be off the hook.
JGabriel
Kaus has it covered in the CA Senate race.
But you knew that already.
.
scav
well, if your alternatives were J.D. Hayworth and a horse — and somebody with a gun to your head and a bible in their hand was telling you to wed or die. . . Let’s just say it’s nice to have options.
MattF
…and, as noted in LGF, the only reason people don’t marry horses is that it’s against the law.
Sue
He doesn’t mean to be absurd about it; he just can’t help himself.
Adam Collyer
I thought we were done with these people once we told Rick Santorum to not let the door hit him on the way out. Turns out, they were just getting started.
Who knew Rick Santorum was the original Tea Bagger?
gbear
You can’t blame conservative republican politicians for thinking that intimacy is dangerous. Look at their track record.
Spork
As a resident of Massachusetts, I considered marrying a horse, but I have intimacy issues.
Osprey
I hope we are eventually allowed to marry animals and pets. I’d take up polygamy, marry all my pets, and get them on my health insurance. Would save a load of $$$ on vet bills!
Blackacre
Maybe it’s just me, but J.D. reminds me of Hannity every time I see or hear him.
Felonious Wench
Why must gay marriage opponents always default to beastiality?
tim
You know, reading this made me realize that I really do not care if someone were to marry a horse. I can’t think of any way in which that would effect my life or the lives of other citizens one way or the other.
Or goats, or chickens, or lizards…I just don’t care, line em up at the court house. It would be very entertaining also to watch the wingers freak out.
It is very telling how they define themselves and their own relationships by what other folks are doing, and how easily threatened they are.
demo woman
Someone needs to ask JD why he thinks that sex with a horse would be fun? Enquiring minds want to know.
Martin
Meh, people have been marrying horses for centuries. Nothing new there. Besides, of all the horse owners I’ve known, they’ve all been more loyal to their ride than their spouse (applies to dog/spouse almost as strongly).
Zifnab
@MattF: If there’s a tax cut involved, you’ll have Republicans lined up around the block.
But when it comes to the truly kinky sex, let’s just say that Republicans know sometimes one wet suit just won’t do.
Zifnab
@Spork: Bob Dole sells a pill for that.
tim
Likewise, I do think polygamy, whether multiple wives or husbands, should be legal and no one else’s business as well.
Abuse and neglect should be illegal, but that’s already covered by other laws, so what’s the problem?
Andy
Mr Hayworth was quoted out of context. If you go back to the original interview, it’s clear he was referring to centaurs, not conventional horses.
aimai
They really can’t help themselves. They never see the difference between torture and frat pranks, or between rape and sex, or between consensual sex and rape of animals. I’d put in the links to those observations but I think I’d end up in moderation. But that’s basically the issue here. On some level marriage and sex are something that is done to one party by the other, in their imagination, not a consensual act at all. To an ordinary person the key thing about human marriage is that it occurs between two humans. In the western tradition it occurs between two consenting partners who are co-equal. But in the wingnut imagination marriage (and sex) are about control and hierarchy, dominance by one party over the other. So when the courts in MA legalized equal marriage normal people said “yay! people can marry their partners/the people they love.” And wingnuts said “hey! some guy can choose to force other people and animals to marry him!” If you don’t think force and lack of consent are the basis of marriage the notion wouldn’t even enter your mind.
aimai
drillfork
It’s all about bestiality with these people.
The sanctimonious asshole Republicans, I mean.
Silver Owl
J.D Hayworth is the poster fool as to why coddling, catering to, propping up, babysitting and playing day care for the endless emotional insecurities and substandard mental development of today’s republicans should NOT be America’s focus nor on the list of priorities. We need quality not more immature crap.
geg6
Man on Dog, my very own former senator, will NOT be happy that Hayworth is stealing his schtick.
The Grand Panjandrum
Whoa! Like Mr Ed would have that sack of shit for a husband. Keep dreaming J.D.
freelancer
@Felonious Wench:
Because their understanding of anatomy and psychology is about as deep as their understanding of science or history for that matter.
Glenn
By the way, Hayworth made up that “establishment of intimacy” thing out of thin air. That phrase appears nowhere in the Mass SJC’s Goodridge opinion, nor did they “define” marriage in that manner. He is, in addition to a braying ass, a liar.
tigrismus
What the Massachusetts court ACTUALLY said: “We construe civil marriage to mean the voluntary union of two persons as spouses, to the exclusion of all others. This reformulation redresses the plaintiffs’ constitutional injury and further the aim of marriage to promote stable, exclusive relationships…. extending civil marriage to same-sex couples reinforces the importance of marriage to individuals and communities. That same-sex couples are willing to embrace marriage’s solemn obligations of exclusivity, mutual support, and commitment to one another is a testament to the enduring place of marriage in our laws and in the human spirit.”
I guess the “stable relationships” part confused him.
Zifnab
@tim:
The problem is what it has always been. Any form of reasonable enforcement. When people are convinced that polygamy / polyamory inevitably results in abuse, it’s just written off as illegal.
We have a system in America. You have your wife and your secretary. She has you and the milk man / pool boy.
Laura Clawson
And speaking of animals, where are Tunch and Lily? I keep hitting refresh on this damn blog but you have not delivered my fix in days
slag
What’s bizarre about these particular slippery slope arguments (aside from the obvious, of course) is that we have plenty of laws that limit certain activities to consenting adults. This kind of argument is akin to saying that, if we let 21 year-olds drink alcohol, we would have to let horses drink alcohol too.
It doesn’t take a PhD to figure out that there is absolutely zero basis for the apocalyptic scenarios that conservatives dream up around this issue. It just takes about 2 seconds of rational thought. And yet, they keep saying it. And people keep repeating it. Of course, this isn’t the first time that they’ve gotten away with this kind of nonsensical argumentation. It’s just that this one is particularly striking in its obtuseness.
Fergus Wooster
Jesus fucking Christ. Tom Tancredo aside, does anyone think maybe we should have some sort of literacy requirement for office-seekers (not voters)?? Along with a civics test?
Then we could weed out the majority of these fuckwits. (If you believe George Washington was a tongue-speaker and tha our christening as “New Zion” was scrubbed out of the Constitution by nefarious Freemasons and Jooz, you don’t get to run.)
Stefan
“I guess that would mean if you really had affection for your horse, I guess you could marry your horse.”
Wouldn’t it still require mutual consent? What if the horse says neigh?
scav
Interesting that it’s a FL station interviewing about an AZ election. It’s all just about getting your name and controversy out in the media spotlight, saying whatever the fuck what to whoever calls. But I think this is a bit of a dead horse issue so it’s kinda amusing he’s trying to flog it. Or whatever they call it these days.
Ruckus
The reason the bar is so low is that snakes do not like to shit in the same place twice. So for republicans to meet the bar they have to pile up their shit….
Well that explains it then.
Ella in NM
JD Hayworth and The Grape Ape: separated at birth?
http://www.tvacres.com/images/grape_ape.jpg
Kennedy
@Sue: That’s like the Ricky Bobby defense.
“But I said with all due respect!”
“JUST BECAUSE YOU SAY ‘with all due respect’ DOES NOT MEAN YOU CAN SAY WHATEVER YOU WANT TO ME, RICKY BOBBY!”
slag
@Stefan:
Ha!
Keith G
Oh come on, it’s not JD’s fault.
He just misunderstood me when I said I was looking for a stud.
Joey Maloney
@Glenn:
Someone should ask Mrs. H if she thinks marriage between a human and braying ass should be allowed.
gbear
@demo woman:
So do equestian minds.
geg6
@Zifnab:
Ummm, you do know that there is quite a history of polygamy that pretty much blows a hole in the idea that it is a harmless form of relationship that really hurts no one? A history that pretty much shows that in the vast majority of cases, polygamy benefits only the man and that the women involved really are abused? Funny, but every account of a polygamous society around the world does not give many examples of how wonderful polygamy is for the women involved. Unless you think women have it great in Saudi Arabia and in fundy Mormon communities.
Anne Laurie
@Felonious Wench:
Because they’ve been trained to believe that sexual urges are dirty, filthy, disgusting, vile instincts to be resisted at all costs — and therefore any action that doesn’t frame sexual practices outside of the narrowest possible gods-blessed, only-after-the-purification-rituals-have-been-performed procreation efforts are the work of demons and monsters. In their universe, the gays don’t want to get married because they love each other and want to share the political benefits due every bonded couple… they just want to force the Decent People to think about the icky sweaty non-gods-approved homo-sex. It’s a form of narcissism, really.
artem1s
someone needs to tell him that South Park is a cartoon and this is not real life…
http://tinyurl.com/doucheorturd
Joshua Norton
No matter how stupid you think repiggies are, multiply it by 10 and then give it a lobotomy. You’ll be closer to the actual level of their intelligence.
El Cid
Well, as long as it’s not a homosexual cross-species marriage. I mean, if a man were to marry a stallion, why, that’d just be sick.
Fergus Wooster
@Felonious Wench:
I’m going to go with the default answer for their obsession with any manner of kink – that which they scream most about, they have their own obsessions with.
Anybody remember Mr. Hands??
Cheryl from Maryland
Too late for Mrs. H.
scav
@geg6: History of marriage in general isn’t so grand for women for the most part. It might have a lot more to do with the status of women overall than necessarily that of women in one specific socio-legal relationship.
ajr22
I was always under the impression that the people who would have sex with farm animals were more part of the republican base. I mean all the liberal fake Americans live in cities. I think what he was trying to say is ” if gays start getting married, next thing you know my supporters are gonna marry their donkeys.”
AnotherBruce
If JD, is married, we know at least that a horse’s ass is allowed to marry.
ruemara
@Adam Collyer:
OTB?
Dunn, I am so hopeful for america and then I pay attention. Suddenly New Zealand looks awesome to me.
Joshua Norton
I feel sorry for their house pets.
forked tongue
“These Americans, these long drinks of water like Cooper and Wayne, they’re all alike. All they do is mumble ‘Howdy, Ma’am,’ trip over their spurs, and go off to fuck their horses.”–Marlene Dietrich, to her daughter.
cleek
bring it!
i sincerely hope all the wingnut primary challengers win their primary challenges. the country needs to get a good look at what the GOP is really about these days.
licensed to kill time
@Felonious Wench:
I guess their real point is that they see gays and lesbians as so Other that they are an entirely different species and not really human at all.
Brachiator
@aimai:
Consent and equality in marriage are fairly recent accommodations, whether in the Western tradition or any other. The worst Wingnuts have a very rigid view of what society is supposed to be like, and see chaos lurking behind any significant social change.
And news stories like the following positively drive them up the wall:
There’s probably more secret horse love in conservative states as well.
geg6
@scav:
You are right, but the women who still suffer most in this stupid and useless (IMHO) social construct of marriage are the women in polygamous marriages. Just look at the types of societies that find them the best way to go. That should tell you all you need to know about how polygamy affects women. Personally, I think gays are nuts to want to marry and I’d like to see marriage, instead of the default, be the exception. I simply don’t see anything good about it except for the men in them.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
John, as a former Republican I expected you would appreciate how people like Hayworth can with perfect conviction spout this kind of lying crap.
Right wingers have an entirely different conception of what constitutes an argument. Wingnut arguments are not about logic. To the wingnut, the power of the argument comes from the FEELINGS of self-righteousness and defiance that they instill in the speaker. The more grandiose and ad absurdum the argument is, the stronger the feelings it instills in the speaker and the more correct it is. Sure, you can make some sort of logical incremental argument about why people shouldn’t do something, but then that sets the issue up as a battle of the greys, rather than existential good and evil terms–the latter makes you much more of a brave ideological soldier.
Redshirt
Also, as a resident of MA, I’ve married A Flock of Seagulls. They’re not around much, however, and to be honest, I have a hard time identifying who’s who.
Mnemosyne
@tigrismus:
You win the internets for today.
jrg
In the wingnut mind, nothing can possibly go wrong with torture, or holding someone without trial, but consensual gay marriage will clearly result in widespread bestiality.
The stupid burns hotter than 1,000 suns.
scav
@geg6: I’m just saying that polygamous relationships in those cultures are shit. A legal mutually agreed upon polyamorous relationship between equals in the U.S. has about as much to do with those examples as Hillary+Bill’s or Barack+Michelle’s marriages have to do with that between Henry VIII and any of the 6.
DarrenG
@geg6:
Cite, please? There are plenty of monogamous societies where women are still treated as domesticated animals. While fundy Islamic and Mormon polygamy is overwhelmingly bad for women, many fundy/tribal societies are equally horrible.
Brian J
There are very few Republicans who make me want to actually push them down a flight of stairs. Hayworth is one of them. I hope that feckless turd is the nominee, because if the Democrats field a good candidate, I suspect they’ll win the seat with a good investment of resources.
Can anyone from Arizona tell me what’s up with this race for the Democrats?
cschack
From Amanda Marcotte’s Twitter stream:
Heh, and possibly indeed.
PaulW
It gets to be an old joke that the Republicans are the only ones obsessed with beastiality. The rest of us just want to marry (insert fantasy girl here even if you’re gay because that’s how I roll son). Sheesh.
Punchy
Maybe he meant that you cant marry a stable of whores
I’d tell him he’s confused by homophones, but then he’d probably banish his telephone and call it a sinner.
call_me_ishmael
Horses? Huh? They must not have any box turtles up there in Arizona.
Annie
@tigrismus:
LOL…..
Yes, of courses, horses (and goats — let’s not discriminate) can enter into contracts, sign legal agreements, etc.
JohnR
@demo woman:
maybe he took that scene in Airplane a bit too seriously?
Remember November
What about the dude from Georgia who admitted to frakkin’ the livestock?
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Danton:
Mr. Ed would totally agree with that.
@Felonious Wench:
Because they enjoy the thrill of breaking the law and if you allow animals and people to marry then it takes the thrill out of it for them?
@tim: “Or goats, or chickens, or lizards…”
Lizards already marry. We refer to them as Republicans.
What gay people need to do is propose a bill that combines massive tax cuts, another war (or two!), complete deregulation of all business and finance, border fences to the north and south (and minefields to the east and west!), shipping every illegal alien out of the country and gay marriage. Do this and it just might get enough Republican votes to pass.
It would be close but I think it would work.
elmo
What I love about these arguments is how they contradict themselves from one breath to the next.
According to wingnutz, gay people make up a tiny, disturbed minority of people, and when they show up in movies or TV shows or news articles it’s because that tiny minority is pushing an agenda on the rest of America. In this part of the argument, the vast majority of decent people want nothing to do with homosexuality or homosexuals, and it’s unfair to subject them to such filth.
But of course, if we legalize same-sex marriage, straight marriages will disappear, men will suddenly marry horses, and everybody will want to be teh ghey. Only our strict moral code, handed down from Gawd, keeps people from having gay sex with random strangers in downtown Branson.
[nerd] It would be like the Festival scene from Star Trek. [/nerd]
John O
LOL, John.
Some day I would really like to buy you a sody pop or something, because you vent my feelings most excellently to a large audience, for which my gratitude is hard to quantify.
It’s really become a can o’ nuts when McCain seems like the statesman.
Warren Terra
@call_me_ishmael:
It took 70 comments and a full hour before anyone cited Box Turtles? Shame on you, Balloon Juice commentariat.
Also, he’s perfectly right – assuming (as was pointed out in the very first comment) that the horse is an informed and consenting adult. So I guess his concern is that the informed, rational consent of the horse will be faked? That some skilled ventriloquist will give a horse a mouthful of peanut butter and get hitched, huh?
(And surely “getting hitched” must be the term of choice in this situation?)
Also, if he’s so worried about marriage why isn’t he going over to Nevada and complaining about marriage being debased by quickie impulse weddings of the inebriated in Las Vegas?
Dollared
John, JD was made for you. He gets elected, I will send you a daily transcript of his on record statements, just to come here and breeeaaaathe innnnnn your healthy anger.
I’ll be able to fire the chiropractor.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@AnotherBruce:
Fix’t.
@Joshua Norton: “I feel sorry for their house pets.”
Now you know why Hitler’s German Shepard always kept his head and tail down when he was around his owner.
freelancer
@Remember November:
Was that why McCain said that “We are all Georgians now”?
blech!
Comrade Dread
You know, I wonder if the Mormons are the most pissed about this because the government already came along and redefined traditional marriage from one man and up to 5,000 wives to the current one man/one woman dynamic.
Comrade Dread
As another aside, I love how GOPsters seize on vague language on laws and decisions they don’t care for, and completely ignore it on laws the support.
Thus, we have JD worrying about horse on man love and not giving a flying fig about the more real possibility of Americans being denied their constitutional rights at the whim of the President.
Cat Lady
I want JD on his crazy train running all the way to the Senate, because it would give Dana Milbank more awful butthurt and either force the bobbleheads to either give up on President McCain or have to ask him how a blockhead moran like Hayworth beat his wrinkled POW ass. It’s not like McCain was ever going to vote for anything proposed by Obama anyway.
toujoursdan
@tim:
I would have a problem with polygamy. Unlike gay marriage which already fits into the monogamous model our society is built around, polygamy comes with a huge financial cost.
Marriage in North America comes with tax benefits, insurance breaks, corporate health and other benefits and 1,000+ other legal protections, including marital anti-discrimination laws. Institute legalized polygamy and you’d set up a situation whereby 2 or more husbands or wives (and possibly dozens of kids) are able to receive these benefits per one worker contributing to the economy in productivity. This then becomes a drag on a company and the economy; the cost is transferred to the rest of us.
You’d either have to limit these benefits to the first wife/husband so that the other spouses are S.O.L., or scrap them altogether, which would mean almost no stay-at-home parents. You could get rid of the marital anti-discrimination laws but there are few companies that would hire a polygamist worker. The total compensation package cost (salary + benefits) in most cases would exceed what (s)he is contributing in value.
And geg is right. Generally polygamy happens in societies were women are little more than animals, but even if the reverse were true, in a heterosexual marriage, you’d have one person always in the power position. If it was one woman and two men, the woman would always have more power over the men who would have to compete for her. So these relationships are inherently more unstable. Maybe some could overcome that instability but I’d be willing to bet they are few and far between.
CT Voter
I’m looking forward to debates between McCain and Hayworth. This has to come up, right?
Hayworth: Yes, I feel that same-sex marriage would allow men to marry horses.
McCain either has to agree, or he has to disagree, and that’s like trying to answer the question, when did you stop beating your wife?
“No, the Massachusetts law doesn’t allow men to marry horses and I’m still against it.”
There are going to be debates, right??
JD Rhoades
Y’all had me going for a minute there.
West of the Cascades
in Western ranching communities, horses are considered a “little piece on the side” (if they can’t get cows or sheep). No one wants to marry their mistresses, so the hypothetical pretty much fails on its merits, too.
Jay
Basic contract law eludes the GOP. Check.
r€nato
to be fair to JD Hayworth, he’s spent the last 3 years (roughly) on his own AM hate radio show; he’s a little too accustomed to throwing out ridiculous bullshit and receiving nothing but fawning praise in response.
Real life, sadly for JD, is not pre-screened. You can’t cut reality’s mic.
EthylEster
@scav: well, if your alternatives were J.D. Hayworth and a horse
i’d vote for the horse every time.
Tax Analyst
Former Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.) said Sunday that the expansion of state laws allowing gay marriage could lead to people marrying horses.
Ya’ know, I have had my eye on a fine filly over in the south 40. I’ve been kind a-yearnin’ fuh her lately.
It’s really all her fault, y’know, runnin’ around all frisky and nekid alla time.
Shit, I’d ask her to marry me, but I’m too afraid she would say “Neigh”.
WereBear
Over and over, the conservative right declares that the only reason they don’t sleep with everything that appeals to them and don’t murder the rest is simply because it’s illegal.
That’s a helluva admission.
Warren Terra
@toujoursdan:
You are of course absolutely right, but it’s worth asking whether these costs would still apply in a just society. If we had single-payer, then the health benefits argument wouldn’t apply. It’s already unclear how income taxes should handle marriage; our current system that gives a modest subsidy to married couples with very unequal incomes (as in the 50s, when only the husband usually worked outside the home), but many married couples making moderate and similar incomes would pay less taxes if they remained unmarried. How inheritance taxes would be handled in cases of polygamy is hard – but, of course, this could already be a problem with serial marriage.
This is also true, and your pessimistic outlook for the dynamics of polygamous marriages may have something to them. But you could make the same arguments about monogamous marriages: they’ve often been very abusive in history, and one partner often dominates the other.
Basically, I don’t see a good theoretical argument against polygamous marriages of consenting, informed adults who choose this lifestyle while having other options. The practical arguments are real, but they also function as an inditement of the way our society is constructed. The historical record of abusive polygamy is also all too true – but the solution is to penalize abuse and offer recourse and refuge, not to punish genuinely loving polygamous households.
JohnR
@toujoursdan:
I think you need to check your assumptions!
1.”..you’d set up a situation whereby 2 or more husbands or wives (and possibly dozens of kids) are able to receive these benefits per one worker contributing to the economy in productivity.”
Where is it written in stone that there can be only one?
2. “Generally polygamy happens in societies were women are little more than animals”
Yikes! You sure about that?
3. “..even if the reverse were true, in a heterosexual marriage, you’d have one person always in the power position.”
As opposed to monogamy? Stable, homogeneous monogamy? Where nothing can ever go wrong? (unlike Westworld..)
Well, you’ve made a compelling case! Allow me to respond with the same degree of intellectual heft:
Yes, your points are well taken, but legal polygamy would allow single women, who at the moment are a terrible economic and social drain on society, to join other marriages and contribute to both social stability (having a 3rd partner allows 2 to continue to work while the 3rd cares for the kids) and economic viability of the marriage.
It’s totally obvious, because I said so, and therefore I’m afraid your otherwise excellent rebuttal has been completely Yabuttalled. Thank you and Good Night.
Tax Analyst
@WereBear:
Well now you’ve let the cat out of the bag, WereBear.
HEY, HEY! – J.D., now you just get the hell offa that damned cat now, will ya’?
EDIT: Hey, anybody remember that ’70s movie, “They Schtoop Horse, Don’t They?”
Cerberus
Given the extents of the rape culture, it shouldn’t surprise me that this many right-wing nutcases seem so utterly disconnected from even having heard of the concept of consent, much less used to applying it in how they approach sex, but somehow it still does.
I guess, I always knew the attitudes were out there. Certainly given the fact that marital rape was still legal not that long ago and marriage as a concept of love rather than ownership similarly “novel”, it makes sense that a number of people who just so happen to long for the “good old days” would be hostile or otherwise divorced from consent as a baseline from sex.
I guess what disturbs me is the widespread repeating of these memes. Memes that only make sense if consent is not just something one doesn’t believe in or value over other beliefs in how sex works, but rather if consent is some foreign unheard of concept.
Arguing there is no difference between gay sex and bestiality, child molestation or other forms of rape, these things can only make sense in a consentless worldview of sex.
It’s nice I guess to get an accurate snapshot of culture, but still a little frightening to realize just how bad it is and how far we still have to go towards a society where consent is at least acknowledged if not followed by everyone.
It also makes me deeply pity their beards and wives. Every time they go on this tangent, they’re pretty much admitting on camera that they don’t really believe their wives have any agency or purpose in marriage and sex. Literally dehumanizing.
Again, the fact that this is a meme is the really scary part.
kay
The marriage equality opinions and rhetoric couldn’t be more pro-marriage. They go on about all the societal benefits of commitment, and then to really lofty stuff about emotional sustenance. They border on sappy at times.
In stark contrast to the conservative rhetoric, which is all grim declarations about binding contracts and rights and duties, and the mandate of PROCREATION, or, like this idiot, who sounds like an obnoxious drunk at a wedding reception.
Marriage equality advocates are starry-eyed romantics extolling the virtues, while conservatives make marriage sound like a sentence.
That’s telling, I think.
gnomedad
I was thinking of marrying the “WP Robot” at the top of the page. I could really use the help. Then there’s this guy.
Tax Analyst
@JohnR:
:@JohnR:
“Stable”, homogeneous monogamy?
WereBear
@Cerberus: Well, yes.
There’s a reason this mindset continues to reap them the support of certain types of males. The kind who treat their wives like unpaid housemaids and babysitters, ignore their needs, and laugh at their wishes. Once upon a time, there was little a wife could do about it, except run off with a traveling salesman (and sometimes, they did.)
But now, women can do something about it, and more and more, they do. These assholes wind up bitter and lonely and unwilling to admit it’s entirely their fault.
It’s easier to blame the women.
Peter J
Not sure if Hayworth makes McCain look compelling. What Hayworth has done is to show that judging from McCain’s reaction to his candidacy, McCain got no spine, no honor and no principles, all that matters is for him to get reelected. I’d rather vote for roadkill.
Tax Analyst
@tim:
“I married this damned horse and all she does is nag, nag, nag.”
– Mr. Ed
freelancer
@gnomedad:
FSM bless the internet. This made my day.
SiubhanDuinne
@Stefan:
Reminds me of a terrible and very lame old routine I learned as a kid (er, sorry given the tone of this thread, I mean as a child) — but once learned, never forgotten:
“What’s a double petunia?”
“Well, a petunia’s a flower, like a begonia.
Begonia’s an Italian sausage.
Sausage and battery’s a crime.
Monkeys crime trees.
Trees a crowd.
A rooster crowd and made a noise.
The noise is on your face, like your eyes.
Eyes is the opposite of nays.
A horse nays, and has a colt.
You catch a colt, and go to bed, and wake up in the morning with double petunia.”
/ducks (well, I said it was lame!)
Er, I suppose this actually belongs in an open thread, if anywhere. Too late. Sorry.
scav
@Tax Analyst:
Purrvert
Wouldn’t that involve cats?
EDIT. That’s so wrong I’m keeping it!
Cerberus
@toujoursdan:
Others already responded pretty well to this, but yeah, we should have nice stable social nets so no one needs to do anything fancy or forced just to get basic needs met. Denmark pretty much has this, same with Amsterdam and the social nets don’t really get abused, because well, people oddly enough do like to work or do something meaningful with their time.
For the why, we can look at the malaise that often strikes stay-at-home parents, the feminine mystique that Betty Friedan documented about how doing unpaid menial labor for the home with little hope of validation or advancement, often based on unending menial tasks of repetition and little to no social contact or scene changing can be really draining emotionally. Indeed a similar effect of emotional collapse often occurs for the retired who often need social hobbies to keep them motivated to keep living and keep emotionally healthy.
So outside admittedly openly hostile systems such as the extreme patriarchies practiced in most every “orthodox” version of a religion, most people will choose to work and treating women’s rights more seriously in this country would go a long way to reducing the damage of orthodox religious dogma and expectations (such as mormons monogamous and polygamous, fundies, etc…). Education as well can be great as it can remind people of options and a nice social net (and free education ala Europe) also allows people the freedom to pursue said education at any time in their life as well as pursue jobs where they stay at home but pursue a career as a home business or in the arts.
As regarding your final statement, not exactly. But that’s mainly because most people now living the lifestyle (or rather acknowledging their multiple loves or sexual desires with the consent of their partners) call it polyamory and have been working to not only devise a BDSM-esque society of consent fetishism where there is hyper-awareness of each partner’s consent at all times and value as a person, but also to figure out the various legal aspects of possible arrangements. For stable triads, Vs, quads, etc… there has often been discussions of where legal protections end up being drawn, how the non-protected partners can be protected, etc…
I think where the polyamory movement and those who end up there run into the most problems is that while the notion is starting to gain crucial visibility, the creepy practices of the mormons has soured public perception of the idea of polyamory as one that is inherently one-sided, often coercive. But that isn’t really something endemic to a poly structure, more that those who practice the particular form of spousal abuse are exaggerating the women-demeaning views in all of mormonism.
I mean this is a religion that openly views women as breeding agents and pressures them into viewing their entire lives solely around marrying young is going to breed extremist variations even more creepy, just as violent fundie churches often breed out right eliminationist cults.
In short, polyamory as practiced by the majority of people has little in common with the practices of the mormon offshoots, nor does it have much to do with scarcity. An open relationship is just that, open and most partners allow both partners (theoretically) to pursue multiple partners of either sex. It often greatly benefits those who fall in love with someone of an incompatible sexuality (such as asexuality) or bisexuals who want to express both sides of their sexuality freely not to mention the large number of people for whom monogamy is not a natural fit.
So a man dating two women or a women dating two men isn’t yanking those men or women off the market, because those men or women would also be free to date multiple people and all three of those people may actually be a full triad, aka the two X’s might be dating each other as well. In essence, for the most part, those people in the relationship will often operate with the outside world much like straight people (but with the baggage nicely laid out front) thus taking two less people “off the market” than monogamous pairs do.
Not that that should be one’s primary worry to begin with, really. We all fall in love like we all fall in love and as you state, the big problem are the miserable way women are treated especially in constricting cultures like the mormon cultists.
John O
@Cat Lady:
Oh, baby, I love it when you talk like that.
Or, “this.”
John O
@toujoursdan:
Blah, blah, blah.
Got no trouble with polygamy. All I have to do is picture myself with polygamy-appeal to non-polygamous (smart, strong, lovely) women.
The day care is second to none, these days you would have multiple incomes, and if they all want to go shopping while I watch the game I’m cool with that.
It’s not like I think it is realistic, but nor is it impossible. I’ll bet someone’s doing it outside a cult, and it ain’t no nevermind to me so far.
SiubhanDuinne
@Brian J:
I’m not from Arizona but a quick visit to http://www.Politics1.com (a useful site to bookmark, BTW) provided this list:
U.S. SENATOR:
John McCain (R)* – (Campaign Site)
Jim Deakin (R) – Fire Protection Systems Contractor, Navy Veteran & Conservative Activist
J.D. Hayworth (R) – Ex-Congressman, Ex-Radio Talk Show Host & Ex-TV Sportscaster
William Lundy (R) – Verde Valley Justice of the Peace
Rudy Garcia (D) – Ex-Bell Gardens (Cal.) Mayor, Retired Non-Profit Executive & Veteran
Rodney Glassman (D) – Tucson City Councilman, Realtor, Ex-Congressional Aide & USAF Veteran
Stuart Starky (D) – Teacher, Ex-Businessman & Frequent Candidate
Rick Biondi (Libertarian) – Risk Management Consultant & Army Veteran
Leonard Clark (Independent) – Iraq War Veteran & Progressive Activist
Ian Gilyeat (Independent) – Management Consultant
I don’t recognize any of the names of any affiliation except for McCain and Hayworth. From a distance, the Dems don’t appear to be a very prepossessing bunch, but I’m not on the ground there and just don’t know.
Cerberus
@WereBear:
Pretty much.
Remember that every single one of these men has gone on long ranting tirades against feminism and “uppity women” figures such as Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, and Gloria Steinem. They know exactly what they’re arguing against. They resent that feminists and women are taking away the patriarchal culture where you put forth some “wooing” effort, relied on a patriarchal culture where women married or suffered, and bam, you got a free house slave who’d raise your children, cook your dinners, clean your house, and take care of your ahem needs, leaving you to succeed easier at your job because “the home” was taken care of.
They resent that women are starting to be able to chart their own destinies and women in the workplace and in the schools is becoming the norm rather than the exception or some cute attempt done only to find datable men (does anyone under the age of 40 even use the phrase “co-eds” anymore?). And now they even have to treat them like more than easy access sexholes.
They resent the hell out of it, which definitely makes me weep for those directly suffering their wrath, who haven’t developed the self-esteem and self-regard to trust life on their own away from men that openly hostile to their existence and needs, but also the men themselves. From what I hear from sexuals, consensual sex where both partners want it is this amazing thing. Nonconsensual sex is pretty much using someone else’s body to masturbate, someone’s body that you hate for being a woman. That’s not really beneficial to the man in that setup either.
No wonder they’re empty soulless people who need to base their entire lives on what makes hippies cry. If I’d made my life that horrible and saw those hippies with their consensual sex and love and general ease with this confusing changing world, I’d probably be tempted to externalize all my self-loathing too and blame them for reminding me how pathetic and horrible my life and my soul had become.
Tax Analyst
@scav:
Well, that actually is where I was going with that. I just wasn’t sure if anyone else was sick enough to pick up on it.
How could I have doubted it? That was very silly of me.
JohnR
@Tax Analyst:
Splutter! Gasp! What!? How dare you sir! It shall be pistols and horsewhips at dawn for this night’s work! Anyone that knows me knows that I abhor horses. Disgusting creatures. So ill-bred. My tastes run towards genteel and demure heifers, who won’t sneer at my size or struggle when being dressed in Frederick’s latest Hollywood fantasy.
There. I hope you’re happy now.
r€nato
@SiubhanDuinne:
The Arizona Democratic Party sucks balls. Poorly.
In 2008, they actually lost seats in the Legislature.
They can’t come up with any name candidates to run against the last man standing in McCain v. Hayworth. Terry Goddard is already committed to running for governor. Janet Napolitano seems to like her job in DC, and frankly she bailed out of AZ just in time given the mess the state budget is in. There’s no way she’s coming back here to answer hard questions about what she was doing as governor (rightly or wrongly) just before she left to join Obama’s administration.
I can’t think of any other local well-known Democrats who could run for this Senate seat.
The sad thing is, McCain’s never been more vulnerable, but there just isn’t anyone who’s willing to take him on.
Beauzeaux
This all makes perfect sense once you realize that horses have opposable thumbs and can sign marriage contracts.
scav
@Tax Analyst: well, if it’s not exactly a meeting of minds here, it’s a meeting of something.
Tax Analyst
@JohnR:
Well that’s diff’rent. Mah apolagees, suh.
May ah be so bold as to ask: Hereford o’ Guernsey?
Tax Analyst
@scav:
Well, sometimes you takes what you ‘kin’ gets, if ya’ know what ah mean.
Cerberus
@John O:
Many someones. My partner is poly (I’m theoretically poly but since I’m asexual, it doesn’t really come into play). She’s got a boyfriend who also has a wife and is looking for a second girlfriend but letting the chips fall where they may with that one. Her boyfriend has a wife who has a long-time girlfriend of her own. All in the set have made it work. Boyfriend and wife have been poly for most of their marriage and it’s been a godsend for both of them for I believe 8 happy years. My partner and I have been together almost 5 years now, openly poly for 3 of them and my partner’s relationship with her boyfriend has passed the year mark now.
I’ve known some people who’ve had poly relationships for decades or for whom it saved decades long relationships and at least one triad (3 people all dating each other) who’ve passed their decade mark as a committed relationship to each other.
Not going to work for everyone and pretty much demands a personality not prone to massive jealousy, possessiveness, and often one pretty well scrubbed of gendered expectations and relationship structure expectations.
Because trying to deal with polyamorous relationships with mono frames will really fuck you up.
Again, not for everyone, but for those it fits, it can be a welcome relief from the strains that monogamy can place on them and can be critical for sexual relief if you’re say a sexual who was unfortunate to fall in love with one of those deviant asexuals with their not sex having ways.
Cerberus
@Beauzeaux:
Maybe if you taped it to their hooves and did one of those old west Xs in place of your name that they had due to rampant illiteracy.
What?
I’m only trying to help.
Irony Abounds
I know Hayworth is an asshat clueless buffoon, but I’m going to re-register as a Republican and vote for him just because McCain has become such an unprincipled piece of trash. Also, because it is the only way the Democrat could win.
Living in Arizona is truly a tragic comedy these days.
scav
@Tax Analyst: Still managing the synchonized bottom-skimming with ya, I got roots (homo sapiens in theory sapiens though) in AR and KY. “Well, sometimes you takes what you ‘kin’ gets, if ya’ know what ah mean.”
DPirate
If the law simply defines it as intimacy, then why can’t I marry my horse, or dog, or goldfish? I could use the tax break. He is right as far as I can tell, and you will find plenty of people who wish to marry anything simply to save on taxes. Hell, it is a boon just to be able to say you are married when you go for a job, usually.
I say, scrap all marraige law as discriminatory against celibates. In Korea a man recently married his pillow-doll. Why can’t I marry my boots?
wenchacha
Janie: Are you going to marry a carrot, Lisa?
Lisa: (Rolling her eyes) Yes, I’m going to marry a carrot.
Sherri and Terri: Ohh! She admitted it. She’s going to marry a carrot!
Irony Abounds
@SiubhanDuinne:
Glassman actually has some promise, although running as a member of Tucson’s dysfunctional City Council is the rough equivalent of the manager of a Denny’s applying to manage a 5 star restaurant. Goddard is the only Democrat with any state-wide name recognition. Otherwise the bench is thinner than the Nets’ bench.
Tax Analyst
@scav:
Well, that’s your excuse, but I’m in CA by way of CT, so I’m not sure what mine is.
Maybe just “bad breath of the mind”?
scav
@Cerberus: It is rather a bore that all important relationships between the sexes in this culture are assumed to be sexually based? It’s rather as soon as one individual is a tab and the other is a slot they suddenly cease to have brains and interests and emotions that don’t involve the wiggly bits.
Cerberus
@geg6:
Polygamous yes. Polyamorous no. It’s not de facto equal anywhere yet, but areas where polyamory are accepted and well-known (Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, many major European cities such as Berlin, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm) tend to also be pretty liberal places where women’s rights in general are supported. Polygamous societies however tend to be closely tied with orthodox or otherwise ultra-religious societies that suck even for monogamous pairs. A 14 year old girl being sold as an essential sex slave to a harem or a hairy 30 year old in a “normal marriage” likely does not see much difference other than the former gives her some nights of rest from her marital rapes.
On marriage, the dismantling of the patriarchy is slow and painful. I am down with those who give marriage a miss and those who wish to marry for the subversive notions of love and the notion of the two people in the relationship over the traditional ideas of a relationship.
I suspect that marriage will evolve over time as it is now, rapidly becoming less and less misogynist and full of cultural pressures on the “woman” as more and more people continue to treat it as a recognition of long-lasting love.
With growing acceptance of gay marriages, equal partnerships, open marriages, etc… I suspect it’ll be harder and harder for cultural forces to continue fellating Ozzie and Harriet to all of our disadvantage and the less pressure there will be. That goes double when we have a functional social net in this country and people won’t feel pressured to “have” to marry someone just to receive health care or the like.
I guess in short, as society becomes more liberal, the evil aspects of “marriage” will die off more and more and marriage will be “new” in that it will be what we here in America now assume it to be, an equal partnership of two or more people expressing love and wishing to put into place the legal protections of a legal family.
scav
@Tax Analyst: We share the CA, I was born there so be very very frightened.
r€nato
@Cerberus: funny how you never hear about men entering into a polygamous relationship with one woman.
That’s the tell as far as what polygamy is really all about.
Cerberus
@scav:
Well I was talking fairly narrowly admittedly in that particular example, I’ll admit.
I fully recognize that when you expand that there’s a whole host of other relationships. Friendships, non-romantic parenting couples (amicably divorced people often end up doing this one), and straight up no frills sexual flings.
Indeed what I was talking about in my personal experiences and those surrounding me actually had nothing to do with lust or sex. I am an asexual, so it’s physically impossible to fall in lust or feel even the slightest stirring of tab A/slot B behavior, but I can still fall in love and have done so.
All the pairs in my story were ones of love not lust though lust is often involved as it is for most sexual monogamous people (because sexual needs are needs too). That’s what rises those particular designations from the point of sexual flings or sexual relationships to romantic relationships. My partner’s boyfriend has several more partners with whom his relationship is wholly sexual to. His wife has a BDSM male partner who she is often sexual with but doesn’t feel any love to like she does her husband or girlfriend of many years.
The decades long triad are very cute together and most of their interactions are no more sexual than that of most other couples (i.e. they have sex but sex isn’t the main focus of their relationship or entire point of their relationship).
Though, I just realize now I might have misread your comment in which case, whoops.
Probably important to qualify anyways. Love, lust, friendship, these things are pretty well random and doesn’t always fall in nice easy 1:1 relationships. I have two (three if you count my partner) best friends, currently one love interest, and no sexual interests. Given a different history or a different sexuality and that could easily easily have been very very different.
scav
@r€nato: well, it actually happens so maybe you should check the channels on your news feeds.
El Cid
@r€nato:
Polyandry. Far less common, but not unknown.
scav
@Cerberus: go with the misread, but the explanation is adding to the whole ineffable flavor of this thread. I’d say that all the really important relationships of my life have been non-sexual and it’s been a joy and a mind-fuck to watch people try to fit my life into one of their tidy little boxes.
Cerberus
@r€nato:
I suspect it’s because polyamory has come socially to encompass both polygamy the exact term and the non-marriage variations whereas polygamy socially has come to mean polygyny the exact term only.
Probably because the religious zealots who use the term polygamy socially are giant misogynists who want to extend women-ownership over multiple women to live out some outdated harem fantasy (and not in the cool BDSM way).
Which is hilarious because in the polyamorous world, if 3 people are two women and a man, it’s far more oftentimes a V centered on the woman at first rather than on the man at first (successful polyamorous relationships often develop with both parties having freedom so single-arms of Vs will often find other partners over time of their own as well, if not romantically then at least sexually).
The vast different approaches to female autonomy and sexuality probably is why polyamorists decided on the clean-break from the polygamy label entirely and left it with the abusive polygynists.
Cerberus
@scav:
Well that’s where we get to the really interesting relationship structures being formalized by the aromantic asexual community. These are asexuals who haven’t fallen in love or otherwise have no interest in romantic relationships and so focus on non-sexual close relationships of other structures. Some focus more strongly on the strong friendships of “best friends” styles, others into interesting hybrid friendships of the Samwise/Frodo school where it can be viewed as having traits of a romantic relationship from the outside, but lacks love or lust.
There are also extroverted aromantic asexuals who’ve been talking about the cultural support power of large circles of friends or generalized communities or just the power of friendships in general to provide all the necessary supports and emotional connections one desires.
There are even those more introverted who find their greatest connections not in any human interactions but rather their work either traditional or creative, finding the greatest fulfillment there and having that meet their needs.
And a few others that have been mentioned here and there.
So it’s possible you fit into one of those categories though probably without the asexuality (though possibly not, I don’t know you after all).
Certainly I didn’t feel at all empty before I fell in love with my partner as I had two wonderful best friends to support me emotionally and my studies both in biology and creative work as a writer to fulfill me and drive me as a focus.
Indeed while love and lust and even friendship are all wonderful things to have and can lead to great experiences, they are not actually critical to one’s mental well-being and one can do just fine without any of them if none should manifest.
toujoursdan
Well, actually no one responded to my concerns at all.
The benefits problem would still apply in single payer based countries. It would even apply in Scandinavia. Even in a single payer country (where I lived in for many years) you STILL receive a benefits package from work that may include wrap around coverage for dental/treatments not covered by the single payer system.
In fact, I am repeating arguments used by the Status of Women Canada Department (a single payer country) when they considered legalizing polygamy. You can read the entire 300 page paper here. It was instrumental in changing my opinion on the subject:
Status of Women Canada: Polygamy in Canada: Legal and Social Implications for Women and Children
and
Sorry, but this is a pretty weak comeback. There is an inherent gender imbalance in polygamous relationships that are not found in monogamous relationships and that gender imbalance causes a power imbalance. If you have two men and one woman in a polygamous relationship then the woman has inherently more power than the two men.
Sure monogamous relationships can be abusive or unstable, but there isn’t a built-in gender imbalance that itself leads to that. And the fact that about 50% of monogamous marriages fail doesn’t make it any more likely that 50% of polygamous relationships will succeed over a lifetime (or even until any children reach adulthood.)
JohnR:
It’s not, but it is a valid legal option which adds a drag onto a productive worker and the costs for that still may get transferred to single/monogamous workers. Again, it’s not just medical insurance.
Yes, unless you can point to real historical or contemporaneous cultural examples that are otherwise.
Oh, is this my blog now where I am supposed to post articles with lots of references? You should have told me first. Or is the comments section of someone else’s blog where we comment and give our opinions?
Even reading the comments I don’t see anything that changes my opinion. If you want to be in a polyandrous/polygamous relationship, have at it. But I don’t want to pay for it because we are talking about something that is, unlike sexual orientation, a voluntary arrangement.
Cerberus
@r€nato:
A second point is also that in my personal circle of knowing poly people is well very queer. I know of only a few parties where everyone is 100% hetero and the structure is also of the V variety most people seem to be centered on (Vs are where one person is formally dating two people who may or may not be sexually active with multiple partners themselves). So most of my interactions tend to be bi pairs or gay people who fell in love with straights for a male-male-female V or a female-female-male V. The woman who runs Polyamory Weekly is a female poly heterosexual who dates multiple men who don’t date each other, but then, they tend to be poly themselves.
I guess, what I’m saying is the imagined one X dating multiple mono partners of the opposite sex only indeed happens, but it’s pretty rare in genuine polyamory circles because to occur there it would have to be a consensual natural fit for the couple (aka someone who’s naturally monogamous and is only romantically and sexually interested in one person but who was open and accepting of their partners need for multiple partners with constant checking in for consent).
Whereas in the polygamist mormon and harem muslim circles I think everyone is trying to use for a framing reference, the women are considered monogamous because women are considered property there and like in the philosophy of JD Douchebag above aren’t expected to have sexual needs of their own or full rights of consent or humanity. A problem that often stems from the conservativeness of their religions of origin and their views on women as a cultural whole.
John O
@toujoursdan:
In what world do you live in where a polygamous legally recognized arrangement wouldn’t have more than one worker-bee?
Polyamorous is going to happen whether you like it or not. Seen it with my own eyes a helluva lot more than I’ve seen anything else. And there is tons of research about how many times us “average” folks (!) fall in love over a lifetime.
Not. Good. Reasoning. Or, maybe really good reasoning, lying eyes be damned.
scav
so it all comes down to dollars and cents with you? Well, that and a little “if it doesn’t exist now as a mass phenonoma, it can never exist” and a generalized dread of unbalanced emotional relationships. Because, really, all human relationships are unbalanced, even the happy twosomes. What’s the French proverb? “In love, there is always one who kisses and one who offers the cheek.” Well, excuse me for not being impressed and excuse me for not much caring for your blessing.
Brian J
@r€nato:
There’s gotta be someone. Who gives a crap if it’s someone obscure? If this person has the right values and isn’t a bad campaigner, like Martha Coakley, why not convince him or her to run and then start pouring the money in? There’s eight months until the election. That’s more than enough time to raise someone’s profile. Perhaps in the end, the lack of recognition would be a good thing, because while it leaves Republicans more room to attack, it leaves Democrats just as much room, if not more than enough, room to counteract and define themselves.
toujoursdan
@John O:
Gosh. Pretty much every world that it exists: Saudi Arabia, west Africa and amongst American and Canadian Mormons. In pretty much all of them only one partner works and the rest stay home. In North American, these families are all pretty much on welfare because supporting so many wives and children is expensive.
Which world do you live in?
You’ve seen western countries with legalized polygamy where they worked through all the legal, social and financial implications and happy legal polyandrous marriages exist? Wow! I had no idea. Where? Australia? No. New Zealand? No. Canada? No. Sweden? No. Hmmmm… Where?
Cerberus
@toujoursdan:
Uh, I live in Denmark (until June). They have a truly universal coverage and marriage or rather civil unions don’t really pass on any legal privileges other than those rights of legal family. Dentistry doesn’t get a magic married discount. Hell they even offer maternity and paternity leaves and if you’re out you can even receive them from your employment if they allow it if you’re the non-legal arm.
I know this because my thesis advisor is in a triad and got paternity leave to cover an extra arm and allow the other two to get their lives re-settled.
I think there is also a weird over-reliance on polygamy. Polygamy got ceded a long time ago. It may not be wholly accurate but in cultural parlance and even the parlance of most sociologists, it’s entirely talking about the subculture of man marrying multiple women who are close bonded to him and him only often because of an even more conservative view of women than the conservative religion of origin. As such, duh, it’s bad for women, any conservative religion is bad for women. Conservatism in general is bad for women because conservatives don’t really view women as wholly human.
And any society that doesn’t view women as wholly human is going to see more abuses. This is why you see more child abuse, rapes, and incidents of domestic violence in more conservative and more religious countries. There’s a reason that Romania has a worst record on all aspects of women’s rights than Denmark and tolerance of poly isn’t the reason.
Indeed the term most people who practice poly of any structure and those who will most be practicing it into the future are under the cultural term polyamory or multiple loves and doesn’t have these problems of domination because it’s not based on control or ownership and indeed may unfortunately present a radical view of relationships. The view is one where their partner is not their possession and is as free to explore their loves and lusts as they are and often plays itself out as such. Relationships that start as closed Vs rarely end there, especially in sexual freedom.
These relationships have shown strong shelf lives, strong community stances against rape and abuse as well as against domineering controlling personalities (absent a consensual BDSM set-up of course) that believe they have ownership of their partners.
Seeing how modern polyamory has greatly benefitted in origins from consent fetishist lifestyle BDSM and the queer and hippies communities (SF in particular) it really shares nothing in history with the abusive ultra-conservative groups often spoken of with regards to polygamy.
Basically what you’re describing has little to do with polyamorous setups, nor would it be as much of a problem with movement against conservative religious setups and strong actions for the propagation of women’s rights.
Indeed, I’d look with an interested eye on the poly experiment to either Scandanavia or Amsterdam. Denmark has had remarkable success in particular. Several national ad campaigns have featured polyamorous setups and several state businesses such as universities have extended specific benefits to non-legal polyamorous partners.
They’ve also expanded the universal safety net to universal without seeing the kind of scare-tactic world-burnings we’ve been told to expect here in America. A person who refuses to work is guaranteed a living wage and a roof over their head unless they are too incapacitated or principled to take advantage of it. They’re even tolerating an anarchist experiment in their capital city. They are doing everything wrong by the conventional American idea of the limits of safety nets (hell a lot of places are only open for four hours a day) and not only is the economy doing great, but unemployment is remarkably low and they’ve been pretty close to untouched by the global economic collapse.
So the “we can’t afford it” doesn’t really fly in the face of that reality.
toujoursdan
Uh huh. So you’re saying that legal polygamy exists in Denmark?
Because the Danish government disagrees and have forced polygamists to divorce their second spouses.
Denmark Polygamy Unacceptable
scav
tourjoursdan is also missing out on the existing non-archtypical examples of polyandy in the U.S. because they generally don’t come with T-shirts and neon tattoos announcing the each and every detail of their emotional lives to all that walk by them in the street. I’ve never bothered to talk much about my various emotional situations even to my family and while I’ve been nearly consistently been labelled gay or labelled straight, I’ve never been labelled polyamerous or ambisexual when the latter labels fit the existing circumstances as well as any other.
Blue Raven
@toujoursdan:
And there is an inherent heterosexist presumption in the construction of this claim. Why do you presume the men are not romantically involved with each other? Why do you presume that triads always include members of both ends of the gender continuum? Why are you so damn scared of more than two people being in love that you have to make up this kind of bullshit and cloak it in reasonable language?
I don’t want to pay for your marriage, so go get divorced. It’s a voluntary arrangement, after all.
See how well that works?
And you can take your pseudo-magnanimity and carry it to someone who cares. I don’t.
Cerberus
@toujoursdan:
Uh, again the structure you’re imagining is not the most common one practiced by cultural polyamorous people.
What we’re going to be seeing in regards to people agitating for the legal rights of marriage isn’t going to be polygamist heterosexual relationships nor polyandrous heterosexual relationships for the most part. We’re not going to be seeing many female-male-female Vs or male-female-male Vs that are wholly closed and otherwise running by the rules of the most restrictive of monogamous frames.
What we’ll be seeing agitating for legal rights will be stable triads (aka queer groups where 3 people of varying sexes are all dating each other), stable quads (4 people of varying sexes all dating each other) and a couple of open Vs that want to protect a vulnerable second partner, open Vs that more often than not will be a little queer (male-male-female or female-female-male).
There are also poly people who are already married. My partner’s boyfriend has been married for years and openly poly the entire time, indeed the primary married couple getting multiple secondary relationships is a pretty common polyamorous practice (often called open marriages).
What you describe is a wholly narrow focus and one which has really been abandoned. Sure, there are some, albeit few polyamorous couples who function with one partner dating heterosexually two partners who are naturally monogamous and uninterested in exploring other partners but also fully okay and consensual to their partner’s other partner and wish to protect all members. But it’s hardly the norm and these people are going to call themselves polyamorous not polygamous and will be treated by sociologists as polyamorous because polygamy the term has again been ceded to right-wing women-hating nutcases.
Arguing against this narrow idea that all poly will be the simple scale of monogamy with extra husband or wife, completely closed, and nicely heterosexual does not fit with how polyamory is currently practiced throughout the Western world.
Ergo, it won’t have the problems you’re associating with it.
Indeed the problems you illustrate are endemic to ALL the religion surrounding it (or rather the conservative arms of it). We just somehow EXPECT ONE woman to be on the welfare of their husband as an unpaid house slave and balk when open misogynists try and turn that scalable. The point is to crack down on misogyny across the world and stop accepting that one woman free pass. A conservative mormon monogamous marriage and a conservative mormon polygamous marriage both suck balls for the women in question but by displacing that problem to just the freaky polygamous cult, we ignore the greater problems hiding in “traditional relationships”.
Warren Terra
Why are people continuing to argue with Toujoursdan after, from among a whole bunch of thoughtful theoretical and practical responses to his first comment, he decided to narrowly focus on nitpicking the legal status of polygamy in European countries and ignore all the rest?
toujoursdan
Monogamous marriages are legal and my parents have been together for 50 years. Polyandry isn’t legal and there doesn’t seem to be any example of the same.
@Blue Raven:
Because most men aren’t going to be romantically involved with each other. Most men are heterosexual. Most people are on one or another end of a gender continuum as well.
And I am gay. So the heterosexist charge is laughable.
Why do you assume that because I find the legal, social and financial implications of plural marriage problematic it must mean I am scared of it? How about focusing on that instead of projecting your assumptions onto me?
But you’re already paying for monogamous marriages. The question is whether we should pay something different and probably additional for a polyamorous relationship.
It works as well as every apples to oranges comparison. So congratulations!
Then why answer?@
scav
@Warren Terra: Good question. Exit, pursued by bear.
EDIT: well, maybe he fancies himself an otter.
Cerberus
@toujoursdan:
Why do I even bother writing responses if you’re not going to read them?
No, I am not saying polyamorous relationships have the legal rights of marriage anywhere. Because they don’t. Hell, the polyamorous community isn’t even agitating for them yet. Anywhere. Not even the Danish polyamory community is going for civil union status yet. They are about where say gay rights were back in the 60s, that shit isn’t even on the radar yet.
What I’m saying is that polyamory in Denmark has made massive gains culturally C-u-l-t-u-r-a-l-l-y. This word, it is important, I am highlighting it. Culturally. Okay, following? Good.
They have started to gain some big visibility victories. National ad campaigns featuring poly setups, most clubs fully open to poly groups, poly groups openly showing group affection in public downtown places, and most amazingly some workplaces and governmental offices willing to extend rights granted to legal families as dictated by civil union to technically non-legal polyamorous members who are open to the higher-up staff. As I stated, my polyamorous thesis advisor in a stable triad got paternity leave extended to him by the university, though they were not legally obligated to extend those privileges to him.
Indeed seeing as all of these are cultural victories, it will probably be awhile before there are strong legal benefits especially as there exists a small racist fear of the immigrant muslim populations continuing women-hating policies of female ownership. (They and any conservative muslim men in question don’t realize that I’ve seen a shit-ton of muslim kids exploring the new freedoms of their new home to be open about their sexuality and even be part of some poly setups I’ve seen). Again, polyamory is in no shape to step it up. Also, polygamy the term has wholly been ceded to the women-hating nutcases. It’s pretty much straight up polyamory everywhere, even among the old-timers these days. This is even true of sociologists such as those who wrote the paper you’re citing. So polyamory is almost always being left out of many discussions of what to do about polygamy
I was also disputing your “financial ruin” argument by pointing out that Denmark has possibly the most extensive social safety net in the world and not only haven’t seen massive unemployment or financial ruin, but has even survived the financial meltdown completely untouched.
Cerberus
@Warren Terra:
I blame my deep love of teaching in all its forms. Whenever I see ignorance, I just have to drop a knowledge bomb of lecturey goodness and I have the damndest time slamming on the brakes when I realize that they’re arguing in bad faith. I know that they are arguing in bad faith but must. correct. misinterpretation. incorrect. usage. of. terms. and. data.
Help me, I’m an addict.
More seriously, it’s also because I believe in the radical nature of being oneself as an act of radical politics. By stating what is for as long as I can stand the purposeless debate, I’m hopefully imparting some of my experiences to others and educating them about something they didn’t know about, hadn’t thought much about, or didn’t know anyone who practiced it. And getting that out there is like coming out to the world a piece at a time and all the benefits therein.
Of course, I might have to bail anyways, because debating those who argue in bad faith or who are otherwise uninterested in examining their position is often tiresome and I don’t really need the headache of futility.
toujoursdan
@Cerberus:
So you’re not going to addressing what I have written at all.
I already wrote that I don’t care if people enter into the relationships. I certainly don’t think it should be criminalized.
All I wrote is that making polygamous/polyamorous relationships legal equivalents to monogamous marriage would involve serious legal, social and financial implications that would incur additional costs on business, government and the rest of us. So far I haven’t read anything that suggests otherwise. And that researchers seem to agree that in general these relationships suffer from gender imbalance that leads to a power imbalance (as documented in the paper I linked to.) But I am sure there are people who are able to successfully overcome them too.
toujoursdan
Et tu brute.
If you READ what I WROTE you’d notice that the legal implications are what I have been talking about.
But but but polygamy/polyamory isn’t legal there, so of course not.
toujoursdan
Damn blockquotes. The last sentence over the last blockquote box is mine.
But I’m bailing too. This generated far more heat than light.
Cerberus
@toujoursdan:
Uh.
Let me get this straight.
You’re gay.
But you at the same time, made this argument without a shred of self-awareness:
Monogamous marriages are legal and my parents have been together for 50 years. Polyandry isn’t legal and there doesn’t seem to be any example of the same.
Wow.
I got nothing.
P.S. While you may or may not be personally heterosexist in your worldview, you are being heterosexist in the narrow way you examine polyamory, though I am heartened to see you use polyamory for the first time in your rants. You assume polyamory as operating wholly like a heterosexual monogamous relationship of the most constricting “traditional values” interpretation of that.
Which it doesn’t, which is why it let the word polygamy fester with those who perverted it and decided to rally around the word polyamory instead. Indeed from as best as I can tell, a lot of poly people aren’t wholly heterosexual, though there are subcultures that are strongly hetero (the BDSM poly people and “swingers”).
I’m also not wholly convinced based on what I see on the Kinsey scale that Kinsey 0s are really the majority of sexualities out there. From my perspective, bisexuality may in fact be the norm if one looks at the range of the Kinsey scale from 1 to 5 rather than those who are willing to come out as openly bisexual.
scav
@Cerberus: tourjoursdan’s not reading for enlightenment, he’s backing himself into smaller and smaller legalistic cash-based points that hold up only if he keeps his view of society constant and incapable of change. Not worth it, and all to best to you. Maybe the situation/role of marriage and family itself in Scandinavia is too different from that in the US for people to really grasp what you’re describing.
TheBigotBasher
I blame the horses, they are such flirts.
Why just men marrying horse? Don’t women like horses too?
Cerberus
@toujoursdan:
Uh, okay, I live in Denmark right now. The “financial benefits” of being married are some paternity/maternity leaves, a couple of tax benefits, and some of the standard legal family protections.
No health care, dental care, welfare protections, etc…
Hell, there’s not even an extra family consideration regarding welfare and housing because all of that is based on “household” so the person living with me could be a super platonic roommate who hates me or a ball-gagged love-slave named Alfredo or my legally wedded partner and the Danish government would not care regarding housing or welfare credits except for the following:
a) The household member in question is a minor
b) The household member in question is a retired senior citizen
c) The household member in question is a veteran of armed services
Outside of those three considerations the “giving me welfare” arm of the Danish government doesn’t give a shit.
So, you’re scare tactics are off topic wholly because there just aren’t enough social net type aspects that are marriage-specific. So unless you’re arguing that maternity/paternity leave (which requires you to have a job you’re taking said leave from) will bankrupt the Danish government, your financial argument is refuted by how the Danish system operates and treats marriage/civil unions.
Personally, I kind of like the Danish system because marriage/civil unions are wholly uncoercive. There are very few benefits or protections that require you to get married/civil unioned to receive so people can marry/get civil unioned on their own terms more for reasons of love than necessity.
The freedom this gives is often cited by alarmist right-wing sources about how “marriage is collapsing in Scandanavia” after they “dared allow gay marriage”.
Cerberus
@scav:
I know. But I might as well give the startled other Americans a small taste. Scandanavian culture is basically what one as a liberal, nay a human being, wants to see extended everywhere. Incomplete, imperfect, still evolving, yes, but so much ahead of where America is that I’ll be spending my entire life trying to get America where Denmark is now. It’s culturally awe-inspiring in how simply it just works without the constant paranoid fever that drenches so much of American culture.
If only everyone I loved and my true country at heart weren’t half a world away.
More seriously, it’s probably worth it describing some of that and what it can be and what is practiced even in America. The modern polyamory movement pretty much started in America in San Francisco after all. All that giant personal stuff I mentioned is back in my real home in America. It’s just random happenstance that my advisor here in Denmark is practicing a semi-similar thing.
The only real difference is legal and cultural. He has more cultural protections and support, more people aware of his family structure and more people supportive of it and a better governmental system that allows him to protect his “household” despite not having the legal protections of civil union to his partners.
But how we live here in Denmark and back home in America is not so different, really. Not in the home. They can just be more honest here.
TheBigotBasher
@Cerberus: Just to butt in on the end of a conversation, for benefit purposes in the UK polyamorous marriages are recognised, however the marriage must have taken place outside of the UK in a Country that has not made bigamy illegal.
Cerberus
Finally, really when we get right down to it, when we’re truly honest apart from the cultural pressures, the cultural detritus of mistakes we haven’t shaken and futures we’re afraid of accepting. When we focus on who we are, who we love, who we lust after, how our families look, how we define community. When you strip away all the mess, the gunk, and focus how we truly are in the deepest darkest corners of our hearts, a beautiful painting is drawn, an opened world of the marvelous heterogeneity of the human species.
We are all so varied, love, lust, friendships flit so randomly in our distribution. Our sexualities, our gender expressions, our personalities spread over giant spectrums and home to such wonderful diversity.
This is our connection to the natural world, the strength of evolution coursing through the makeup of our minds the chaotic happenstance of chance encounters and neuronal connections.
We are such a heterogeneous species. When we try and pigeon-hole it into such a narrow way of living in the world, insisting on one method regardless of how it fits for everyone, we can become twisted by it, owing more to cultural expectation than the pattern in our own hearts.
What works, what doesn’t, that’s for everyone to decide for themselves. but the options should be there and the bigotries and oppressions that deny those options from even being considered should be hard-fought. Why should the house-slaves of fundamentalist religions of both the monogamous and polygamist varieties feel they have no other option but that patriarchal hell? Why should the black and poor be denied the opportunities of the middle class for want of a functional social safety net? Why should marriages and relationships still hold potent weights over the individuals considering them or entering them? Weights that threaten to overtake their needs, their plans?
There is no reason for any of it, if we are all honest with ourselves.
And being so and helping others be so will hopefully continue to piss off the JD Douchebags of the world, so desperately clinging to the petty oppressions that gave them a slight edge up at the expense of their souls and leave them with fewer and fewer victims to oppress.
This is why I fight for progressivism, above the narrow personal concerns, above even the high-minded morals of my response to injustices, because life should work like that and it is a shame that it doesn’t.
Denmark shouldn’t be a dream, too distant to comprehend. It should be the standard to beat. And we can do it.
/Rant taking itself way to seriously
Okay, I’m going into St. Crispin’s Day speech territory, so I think I’ll be calling it a night.
Thank you everyone for a really productive and interesting thread.
ksmiami
One last fly by night comment; I remain convinced that Dems will be fine at the mid-term elections simply because all the current crew of Republicans seem to be able to do these days is amp up the crazy. They just can’t help themselves and frankly, they will start scaring people away soon enough.
planetspinz
here’s the actual Massachusetts court ruling http://bit.ly/2ph5Ou
and here’s where you can do more than complain to the choir but tell Hayworth (notice the hay in his name btw) what you think
http://twitter.com/jdhayworth
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#!/pages/JD-Hayworth-2010-for-US-Senate/312423051210?ref=ts
KDP
Maddow called him on the ‘establishment of intimacy’ statement. It is, apparently, not a part of the Massachusetts court ruling that allowed same sex partners to marry. Hayworth’s response to her reading excerpts from the ruling that reference ‘intimacy’ was to say that ‘They’d just have to disagree.’ Maddow has promised to post the ruling on her site for viewer review.
Robert
@Rook: My goat said “naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah”
bill
What’s really strange is that the republicans say that we gays are the sexual deviants , but listen to where their minds go when trying to compare? Some of the really gross stuff that they come up with makes marrying a horse a sunday picnic with the old ladies church group.
“””Gawd bubba, I know the truth is horribler than ever, but them new york faggys aint so bad really, i guess”””
for christs sake people, all they really want is to be able to take their partners kids to achool, or get in to be with a dying victim of an accident in the hospital, anything that a husband can do concerning his wife or that a wife can do concerning her hussband. Essentially, the legal rights that go along with marriage, that’s it, they just want to make life a little easier, period. It’s not this huge agenda against the church, it’s not a covert operation to take over the government, they just want life a little easier, give ’em (us) a break,
DPirate
@TheBigotBasher: They say Catherine the Great did.
WestCoaster
Ummm, you do know that there is quite a history of polygamy that pretty much blows a hole in the idea that it is a harmless form of relationship that really hurts no one? A history that pretty much shows that in the vast majority of cases, polygamy benefits only the man and that the women involved really are abused? Funny, but every account of a polygamous society around the world does not give many examples of how wonderful polygamy is for the women involved. Unless you think women have it great in Saudi Arabia and in fundy Mormon communities.
That’s because those ‘marriages’ are unequal. It’s a man and several wives. We should just let gays have polygamous relationships. In those everyone is equal to start with. You straight people have fucked it up for centuries…. it’s our turn to show you how it’s done.