"The point of same-sex marriage is to give everyone an opportunity to marry. Polygyny only serves to reduce that opportunity."

No, the point of same-sex marriage is to give same-sex couples who want to be married the right to be. The point of polygynynous marriages is to give polygynous groups who want to be married the right to be. What part of 'want to be' don't you understand?

"The kind of unconditional love that Belle gives Marc is something we all hope for, the love of another human being who commits to you, to the exclusion of all others."

This is called 'infatuation' and it leads to stalking, obsessive behaviour and occasionally violent assault. It's a nasty, scary thing. If it turns you on that's fine. But if something else turns you on that should be fine too. What's wrong with choice?

"This is a right that should not be denied to women.
Nor is it a right that should be denied to same-sex couples."

Nobody has a 'right' to unconditional love, even if that's what they really want. Love has to be earned. If you can earn the love of two, or three, or four other people then you have just as much right to that as you do to the love of one other. In fact a majority of people manage to break their obsession with a single beloved and form loving communities of three, four, five or even more people.

Some of them are called 'families'.

Yet another situation that falls into the, " two aspirin, glass of water and a lie down" category.
I can't imagine that after several thousand years of recorded history entire populations are going to abandon their deepest inclinations and change to behaviours they find distasteful, either with gays or straights, either through biology, or cultural conditioning or a combination of both.
Can you contemplate a sillier notion than the idea that you will head of to assault your neighbour's livestock, for no better reason than a couple of gays a thousand miles away got married?
If people want others behaviour's modified, maybe start with the problem of violence- at least there is an actual victim and real and malicious harm done.
Or perhaps some of the morals police could do an internal investigation and work out what/why it is, this compulsion to meddle, judge, control and superintend, in the private lives of others.

I wonder how much evidence there is for the view that pluralistic marriages lead to worse outcomes for women and children than binary marriages when other factors are seperated out. Are the case studies being done in modern secular western democracies or based on the experiences of societies dominated by values and laws which bear no relation to ours?

Its also clear that binary marriages can do great harm to men, women and children when they go bad, given the proportion which go bad would we consider banning such relationships? I doubt it.

The arguments against pluralistic marriage seem to employ many of the same tactics as the anti same sex marriage arguments which does little to help the case for same sex marriage.

R0bert

yes and the secularist argued that abortion was about the one in a thousand girls who was raped. They argued claimed the slippery slope arguement was nonsense. Yeah. The secularist are known for their deceit. Even Kirby knows 'gay'marriage' will open the door to other forms of perverted 'marraige'.

<< Its also clear that binary marriages can do great harm to men, women and children when they go bad, given the proportion which go bad would we consider banning such relationships? I doubt it. >>

R0bert, yes. How could same-sex marriage possibly be as bad as conventional marriage?

It would have to be truly rotten, on average, to go anywhere near being as harmful to kids and all concerned as conventional binary marriage!

The same could be said for polygamy.

Jon J

'..... the point of same-sex marriage is to give same-sex couples who want to be married the right to be. The point of polygynynous marriages is to give polygynous groups who want to be married the right to be. What part of 'want to be' don't you understand?'

I understand the bit about 'want to be' But I don't understand where you find the 'one man and one woman' bit necessary for the established meaning of a marriage.

I have sympathy with those who can not meet the basic requirements for the formal arrangement defined as 'a marriage' but I prefer the description 'civil union' for homosexual couples or polygamous
gatherings rather than redefining the word marriage.

I 'want to be ' is not an established basis for legislation.

In any case we have plenty of 'wannabees' already. Perhaps this is because they don't understand that 'want to be' is an aspiration not a right