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Santorum booed in New Hampshire for comparing same-sex marriage to polygamy
By James Brady RyanJanuary 5th, 2012, 7:02 pmComments (25)
Rick Santorum and his team, like most of the potential Republican nominees for president, have moved onto New Hampshire, where the next primary will go down on January 10. And while Santorum is probably riding pretty high off of his incredibly close second-place finish in the Iowa caucus, it looks like he'd be smart to remember that not every state is as socially conservative (or religiously devout — at least not the same strain) as the corn capital of America. Because while speaking at a town hall in Concord, the former senator — whose distaste for homosexuality is well publicized — ran into some trouble when he trotted out the old, "If we have same-sex marriage, why not polygamous marriage?" argument in response to a question about what's wrong with two dudes or two ladies getting hitched.
Oops! Turns out that line doesn't go over as well in New England:
Santorum continued: "Here's my point of view. And we're done talking about this issue, we're going to move on to something else."
He went on to laud the traditional marriage, saying that "I think that’s something society should value and give status over a group of people who want to have a relationship together."
Some in the crowd booed him after that statement.
Now, it's not like the audience started to throw rotten fruit at the man, but it very well may be a sign that Santorum's hard-right stance on social issues, while a strength in some parts of the country, will only serve to hinder him as he goes up against the slightly more moderate Mitt Romney in the coming weeks. Could that mean his near win in Iowa was a one-off? Remember, Rick: play to your audience.
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Rick Santorum
Commentarium (25 Comments)
Why not? What is the problem with polygamous union between consenting adults? No difference in my books whether there's 2 or 3 or more of the same or different sexes.
The Feminist crowd is against polygamy. They don't overtly condemn it, just make sure it will NEVER be allowed. Think about it, why wouldn't polygamy have been legalized along with gay marriage? Its a perfectly common Muslim practice.
The bigoted intolerance of the public is obvious. Any number of consenting adults should be allowed to get married and the government should make churches marry them, even the ones that object. Who's in charge anyway?
The solution to all of this is sooooo simple.
I say ban marriage altogether, for everyone, in terms of the government. Marriage should be a religious recognition of a union, nothing more. Everyone -- gays, straights, polygamists, so on -- should have to register as a domestic partnership for governmental purposes, which in turn would convey all rights and legal protections (including access to health benefits, etc.).
Then, if you want to be married in the eyes of your church, you're free to do so but it would strictly be a church-based event. If your church doesn't support the kind of marriage you'd like to be a part of then you're free to find another one, but in the meantime everyone is free to form a domestic partnership with whichever and however many consenting adults they chose.
In other words, keep marriage in the church where they can define it however they wish based on their beliefs, and keep it out of government where they can only do harm by using it as a weapon.
But wait, this makes far too much and sense and is way too logical for our government or our society to accept. Sometimes I don't know why I bother thinking...
Better but probably not good enough. Until all intolerance is eliminated, society won't be fair and safe for all people. Even if government isn't involved in defining marriage, it should be involved in eliminating intolerance. Any church that refuses to marry any group of consenting adults should be seized by the government with the building and assets taken and given to pro-tolerance people.
I'm a very tolerant atheist, even though I think all religious beliefs are utterly retarded I still recognize that others hold them. I have no problem with churches and religious organizations not allowing for gay marriage if it goes against their beliefs, but what I cannot accept is having those beliefs forced upon others who don't share them.
There is zero negative impact on married straight folks by allowing gays to marry. Straight people won't start divorcing, or deciding not to get married in the first place. It will only add to the total number of committed relationships, and that can only be a good, positive thing overall.
Polygamous marriage will seem a lot more acceptable when:
a) even one of them involves a lady getting married to a bunch of dudes, and
b) they stop involving teenaged brides.
Also, when did Nerve become the preferred trolling ground of idiots and weirdos? Is this where people go once they're kicked off Gawker?
Everyne who just said "why not?" to polygamy, you realize that you just made Santorum's point, right?
Santorum's point is that X thing is gross, therefore Y thing is gross. So What's question is, Why is X thing gross? That's challenging santorum's assumption, no proving his point.
You're still stuck with saying that X thing isn't gross but Y is. I'm with Doofus.
While Santorum disapproves of both gay marriage and polygamy, his point in this particular talk is that when you open the door to one--no matter whether you approve or disapprove--you open the door to the other. He didn't mention anything about grossness.
Traditional marriage has a clear, strict, exclusionary definition. Maybe that's bad, maybe it's good, but if you change the definition for one group (homosexuals) because they are in luuuuvvvv, then you have to change it for everyone who feels luuuvvvv (polygamists).
And why is that a bad thing, so long as everyone involved (be that two, three or ten) are *consenting adults* capable of making the decision on their own? I still don't understand why so many people have such an issue with legitimate polygamy/polyamory (not to be confused with fucktards who use their religious cult leader status to rape 12 year olds).
@Banana Sam: No, you confused my point. His logic is, "Polygamy is so gross it'll scare people away from gay marriage." My point/So What's point is "Gay marriage isn't gross, and neither is polygamy." He didn't mention grossness, obviously, but that is the implication there.
The answer to Santorum's question, which no one seems to think of to say to him at the campaign stops, is this: It's an Equal Protection issue. The government recognizes only marriage between two people, but says that it has to be between members of the opposite sex. That discriminates unfairly against people who want to marry someone of the same sex, and there is no rational basis for that discrimination. Conversely, the government does not permit three or more people to marry, regardless of the make-up of the group. To run afoul of the Equal Protection clause, the government would have to permit plural marriage where, say, it was one man and multiple women, but forbid the reverse. Instead, all plural marriage is banned, so there is no discrimination among the various sets, unlike the case with two-person marriage.
Swing and a miss, robert, or at least severely tortured logic. The prohibition against greater than two being involved in a marriage is no less arbitrary than two people being allowed to marry.
The constitition doesn't prohibit "arbitrariness" -- indeed, nothing in it prohibits recognition of plural marriage. All it says is you have to treat people equally, unless there is a rational basis for doing otherwise. If you allow two people to marry -- and again, the government could eliminate all marriage on a go-forward basis (states couldn't do that retroactively, as it would violate the Contracts Clause, but I digress) -- you can't discriminate on the basis of the gender of the parties because there is no rational basis for doing so. No government is allowing any group of three or more to marry, so there is no equal protection issue.
No, prof is correct.
Are gay men barred from marrying a woman?
Gay men are not a different gender than straight men.
Of course the Constitution prohibits arbitrary application of the law; the Equal Protection clause has been cited several time on precisely this basis. I thought you were a lawyer?
No, the Equal Protection Clause only comes into play in rare circumstances. Discrimination on the basis of race or religiou, for example, is presumptively forbidden, and it is up to the government to show a compelling reason for it, and the courts will strictly scrutinize the discriminatory law or practice. Gender discrimination gets "intermediate scrutiny." All other discrimination that isn't on the basis of a "suspect classification" is presumptively valid and will be upheld unless it fails the rational basis test, which is extremely loose. The government simply has to have an articulable basis for what it's doing, even if it seems arbitrary. Discxrimination on the basis of sexual orientation should be a "suspect classification" subject to strict scrutiny, and some courts have so held. But other courts have held that such discrimination fails even the rational basis test, that is, it's designed simply to deprive gays of rights because a factional majority doesn't like them.
Nobody ever seems to address the basic assumption of the "marriage is holy" crowd either. Marriage - in every culture - is a means of defining property inheritance, NOT a child rearing mechanism. The church came along after the fact and "sanctified" the process. All the rest is just custom, and we don't need a government to regulate customs. We DO need a government to enforce the rules that we have agreed on, customary or not, as Profrobert has pointed out.
Your premise is flawed. Cultures pre-dating the church had structures that we would call marriage, before the concept of property ownership was defined. "Marriage" was likely created - or came into existence - as a consequence of child-rearing. The idea that it was created originally as an inheritence mechanism is silly.
Also, government is enforcing the rules that we have agreed on, most on point, DOMA.
The Thingmen just explained why the gay marriage issue is such a Big Hairy Deal in a better way than I'd understood it before.
Keeping marriage as a "holy union" is the easiest/most convenient/most powerful way to make it something that people enter into (GENERALLY) cautiously and with consideration. If marriage is exclusively about conveyance of rights, why would EVERYONE not "marry" their roommate? I'm not saying "then people would marry DOGS!" I'm saying it would make sense to save on health insurance, for example. Doesn't mean I have to sleep with the roommate, doesn't mean I'm even making any more of a commitment than I did to our lease. But it would mean less money from our collective pocket for a whole host of things.
So, we keep marriage "holy," thereby allowing/encouraging/enticing fewer people to do it, and, oh what do you know, follow the money right into the corporate purse.
And you know, I never even thought of it this way before. I was seriously puzzled why all the fight -- it is the most sensible thing in the world to let two men or two women marry. All this Leviticus nonsense was clearly bullshit (because shellfish is legal! etc!), but I still didn't really GET it.
Now I think I do.