Muslims have multiple wives on welfare in this country?
Pardon me if I don't have a problem with it. Seriously.
Okay, the welfare thing burns me, but that's more about the program itself. I'll explain what I mean in a sec, but I need to clarify the other point.
Basically, as I've said before, I support polygamy for basically the same reasons I support gay marriage: there's no good argument against it, so why limit civil liberties? (Strangely, most of my socially Liberal friends get all reactionary and conservative on me when I say I have no problem with it. The best was when someone said we shouldn't allow it just because it's "unnatural".)
So, if polygamous marriages validly exist and welfare (as should be the case with any government program) does not discriminate based on irrelevant factors, it follows that this situation is kosher. As in, it's not a bug in the system, it's a feature. Welcome to the nature of welfare.
Saturday, February 09, 2008
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Here is one good article on the issue: it talks about increased crime rate, lack of opportunity to marry, families throwing out excess males and possible incompatibility with liberal democracies
One Man, Many Wives, Big Problems
The social consequences of polygamy are bigger than you think
Jonathan Rauch | April 3, 2006
Reason Magazine
.......
By this point it should be obvious that polygamy is, structurally and socially, the opposite of same-sex marriage, not its equivalent. Same-sex marriage stabilizes individuals, couples, communities, and society by extending marriage to many who now lack it. Polygamy destabilizes individuals, couples, communities, and society by withdrawing marriage from many who now have it.
As the public focuses on a subject it has not confronted for generations, the hazards of polygamy are likely to sink in. In time, debating polygamy will remind us why our ancestors were right to abolish it. The question is whether the debate will reach its stride soon enough to prevent polygamy
from winning a lazy acquiescence that it in no way deserves.
Why is this a polygamy issue? Wasn't the gist of that article that some men got married to multiple women in another country (marriages that are recognized for a limited number of purposes in Canada) and then when they move here, one woman is claimed as a wife and the others all get welfare as individuals? Because the marriages *aren't* recognized for the purposes of welfare? So what is the relevance of the marriage?
Hey wait a minute... didn't some foolish people complain that if SSM came to pass then it'd inevitably lead to polygamy too?
Ha ha.. those uneducated hicks sure are funny sometimes eh?
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