Random Polygamy Post, With a Side of Gay Rights

After deciding to rant on the subject of (unfounded, irrational) anti-Americanism, I started poking around the Economist's (a British newspaper) blog, "Democracy in America', looking for some angrifying tidbit or other, but actually stumbling across a post that made me angrier at Americans than at any anti-Americans. These poll results didn't exactly thrill me on whole. The statics concerning homosexuality and polygamy stuck out especially. And the evolution/creationism stuff...maybe a later rant? (Note to British Blogger; that sort of stuff doesn't just 'stop the European types in their tracks', it gets some Americans pretty damn riled up as well).

Listen, people, when we stop seeing the disadvantages of things like polygamy, we prove some of the old 'world's going to hell in a handbasket' fogies right. No one out there wants that, I hope. People argue that polygamy is morally all right if it only involves consenting adults; they argue that if gay people are getting their marriage rights, the polygamists should get theirs. Even with the basic moral issues of one guy married to multiple females put aside, polygamy really isn't even on the same plane as gay marriage. When polygamist societies arise, marriages involving under-age girls and unwilling parties pretty much always begin taking place. In polygamist societies, women will gravitate to, or be forcibly married to, the men with wealth and power, since a married man with money would no longer be a taken man. This leaves the poorer classes of males partnerless. When the poor young men of a society have nothing to do/no one to take care of/no mate to keep an eye on them, it usually results in higher violent crime rates for the community they belong to. If the secret polygamist societies in Utah are anything to go by, it could even result in the younger males being driven out by the older, more powerful men looking to keep all the women to themselves.

No doubt pro-polygamy parties will say that in their own vision of the ideal society, such forced marriages and other problems involving wealth and power could be dealt with by law...as with regular old marriages, it is illegal to force some one (especially an underaged someone) to marry you, or run their fiance out of town. Even so, doesn't polygamy seem to be a sexist system to anyone else out there? The word 'polygamy' implies one man married to many women; not one woman married to multiple men. The polygamist principle sees the female as something to be acquired, or bought, and even accumulated, regardless of the female's wishes (at least in traditional polygamist systems). And, while I know people are free to marry as they chose, as they should, women could still gravitate towards the upper class and therefore cause trouble in the lower and middle classes, if said society were polygamist.

As for the results of the poll concerning homosexuality: The people polled may genuinely think that being gay is morally wrong for their own secular reasons. But, in the Ranting Kid's experience, she has found that many people will point to the fact that the Bible denounces homosexuality as their main argument against it. The Ranting Kid is also so very damn sick and tired of people covering their ears and sticking their heads in the religious sand when confronted with a secular matter of people's rights. As for those polled that think being gay should be considered a crime, I simply can't think of anything good to say to those sorts. As far as I can tell, most scientific evidence shows us that homosexuality is probably caused (for the most part) by hormone goof-ups in the mother's womb while the baby is gestating.

Definitely criminal behavior, that hormone messing-upping. But who should be punished for it, mother or baby? It must be somebody's fault, but whose?