Joe Doakes from Como Park writes to the Minnesota Bar Association:<\/p>\n
To the Chairman:<\/p>\n
The amendment to prevent gay marriage from being court-imposed on equal protection grounds, was defeated. Gay marriage is only a matter of time. Our statutes are mostly gender-neutral already, it won\u2019t be hard to adapt to \u201cspouse-spouse.\u201d But after we substitute individual rights for Judeo-Christian tradition as our intellectual model for marriage, why should equal protection stop at two spouses?<\/p>\n
A billion people live in plural marriages in Muslim nations. Minnesota has an active and growing Muslim population. Muslims in England and Canada have obtained government benefits for multiple wives on equal protection grounds. Why should equal protection stop at welfare benefits; why not all civil rights flowing from marriage, the same parade of horrors used to justify gay marriage?<\/p>\n
Adapting the statutes for three spouses will be trickier than for two. Must the Senior Wife consent to adding a Junior Wife? Do the Junior Wife\u2019s children receive less child support? When the Junior Wife divorces, does she get a third or only half of the Husband\u2019s half? If one woman has two husbands, who pays child support? Who gets custody \u2013 the departing biological mother or the remaining primary caregiver?<\/p>\n
Lawyers advise clients to make contingency plans; well, we should take our own advice. The Bar Association should establish a Plural Marriage Legislation Committee now, so we\u2019re ready when the time comes. It\u2019s only a matter of time.<\/p>\n
Joe Doakes<\/p>\n
Como Park<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
After all, why should be westerners be imposing our values on them?<\/p>\n
And all those years we spent browbeating the H’mong out of child marriage? \u00a0What right did we have, really?<\/p>\n
If two people – or five people, or one adult and a 13 year old girl – love each other, what right do we have to get in the way?<\/p>\n
It’s about love, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park writes to the Minnesota Bar Association: To the Chairman: The amendment to prevent gay marriage from being court-imposed on equal protection grounds, was defeated. Gay marriage is only a matter of time. Our statutes are mostly gender-neutral already, it won\u2019t be hard to adapt to \u201cspouse-spouse.\u201d But after we substitute […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-family-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31703"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31705,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31703\/revisions\/31705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}