How about some actual news with the news?

[trinityvixen]

More about the California decision.

Most important part, right here:

The California Supreme Court was the first state high court to strike down a law barring interracial marriage, in a 1948 decision called Perez v. Sharp. The United States Supreme Court did not follow suit until 1967.

Thursday’s decision was rooted in two rationales, and both drew on the Perez decision.

The first was that marriage is a fundamental constitutional right. “The right to marry,” Chief Justice George wrote, “represents the right of an individual to establish a legally recognized family with a person of one’s choice and, as such, is of fundamental significance both to society and to the individual.”

Chief Justice George conceded that “as an historical matter in this state marriage has always been restricted to a union between a man and a woman.” But “tradition alone,” the chief justice continued, does not justify the denial of a fundamental constitutional right. Bans on interracial marriage were, he wrote, sanctioned by the state for many years.

Tradition. You've got to be fucking kidding me. TRADITION is a good enough reason to deny people basic human rights? Find me the people who think so right now. I'd like to initiate them into the tradition of me stabbing them in the groin with rusty knives.

Comments

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

Incest is covered by the impossible consent issue.

As far as polyperson marriage, I would say that the right to marry multiple people is a universal human right, yes. I would, however, say that there is a compelling government interest in restricting the rights granted by the government to go along with marriage to one person per person at any given time.

Let's do remember that there are two issues here: The right of individual people to cohabit and present themselves as married, and the right to have their relationship recognized in the eyes of the law. To be fair to your side, Loving removed laws that infringed BOTH, and at this late date there is little obstacle to members of the same sex (or a group) living as a married couple (unit) and calling themselves married, as there was to the Lovings, who were committing a crime in Virginia by doing so. Whether equality demands that we offer the governmental rights to such people is, I would say, an obvious decision based on the human right to equality and non-discrimination, with the caveat that in such equality interest, the government has a interest in limiting the number of benefits tied to any given person (so, say, a bigamist could only designate ONE wife as his wife under law. Given a poly-person situation, I waffle on whether the government could require that all such designations be reciprocal, and whether to permit pre-determined survivorship charts).

[hslayer.livejournal.com]

Incest is covered by the impossible consent issue.

What about between adult siblings? Come on, man. You know your brother's hot.

I would, however, say that there is a compelling government interest in restricting the rights granted by the government to go along with marriage to one person per person at any given time.

Seriously. Not that I'd have anything against a harem per se (though someone might), but think of the tax code! Gah.

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

The tax code nothing -- it would be a huge set of tax breaks for them, but not terribly confusing, just inequitably beneficial.

Think about the estate system.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Think about the estate system.
Oh, that's never lost on the wives! (At least if Ming-Qing concubinage is any model).