I was flipping through the channels the other night and happened to pause on Mike Duffy Live when I heard the phrase “activist judges“.
Usually when something like that is espoused by a talking head you’re about to get some Right-Wing nut job rant. Unfortunately, the guy on screen wasn’t really coherent to explain what exactly the topic that was being discussed before I got bored with him.
All that was being mumbled had something to do with police being afraid to prosecute polygamists in B.C. for fear that “activist judges” might make it legal.
There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.
-Trudeau
Well… why is it illegal?
I’m not a fan of polygamy, and I’m not endorsing it. (My God, can you imagine two sets of in-laws??? *shudder*) But if you have three (or, I guess, possibly more) consenting adults, what right does the state have to say: No!
And consenting adult is the key there. Many against gay marriage protested with rhetoric such that if homosexuals were allowed to wed, then you’d have to allow pedophiles to marry children or let people marry their pets. If this is the kind of logic they follow no wonder they think the earth is only 6,000 years old.
Granted, many of the polygamists communities I’ve heard about it’s more coerced then consenting but I’m not sure if that’s enough to actually outlaw it.
The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Things are outlawed not just when something is harmful to a person, but also when that person becomes a danger to others. Getting drunk isn’t illegal, drunk driving is. Smoking isn’t illegal but second-hand smoke is harmful to others hence the tighter and tighter restrictions on that. Not only does the drug addict waste his own life, he usually ends up threatening somebody else’s.
I haven’t researched this, I don’t have all the facts, if someone has a credible argument as to why polygamy is harmful then by all means, lock’em all up. But I’m not sure I see one from where I stand right now.
