Regardless of the side one takes on the whole same-sex marriage act, I think it is a little misguided to link that proposition with child molesters. There is nothing out there that supports that conclusion.
As often happens, when someone is against some issue and they desperately want to covert others to the same thinking, they will exaggerate the evilness of the issue and will use the tried and true method of associating the issue with something even more evil that more people are also against. Very, very few people are OK with pedophilia or bestiality, so if you can associate homosexuality with either or both of those, make them one in the same, get people to believe there's really no difference between them, you can get converts out the wazoo in a hurry. It works in the reverse, too, like when gays try to associate "gay rights" with "civil rights" because who wants to be thought of as being against civil rights? In the end, though, they just end up clouding the issue and looking like a wacko fool.
On the other side, if it is allowed, it does beg the question of where do you put the limit? Does it mean people can have multiple wifes or any other combination of possibilities?
Multiple husbands? The right to marry is considered a fundamental human right. If you want to get married you can get married, easy peasy. The problem is, marriage is and always has been defined by society at large (yes, there are exceptions, but not "at large" exceptions), as being between one man and one woman. If marriage can be redefined to mean you should be able to marry who you love, regardless of gender, then the
'regardless of other considerations' door gets opened up wide and the precedent will be set for polygamy.
Marriage is a legal contract, so anyone or anything that cannot enter into a legal contract would be left out, like sheep, donkeys, minor children, Japanese Love Dolls, shower heads, and wooden roller coasters at Cedar Point. But polygamy will make a comeback. Opponents of gay rights often warn that legalizing same-sex marriage would inexorably lead to legalizing polygamy. Maybe it would, and maybe it should in that context. Unintended consequences and all that. Denying gay couples the right to marry violates state constitutional guarantees of equality, which necessarily must also be redefined, as several states and the California and Massachusetts high courts have ruled in a sweeping redefinition of marriage.
More than 100 years ago the Supreme Court ruled in
Reynolds v US that polygamy was “an offense against society.” The
Reynolds decision upheld the criminal conviction of a man accused of taking a second wife in the belief that he had a religious duty to practice polygamy, a duty he would violate at risk of dаmnation. The Court compared polygamy to murders sanctified by religious belief, such as human sacrifice or the burning of women on their husbands’ funeral pyres.
Today the Court’s analogy is as anachronistic as Georgia's ban on sodomy between married couples or a ban on adultery. After all, what’s the difference between an adulterer and a polygamist? And if it’s not illegal for a married man to support a girlfriend or two and father children out of wedlock with them, how can it be illegal for him to bind himself to them according to the laws of his church? Why is a practicing Mormon, for example, with two wives considered a criminal, while Staten Island Congressman Vito Fosella, recently embarrassed by the discovery of his second family, is simply a punchline? What’s the moral, practical and legal difference between a man who maintains multiple families without the approval of any church and a man who maintains multiple families with his church’s approval?
Nontheists who favor civil unions for everyone—taking the state out of the business of approving or disapproving religious matrimonial rites—should be especially supportive of Liberty and the First Amendment right to engage in polygamous marriages sanctified by any faith. Whether or not polygamy should be legalized so that people in polygamous marriages enjoy equal rights and entitlements (like Social Security benefits), it should at least be decriminalized, I think. Why should we care about other people’s private religious ceremonies? How dare we criminalize them, unless telling other people what to do, how to think and how to live their lives is really the important thing here?
I think if someone is stupid enough to take on more than one wife (or husband) or have one or more mistresses in addition to their wife, they get what they deserve. And if they're all happy with it, more power to 'em. But same-sex marriage is different, because it forces society to sanction the redefinition of a term deeply rooted in religious origins for what is otherwise unacceptable anormal behaviour that offers no benefit to society whatsoever. Civil unions I'm fine with, but redefining marriage simply to accommodate the wants and desires of a distinct minority is taking it too far.
