Polygamy should be legal in the United States

Rebuttal 1"But it is not justified by culture even if it is a product of culture. To justify policies based solely on "it's our culture" leads to self-referential reasoning in creating policies. Murder, rape, and child molestation can be justified on the basis of violating the rights of non-consenting or unable to consent others."This statement is false when you look at it from a proper perspective. Culture does dictate and determine what is legal and not legal within a society. As society progresses and determines what is more harmful, or less harmful to them they place laws in place to prevent these issues. A better way to say it this, as people become more rational laws and regulations change. While murder and rape may be legal in less civilized societies, with our nature and how most of the modern world accepts that murder is wrong. It would never be accepted as a traditional value in a more modern culture. Using murder as an argument for this is a fallacy. Murder is inherently wrong and causes harm to other people, we are able to recognize this fact and why it would be illegal in almost all circumstances in any rational society. The society in question falls under this category.Rebuttal 2"Con points out how certain benefits could get out of control. That is why I said we could adjust marriage policies to limit the number of spouses you can allow to "join" in on certain benefits""Furthermore the example con brings up of someone having 700 children is ridiculous. This would raise red flags and an investigation to see how a person could possibly be raising this many children"The first statement he makes is erroneous. He missed the initial premise of the argument. It does not have to do with how many people on person can claim, but how many people can claim one person. It is just not the husband whom is allotted to have multiple wives, but the wife whom is allowed to have multiple husbands. So if you look at it from the perspective that a wife could have 30 husbands, and each one of those could claim her. It would lead to severe issues. As state and federal laws allows, a spouse determines taxation. So when you have 30 different people claiming her, and saying that it is "their" wife. This is a problematic issue. As far as the 700 children claim, that was a metaphor. I was hoping anyone with rational thoughts would be aware of this. It is not the point of how many children, but the fact that they could theoretically have an unlimited number of children. If you permit someone the ability to marry more than once, you are saying that number is not limited to (x) marriages. So you very well could have multiple people claiming the same children or someone having 100 children.Cons claim that this would not be supported is absurd. Me doing income taxes, I often have to turn people down because of them trying to abuse this system. I am not obligated by law to turn them down, but to save myself trouble I do so. You can claim kids whom are not your own already, think about the loopholes this would bring.Rebuttal 3"The wife with 30 husbands could require the "claiming" of the spouse to be split into fractions, each only benefiting 1/30th. As with health insurance we can always change the policies in health insurance about how you are allowed to claim people or not"Again this it not possible. You can not split houses by fractions. The way income is determined is relevant to how much a specific house makes you. It would be impossible to divide this among 30 different houses. You would then have to judge how much each house spent on food, gas, school clothes or individual things that go into the equation of the return. In a typical family setting, it is wife + husbands income and then you get additional credits back for additional allotments. It would also just not be relevant to the person in question. So if we are talking about Wife 1, you would then have to factor in (Wife 1 + Husband 1- Husband 30) subtracted from each husband (Husband 1-30 + (x) many wives they have). Then also after that factor in the wives of husband 1-30 and how many familes they have. This is an unacceptable situation in which people would seek out to exploit. Just to do one person returns, you would have to calculate the income for each family she has, and then every family that each of her husbands has and so forth and so on, to actually get a percentage to divide among each household. Needless to say that is impossible with tall the loopholes that would come from it.Rebuttal 4"The point of this and the above contentions is that there are things we can do to get rid of the problems that would be related to legal polygamy while still legalizing it. If we can treat people equally and fairly and have no problems by just adjusting some policies while not disrupting anyone else's lives"I hate to say, ones individual freedom can not infringe on and or harm others or the society in question. I am sure some people want pedophilia or incest to be common, but since it causes more harm than good to people in the society we chose and have the right not to legalize it. It is not your right to do anything you wish.I have shown how this could be exploited by people in multiple situations, and also the fact that you can not fix it. Just saying we can fix it and actually being able to put a system in place to make it work are two different things. If saying we could fix something would actually make it work, the key stone pipline would already be legal, global warming would not be an issue , and our economy would not be going down the drain. There are factors in everything that can limit or prevent it from happening.Rebuttal 5CommitmentI do not feed the need to refute this much because he is applying different definitions to what commitment can mean. All the time ignoring the foundation on which marriage was started. Sure commitment can be applied by different definitions, but in this situation it is directly relevant to the topic at hand. Just because there are different definitions for what commitment is, does not mean that we can change the foundation of something like marriage itself. Anything can bear different meanings but you have to place them into what type of situation you are talking about.Take your job example(A) commitment to a job means you are dedicated to that job, it does not mean you have to stay there foreverIf I took the definition of marriage. Which is wanting to be with someone forever in most circumstances and put that definition in the job situation. You would be stuck at that job forever if you chose to commit to it. Just because you change the definition of something, you have to look at the underlying foundation and principle of the circumstance in question and how the definition applies. In the context of marriage, you are saying you want to be with one person regardless of death, sickness, and hard times. Which is why if you cheat on someone it breaks that promise of commitment. Allowing someone to break that promise freely is breaking the foundation on which marriage was founded.Rebuttal 6I already spoke on the issue of domestic violence/protecting the spouse from domestic violence and I do not want to waste my last few allowed words repeating myself when you offered no rebuttal for this. As far as hospital rights, that is a statement you made not a contention. You are saying hospitals could do (x) where families would have visitation rights as if you were responding to me. I never made this claim or am aware of its relevance to the debate. You say this " Hospitals can set reasonable occupancy limits on the number of spouses permitted in the room at a single time"(Example) : For this to be relevant it would have to work something like thisI would say in a contention : Polygamy would be an issue because visiting families in hospitals would be over crowded.Then you would respond with : (X) or your initial claim that "Hospitals can set reasonable occupancy limits on the number of spouses permitted in the room at a single time"The issue with this is that you just randomly say hospitals could limit this as if you are responding to something. It was not a contention, but was offered as a rebuttal in your first round so I am quite lost as to how to actually respond.Even if you had meant that hospitals limit polygamist families from entering the room and wanted me to respond, there would be no need because you already offered a rebuttal to your own question. In ClosingMy adversary has still gave no reason as to why polygamy should be legal. He offered assertions based on a personal perspective. I have shown how this practice would harm our society more than help it, and therefore remain illegal.