Intermediate Debate Competition R2: State Legislatures should decriminalize Polygamy

THESIS: To the extent that a small minority of people wish to participate in polygamous marriage as a sincere religious and/or personal expression, state legislatures have little compelling interest to refuse such arrangements. This house believes that states should abandon current prohibitions and permit polygamous groups to define their own families according to their individual belief systems.A1: ANTIQUATED and REDUNDANTFederal and State legislatures enacted polygamy laws in the mid-19th century, principally in reaction to the Church of Latter Day Saints' public endorsement of polygyny in 1852. Legislatures observed that polygamist communities were less than stable. Patriarchs tended to use the new social order to procure sometimes less than willing, sometimes underage wives, contracting with other patriarchs in the community. Patriarchs tended to ostracize young men of marriageable age in order to monopolize the supply of available women. Families were large and insular. Women had few advantages within these families and were often treated as baby making commodities. At the time, empowering women with voting rights, divorce rights, property rights was inconceivable. Suffrage, in it nascence in London, was far from a popular notion in the States. Child abuse and child abandonment were commonplace features in American family life against which legislation would have been impracticable. Polygamy was wildly unpopular with the general populace, so acting against polygamy provided relief of some social ills with little political risk.During the course of the 20th Century social progress has provided superior avenues of relief for those social ills that made polygamy a target for legislation. Women's suffrage and the rise of feminism have empowered women to make their own choices in marriage. Women today have the right to no-fault divorces, the right to an equitable division of property, mothers can now have a say in the destinies of their children. Birth control is commonplace and inexpensive when compared to the 19th century. Likewise, children today enjoy far more legal protection today than they did 150 years ago. Child abuse and child abandonment are generally treated as serious offenses with the real possibility of custody loss, fines, and jail.In spite of legislation, some polygamist groups continue to persist, particularly in the American West. These pockets have enjoyed a renewal of public interest in recent years, due primarily to several TV shows presenting a favorable or at least more balanced perspective on these unusual families. Although anti-polygamy laws are still sometimes employed, most of these families are tolerated by local communities. Instead, law enforcement usually focuses on tax fraud or domestic abuse as a more specific relief of those social ills.Since more specific relief is now available to address the harms that compelled legislatures to act in the 19th Century, polygamy laws are no longer needed to fight these social ills and unnecessarily criminalize citizens who are in all other respects law abiding. In fact...A2: DECRIMINALIZATION WOULD MAKE IT EASIER to COMBAT ACTUAL CRIMESCurrently most polygamous families, even responsible and otherwise law-abiding families, are driven into hiding from law enforcement and social workers. In isolation, the abuses of the past may be allowed to persist unchecked. Polygamous communities learn to fear the state and are not likely to report abuses that might result in legal action against the whole community. One advantage of decriminalization is that responsible plural families could emerge from the shadows letting the spotlight fall on legitimate abuses that might require the state's attention.Polygamy laws necessarily create a class of married people defined as single, who may access welfare programs without acknowledging other breadwinners in household. Decriminalization would offer these folks the opportunity to remedy this deception without risk and so improve the public coffers. Those who failed to declare their married status would become more legitimate targets for fraud investigations. Bigamy laws throughout the United States Misdemeanor Felony All forms of cohabitation outlawed [1] A3: LEGITIMACYPolygamy laws as they currently stand create a minority class of bastards before the bar. Of no fault of their own, children registering for school must choose to lie about their parental arrangements or risk the scrutiny of the state. Rights of inheritance or legal guardianship are muddled or denied for many children of plural wives.Immigration, too, might benefit from legitimization. Academics estimate that there may be between 50,000-100,000 Muslim immigrants living the US without acknowledging their polygamous marriages. [2] Decriminalization would legitimize those religious commitments and improve the US as an attractive destination for families considering emigration from nations where polygamy is normalized. A4: POLYGAMY LAWS VIOLATE FIRST AMMENDMENT GUARENTEES The First Amendment of the United States assures its citizens:"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." [3]Our government must refrain from the business of defining which religious sacraments are genuinely sacred. Likewise, government must resist the temptation to limit social expressions simply because those practices don't conform with the majority. Good government only interferes in the private, domestic arrangements of its citizens to the extent that interference prevents harm to its citizens or encourages widespread social benefit. Within these bounds, lawmakers might justify the removal of children from households that fall beneath certain basic standards or encourage the stability that marriage brings to families via tax benefits. Within these bounds, some state legislatures have recently enacted legislation permitting gay marriage in the absence of any compelling social harm presented by the union of same sex couples, but also to preserve the social advantages of family stability and enfranchisement. A sizable portion of the electorate has begun to realize that the government's restriction of the marriage franchise to one man and one woman excludes minority expressions of that commitment unfairly.Some pundits opposed to gay marriage have warned that this freedom would be a slippery slope to polygamy. However, I would argue that the question of LGBT marriage and the question of polygamy are the same. The concept of separation of church and state requires the government to refrain from defining marriage for its citizenry. Lord Acton wrote in his The History of Freedom in Antiquity, "The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities." Minority expressions of marriage may very likely be one of this generation's most important tests of freedom.[1] http://en.wikipedia.org...[2] http://www.npr.org...[3] http://www.archives.gov...