[Kjorteo]

Psudo wrote:

Several hours from here is a town called Colorado City. ...

That's... horrible, and the worst part is that I don't even consider it remotely relevant to the question of polygamy. At this point, we're talking about statutory rape, which no one ever even implied was a victimless crime, while consensual adult polygamy is.

I mean, really, now. Let me see if I follow your chain of logic here....

1) There exists a legal loophole where people can have sex with 14-year-old girls if they're married.
2) A polygamist religious sect abused this loophole to marry off 14-year-olds as people's second, third, etc. wives.
3) Because the polygamous marriages aren't legally recognized, they're actually not married and therefore the loophole actually doesn't apply, so this sect was busted for statutory rape.
4) Therefore, polygamy is bad.... ???

We've had some extremely intelligent debates before, but this one... what? Seriously?

I am finding myself faced with the rather terrifying thought that you think all this would have been okay if only those girls were the guys' first and only wives. (Then there wouldn't be any of that awful polygamy going on, after all, and that loophole would have actually worked.)

Psudo wrote:

Or is it the law and it's inconsistent age of consent that is at fault [in this case]?

Yes. That's why I called it a loophole three times, rather than changing my stance that consensual adult polygamy is a victimless crime.

[Psudo]

I wasn't using that example to argue that polygamy is universally bad. I gave an example where decriminalization without recognition of polygamy failed; the false compromise is bad. How should it be changed to make it work?

I also said I disagreed with pursuing unrecognized polygamy -- that is, subsequent wives shouldn't pretend they're legally married when the law doesn't recognize any marriages after the first one. But the other issues interest me more.

Should the age of consent be standardized? That seems to be your solution to the loophole. But there's no one universally accepted age of consent; It's 18 in the USA, 16 in Canada (with a "close-in-age exception" for 14- and 15-year-olds [1]), 14 in Iceland, 13 in Nigeria, 12 in some countries under some conditions. But what should it be? There would have been no crime in Iceland or Nigeria either, and it might've been fine in Canada (I don't know the ages of the husbands). So why are you upset about the "underage" girls Colorado City? What sets them apart from consenting adults?

I'm upset, too. But I want to understand your reasoning, since you object to mine.

As long as "What should the age of consent be?" remains unanswered, "consenting adults" is not a definitive criteria. And make no mistake: whatever line you draw in the sand, plenty of people will live on that border, searching for loopholes and probably "finding" them whether they exist or not. The most popular loophole is still "No one will know." And for good reason: it works.

Setting that mess aside for a moment, there is still polygamy policy to address. I gave an example wherein you cannot decriminalize and refuse to recognize polygamy at the same time. To refuse recognition inevitably leads to criminalization in this case. So, in such cases, which should win out? Should the marriage be legally recognized to protect them from criminal charges, or should criminal charges apply to their polygamous relationship that would not if they'd been monogamous?

Somehow, the Standard Creepiness Rule seems appropriate to this topic. It's range of acceptable dating ages remains inside out (null set) until age 14, suggesting 14 as the age of consent. Yay for taking jokes too seriously!

[Quantum_Wizard]

Psudo, the age of consent indeed seems strangely inconsistent in this case, especially with the large discrepancy between 14 and 18.

It's probably not too unreasonable to say that these men should have waited as you suggested. I personally think that one should wait at least a bit more for the first marriage too.

In any case, I think that such age of consent trap is a much less serious blow to polygamy than direct criminalization since one can always wait it out.

Choosing a proper age of consent is indeed a difficult issue, but it is separate from polygamy. Or at least it would be if there were no inconsistency in the age of consent, which I think should be the case.

Or course one possibility would be to officially recognize polygamous marriages (both polygynous and polyandrous). At the moment I myself am neither for nor against this.

[Psudo]

I think I've botched my point. It seemed like such a good example at the time.

I agree that the age of consent problem and the polygamy issue need not be related. I used the example I did in order to bring them both up in such a way that they could be considered both separately and together, but I only see people responding to one by putting the weight of the choice on the other.

The two points I wanted to address were:
1) How should age of consent be handled?
2) Given a hypothetical situation in which polygamy cannot be both decriminalized and unrecognized, do you prefer it be criminalized or recognized? Why?

You, QW, mention recognition of polygamous marriages as a possibility. Does that mean recognition is the preferred of the two solutions to point #2 above? Why?

[Kjorteo]

1) Obviously that's tricky, since no matter what age you pick, there are going to be certain people who chronologically meet it but are still a bit...immature, and certain minors who are wise beyond their years. However, I think we're falling squarely into the Perfect Solution Fallacy here; I don't think it has to be universally flawless for it to still be the best solution we have, at least until we get the Jetsons-like future technology that includes inner age scanners or something. I want to say somewhere between 18 and 21 is a good age of consent for most things, but I freely admit to the possibility of American bias there.

2) My entire thing since the day I first arrived on these boards has been opposing pointless blue laws and legalizing the truly consensual/victimless crimes. See if you can guess whether I'd rather decriminalize polygamy or continue to not recognize it.

Oh, and something I was going to respond to last night, but I completely forgot:

Psudo wrote:

I know, they're banning smoking, not smokers. Why can we separate behavior from identity on this issue but not on homosexuality issues? What if governments were banning homosexual displays of affection from public places by the same criteria? Two guys can't kiss here! This is Walmart! We have standards!

Stephen Colbert once did a rather amusing piece about how the LDS church bought and technically owns a main street in Salt Lake City, and used that power to harass and eject a gay couple (who had been holding hands while walking, and one gave the other a peck on the cheek) for trespassing, then later completely ignored a heterosexual couple who was full-blown making out on a park bench.

Edit: And another one because my memory is terrible.

Psudo wrote:

Out of curosity, can anyone name a situation in which the enforcement of a just law detracts from justice?

What about full no-compromises prosecution of people at the bottom of an organization when you could have used them to get at those higher up instead? Like, arresting that hooker with a heart of gold instead of using her as a contact to go after whoever the bad guys are in this cheesy cop movie whose territory I am undoubtedly approaching at this point. Or not allowing for plea bargains when whoever you arrested could have had useful information on whoever you haven't caught yet. Or immediately arresting whatever gang of low-level grunts you find in a possible terrorist cell rather than trying to infiltrate them with an undercover agent to learn something about their leaders. That sort of thing.

[Quantum_Wizard]

Psudo wrote:

2) Given a hypothetical situation in which polygamy cannot be both decriminalized and unrecognized, do you prefer it be criminalized or recognized? Why?

I hope my answer isn't too confusing.

First I want to split hairs a bit. In the case you mentioned apparently it wasn't strictly speaking the polygamy which the crime. I nonetheless understand your point that unrecognized polygamy was in this case 'effectively criminalized' when normal marriage was not.

If we are not talking mere 'effective criminalization' then I think there is no reason why polygamy couldn't be both decriminalized and unrecognized.

I think that if polygamy isn't recognized it should have mostly the same status as normal monogamous informal relationships, which is probably the case in many places.

Now I have several answers to your question:

1)These cases are mostly rare and narrow, so it doesn't matter much.

2)In the particular case you mentioned, I think one should have a uniform age of consent. I think this might count as criminalization in this case if the age is set high enough, but not as recognition even if the age were low. I think the age should be at least higher than 14.

3)In other hypothetical cases it depends. But most of the time being unrecognized wouldn't cause much problems, I think.

Psudo wrote:

You, QW, mention recognition of polygamous marriages as a possibility. Does that mean recognition is the preferred of the two solutions to point #2 above?

I have not made up my mind on this.

[BartSimpson]

Just to chuck a monkey-wrench into the discussion...not all polygamous marriages or polygamous groups are Mormon. Something I ran across a few months ago was "Megan's Polyblog" and now I occasionally run into Megan on Yahoo Messenger. Seems a nice enough young woman who entered into this as a personal choice. As best I can tell, she does not live too far from me - about 50 miles from here.

[Kjorteo]

Actually, since polyamory is sort of a Free Love ideal these days and the LDS church is known for being conservative on social issues, I'd be willing to bet that almost all of the serious proponents of polygamy these days are not Mormon.

[Psudo]

On the age of consent, I guess my problem is people treating "adult consent" as though it's a definitive thing when the age of consent is clearly such a no-win problem. Not only is no particular age clearly right, but multiple standards will always be at work in various jurisdictions. You complained about the Colorado City situation using different ages of consent as a loophole; such loopholes will exist so long as there remains no definitive answer to the unanswerable question of age. Thus, any discussion of marriage, tobacco or alcohol consumption, employment, medical decisions, right-to-die laws, and whatever else that is based on the premise of adult consent must inherently concede that people who are not actually capable of consenting will sometimes be legally considered capable. All "adult consent" laws inherently will leak permission to some children. That inevitability is a pretty good argument, I think, for a conservative, restrained approach to all "adult consent" laws.

Actually, there is an alternative to any age of consent for sex; require marriage first. Or, if not marriage, than some marriage-lite kind of contract. A romantic/sexual relationship contract that would not be actively enforced by law enforcement (no check to see if the bride and groom are already married, as some jurisdictions do for marriage), but would hold up as binding in civil court if both partners sign. I'm not sure it'd be better, but it would certainly be less ambiguous.

Kjorteo wrote:

Stephen Colbert once did a rather amusing piece about how the LDS church bought and technically owns a main street in Salt Lake City, and used that power to harass and eject a gay couple [...] for trespassing

The authority the LDS Church wields in Salt Lake City is a controversial political issue in city, county, and state politics. On the one hand, as the capital of the LDS Church, it is a frequent target of protests and politicization of everything the church tries to do there. Sometimes gays go there to protest LDS opposition to homosexuality, sometimes in repugnant ways. On the other hand, in trying to keep controversy from disturbing the religious reverence they try to sustain, they have tried (and generally succeeded) to attain more legal controls than people would be comfortable giving to, say, government. That gives the Church the power to be oversensitive or to overreact, which I'm sure they sometimes do. Some critics of the LDS Church also perceive a strain against the separation of Church and State at the city, county, and state levels, since the majority-LDS population of Utah tends to vote in LDS-friendly politicians at all levels.

I wonder if Mecca has such problems. The Vatican certainly has problems with protesters and critics; there was even that assassin that tried to kill Pope John Paul I. And Jerusalem has much worse problems.

Before he had his own show, Stephen Colbert played a parody of real-world lapsed-LDS forger/bomber/assassin Mark Hofmann on an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. They hid all LDS ties and moved the case from SLC to NYC, but the parallel was obvious to anyone who knew Hofmann's story (the best forger ever caught). It was rather amazing to watch, one of the most engaging things I've ever seen on TV; he really is a fantastic dramatic actor as well as a comedian.

Kjorteo wrote:

What about full no-compromises prosecution of people at the bottom of an organization when you could have used them to get at those higher up instead?

I've heard this argued both ways. If Mr. Jack hires Joe to kill Mrs. Jack and Joe is arrested, should Joe be given immunity from prosecution in exchange for providing the evidence to arrest Mr. Jack? If you make the deal, Joe gets off with a slap on the wrist. If you don't, Mr. Jack got away with murder. Which way is justice?

How do you get both? Torture? That's just another injustice.

Every cop show and courtroom drama addresses that dilemma at some point, and none that I've seen has ever given an actual conclusion that I could believe. (And I do so love to watch that stuff!) It's a case-by-case judgment call which is better, but either is better than both getting away. Talk about your perfect solution fallacies.

Dr. Temperance Brennon put it well in one episode of Bones: "I get the evidence, and you arrest the bad guy. Everything else is just lawyers."

Quantum_Wizard wrote:

If we are not talking mere 'effective criminalization' then I think there is no reason why polygamy couldn't be both decriminalized and unrecognized.
[...]
1)These cases are mostly rare and narrow, so it doesn't matter much.

Yes, I recognize their relative rarity. The cases are uncommon, but are already seeing trials from time to time. They are less important than an overall policy, but also a less than trivial issue in their own right.

Quantum_Wizard wrote:

2)In the particular case you mentioned, I think one should have a uniform age of consent. I think this might count as criminalization in this case if the age is set high enough, but not as recognition even if the age were low. I think the age should be at least higher than 14.

An age of 14 is also a very narrow, rare occurrence. The age of consent is really 18, except that it is thought not to apply to married couples. Couples can get married at 16. But if the parents of the minor sign their approval, the couple can get married at 14. The odds of someone wanting to settle down at 14 are slim, and odds of the parents approving are slimmer; both happening in unison is ridiculously unlikely -- except in the case of this religion, in which it was gradually distorted to be the norm due to their imposed cultural expectation that every male have multiple wives. (Have I mentioned this group seems cultish to me?)

Quantum_Wizard wrote:

I have not made up my mind on this.

That's fine. I appreciate your honesty. Personally, if I had to choose, I'd choose criminal charges over recognition. I don't like the idea of individuals having the power to almost blackmail the law into conformity to their wishes. It seems like circumvention of established political channels, special treatment, inequality under the law.

Kjorteo wrote:

I'd be willing to bet that almost all of the serious proponents of polygamy these days are not Mormon.

I'll second that prediction. The largest single polygamist organization in North America is probably still this fundamentalist sect (10,000 members says Wikipedia), but it is probably dwarfed by the set of unaffiliated, independent poly-advocates.

[BartSimpson]

Psudo wrote:

I wonder if Mecca has such problems.

No, they don't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecca#Entr ... on-Muslims

Quote:

Non-Muslims are not permitted to enter Mecca under Saudi law.[1][37]

And homosexuals are routinely put to death in the Kingdom. Thus, they have no such problems.

[Zipperfish]

Pseudonym wrote:

I particularly liked this section:

Quote:

Classical deterrence theory has long held that the threat of a mild punishment imposed reliably and immediately has a much greater deterrent effect than the threat of a severe punishment that is delayed and uncertain. Recent work in behavioral economics has helped to explain this phenomenon: people are more sensitive to the immediate than the slightly deferred future and focus more on how likely an outcome is than how bad it is.

It was a nice read. Attacking problems early and fairly seems to get excellent results, at least where the article seems to cite from. I wonder if there are stories that provide negative examples to counter the rosy image painted there.

The orthodox thinking here is that "People weigh their chances of getting caught more than the severity of the punishment." This is a reason why some oppose capital punishment--the threat of death itself is not a deterrant (although the actual sentence makes it certain that the executed will not commit further crimes!). Also, it tells you that a government that drastically raises fines (for, say, traffic infractions) but does not step up enforcement is probably more interestd in the money than in stopping the crime.

Interetsingly, this prinicple doesn't hold true for white-collar criminals. They tend to anlayze both their odds of getting caught and the severity of the punishment. An example (rarer these days, thankfully) is companies that pollute and pay the fine rather than pay for more expensive upgrades to their facilities.

[Psudo]

BartSimpson wrote:

Psudo wrote:

I wonder if Mecca has such problems.

No, they don't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecca#Entr ... on-Muslims

Quote:

Non-Muslims are not permitted to enter Mecca under Saudi law.[1][37]

And homosexuals are routinely put to death in the Kingdom. Thus, they have no such problems.

Well, yeah, that'd do it. I don't think that's an option for the LDS Church. At least not a graceful one.

Zipperfish wrote:

Interetsingly, this prinicple doesn't hold true for white-collar criminals. They tend to anlayze both their odds of getting caught and the severity of the punishment. An example (rarer these days, thankfully) is companies that pollute and pay the fine rather than pay for more expensive upgrades to their facilities.

I guess you can't be a white-collar criminal unless you know your maths.