As true as that may be, my hatred for what they stand for prevents me from saying anything non-slanderous about them 
If it were up to me they'd be lined in up the square and shot, post-haste 
Ah, but there's always the question of do their private lives affect society, and will that then impact you or someone close to you in the future?
Well, I've known a couple kids, in school, that er - came from that sort of background. Not legal marriage, but yea. In that fashion, yes, my life was impacted because they went to school with me, but they did not preach anything to anyone. God knows, they knew better, side-stepped questions adeptly. However, at the time, I was already pro-polygamy, so they did nothing but reinforce my idea that it was a negative stereotype. They were otherwise normal kids, with just an abnormal home life.
If a friend of mine wants to enter a polygamous relationship, I honestly wouldn't care. Of course, there's a paranoia with abnormal conditions such as these, what if it wasn't a consentual relationship - but there's far more monagamous, even incestuous, abuse than there is this sort of thing; because it's so rare, and there's pre-determined social norms to fall back upon when you're not sure. That's also why there's so few homosexual abuses, unless, once again, it's incestuous (or in prison).
That's the thing about abuse - rape and etc happens far more often with people that you know, who have some position of authority over you, then with strangers.
So I'm not worried about abuse within polygamous relationships, even less so incest. If anything, molestation should be more rare amongst large families (which polygamists tend to have), because there's more people around to notice when something is wrong.
And many polygamists will tell you - they feel they have a very happy homelife, that they enjoy it, because there's a large household of adults, a firm network of support. There's always someone there to help, and they feel like the a superior family unit because of it. And you can't fault that, in America, where the family unit is an endangered species.
And this also goes back to the homosexuals adopting kids debate. Here's the thing. It doesn't matter your sexual orientation, or how many mommys or daddys a kid has. There's good parents, and there's bad parents. Just because you're straight and monogamous does not automatically make you great parents (rather, quite the opposite in a lot of cases), and just because you're gay and polygamous doesn't mean you're a bad parent (although I'm going to be stereotypical and say that lesbians more often have the stability to raise kids than gay men do, but whatever, off-topic).
Edited by Casilla, 15 May 2006 - 04:15 PM.
