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Title: Polygamist who appeared on Sister Wives applies for a license to marry his second wife in wake of Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage
Source:
Daily Mail UK
URL Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art ... o-applies-wedding-license.html
Published: Jul 6, 2015
Author: AP and Daily Mail reporters
Post Date: 2015-07-06 15:48:02 by redleghunter
Keywords: None
Views: 3847
Comments: 59
A Montana man said Wednesday that he was inspired by last week's U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage to apply for a marriage license so that he can legally wed his second wife. Nathan Collier and his wives Victoria and Christine applied at the Yellowstone County Courthouse in Billings on Tuesday in an attempt to legitimize their polygamous marriage. Montana, like all 50 states, outlaws bigamy - holding multiple marriage licenses - but Collier said he plans to sue if the application is denied. 'It's about marriage equality,' Collier said Wednesday. 'You can't have this without polygamy.' Collier and his second wife were met with confusion when they went to the Yellowstone County court house on Tuesday to fill out the application. 'So, are you legally married, you didn't get divorced?' one clerk asked, when he saw that Collier marked 'not applicable' on a question asking the dissolution date of his previous marriage. Collier responded that he was indeed still married and trying to marry for a second time. 'We'll have to deny that, let me go grab the other supervisor real quick so I can get confirmation but as far as I'm aware you can't be married to two people at the same time,' another clerk said. County clerk officials initially denied Collier's application, then said they would consult with the county attorney's office before giving him a final answer, Collier said. Yellowstone County chief civil litigator Kevin Gillen said he is reviewing Montana's bigamy laws and expected to send a formal response to Collier by next week. 'I think he deserves an answer,' Gillen said, but added his review is finding that 'the law simply doesn't provide for that yet.' 'All we want is legal legitimacy. We aren't asking anybody for anything else. We just want to give our marriage and our family the legitimacy that it deserves,' Nathan Collier said. In a Facebook post on Wednesday, Nathan Collier said he had yet to hear an answer from the county attorney on their decision to grant or deny the marriage license. However, he says that he has told through 'other sources' that the attorney general's office is considering charging him for bigamy. 'I knew the risks I faced when I asked the State to grant legal legitimacy to my family, and I accepted those risks. 'I only ask that if their intent is to lock me in a cage (and we wonder why they keep asking for more money to expand the jails?!?!?) over my family dynamic, contact me privately and I will walk in your front door. 'I have no reason to run or hide. Please, don't kick my door in and shoot my dogs,' Collier wrote. Collier goes on to say that he is 'saddened' that his family faces such challenges in the 'land of the free'. 'You can believe that the entire nation is and will be watching your choices and actions. There is no honor in destroying functional families,' Collier added. The Supreme Court's ruling on Friday made gay marriages legal nationwide. Chief Justice John Roberts said in his dissent that people in polygamous relationships could make the same legal argument that not having the opportunity to marry disrespects and subordinates them. Poster Comment: Seems to look like a "happy, loving, healthy" family...I mean who are we to judge if they all really love each other....The wise Latina wants to know...
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 46.
#3. To: redleghunter, Nolu Chan (#0)
(Edited)
The supreme court case centered around equal treatment under the law. The logic is that since a hetero couple can get married a homo couple should also because they are denied rights a married hetero couple would get. This does not apply to polygamists because that is not allowed for anyone. Whoever brings up this polygamy should now be legal argument just shows they are ignorant over the judicial arguments involved. I don't agree with gay marriage at all as a Christian but the arguments for it are based on the equal protection clause. If I am wrong, I will let our resident lawyer tell us otherwise.
What is magical about the number 2? Nothing. It's purely a cultural artifact, just like the insistence on heterosexuality. It's not even a requirement of Biblical Judaism. Polygamy is a very ancient and widely practiced marital norm. The only reason it is banned is religious and cultural preference in the West. As such, the denial of polygamous marriage denies Muslims and Yemenite Jews in particular their right to the equal protection of their religion under the law, by specifically enforcing the Christian marriage norm and denying the Muslim and Yemenite Jewish right to practice their religion. It is unconstitutional to use the law to enforce one religious norm at the expense of other people's religious norms. It is the establishment of religion and the denial of equal protection to Islam and some forms of Judaism. Therefore, if we were a principled nation of laws, polygamy would have to be permitted to those religions that practice it. But of course we are a nation of men and ruled by the opinions of men of money and power, so trying to argue legal principles as though they really existed and as though we were actually governed by them is a fool's errand.
It was a common American Indian custom as well. Christianity does teach marriage is a one man and woman coupling but does not in any way claim that polygamy is evil. How can it?
Jesus cited Genesis, and said that it is two becoming one flesh, for life. He was emphasizing the indissolubility of marriage. YHWH teaches that the man who deflowers the virgin has married her - and is responsible for her. And that's the way God made women to think too, when you drill down into it. They never forget their first. We've gone far off the reservation. For my part, I simply don't care what people do, as long as they don't do it in the street and disturb the horses. Back in the 80s I didn't care whether or not there were gays in the military, and I still don't. In my experience, the men who are most adamantly and vocally aggressive about homosexuality are repressing it in themselves. Of course I never say that, because I really don't like to fight with people. I just don't care, and I don't particularly like it that other people care. Likewise, I don't care about heterosexuals having sex outside of wedlock. I find adultery a whole lot more offensive than fornication, because of the violation of trust. And I observe that my value judgments on these things are quite a bit different from God's, so I don't propose to replace God's laws with my own views. Still, when it comes to politics, I don't care that gays can marry. I care about the murdering of babies, because THAT is important. I see Christians pretending that guys buggering is as or more important than babies being murdered, and I shake my head and think: we're really sunk - our ability to see what is important is THAT BAD, and therefore no real alliance is possible, and the babies are just going to keep on dying. And then I shrug my shoulders about that too, because - guess what - I'M not killing them, and I can't DO anything about it, so it's one more thing not to drive myself nuts over. The most important thing to ME is finding a healthy diet and keeping my family reasonably on track towards a good life. All of the rest of this political jibber-jabber is fun, but there is such chaos and disorder among people that finding any sort of permanent alliance is impossible. Even with SEXUAL ties, 50% of marriages fail, so how in the hell are mere POLITICAL allegiances going to hold?
Christianity is also about what the church teaches in the name of Jesus. Jesus turned over his church to his disciples and their policies guide the church. With that said, polygamy is not the bogie man that it is made out to be in this culture. It is seen as something foreign and primitive though by our Western standards.
#47. To: Pericles (#46)
True. Which is why Christianity has at times departed very far from God and perpetrated horrible evils, serving Satan in the name of Christ. It's unfortunate, but men want what they want, they have free will, and they do as they please. Christianity has been a bulwark against some of that, but it has been hijacked by Satan many times to perpetrate some of the most heinous evils in history. What happened in Rouen marketplace is emblematic of the problem, and it is an intractable one. The gates of Hell may not ultimately prevail against the Church, but Satan has certainly grabbed the controls from time to time and used the Church to do great evil that stands there as a warning, alongside all of the good, that one cannot COMPLETELY trust even the Church and clergy, one must STILL balance what the Church says against what God has said. And vice versa. Our Western Standards are pretty bad. The very heartstone of them is the notion of personal liberty over convention, and that has found its fullest and clearest expression in personal sexual liberty, since that specific liberty has been the one that has been most consistently and severely repressed by nearly all cultures in all times. The natural offshoot of sexual liberty is abortion, collapsed birth rates, collapsed marriage rates, soaring divorced rates and AIDS and mental health epidemics (including drug and alcohol addiction, most cases of which have sexual dysfunction and relationship pain as the core of their motivation). Of course, traditional societies were not happy either. Death by stoning is just as horrible as death by AIDS. Christian religion was largely abandoned by the West because of the Sexual Revolution (for religion can compromise itself with empire and capitalism and slavery, but cannot compromise itself with free sexuality) and is a spent force on account of it. Muslim religion thrives in an environment of sexual repression because it is only really repressive of women, and it approves of physical violence, which therefore relies upon the innate physical strength superiority of men to retain a structure in which women are held in sexual subjection but in which men are in many ways sexually freer than Christians. (The ability to marry four wives, the ability to divorce unilaterally by a few words while retaining all of the property, the ability to fornicate with unbelievers, even to rape them (of either sex) as a right of conquest, and the ability to engage in widely tolerated homoerotic behavior in private as a natural corrollary of the unavailability of women. Islamic culture was always viewed by the Christian West (and East) as degraded by sensuousness. This is why Islam has not died off in the Sexual Revolution in the same way that Christianity has. Hinduism, with its kama sutra and mystical (and relaxed) vision of sexuality could thrive in the post-Sexual Revolution West, but it doesn't because it's pointless. People who gave up Christian mysticism, which has the feel of truth within it, are not going to go jump into what looks and feels and sounds like a bunch of ancient pagan nonsense. Post-Christians mostly become secular scientific types. They don't reach for Eastern Philosophy. Judaism is too small to mention.
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#39. To: Pericles (#3)
#42. To: Vicomte13 (#39)
Polygamy is a very ancient and widely practiced marital norm. The only reason it is banned is religious and cultural preference in the West. As such, the denial of polygamous marriage denies Muslims and Yemenite Jews in particular their right to the equal protection of their religion under the law, by specifically enforcing the Christian marriage norm and denying the Muslim and Yemenite Jewish right to practice their religion.
#45. To: Pericles (#42)
Christianity does teach marriage is a one man and woman coupling
#46. To: Vicomte13 (#45)
Christianity does teach marriage is a one man and woman coupling Jesus cited Genesis, and said that it is two becoming one flesh, for life. He was emphasizing the indissolubility of marriage.
Replies to Comment # 46. Christianity is also about what the church teaches in the name of Jesus.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 46.
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