You had me thinking for quite a bit there Mark, I am assuming you mean the gay marriages ect?

Very well could be too...especially this coming from the two of them..along with the majority of the msm, now I am going to pay more attention watching the msm when this topic comes up for debate....talking points may be in unison soon about this.

Will be interesting on down the road.....

"Never murder your opponent when he is committing suicide." ~ W. Churchill

Well, if anti-polygamy laws are unconstitutional, then so are all laws in regard to marriage. There go the laws against marrying one's sister or one's son, or one's pet horse, for that matter. Waht about banning marriage under a certain age? Is that unconstitutional? Here we are on the "slippery slope" predicted back when "gay marriage" first reared its head.

This is a problem with a society without a moral basis. There is no right and wrong. There is only "legal" and "illegal." And anything can be made legal by garnering enough of a majority on one side. And once something is "legal," that is the rationale for ostracizing those who disagree or speak out against it.

The Framers failed to spell out every detail of life that seemed self evident to them, and because of it, some judge may rule any perversion "constitutional". To adequately protect ourselves, we'll have to pile on amendments until the constitution would require a 3 volume set to publish it.

When you put the clowns in charge, don't be surprised when a circus breaks out.

When this elitist professor chooses to educate America on issues of law I cannot help thinking he believes we are just a bunch of ignorant idiots. His unsmiling attitude reminds me of some other liberals that disdain a real argument on issues solely because to question their beliefs is to show your ignorance, and they just don't have the time to explain the obvious truth. Or they are loath to bring up a truth we are not yet ready to hear, for instance, Turley's statements on polygamy, a 120 years late, have nothing to do with polygamy. I realize he only has limited time to get his message out and his personality is his alone. On the other hand, it always seems to me when he finishes telling listeners the truth, I sense there is another truth he believes is so wrong, so dumb, that he disdains not only the argument, but the people who might advance it.

IMO, what's being overlooked is the concept of culture. America has a national culture. Our culture finds it unacceptable for men to have many wives and "marry" females who are below the age of consent. And our laws in this regard reflect the culture of the American people. We recognize that allowing for a man to have multiple wives and to "marry" below the age of consent is not in the best interest of a civil society. To choose to live in America while feeling it a right to disobey the law in the name of religion is unacceptable. If one wishes to establish a "religious" sect whose teaching is in opposition to the law, then one should find somewhere to live where such laws are not in existence. It's not the pervue of the government to accomodate religious practices that violate our laws. Should a Satanic cult be allowed to allow human sacrifice as a legitimate tenet of their "faith"?

The slippery slope will allow for anyone to establish any practice - legal or illegal, moral or immoral, humane or inhumane - under the guise of religion.

I am the exotic Queen Mum, and I approved this message.

Cultural mores are constantly shifting. If we try to make them static, we will fail. For example, when the anti-polygamy issue was used to enflame sentiment against the Mormons in the 1850's, followed by passing of legislation, about 3% of the Mormon population was practicing polygamy, while about 11% of the remaining US population was practicing it. Culturally, Mormons could have been considered behind the times. But they were a long way off, practiced other strange ideas that people did not really understand, and were an easy target for criticism.

I hate to even start on ages when one is considered marriageable. But... When my wife and I were married about 40 years ago, I was 21 and she was 19. That was considered a proper age in our sub-culture for the time. At that time, our state also permitted common law marriage between a man and woman. You had to have lived together for at least 5 years, identifying each other as husband and wife during that period. The man had to have been at least 14 when he entered into the 5 year period and the woman had to be at least 12. Now, the states' legal age of consent varies between 14 (one state) and 18 years of age. Some use 16 for females and 18 for males.

Currently, as a result of all us well-meaning boomers who have protected our children and failed to let them become competent adults, or of Christians who want to second-guess God's resons for giving us puberty at the age it occurs, we consider anybody under maybe 25 to be too young to marry or even think about sex.

The concept of age of consent is something that has been constantly shifting, mostly going up for the past several decades. But, it has been a cultural more dependent on our perception of protecting our children too long and keeping them children too long. It well may change again, depending on what happens in our uncertain future. We don't need a constitutional amendment to define who can marry whom, when, how many times, or even how.

I believe the Founding Fathers wisely left marriage out of the Constitution, because they recognized that societies change, and the Constitution was to put a limit on Federal powers, rather than reach into peoples houses and bedrooms.

Queen Mum (the exotic)

A couple of probably long-winded points.

One of my daughters married a man 10 years her senior. She was 30, he was 40. Not a big deal. If she had been 16 and he 26 when they got married, eyebrows would have been raised pretty high. When Anna Nicole married, it was a big deal, because she was perceived as a gold-digger. While your differential was larger (36 years), the concept is much the same. The younger one partner is at the time becomes the perceived basis for whether it is acceptable or appropriate.

I apologize for the generalizations in my previous post. I admit they result from anecdotal evidence. E.g.:

- Conversations with my children and their friends, extending all the way back into their High School years, indicated they thought 25 or even 30 was the earliest you should consider getting married. I coupled that with my assumption that this opinion was something picked up from society – both from adults (parents, teachers, media, etc.) and peers.

- A couple in southern Utah took their daughter to her wedding, but sidetracked across state lines to kidnap her from her wedding (words the police/press used) because they felt she was too young to marry. She was 25 years old.

- A couple in Nebraska got married, with parental permission, when the groom was 19 and his bride was 17. Just before her 18th birthday, he took a risqué/nude picture of his wife and a (presumably older) clerk at the photo processing place reported him for child pornography. He’s in prison and will be a registered sex offender. I don’t think either of them participated in making any of the laws or felt they were doing anything wrong.

- An adopted son and natural daughter started having (supposedly consensual) sex when she was 14 and he 16. She became pregnant at 15. He will be a registered sex offender for the rest of his life. Again, I don’t think either of them participated in making any of the laws or felt they were doing anything wrong.

Another anecdote - my family and I have lived all across the nation over the years. While we lived in one northeastern, teenagers were not permitted to have jobs where they would have to use sharp implements, or be exposed to cooking, or work on farm unless it belonged to their immediate family, or after a certain time of evening, or for more than a (very few) hours per week, or… As a result, many kids could not get the opportunity to experience work in different environments. The jobs teenagers typically did when I was growing up had been legislated out of existence. This state was a little over the top, but not atypical. Those laws came from someplace, and I believe it was from well-intentioned, but ill-informed adults.

Based on this anecdotal evidence, I would still maintain that we, as the overall class of baby boomers, have changed the expectations of what it means to be a child, have kept our children in that stage longer, have protected them more and have not provided the opportunities for them to develop into competent adults and have done so more than previous generations.

Are children and young adults today more independent? Maybe. The current generation certainly has more spending power, more diversions and more contact and influences among their peer group, but I’m not convinced that type of independence is necessarily a good thing.

I mostly agree with your comment about the age of consent and onset of puberty. However, our societal perceptions about ‘true’ age of consent, proper credentials for marriage and even capability for making sexual decisions seem to be based more on competence. There isn’t a good test for that, so we use a one-size-fits-all legal age of consent approach based not on biology, but on perceptions.

Thanks for the discourse and response. It’s been fun and instructive. And I apologize to all for wandering so far off topic.