So we are still against polygamy but polyamory and monogamishy are ok?

I'm glad people are coming around no matter what the impetus for their change of heart, but if you find yourself only caring when it effects you, further reflection is required.

Despite everything, "(t)hey remain faithful Mormons..." Their valiant attempt to reconcile their faith with the love of their kid isn't unique to Mormonism either.

Here's hoping that they don't buckle in their support for their son.

Once you acknowledge that a part of your religion's teachings are wrong, it opens the door to booting out the whole thing. That's the problem with faith -- it's either all or nothing. And that's why, a few centuries after the enlightenment, Europe's churches are empty.

Religious people are treated like dirt and go back for more. It happens all the time. Brainwashing is a powerful thing. Most times more powerful than love.

It wasn't until 1978 that the Mormon church recognized black people as fully human. Accepting gay people will happen, but it's going to take a while.

This is why visibility is so important. Although some outspoken people at their congregation have engaged in ugly behavior it is likely that many others have done some soul searching of their own. Over time I do believe that tolerance will win out.

So they got kicked out of a social club for spiteful, intolerant, ignorant bigots? Sounds like a blessing to me.

@ 1

Mormon polygamy is deeply controling and misogynist.

Well, clearly her faith was not very strong.

/snark

Wanna bet she still thinks poors are that way because they're irresponsible and lazy? The problem with conservatives is that they lack empathy. Nothing is a problem unless it's happening to THEM.

@1: The way the Morman Church in the past, and current fringe LDS sects practice polygamy, yes. Yes we are against it. Your attempt at "Gotcha!" aside, Dan is of course referring to the change of heart the LDS hierarchy had regarding two founding tenets of their faith due to, (if one wishes to be charitable) a revelation. Very, very convenient revelations.

They are above all a practical religion, and when the tide has well and truly turned I do not doubt that an Angel will appear and the church will do a 180 on the Gayz, just as they did about black people getting into heaven.

As an American, I find it really troublesome that Mormons are so immersed in their centrally-managed religion that when they're ordered to give up a family member, they quite often do. An ex-communicated Mormon is exiled not just from their religion, but from their family. I can't imagine a more inhumane practice that doesn't involve physical violence.

Religion remains the cancer of the world, Before you get on my case about noteveryoneislikethat, I don't care. Good people would be good people without this superstitious bronze age nonsense. There is nothing that can't be achieved through a secular society.

@13 I like you. You are spot on. The Chinese know that, too.

@1 - While I, personally, am monogamously (though we had some "monogamish" group ventures back in our 20s) married, and have no interest in polygamy, I am not opposed, morally or politically (and I do hold those matters quite separate), to polygamy. The contemporary Mormon church, however, is, which is what I think Dan was getting at.

@1 The traditional form of polygamy involves forcible coercion of very young girls. In contrast, modern polyamory involves all consenting adults. That is the difference.

@1 and @9 The right or wrong of polygamy, or whether you believe black people are fully human, isn't actually the issue. The issue is that religions, including Mormonism, show how totally bogus they are when they just up and change core tenets of their faith for political reasons. If it becomes politically unendurable, the Mormon church will change their teaching on homosexuality too. Because the faith related stuff is all bullshit, from top to bottom, it is easy to change or modify.

The biggest change is that the outside world doesn't completely reflect back their evil homophobic bigotry anymore. If individuals are open to it, alternative ways of looking at reality are readily available or perhaps unavoidable.

@10 well said.

@11 and @16 - I grant your misgivings about "traditional forms," but marriage, in any form, wasn't exactly a picnic in any societies that have practiced polygamy. And what goes on at FLDS compounds can easily be chalked up to "if you outlaw polygamy, only outlaws will have polygamy."

I certainly wouldn't want to be a lawyer or accountant for a polygamous family, but I don't see why polygamous marriage contracts (including both polygyny, polyandry, and even truly mixed poly-arrangements with multiple spouses of both sexes) couldn't be subjected to modern understandings and norms regarding consent.

@13 - I actually think humanity still needs religion. But I'm pretty sure it doesn't need to anthropomorphize its assumptions of fundamental unity, or to presume that unseen forces are as morally preoccupied as we are. If we accept religion as a pondering of mystery through symbols and allegory, the ongoing negotiation of moral philosophy, and discussion of various subcultures' (as defined by more or less common beliefs) symbols and moral findings with those of like mind, religion is serving the primary purposes it has since the beginning, without the dogmatic and dominionist trappings of anthropomorphic monotheism.

@20: You misunderstand me. I have no problem with poly relationships entered into by consenting adults. I am against polygamy as traditionally practiced with in a patriarchal construct, such as the fringe LDS sects today.

@ 18, well, there's that, but there is also this:
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/569656…

I wouldn't get all soft and fuzzy about the Mormons just yet.

Her inability to see things straight before her own son turned out to be gay is failure of empathy. For this she's an asshole, not a hero.

@24 Sometimes people have to start out as assholes and work their way up.

@24: Perhaps it's a failure of empathy, but mothers want to be grandmothers. Fathers want to be grandfathers. It's a fear of disappointment even through gay families adopt or have their own through other means. It's a very primal thing that many parents have to work through and it's challenging for them. But time heals and love conquers all.

@22 - Oh, I get that; I just wanted to clarify that "polygamy" doesn't necessarily have to mean that kind of polygamy.

@24: what 25 and 26 said.

How can she differentiate gay from Mormon?

Oh for eff's sake! It's not religion in general that makes people do and think bad things. It's ignorance and brainwashing, and an organization doesn't have to be religious to do it. Look at what's happening in Russia. It's not the churches that told people it was okay to go out and beat up gays; it was their secular government.

@26 it was a lack of empathy that allowed her to hate other people's children for being gay, she wasn't expecting to get grandkids out of them, was she?

@1, in addition to the comprehension fail explained at 11--that these are examples of things the Mormon Church claims God changed his mind about in the past 100 years--personally practicing something that aligns with the teaching of a church does not tacitly admit to the correctness of their entire theology. I don't drink, but that does not make me a Mormon or 7th Day Adventist.

@20: As a model for a society, if you run the numbers polygamy results in increasing numbers of young males being forced out of the community, and girls being married off at increasingly young ages. That this actually happens where polygamy is widely practiced cannot be endlessly waved off as a coincidence.

Actually, @31, the Orthodox church is supporting and encouraging the Russian bigotry and abuse. It's a very large part of the problem.

@32 tal,

Even if my kids end up in same sex marriages, I'm still expecting grandkids!!!

Peace

I wonder if there isn't also some "what sin have I done to deserve this.. Well of course I'm not impure so..." sanctimoniousness. OTOH we can hope for an honest-to-God conversion to sanity (I hope the latter).

Peace

@33 - I'm not waving it off. I'm suggesting: first, that correlation is not causation; and second, that polygamy (or polygamous marital contracts) between consenting adults be allowed, not that polygamy be "widely practiced." Unless you believe that same-sex marriage is going to be "widely practiced" simply because it's legal, you don't necessarily have any basis to assume that polygamy would be any more widely appealing to the general populace.

Also, given that most of the cultures where polygamy (particularly polygyny) has been practiced have also tended to be fundamentalist theocracies, colonies of religious separatists, and/or put-upon bands of "persecuted" pilgrims, I think we can narrow the "correlation/causation" question to a basic "chicken-or-egg" quandary.

I wonder if these now enlightened Mormons perpetuate the inherent sexism in the Mormon philosophy? I notice in the video they have a daughter. Why aren't they in tears and struggling with their faith for this too?

The Mormon Church only the changed its views on polygamy in order for Utah to achieve statehood, only changed its views on blacks after being threatened with losing its tax-exempt status.

A practical church, indeed. So much for "faith."

It has been a long time since a Christian institution was at the fore-front of morality. It has happened, so I'm not championing the "all evil is religion and all religion is evil" banner. The abolitionist movement was created by dedicated Christians, who felt that slavery was antithetical to their values. But since the middle of the 20th C, they have been slowly overtaken by secular groups. This is especially true in the civil rights movement.

However, at no time in history could the LDS ever be considered to be at 'the forefront of morality.' They have always taken up the back, being an example for how humans used to act.

@40: When an abstract mathematical model predicts that X will cause Y, and all known examples of X result in Y over time, and you have a logical line of reasoning for why X would lead to Y (think about it: equal numbers of boys and girls are born, old guys need most of these girls for their own brides and not paired off to all the age-mate young boys as numerically would work out, the young males get pushed out and the brides get younger), you might want to consider that the correlation is due to X causing Y. People claim smoking and lung cancer, or temperatures warming with more CO2 in the air, are just wild correlations as well. Doesn't make it so.

I reject the slippery slope argument "If same sex couples marry, then people will marry hammers! or turtles!!!" And so I am not presently okay with expanding marriage--here, in the US--to groups other than pairs of adults who meet various requirements: not already married, able to give meaningful consent, not immediate relatives (because incest just suggests really awful family dynamics and I'm not interested in how THIS guy and his 18 year old daughter are different), etc. Basically everything we had gradually evolved before, but with 'opposite gender' no longer a requirement.

In the future, IF poly groups come out (like gays did decades back) and convince society at large that they are extremely boring and just like everyone else, and IF there is enough common law understanding of how group marriage works and what benefits, protections, and obligations exist between all its subsets of members, then I likely won't raise a fuss if it becomes legal. It will be just like gay marriage now, "Oh Bobby's parents can be legally married now instead of just shacked up, that's no doubt good for Bobby and his siblings." 50 years on, I won't call it impossible.

I doubt this will happen... for both parts, honestly, but mostly for the second. In countries where polygamy is legal, ONLY polygamy is legal, and there is a well-defined set of law--first common and then written--as to the legal relationships between all the subsets. Poly groups in the US (beyond polygamists) don't want a one-size-fits-all model strapped onto their unique relationship, and that's what the law requires.

It's... nice, I guess? that conservative religious nuts sometimes change their minds when they get hit upside the head with a clue-by-four by their own children. But I still think, if you can't make this kind of mental leap on behalf of _somebody else's_ children, you have a serious empathy deficit. And if she's a Republican -- which I bet dollars to donuts she is, given that she and her husband "remain faithful Mormons", and she had a history of anti-gay activism -- has she started rethinking what she "knows" about moochers on food stamps (i.e. the working poor and their children)? How about those parastic government bureaucrats (i.e the people who fight outbreaks of food-borne illness[1], and money-laundering by organized criminals[2]). Conservative religious types seem to "know" a lot of things that can't survive an encounter with the real people they know those things about.

[1] http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/1…

[2] http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2013/10…

@31: Indeed, religions are the way they are because humans are the way we are. Without religion, people will behave in the same ways, they'll just find different contexts for it.

The funny thing is, people who insist that "Religion is the root of all Evil" are only helping prove this point. Turns out, people do not need religion to enjoy feeling morally or intellectually superior to the people they disagree with.

Nor is religion required for lengthy tirades about what is wrong with those other people who are clearly not at all like the good, intelligent people who have the same views we do.

/human too

This makes me think of Niner great, Steve Young, great-great-great-etc.-grandson of Brigham Young himself. He and his wife put "No on 8" signs in their yard - a Mormon ex-football player cutting back against the grain as he did as a player. Organized groups can change when leaders are outspoken in saying, "Enough!"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/16…

@44 - I think there are too many other common elements that have nothing to do with number of participants in describing your abstract correlation; moreover, you make a depressingly common mistake of using "polygamy" to describe only polygyny (having multiple wives), when polygamy also includes polyandry (having multiple husbands). How would women having multiple husbands (let alone households containing multiple spouses of both genders, or those who identify elsewhere on the spectrum) lead to young men being pushed out?

The rest of your argument seems to describe what's tricky about the contracts in question, i.e., that they have no easy precedent or standardized form in our culture. Agreed, but that seems irrelevant, to me, in determining whether it should be legal in the macro; in the micro--that is to say, in order for a specific piece of legislation on the matter to get my support--I would certainly ask that any such legislation include some provision for determining how divorce, inheritance, custody of children, etc., would be worked out in the absence of a pre-nuptial agreement.

Your incest argument is interesting, since, while I'm morally and viscerally repulsed by incest and/or incestuous marriage (unlike polygamy, which I merely find undesirable for my part, sort of the way I feel about the music of Led Zeppelin), I'm not convinced there's a compelling, empirically demonstrable civic utility in proscribing it.

@49: Incest causes ruptures in the family unit. I think society has a vested interest in preventing that.

I'm okay with polygamous marriage, as long as someone else works out the details.

@50 - That sounds suspiciously like an argument that came up a lot during the debate over same-sex marriage.

I don't disagree that rupturing of the family unit is both a possible effect of incest and socially undesirable, but I think society's vested interest is too abstract to justify a proscription that I seriously doubt does anything to actually reduce incidence of incest (which will likely remain rare, and undesirable to most).

Well at least we all know how our good Christian woman Seattleblues will handle her son coming out as gay.

Mr Married - Any parent who seriously (which I suspect you don't) holds that attitude deserves to be raising the future spokesperson of Child-Free By Choice.

More pragmatically, how much of the extra same-sexer costs are you proposing to offset personally? I don't think I'd be able to afford reproduction if I were unRetired from Romance. Not that I'd be so inclined; just pointing out the degree of privilege involved.

Great for the kid, but no props to the stupid narrow-minded parents. Rethinking your values only when your values adversely affect you and your immediate blood ties is the lowest form of primal tribalism. She's stupider than a chimp.

Her children should be taken away from her so some other God-fearing foster parent can take them in and then disown them and put them out.

At which point, I guess he could just go back to his original family?

And that is what we call resolution.

Here's some new scholarship that claims Jesus was fiction made up by the Romans. So in one fell swoop there goes Christianity (if only) but that leaves more room for Mormons, doesn't it? Uh oh.

http://uk.prweb.com/releases/2013/10/prw…

Thank you, karma, you are a delight!

@56 Well, that would be pretty funny. On the other hand, the legend of Moroni has apparently withstood much more compelling evidence that it was manufactured. So, don't expect much in the way of buy-in.

All religions are spiritual exercises that don't lend themselves to empirical analysis, and all have two kinds of devotees. The first, and less common, experience something in common with deep meditative practice, an expansive sense of peace and/or love. The second, and more common, simply latch onto the symbolism as a talisman without really deriving any personal spiritual benefit or enlightenment. For them, it's a superstitious belief in an external force that they somehow harness via declaration, donation, and their presence at worship services, as well as being a sort of tribal affiliation that brings them a sense of belonging.

If it were mostly the first type of devotee, I wonder if religion might not be such a burden on rational thought and secular progress.

@ 58: If it were mostly the first type of devotee, I wonder if religion might not be such a burden on rational thought and secular progress.

And religious people would probably be rare enough that they wouldn't have organizations...

(But there's probably a downside.)

@56 Attention seeking atheist researcher says what?

I find it weird to refer to a 13 year old as "totally innocent and pure".

@ 46 - I've seen that argument made over and over and it always begs the same question for me:

If that is the case and the evils of religious societies are in fact inevitable, why is there such a strong correlation between non-religious societies (for example, the Scandinavian countries) and empathetic social policies?

Yes, there are exceptions. But for the most part if you are a child or a woman or a minority and you wish to be treated with kindness by your society, you will be better off living somewhere devoid of religion.

@ 51- Aren't laws against incest as more of a child protection issue than a family sanctity issue? If a parent is grooming a child to be his or her future sex partner, that creates a conflict of interest (the parent's desires vs. the child's wellbeing).

The only thing that causes us to question our assumptions is an experience that fails to make sense. This is being human. We conserve our energy by listening to "experts" when we do not have direct experience in a matter. None of us is an expert in everything. Experience, fortunately, trumps ideology most of the time.

@60 Well, there's a compelling counter argument.

Ever notice that the zombie earthquake story
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?sea…
not only isn't mentioned in any other books of the Babble, it's not recorded by any other witnesses. Yet it supposedly happened in a crowded city chock-full of literate people? Who might have noticed a FUCKING ZOMBIE EARTHQUAKE?

Very convincing religion, eh?

@62 - Regarding religion, it's worth noting that while Scandinavian countries have secular governance, and majorities who claim non-belief in deity, most are also culturally religious: the citizens, by and large, go to church, observe religious holidays, etc. Which leads me to think that, rather than religion being a force for ill and irreligion a force for good, that religion is most functional when observed as a social construct rather than as a set of ironclad truths to be accepted and imposed despite being unchecked and uncheckable by empirical means.

Regarding incest, the reason you hold forth is the best reason there is for proscribing relations of that sort between members of different generations of the same family. On the one hand, I don't necessarily oppose diiferentiating between that and, say, relations between siblings; relations between cousins are so unevenly regulated that doing away with such regulation seems relatively easy.

That said, I am not sure that abusive relations between different generations could not be prevented by thoughtful application of either domestic abuse or sexual harassment law, both of which deal already in questions of power and manipulation.

@1: Oh look, period troll registered an account.

That's Bakersfield alright. I've been commenting on their newspaper web site almost daily for five years and you could put the name of any church on this story and it would be the same outcome. I'm an ex-Mormon, myself and went through the same alienation even when I had **never** (no, not once) acted on my gay orientation. Worse, I told my bishop in complete confidence and NO one else and he outed me to the entire congregation. My social life stopped DEAD in it's tracks. Of course, my home teaching partner, who later found out I was partnered with a prosperous business man, hit me up for my accounting business. I declined. He' now the bishop of that same congregation.

I honestly have to say I am really proud of Wendy. It's really hard to stand up against things that were drilled into your head since you were young, and it's even harder to stand up to a whole community of people who you were once close with. I think when a person takes that bold step and chooses love over hate, we really should welcome them regardless of what it took to get them there.

I agree with 70, we can only guess in what kind of repressive household she was raised in. If she really was taught from an early age it's very hard to fight that for some people especially if she lives in a heavily Mormon area with a lot of bigots, a bubble essentially. So yes, let's welcome a new ally, she seems like a good misguided person who has come to some rational decision and didn't throw her son out.

As a practicing Mormon I am once again amazed at the number of people who are unwittingly or willfully uninformed about my religion and the people who practice it. I am always amazed at the prejudice aimed at us by people who purport to be put off by the prejudice they have felt from Mormons. I agree with #46 wholeheartedly. Just as this Mom's perception changed with the insight gained from having gay son, perhaps your perceptions might change if you either cultivated a friendship with a Mormon or someone you loved converted. So many are offended when anything stereotypical or derogatory is stated about many minority groups and yet think nothing at leveling insults just as prejudicial at Mormons or religion itself for that matter. I, for one, find all of that rhetoric offensive - whether it's toward a religious group, ethnic group, political group, LGBT community or any other group.

@72: Personally I've always had a soft spot for Mormons, but I'm afraid that until y'all receive another conveniently timed revelation, and join the rest of us on the right side of history ( and make amends for the pain your current position had caused) you will be forced to endure some rather sharply worded criticism.
I regret to inform you my dear that you are not the victim. And neither is your church.

@72 - I'm amazed by your amazement. Your church's official, publicly stated, opinions are offensive. The amount of money the church you belong to has spent on promoting bigotry is offensive. It's not prejudice that is directed at the Mormon church, it's well-founded outrage.

Gordon Hinckley: ""Now we have gays in the church. Good people. We take no action against such people – provided they don't become involved in transgression, sexual transgression. If they do, we do with them exactly what we'd do with heterosexuals who transgress" That's right - gays are fine as long as they don't do anything gay - if they do ... watch out. That's a disgusting, repulsive, policy. It comes from the church you belong to. If you don't like belonging to a church that induces disgust and repulsion in others, then you can always leave your church. The Catholics are always accepting new members and they'll still promise you a seat in heaven, just like your current church.

@72 - My wife is a former Mormon; my in-laws, including my nieces and nephews, are all (or nearly all) currently Mormon. I don't have an issue with "Mormons" per se, but I don't see why it should be considered a sign of intolerance when I say that I take issue with a worldview.

perfect, all of you ignorant nitwits who choose to perpetuate bullshit rumors are no better than the dumbshit bigots.

The Mormons, the official ones, the ones who send out missionaries that we have all run into (Most missionaries you see are either JW's or Mormons) and their official stance is to denounce polygamy and it's been that way for a long fucking time

of course, we all know:

Muslims believe it is their duty to kill all non-followers of Islam (ie they are terrorists and hate US even if we don't kill their uncles and sons with drone strikes for being in the vicinity of possible, alleged without any judicial process, sort of identified Muslim)

Gay people are pedophiles

and Mormons are polygamists

be a part of the solution you stupid fuckers

oh wait, I forgot, proper grammar makes you right, truth is debatable and subject to peer review, because that is what science is

get a clue dipshit

Don't get me wrong Dan, I think it's great that people are starting to wake up, it just pisses me off that a significant number of your readers believe they are "evolved" even though they don't understand evolution, believe they are enlightened because they believe they "understand" however the only difference between them and asshole bigots is they are actually a tad more arrogant then the bigots

Yep, you heard me right, my name is Dusty and I said fuck you

@ 66 - "most are also culturally religious: the citizens, by and large, go to church, observe religious holidays, etc."

I don't have any idea where you heard that but it's inaccurate. As of 2004, only 5% of the population of Sweden attended church on a weekly basis. Norway and Denmark had even lower attendance with only 3% of their populations attending.

Regarding incest, there would be a similar problem with relationships between siblings with a substantial age gap. And it seems likely that deciding where to draw the line would be pretty darned arbitrary. So with that in mind, I think the current laws are appropriate. I don't see similar problems with regards to cousins having sex. That strikes me as more of an "ick" issue. So I agree that doing away with those laws seems reasonable enough.

Domestic abuse laws are intended to deal with physical violence so I don't think they would be terribly effective. Additionally, even if the parent who is grooming the child has "the best of intentions," the conflict of interests should still be legally unacceptable for the sake of the child.

#13 - Re: Religion. There's a parable I just read in a wonderful book by Tamar Adler: "A rabbi is asked to teach a student the Bible while the student stands on one leg. The rabbi agrees, and says: 'Do unto others as they should do unto you. The rest is commentary'".

Amen.

@62: You say there's a correlation by citing Scandinavia. I think you'd have to do a bigger study, personally. I mean, what about the very emphatically godless Soviets? Did they have fantastically amazing social policy?

Personally, I think the problem is no religiosity or lack thereof, but confidence in the ideology. People who are absolutely sure that there is or isn't a God and feel that they can prove it to you are always off-putting (to me at least), and I think that also plays out on a societal level. A society that believes that they are absolutely right about something which no one can know if they're right is a society that is unwilling to see another's point of view on anything.

@79: Um Dusty?
As far as I can tell everyone on this thread is aware that the mainstream LDS church no longer practices polygamy, although certain off shoots still do, and are not sanctioned by the church. Nobody is saying any different, so I'm not sure what your beef actually is.

On top of that, if you did your study on all the societies that have ever been, I imagine you'll notice that not all the empathic social policies come from irreligious societies. The Mughal empire in India comes to mind as a religious regime that was nevertheless pretty good for its citizens (for its time).

HERE is where I first encountered the question of Scandinavian religious participation. It speaks of Swedes and Danes being non-believers, but also offered this particularly interesting observation:

The many nonbelievers he interviewed, both informally and in structured, taped and transcribed sessions, were anything but antireligious, for example. They typically balked at the label “atheist.” An overwhelming majority had in fact been baptized, and many had been confirmed or married in church.

Though they denied most of the traditional teachings of Christianity, they called themselves Christians, and most were content to remain in the Danish National Church or the Church of Sweden, the traditional national branches of Lutheranism.

. . . and this one:

André Comte-Sponville, the French philosopher whose “Little Book of Atheist Spirituality” (Viking, 2007) was discussed here two weeks ago, maintains that individuals can live well without religion but that society, or even humanity as a whole, needs a set of bonds that might be considered “sacred,” at least in the sense of something “that would justify, if necessary, the sacrifice of our lives.”

A fidelity to inherited values, a “nonreligiousness” that is “more than just an empty shell or an elegant form of amnesia,” is Mr. Comte-Sponvilles’s atheist answer to his own question, “What remains of the Christian West when it ceases to be Christian?”

He might find reassurance in Scandinavia and in Mr. Zuckerman’s description of the “cultural religion” that he discovered there. The interviewees affirmed a Christianity that seems to have everything to do with “holidays, songs, stories and food” but little to do with God or Creed, everything to do with rituals marking important passages in life but little to do with the religious meaning of those rituals.

Others may be puzzled or even repelled by the apparent dissonance, but Mr. Zuckerman, comparing it to the experience of many Jews in the United States and Israel, strives to make sense of it, and he suggests that it deserves much more study all around the world.

Weekly attendance seems beside the point to me; many American Christians don't go to church but on holidays. If a people tend to be baptized, celebrate religious holidays, and even belong to a central, national church without much resistance, I think it's safe to say that they are culturally religious.

Your point regarding a wide age spread between siblings is well-taken, but what about any older person who knows any younger person? Family friends, teachers, mentors? Heck, what about older cousins with considerably younger cousins? I can't think of anything that could be said with regards to any age difference between ostensible equals, and the prospects for manipulation.

I'm not sure we can effectively outlaw manipulation.

I've often wondered, also, that if the advantages conferred by the marriage contract don't uniquely benefit society because of romantic or erotic attachments between people, but because individuals consolidated resources and held themselves responsible for one another. And if that's the case, why wouldn't we want that to apply to siblings who choose to live together, or mulit-generation families who live in the same home, or grown children staying at home to take care of sick parents? What if, instead of marital contracts, we had "household contracts"?

I don't have a detailed legislative plan or even strong political will on the matter, and work far too many jobs (to say nothing of taking care of my own marriage) to spend much time debating it, but it's been kicked around my head for some time.

I believe Islam is a true religion and it teaches us how to be patient and how to tolerate other religions and it teaches us about peace. Islam means peace.-Malala Yousafzai

This AMAZING young girl believes in God and is making the world a better place.

@85:
You are right, there are a lot of people who are culturally religious. This brings to mind an old Irish joke about Catholic vs Protestant atheists:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Protestant_…

This is not only true for Ulster where Catholics are usually of Irish descent and Protestants are of Scottish or English descent, but also in general.

@65 FWIW, I'm an agnostic with no axe to grind either way. I followed the link, read the blurb, and got the impression of a Mini-Hitchens, saying "Sorry I disproved your dumb religion. P.S. Not sorry." I haven't evaluated his claims in detail, but on their face, that Jesus was a literary conspiracy by elite Roman to pacify a rebellious province, seems highly unlikely. Not quite as unlikely as a zombie-quake, but still. Anyway, wiki says at "Historical Jesus" that "[...] almost all modern scholars consider his baptism and crucifixion to be historical facts." I personally would be stunned to discover that the virgin birth and the resurrection really took place, but I would also be quite surprised to find that there was no Jesus person at all. What Confucianism without Confucius? What Buddhism without Buddha? What Islam without Mohammed? Etc.

Could one of the defenders of the LDS please explain something that has never been answered by any of the many Mormons to which I have personally enquired?

Namely, how is it that the ONLY places in the USA where entire communities of hundreds of people each are able to OPENLY practice the child sexual abuse that is referred to as "child brides" are found in areas that are predominantly Mormon? Where the Governor, the Courts, the prosecutors, the police and social services are made up of a Mormon majority. How is that possible? The most common answer I get to this question is a statement that the FLDS, the fundamentalist Mormons are not real Mormons. I understand that, but that doesn't answer my question. Why don't real Mormons go after and eradicate these communities where young girls are ritually raped by old men? Utah and parts of Arizona is the hotbed of this practice and these communities are not in secret locations. So what gives? Ohio or Mississippi or Kansas or California or New York don't have baby raping towns sprinkled around their states. So why can't Utah or Arizona seem to clean up their states?

The abolitionist movement was created by dedicated Christians

Slavery itself was created by dedicated Christians. The massive genocide in the New World was created by dedicated Christians.

Sorry. It's not even a wash. You can't claim the cure without also claiming the disease on this one.

@ 82 -

Please recall that I was responding to the following statement: "Indeed, religions are the way they are because humans are the way we are. Without religion, people will behave in the same ways, they'll just find different contexts for it."

But in response to your remark about the Soviet Union, here's a wider sampling.

(__%) - attend church regularly
[__%] - consider religion to be important in their lives

Point of reference: United States (43%) [53%]

Top five countries - Treatment of Women:
1. Canada (20%)
2. Germany [13%]
3. Britain (12%) [16%]
4. Australia (8%)
5. France (12%) [14%]

Five most gay friendly countries:
Spain (21%)
Germany [13%]
Canada (20%)
Czech Republic (11%)
Australia (8%)

Top five rich countries - Child Well-being (according to UNICEF):
Netherlands (35% - this is the highest number I found, other sources say less than 20% or even less than 10%)
Sweden (5%)
Denmark (3%)
Finland (5%)
Spain (21%)

We could use other yard sticks: the death penalty, perhaps? Or maybe access to medical care? But the pattern is the same.

On the other side of the coin, you'll find that the most religious countries typically rank poorly with regards to human rights and well being (even if you remove poor countries from the equation and focus only on rich countries like Saudi Arabia).

The point of all of this is just to show a trend. If religions are right about their places of moral authority, the most religious countries should receive the highest marks on the lists above. And if religion was 100% irrelevant in our treatment of others, the numbers above should have been all over the place. Instead, they are mostly clustered at <25%.

But that is all pretty broad. So let's look at the Mormon mom this article is about. If we can assume that she's a pretty decent person for the most part then she is an example of what I have seen over and over again: otherwise nice people often hold a few extremely hateful views that they learned from their church. This is exceedingly common in very religious areas.

I'm absolutely not saying that religion is the only factor. I'm just saying it is a factor.

I should clarify Lissa, as I did add extra meaning to commentors words, and was addressing issues that this topic only touched but did not actually dig into.

I get way too worked up because I feel that most people aren't actually solving the problem of wrongful discrimination that has become a disease that doesn't look very promising to cure, as even those who believe they are advancing equality, I see as just flipping the problem to the other side of a wrong extreme.

To be clear, I am absolutely disgusted by what I view as govt. sponsored bigotry by illegally withholding the rights, privileges from LGBT people and especially the most sacred of all God Given Rights, which to be able to exercise their own freewill and choose who will form their living family.

Nobody has the right to influence a persons decision of how and who they love so long as they love is offered and accepted by consenting and fully knowledgeable adults.

Believe me, even though I am not gay, nothing pisses me off more than witnessing people have their rights infringed upon.

A close second to the things that pisses me off the most, is those who trash talk others religious beliefs, typically under the rationalization that they are simply trying to have an honest discussion about scientific truth, which just happens to be all about how people who base their faith on scriptures and those scriptures are nothing more then fairy tales.

There is no need to bash peoples beliefs, especially since it was the principle of having religious freedom (practiced within reason) that was the beginning of, or the start of the tipping point the will one day lead to total equality in regards to the choices in their personal lives that all human beings are supposed to have

It takes a great deal of respect, that is not being shown. It is necessary to allow to each their own (again within reason) and trust me I fully understand being extremely angry at those who do others wrong as was done to women, non-caucasians, and LGBT people.

But the same as it is wrong to attempt to force homosexuals that they are somehow flawed, wrong , or even evil, it is also wrong to go to bash on a persons religious beliefs such as the whole dawkinsian atheist blow back against people of faith.

It not only exhibits the exact same disrespect and wrongful intrusions/ways to violate a decision that isn't theirs to make for anybody but themselves (as in it is on par with the assholes that tell Gay children they are bad) but their entire reasoning or "proof" that they are right and scriptures are fairy tailed fallacy is NOT based in truth, in other words is NOT fact.

And in my opinion, which I realize is very in your face and not pleasant, there is little to difference between the criminal wrong committed by those who attempt to convince gays there is something wrong about them and those who believe it's OK to tell others their religions is bullshit, or that women cannot choose to live in seemingly oppressive environments wherein they choose to believe they should be subservient to males

bigotry is a black and white subject, and it pisses me off when people parade around under a flag of true equality, yet still don't have a fucking clue about what bigotry is.

The flaw is perfectly illustrated in the debate Dan got into over whether or not polyamory was a legitimate "orientation" and when Dan said it was not, those ignorant of what bigotry actually is started in on the bullshit claims that Dan's opinion is just tomorrow's new form of bigotry

It's a crock because if you truly understand what bigotry is and you truly understand what constitutes wrongful discrimination, than you understand that it doesn't matter whether or not homosexuality is a choice, it doesn't matter whether or not people have no choice as to living a life of monogamy, polyamory, or polygamy

You do NOT need to justify those choices when we are talking about knowledgeable adults, we are all supposed to be free to to offer our love and offer to whom we desire to share our life with and if they accept that offer then the is nothing wrong with who becomes our chosen family

nobody has the right to tell you who you can and cannot become family with as that is between only each of US and whether or not the desired party accepts our offer.

It appears that we don't get a choice of family when we are born into this world, but we were meant to exercise our own freewill in regards to who we become family with, as whether or not you believe in one life and this one is the only chance you get only makes the argument stronger for NOBODY having the right to decide for another person who their chosen family is.

Doing so is one of the most serious crimes a person can commit when it comes to unlawfully forcing your will upon another

which is exactly what people do when they try to convince someone who is gay that they are not allowed to be gay, which is the same thing -- in principle -- as saying "well you can be Gay but you are going to hell for it"

anyway you try to manipulate another person's most sacred and greatest of all God Given Rights which is to decide who they form their chosen family with, is wrong, it's not only wrong but it is one of the most fucked up things you can do, no matter how "in the right" by superior understanding of life we may think we are.

It's not wrong to gather among subscribers of the same belief system and celebrate or preach your understanding to those who make the choice to listen, but none of US has the right to violate another's understanding of life and force our own decisions of what is religiously right or wrong AND who we are allowed to choose to form our living families with

It's black and white, and you are either standing on the right side or the wrong side, and it is all about respect.

Standing on the wrong side and justifying it because your are fighting for gay rights does not excuse religious bigotry

it's swapping one evil for another

@89: State official did go into an FLDS community and tried to do just that in the 50s called Short Creek and it went pear shaped. That may be why.

@92: Thank you for clarifying Dusty.

@ 85 - "Weekly attendance seems beside the point to me; many American Christians don't go to church but on holidays."

43% regular attendance (United States) vs 3% regular attendance (Denmark) is a huge difference, though.

From the same article:
"a society — a markedly irreligious society"

"And he concluded that “religion wasn’t really so much a private, personal issue, but rather, a nonissue.” His interviewees just didn’t care about it."

"Thoughtful, well-educated Danes and Swedes reacted to Mr. Zuckerman’s basic questions about God, Jesus, death and so on as completely novel."

I would be interested in reading Mr. Zuckerman’s study.

But back to your original post on the matter, you said "rather than religion being a force for ill and irreligion a force for good..."

I see religion is the variable and irreligion as the control. If religion is going left that doesn't mean that irreligion is going right. Rather, irreligion is not moving in either direction at all. Or perhaps more accurately, if I may use Christianity as an example, religion is getting out of bed early Sunday morning to go to church while irreligion is not getting out of bed early Sunday morning to go to church. Religion extracts only 3% of Danes from their beds as compared with nearly half of the population of the United States. Rather than a force for good or evil, in the Scandinavian countries, religion isn't a force.

But back to incest!

;)

Teachers and mentors (and therapists) are forbidden from dating those currently or recently under their control. If they transgress, they lose their jobs. So children (and vulnerable adults) are at least somewhat protected in that regard. There's also the matter of the degree of access: you have much more access to someone you live with than you have to someone you see for a few hours a week.

I like your household contract idea. It could certainly be an interesting way to address all sorts of problems. But the problem that comes to mind almost immediately is that minors can't legally enter into a contract. So they would need an advocate. And that would be a giant mess.

@90: All those Gauls who were enslaved by Caesar's legions 50 years before the birth of Christ would no doubt be happy to hear that slavery would be invented by Christians, as would the various slaves of Spartacus' unsuccessful revolt who were crucified and used as milestones around the same time.

@MiscKitty: you could certainly argue that there's a pretty strong trend for relatively tolerant, mildly religious countries to become relatively tolerant irreligious countries. However, there is no such trend for irreligious countries becoming more tolerant. In 1945, the most irreligious country in the world was... Russia.

@34 Epic fail at understanding Russian politics. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church was appointed by (atheist) Vladimir Putin. His credentials are that he's cooperated with state security services all his life. "Separation of Church and State" is something that never happened in Russia - the official Church is as much an arm of the government as the police are. If Putin told the Russian Orthodox Church to fly rainbow flags from all their cathedrals, they'd fly rainbow flags from all their cathedrals. If they had any independence they wouldn't let Putin tell them who their next Patriarch was going to be.

@1 Yes, we polyamory are against "traditional polygamy", which as everyone but you knows, is a code expression for "polygyny forced on females by a patriarchal society".

43% regular attendance (United States) vs 3% regular attendance (Denmark) is a huge difference, though.

But that 43% figure is considerably lower than the number who consider themselves Christians, and lower yet than the number who claim to believe in some sort of deity. And if most citizens still claim membership in the church (whether or not they attend) and celebrate religious holidays, it still seems to me that they are more culturally religious than irreligious.

The comparison made to the Jewish faith in the article was interesting, given how many "secular Jews" I know.

I see religion is the variable and irreligion as the control.

Perhaps. But belief in [G/g]od(s) is more common than non-belief; open up our definitions to include belief in metaphysical principles other than deity, and we'd have to say that religion (by its most inclusive definition) is more common than irreligion. Getting out of bed on Sunday to go to church is only one measure.

Teachers and mentors (and therapists) are forbidden from dating those currently or recently under their control. If they transgress, they lose their jobs. So children (and vulnerable adults) are at least somewhat protected in that regard.

But nothing stops a mentor from dating a former student. Is "grooming" not also plausible under those circumstances?

There's also the matter of the degree of access: you have much more access to someone you live with than you have to someone you see for a few hours a week.

Fair enough.

But the problem that comes to mind almost immediately is that minors can't legally enter into a contract.

I was thinking of adults, actually; minors weren't really on my radar, the the marriage contracts which I was theoretically replacing are currently between consenting adults.

@73 - My church and its members absolutely have been the victims of intolerance, bigotry and misunderstanding, much as the LGBT society has and countless other groups over the course of human history.
@74 - I have no problem with people sharply criticizing the positions of my church that they feel is offensive & wrong. None. I can understand why they feel the way they do. My amazement comes when the criticism becomes mean-spirited & overly broad in its context - not just centered on the issue in question. I would wish that ANYONE asking for tolerance and respect would treat others with that same tolerance and respect.
@75 - I do not see taking an issue with a worldview as intolerant in any way. It's the stereotyping and disrespectful discourse I take issue with. I have seen so many comments on so many websites from people who are upset about a stance the Mormon church has, whose biggest beef is that they feel judged & offended then proceed to judge & be offensive. It smacks a bit too much of the teapot. I suspect many of these people would be indignant if someone said "Jews are (*insert stereotype or insult here) or "Gays are *...." or "Blacks are *..." or "All Muslims are *..." But freely state that "Mormons are *..." without ever considering themselves offensive. It is all bigotry disguised as righteous indignation.