You can't have two wives because the state doesn't allow it. The state allows you to get married without religion involved. But you can't get married without the state involved.
And the state doesn allow it because Catholic/Protestant tradition says it's not allowed - one man, one woman. It's strictly religious. There is no other reason...
It is a religious covenant. For me, it certainly is. I regard the bond between my wife and I as something spiritual that God ordained and it is far more important to me in that regard than any piece of paper I got from the state. The paper may burn and the state could say hey, that contract is no longer valid, and we would still be married.
Having a wife and sister in law in the same house, I can tell you from experience. You don't want two wives!
That's pretty much the rule now. A priest, pastor or rabbi should be just in a different category from a shopkeeper. That really should be a 1st Amendment issue, as you indicate. If you'd asked me about five years ago, I'd've said that it was a settled issue. Scalia, of course, raised that bugaboo in orals the other day. Kagan disagreed. If the holding favors SS marriage, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the opinion didn't contain some legal limitations, to keep away from the 1st Amendment question in the future. In fact, the test case is already ready, out of Idaho, of all places. Coeur d'Alene has an ordinance requiring clergy of any sort to perform gay marriages. The owners of a wedding chapel (clergy!?!?) have been fined, for refusal to perform such. I also wouldn't be surprised to see a test case out of Alabama. Our statutes list who may perform marriages, not who must. Some judges of probate (Mobile) have declined to perform any marriages at all. This obviously raises the same issue. As I said, the supreme court may choose to solve this in advance, with a 1st Amendment protection built-in, if SS marriage is upheld. JMHO, but Kennedy's questioning didn't look good for SSM. OTOH, Roberts' questions showed some surprising twists. As I think I've said above, some place, at this point, I wouldn't be totally surprised by a decision favoring SSM, but with Roberts writing a separate, concurring opinion, based narrowly on sexual discrimination, rather than a broad constitutional right. Going to be interesting...
I've heard that echoed by others. OTOH, I've also know triads which seem to be happy with the arrangement, after decades...
We do share in a lot of ways, but the ''sexy'' is not one of them. As much as some think that would be a benefit, to us it is still cheating and is something neither I nor Mrs. Reb could ever do or condone being done. Although we have a triad living arrangement, our marriage remains as traditional as any other.
Simple. It's having to deal with the emotions and drama that one could expect from having two separate wives, and then having them live under the same roof, but confining the 'marital relations' to only one. The phrase I would use to describe it is "mentally challenging".
I think we had a thread about that Idaho case a while back.
