Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Wedding Photos Result In Polygamy Arrest In Michigan
An anonymous reader writes "Police in Michigan have arrested 34-year-old Richard Leon Barton Jr. on charges of polygamy, thanks to incriminating wedding photos on Facebook. The man unfriended his first wife on the social network before marrying his second wife, but unsurprisingly that wasn't enough."
Blah blah FACEBOOK blah ARREST blah!
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
It makes no sense to me that something like polygamy is an arrestable offense. Aside from the mediocre tax breaks you get from marriage, what are the benefits that you can glean from multiple marriages that would cause it to be inherently illegal?
Ok, why exactly is that a crime in the first place? Has that something to do with tax evasion or whatever or is that just moral code enforced by law?
> In general, societies enforced monogamy because otherwise men would marry a whole bunch of women
and leave back an army of unmarried angry young man. As to my knowledge the ban of polygamy was primarily to prevent a few wealthy old men marrying dozens of young women off the market and leaving hordes of young men without a way to reproduce, leading to explosive social unrest. The Bible had nothing to do with it, the Old Testament, on which the model of the Mormon practices and scriptures was based, was highly polygamous itself.
Contrary to some comments here, I am all about learning new FB horror stories. These stories provide me useful real-life evidence that I use when advising my friends (and my students) why they shouldn't ever post things that might get used against them. Think 10 times before hitting 'submit'.
RTFA. The first one was left without any explanation, and to the second one he said that he was divorced.
Yes, I am a biological organism. All rumors to the contrary are just that, rumors.
And why is the state even involved in regulating marriage?
Because marriage has legal status and benefits attached to it and stop people from abusing those benefits.
The question is why marriage should have any legal status at all.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
No, it's multiple mother-in-laws.
Except the tax breaks aren't for families; married couples without children are eligible for them too. That makes it an issue of fairness, not greed.
Also, by the way, some gays reject the compromise of "civil unions." They, at least, do want recognition.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Except the tax breaks aren't for families; married couples without children are eligible for them too
There's a slippery slop there. Many couples plan on having children, they make decisions based on that. To be fair, a couple that does not intend to have children is cheating on the system.
A totally neutral system would do away with all tax breaks for dependents, but it sucks to be born in a family that cannot sustain itself, so we give children a break. They never asked to be born, did they?
So make the tax breaks limited to cases where a family has at least one minor dependent. That takes care of traditional married couples with kids as well as gay couples who successfully adopt.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Er, China has a long history of polygamy, and was arguably one of the more stable countries throughout world history. They really only got fucked up under the communists, who were also monogamist-or-die type fellows. The richest guy in Macao (IIRC) has a few wives even still, and in modern Hong Kong the practice remains, though they're simply called mistresses now. It's considered acceptable (by everybody except the Christians) in Hong Kong, though under the don't-ask-don't-tell policy that governs a lot of Chinese public/private life.
To paint a broad brush, every society has always been monogamist for the poor, and polygamous for the rich. Belle Ãpoque France, ancient Israel, whatever. In modern America, we have Tiger Woods, Letterman, and the rest getting money and sleeping around. Not saying it's right, but it is certainly not anything new.
Given that neither wife knew about the other, this is definitely not polygamy. Polygamy is defined as "a marriage which includes more than two partners", and as the "partners" were in separate, distinct, relationships, this does not count.
What we have here is a clear-cut case of Bigamy on the man's part. Nothing unusual about that, as there have been many cases over the years.