MuadDib

Sorry, but that "in depth" study is not a study at all. It's a research critique and it's completely generalized at that. It isn't critiquing specific research done by the institutions named and, moreover, the problems it has with the research often just don't apply. Anyone who has ever done scientific social research knows that there is no such thing as a perfect study. There is no perfect random & representative sample, there is no way to prevent people from dropping out or not completing the study, there is no perfect lab setting, and so on and so on. The question that is important is if there imperfections in every study are so great as to remove the internal and/or external validity of the study. Whether the answer is "yes" or "no" its still part of the "research loop". That is why more than one study is done under different conditions to see if the results of the previous studies still hold up. And you know what? In this case they do. In what cases doesn't it hold up? In the same situations as heterosexual households. Ex. abusive, negligent, split, or generally emotionally unstable households.

Now back to the marriage issue, which is seperate from (but related to) the parenting issue that we've gotten side-tracked on. We are talking about equal, civil rights here. These are distinguishable from religious rights (I think that's been adequately covered) and a sweeping libertarian freedom claim. The latter is what seperates it from polygamy and incest. The civil rights, policy argument here is not that anyone should be allowed to marry as many people as they want regardless of age or involvement. While that is a fine philosophical notion, when it gets down to it most people aren't willing to stand by everything that implies. However, the civil rights argument is that homosexuals are entitled to the same legal recognition of their arrangement as heterosexuals. The fact of the matter is that polygamy doesn't fit in with the legal manner in which marriage is constructed. I'm not talking about social taboos or that people thought/think its not right/unnatural. What I am talking about is the legal institution of marriage is only constructed to deal with two people in a relationship and the law isn't prepared to deal with varying numbers. Maybe that's a deficiency in the law and ought to be corrected, but nonetheless a lot of legislative work would need to be done to bring polygamy into the legal fold. With incest the story is also legally complicated because of the structure of legal relations, sister/cousin/daughter/wife complicates the process of legal authority, estate control, inheritance, etc. Moreover, both polygamy & incest tend to be exploitive in that they occur between an adult and a legal infant (under the age of majority). Out of this arises the problem of the rights of one of the member of that relationship possibly being harmed. That is not a concern in homosexual relationships. In these relationships there are still the same protections on the rights of partners, they fit into our legal structure that is mostly gender neutral, and which, in the end, is not an issue of condoning any type of relation but about the law not ignoring any particular person or group of people based arbitrarily upon an otherwise legal sexual practice.

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"The courts that first rode the warhorse of virtual representation into battle on the res judicata front invested their steed with near-magical properties." ~27 F.3d 751