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[quote="Guest"][quote="Guest"][quote="Guest"]What if I want to marry my sister?[/quote]

The state outlawing you marrying your sister is not legal discrimination because "sisters" are not a recognized class or group in our society.  Someone can be a sister but "sisters" are not a class.  Race, gender, religion, age, sexual orientation, people with disabilities are recognized classes that are entitled to protection against discrimination.

The better and more common example is the State outlawing polygamist marriage.  Putting aside marriages to minors which where the State's obligation to protect the welfare of them minor supersedes protection of religious freedom (and our Constitution is clear that your individual rights end when they trample on another's), preventing plural marriage between 3 or more consenting adults for religious reasons could arguably classified as discrimination on the basis of their religion.

However, the state has defined marriage as between two people.  Since a third person is not a legal "class or group" it can't be discriminated against.  What becomes discrimination is saying marriage is between two people but not certain kinds of people.  It is not discrimination to say marriage is between 2 people versus 3 or 5 or 10.  Again, this applies to the state's role in the institution.  Whether the state has the right to prevent plural marriage recognition by a religion, with none of the benefits or distinctions of the legal status is an entirely different matter.

From a legal and constitutional basis this whole problem is really the result of people using the state legal status of marriage to effectively become a club with special benefits conferred by the state.  If people had left marriage a strictly religious institution we would have no problem here.  A given religion can define what it constitutes as marriage and if two or more people want to be married they can shop for a religion that acknowledges their preferences or simply live together and consider themselves married (as many, many heterosexual couples did throughout history and in the early days of this country before there was state advantage to it and when religious recognition was not always practical, or at least had to be deferred often for years past having kids, etc.).  Instead, we have created all kinds of state-sanctioned benefits to marriage from tax advantages to legal protections.  Once we did this, we created a basis for discrimination and an issue of separation of church and state if we were going to narrowly define the benefits the state was rewarding only only the basis of certain religion's definition of marriage.

There are three ways out of this.  Stop conferring the state benefits to the institution or don't discriminate.  Or, three, rip up the constitution and throw a couple of the core values our country was built on out the window.  I prefer one of the first two.  As a married person who enjoys the state-sanctioned benefits, I most prefer the second, stopping discrimination.[/quote]

Thanks for your explanation, but I'm not looking for a better and more common example. My question is why can't I marry my sister? or Mother? Or Father? Or any other consenting adult. If marriage in the eyes of the government is not about sex or procreation and simply a contract between two consenting adults who love each other and want to enter a contract whereby they can access certain rights and privileges... why can't I marry my sister?[/quote]

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