Same-Sex Marriage Is a Right, Supreme Court Rules

There are actually "religious" organizations who for a small fee will give you a certificate to act as a minister to perform a weddings, no dogma required. I believe these are accepted in all states.

In my state of Colorado, a couple can marry themselves without the need for any official from the state or religion. Couples marrying themselves are free to ask a friend to stand in as an informal "official" during a ceremony, but legally, they sign the marriage certificate as having married themselves.

In the US the question of gay marriage is really about the government recognizing the it and giving gays and lesbians the legal rights and responsibilities found in marriage. Most church's will continue to be against it and not perform such ceremonies. Although a few, such as my own Unitarian Universalist have been advocating for gay marriage for decades.

Marriage fraud is marriage fraud--an application for marriage doesn't prevent that even presenting themselves before court officers.

However, there's a whole discussion on how tax benefits for married couples is in violation of the equal protection clause...

There are green card marriages.

In the case of the first, we have decided that we will still give the kid citizenship. In the case of the second, we don't allow it (if we catch it).

I'm pretty sure you can marry without a marriage license. You just aren't legally married, i.e. you don't get all the legal benefits.

> A marriage should be recognized in the same manner that we issue a birth certificate

In the case of a birth there is a clear indisputable fact: a child is born, therefore a new human being that must be taken care of and have rights as a citizen is added to the world.

That's a pretty clear event to which a birth certificate can be attached. Is there such an equivalent for marriage?

Because you're applying for an official recognition of your marriage for which the government grants various benefits, and the government can in fact refuse it (for siblings for instance)

Because you cannot be married to two different people at the same time. Marriage is not an event that happens, it's a legal contract that cannot be in conflict with an existing legal contract. A new marriage does not immediately nullify the existing contract, so an application must be processed to verify this.

There are also other things that need to be verified like age.

Should be, but isn't. Gay couples have been having expensive lawyers write these contracts for twenty years or so and when push comes to shove, they often don't mean shit. That's why we have been pushing for marriage rights.

The other issue is divorce. I know someone who is going through the end of a messy breakup with his long-term boyfriend. They met before marriage or civil partnership were a thing and the process of untangling shared assets, property, mortgages and so on is really complicated.

No. United State v Windsor (the DOMA case) proved that. Spouses have estate tax exemptions. Windsor sued the IRS for $363,053 in estate taxes that she paid to them because the IRS didn't recognize her and her wife as legally married for tax purposes even thought New York did.

Civil marriage is a form of a "normal contract."

However to make that equivalently semantic "government version" union would require changing of a large amount of legal text (e.g. taxation legislation). If the "government version" was simply a stand-in for "married" (i.e., reusing the variable) then what difference has been achieved even semantically?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_solidarity_pact

I have a suspicion that in the end, it will turn out to be best not to make any special legal provision for poly marriages. The law will recognize couples, and those couples will be free, as indeed they are today, to make whatever informal arrangements with other parties they wish. In a few areas -- hospital visitation rights are a good example -- I think it would work to detach the right from legal marriage altogether, and just let people declare who may visit them, etc. But the legal system has to know who is legally responsible for each child, and I don't think it can be more than two people -- even two is often problematic, as we know from long experience.

Joking aside, you'll notice a lot of parallels between a business partnership structure and marriages in general. Including the liability parts!

"Personal liability is a major concern if you use a general partnership to structure your business. Like sole proprietors, general partners are personally liable for the partnership's obligations and debts. Each general partner can act on behalf of the partnership, take out loans and make decisions that will affect and be binding on all the partners"

But it's an expensive option given all the paperwork (and taxes) you'd have to file at least once a year.

In the UK, you'd probably be better off incorporating as a trust - perhaps even a charitable trust, if you can find a good enough cover story.

And you may think you're joking, but a lot of families set up financial trusts for their assets for exactly these reasons.

It would be unusual for a trust to include non-married partners, but I don't see why it would be impossible.

Corporations can't issue medical directives for an incapacitated person.

Corporate shareholders don't get hospital visitation rights or medical insurance via someone's job, et c.

One part that might be different is the special rules for child custody, but there are extramarital legal arrangements for that too.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/02/up-for-pol...

It's not a majority vote under monogamy, by the way, so why would it be under polygamy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_and_responsibilities_of...

Yes we did. Black people were legally discriminated against for almost 100 years until the Civil Rights Act. And before that, we were slaves until the 14th Amendment. Similarly, women weren't allowed to vote until the 19th Amendment.

I'm all for civil disobedience in the face of injustice. And I'm 100% for gay rights. And I'm ecstatic about the court's decision today. I think it was undeniably right from a moral perspective. But it was probably wrong from a legal perspective, and that's worrisome.

That's nonsense. I'd stay married to my wife even if it were illegal.

Hardly the place to look for the origin of ancient traditions...

You're just trying to rationalize your prejudice by pretending it's about fertility.

The decades and decades of non-consensual infant "corrective" surgery of people with intersex conditions, leading to physical and mental damage (and in some cases involuntary sterilisation), suggests otherwise...

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/07/should-we-...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/special-repor...

Ridiculous concept. Most of human history was based on a gift economy, in small groups not couples, partly because it was unlikely to know for certain that one specific kid was yours. It's only later on that humans lived in smaller and smaller groups. The concept of a nuclear family is relatively new, in fact many societies still have the entire first degree family living together (India).

And besides, we're all tired of the argument, marriage today has little resemblance to its old form.

You know why you ask the girl's father's permission when asking her hand in marriage? Because traditionally, girls were the property of their fathers and it was literally a transfer of goods. So I don't really care what happened for "millions of years".

>>> There's no point in formal social recognition of a union if there's no chance of reproductive consequences thereof.

I beg to differ. There are many many many legal reasons one would want to get married to your loved one, I won't bother explaining them to you, as I'm sure you know them.

You can redefine the purpose of marriage however you want, but at the end of the day, legally there is no mention of procreation when you sign a marriage certificate. Unless you are seriously suggesting we should verify the fertility of couples before they get married?

The real reason for official recognition of unions is that, as a married man/woman, you are less likely to create damage to society, you are seen more stable, it has nothing to do with your ability to procreate.

Citation needed. Plus, the benefits have to outweigh the costs: tax breaks, unhappy folks (would that cause health issues?) stuck in the bad marriages etc.

I am guessing availability for comparatively stable social unit for raising kids might be a large enough positive, but the benefits should then be for families who raise kids, potentially scaled with the number of kids (don't know if that's already the case). Even the other benefits you mentioned, have nothing to do with marriage - civil unions (or even group of not-romantically-involved-with-each-other friends) can make citizens happier, productive, less likely to need handouts, raise children well (if single parents can, why not multiple parents?) and produce taxable wealth.

I'm disinclined to celebrate an expansion of rights of a group that mostly relies on a "gotta get mine" mindset than one of true principles of liberty.

> Long term, religious people are worried that our institution and faith will not be allowed to continue if a super-majority deems us unworthy - as we have seen through history.

A sincere question: I can see that risk for small religious minorities facing a history of discrimtination (e.g., Jews and Muslims). But most people talking about this are white-skinned Protestants and Catholics. Have they ever been subject to discrimination in the U.S.? And aren't they the most powerful political grouping in the country?

There was discrimination against Catholics in prior generations, but I don't see that now (just look at the Supreme Court!).

Indeed. You, or any other religious group, can have whatever prohibitions you believe in your own lives, homes and churches. Different groups can have different prohibitions. However, they must therefore be kept separate and out of the public law and state, because that space can only accomodate one or zero religions. The US constitution specifies zero: no establishment of religion. This enforces a ceasefire between the doctrines that would otherwise fight to be the one doctrine that has control of the state, as Europe experienced during the Reformation and Islam is experiencing in the Sunni-Shia conflict.

For decades if not longer it was non-straight people who were deemed unworthy and not allowed freedom from persecution by the religious supermajority. There really isn't a desire to put the boot on the other foot - provided you don't condemn people.

Perhaps if the spiritual and temporal benefits of marriage were entirely separable this wouldn't be a problem. But the UK tried it with civil partnerships and it was so obviously a "separate but equal" (ie not equal) arrangement that full equal marriage was enacted.

If the church has a problem with this, it should divorce the state.

In neighbouring Sweden, church and state separated in the year 2000, so when same-sex marriage was finally made legal in 2010, this was simply not an issue. The Church of Sweden can deny same-sex marriages on its premises and by its staff if it so chooses.

The key point about the Idaho ministers is this: "The Hitching Post has apparently in the past operated as a for-profit business and offered civil services as well as religious ceremonies. Earlier this month, it either became a religious organization or decided to present itself as such. If the Knapps are operating and plan to continue operating the Hitching Post as a religious organiztion, they have no reason to fear prosecution from the city."

In fact, they agreed that some people should be slaves to others and only landholding white males should vote. But the founding fathers intentions are not decisive or necessarily even important (and relying on grasping their intentions is, as I understand it, is not a legal principle but just one philosophy of many).

To emphasize the difference in perspectives: This is not a religion; the Founding Fathers are not gods, and they did not hand down scripture to us. They were the citizens of their day, they did what they did (I think they did very well), and we are the citizens of our day, to do what we think best. That's the essence of democracy; the Constitution and country are now ours, not the property or responsibility of 18th century or 19th century or any other ancestors; they belong to the people, to make of it what we will.

If you think about it, it's a very conservative and pessmistic idea to say we must appeal to these ancient authorities to decide things for us, that we can't do it ourselves just as well (and if you read about the people and politics of that era, you will see they were no different than us). A more optimistic and I think democratic point of view is to say (it's a well-known idea but I don't know who I'm quoting ...), "We are the ones we've been waiting for'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQIkLTLf_IQ

A constitutional amendment was necessary for women's suffrage because the constitution already spoke on the issue

(Scalia, I): "...Take, for example, this Court, which consists of only nine men and women, all of them successful lawyers, who studied at Harvard or Yale Law School. Four of the nine are natives of New York City. Eight of them grew up in east- and west-coast States. Only one hails from the vast expanse in-between. Not a single South-westerner or even, to tell the truth, a genuine Westerner (California does not count). Not a single evangelical Christian (a group that comprises about one quarter of Americans19), or even a Protestant of any denomination. The strikingly unrepresentative character of the body voting on today’s social upheaval would be irrelevant if they were functioning as judges, answering the legal question whether the American people had ever ratified a constitutional provision that was understood to proscribe the traditional definition of marriage. But of course the Justices in today’s majority are not voting on that basis; they say they are not. And to allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation..."

Children are not considered capable of consent.

> Why not allow brothers and sisters to marry?

Claimed societal interest in preventing harm to offspring born from inbreeding.

> I'm not trying to make a slippery slope argument. I'm really asking.

OK, well now you have a couple answers.

Siblings/cousins creep most people out due to inbreeding, but honestly I don't really see a problem with it if they promise to not have kids. (I'm an only child though, so I don't have any perspective)

Polygamy also seems like it should be legal to me, as long as everyone is a fully consenting adult.

Basically I just think the government should just stay out of peoples lives as much as possible.

Your question — whose dignity falls under the scope of consideration — is the tricky one here. This is malleable and in the US Constitution is reinterpreted as views change. The majority's view is that, as we have seen states experiment with gay marriage and civil unions, we have found the arguments against them to be untenable. We've never defined marriage as being about procreation (e.g. if a man and a post-menopausal woman want to marry that's never been an issue) and we hold it as a form of social cohesion (which applies in LBGT unions, as seen in state who have allowed them.)

Why not siblings? This has a genetic argument against it that was not addressed here. Why not 12 year olds? We don't see their union as a part of the social construct. Again, this decision isn't about tearing down the definition of marriage. It upholds the definition of marriage and says that it applies to same sex couples.

States screwed up when they took the civil part of marriage and associated it with the ceremonial part in a church.

Marriage is a legal contract. 12 year olds can't enter into legal contracts (alone). Therefore, 12 year olds can't get married. This also takes care of pedophiles marrying children.

Gay people are born gay. So this is different from polygamy. Animals can't enter into legal contracts. So this is different from bestiality.

As an aside, my girlfriend just pointed out to me that it is hard to justify laws against incest (two adult relatives). Maybe we shouldn't have such laws.

The best way, in my opinion, to look at this issue is to see marriage not as some kind of weird lovey-dovey thing, but to see it as what it is, a legal contract that has special consideration in many areas of the law and society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_marriage_in_the_United_...

Brothers and sisters does seems to me like it's just people think of it as icky. Some cultures encourage marrying first cousins and the genetic risks are minimal. And even people that aren't related can and are tested for whether their genes combined will likely lead to genetic issues with their children. In other words the genetic risk is mostly not a valid excuse to ban siblings from marrying anymore than not being able to create children is for same sex couples.

12 year olds can't provide informed consent.

> Why not allow brothers and sisters to marry?

I actually don't object to this, so long as they're not permitted to have biological children. The primary reason why incest is bad is because of the genetic damage caused by it; eliminate that problem (by preventing the possibility of said damage), and there's not really that much of a reason left to forbid it (other than a potential "ick" factor, but that's mostly subjective).

For example, state governments can require a person to have a driver's license before driving a car. This discriminates against people who don't have a license, but the support for it is rooted in a good reason: safety. Requiring people to pass a brief examination to show their knowledge of traffic laws and possession of the basic skills of driving is quite reasonable, and so driver's licenses are a permitted form of discrimination.

Similarly, people under a certain age typically cannot enter into contracts on their own. The support for this comes from the fact that younger people are less likely to be mature and knowledgeable and understand what they're getting into, so restricting it to a particular age (typically, the age at which one graduates from the public school system) and requiring the advice and consent of someone over that age for a minor to enter a contract is reasonable, and is permitted.

Over the past few years we've seen multiple alleged justifications for banning same-sex marriage asserted in courts, and each time they've been knocked down as nonsensical or even as contradicting the other policies of the state which advanced those arguments.

For example, we've seen an argument advanced that states have an interest in ensuring the production and safe rearing of future generations, that marriage is provided for the sole purpose of advancing that interest, and so a same-sex couple (who cannot procreate) should be excluded from marriage. Except this argument falls apart if you so much as breathe lightly on it: states which make this argument do not require any sort of commitment to have children from a heterosexual couple, and in fact will grant marriage licenses to couples known to be sterile, and many of them allow same-sex couples to adopt and raise children.

The result of this process has been that there really is no alleged justification or purpose left, other than "we don't like same-sex couples, largely for religious reasons". And that's not something our country allows as a justification for a law ("we don't like that kind of people" stopped being allowed about a half-century ago).

In these cases you can reach a situation where the democratically elected representatives will hold an opinion that is more conservative than that of the general population.

In this case, whatever shortcut mechanism can be exploited to bring the legislation closer to the general opinion, it will be cheered by the general population.

The decision was not made through the normal channels, but people are happy nevertheless.

It's not gay marriage, it's same-sex marriage. This is a subtle but extremely important distinction.

Gay people have always been allowed to marry. They haven't been allowed to marry the people they want, but a gay man was allowed to marry a gay woman in every state in the union. Similarly, straight people were not allowed to marry other straight people of the same sex.

Marriage is just a matter of straight-up sex discrimination. Bob can marry Jane but Susan can't, because Bob is a man and Susan is a woman. That's clearly discrimination based purely on the sex of the participants (and not the sexual orientation, which is merely the thing that might cause Susan to want to do this, but not relevant to whether it's allowed) and IMO a clear violation of the equal protection clause.

Laws are supposed to be sex blind. If a man can legally do something, a woman should be able to legally do it as well. That was not the case with marriage before this decision.

And I didn't say the supreme court needs to step in, I said the federal government needs to step in.

It's like I tell my liberal friends: if you want to regulate guns, it's very simple: repeal the second amendment.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court, by virtue of the fact that the Union army won the civil war.

If you don't like it, you can always try to get the Fourteenth Amendment repealed. Maybe the Thirteenth too while you're at it. Good luck with that.

I've been studying this issue (and writing about it) for twelve years. I doubt very much there is an argument on either side I haven't heard.

But this is a red herring. It doesn't matter whether gay marriage is or is not a good thing for the country. (I think it is, but that's irrelevant too.) What matters is if it's protected by the Constitution.

So here's the test: do you think that states can Constitutionally ban interracial marriage? If so, then we'll just have to agree to disagree. But if not, then I submit that you cannot oppose same-sex marriage without being a hypocrite. There is no argument against gay marriage that cannot be applied just as well to interracial marriage.

If you think there is such an argument, I'm listening.

Opinions among historians seem to vary, but the impression I've gotten (albeit not with any careful study) has been that the slave states likely would have been extremely slow to abolish slavery, because:

1) the dollar value ascribed to enslaved people represented a huge proportion of the wealth of politically-powerful slave owners; and

2) many non-slave-owning voters in the slave states --- all white males, of course --- aspired to become slave owners and thus tended to sympathize with the interests of slave owners.

Don't forget that liberal madness about replacing monarchs with elected government!

About 60% of US residents now support gay marriage and consider it a right, according to the polls.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_of_same-sex_mar...

As a counterpoint: Since the civil rights era, the welfare and integration of the black-skinned Americans has improved dramatically. Some argue that desegregation alienated more hearts and minds than it helped, but I've yet to see any evidence. Certainly American opinions about blacks also have changed dramatically. (But I agree that we do have a long way to go.)

> No hearts and no minds are changed as a result of the supreme court rulings, just the code powering the justice system ...

I'm not sure no hearts and minds were changed -- I suspect many will reconsider, having seen the decision of a respected institution and the direction of society -- but I agree that you can't do that by court order. But there is a very substantive change: Gay Americans now can get married!

We've proven as a society that this won't happen without administrative action being taken from the top.

The legality has real consequences for people right this second, so waiting for the tide of change is absurd to ask of those that are affected.

Both fronts can be attacked simultaneously.

Though, I do agree there is a trend to pass a stopgap measure and to then pretend the problem is fixed.

This assumes that peoples' moral judgments aren't influenced by societal opinion and that societal opinion isn't influenced by laws and the opinions of its leaders/elites. That seems like a tough case to make.

Today's decision pushes back the more important goals of social equality and cultural integration.

How so?

1) A culture of segregation in the minds of part of the population AND segregative laws.

or

2) A culture of segregation in the minds of part of the population.

I would say 2 is better than 1. They already fixed part of it. And a part that was hurting a lot of people.

Historically, it seems to be the case that when society legalizes something, and people can observe that under that new order, society doesn't crumble, societal attitudes on the morality of that thing change to reflect the reality (albeit slowly).

Consider women's suffrage. Consider no-fault divorce. Consider black men and white men being forced to serve side-by-side in WWII by the draft, then coming home to a country that still treated them unequal in the eyes of the law.

It's not a 100% consistent scenario (contrast abortion rights debate in the wake of Roe v. Wade), but the trend is for culture to adapt in the face of evidence.

A lot of the "hearts and minds" you talk about are animated by "tradition", which is often code for "continuing to do the thing I grew up with". The legal code changes what people grow up with, thereby changing future hearts and minds.

Take a look at the graph of approval rates of interracial marriage:

http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Prod...

Some of the change there is changing hearts and minds. But a lot of it is just the replacement of bigoted hearts and minds with new ones.

As Max Planck wrote, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

And if that's true for science, it's much more so for cultural things like this. I think there's little point in continuing to harm GLBT families in the hopes of preserving the delicate feelings of people who were unlikely to change anyhow.

(edit: Holy cow this post got downvotes! If you think this is wrong please go read pretty much literally anything on the topic of the bill of rights by literally any of the founding fathers. Protecting the rights of democratic minorities was a very, very, VERY explicit goal of the bill of rights.)

Another really helpful thing to remember about the Constitution is that it's incoherent. The framers were not logicians and the Constitution was not an exercise in formal consistency. There are provisions and even rights that conflict directly with each other.

And that's by design, too. The idea is to set up an enduring process that will generally converge, like a good distributed commit algorithm, on the citizenry having access to the channels of power. When that system arrives at a circumstance that implicates a conflicting set of Constitutional mandates, the design of the system is "fuck it, let smart judges chosen (at some remove) by the people resolve that."

The justices are supposed to be referees. They aren't supposed to change the outcome of the game. But anyone who's ever watched more than a couple baseball games knows that it's tough to keep refereeing and outcomes separate.

It happens to make sense to me that (a) allowing MS to deny full faith and credit to MA marriages is overt support for discrimination against LGBT people: it's using an implied principle (respect for people's belief in religious sanctity of marriage) to upturn an explicit principle, and (b) allowing MS to effectively monkeywrench the decisions of other states, so that you're effectively un-married if your job moves you from IA to MS, is undemocratic. So I think the refs made a good call this time. But reasonable people can see it differently.

So your saying you don't mind if people are a little bit religious as long has they are not fully devout to the principles of their religion?

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04353r.pdf

Had they challenged benefits laws, that would change the equal protection analysis significantly. But in this lawsuit, given what they've actually challenged, the normal precedent would be to apply the rational basis test, and nothing stronger.

Again, i'll quote roberts, who quotes lawrence:

"In any event, the marriage laws at issue here do not violate the Equal Protection Clause, because distinguishing between opposite-sex and same-sex couples is rationally related to the States’ “legitimate state interest” in “preserving the traditional institution of marriage.”" Lawrence, 539 U. S., at 585.

(Now, you could argue this isn't a legitimate state interest, but that's a pretty resolved question at this point, and would require overruling about 200 years of precedent on the issue :P)

The majority doesn't even bother to argue otherwise.

Second, the vast majority of the opinion does not rest on any equal protection claim, and not even the majority takes that argument seriously on these facts given the above. In fact, the majority doesn't even explain how their argument that this is correct works. They don't even spend a paragraph explaining it, just make a conclusory statement.

So to answer your question, i don't claim what you are stating would in fact, be offering equal protection, but will point out

A. This isn't actually the case before the court

B. Resolving that case does not require declaring states must issue same sex marriage licenses. It would probably require that those validly marriage be given the same benefits. SCOTUS is supposed to go out of it's way to not resolve questions not before it, and when they do resolve questions, they generally resolve them in the least sweeping way possible.

I'm aware of loving, which said nothing different? Loving basically said the same thing i did - they need a legitimate state interest. Race based discrimination is not a legitimate state interest. Therefore, Loving falls.

That is sane legal theory. But it doesn't change this case?

"So you are saying that every social issue must end with a constitutional amendment? The 14th amendment is already there. Why must we repeat the mistakes of the past every time a new issue comes along? Are you suggesting we should go to war to settle same sex marriage?"

So what is your view on the 14th amendment. What do you think equal protection means? Because what you've said here essentially implies you think the 14th amendment swallows the rest of the constitution, when instead, the 14th amendment has very specific application.

"You have not established this conclusion with anything you said. Nothing in this comment strikes me as from a "lawyer" but what do I know, I'm just an astronaut doctor lawyer in space."

You haven't actually refuted any point i've made. If you are arguing i am not a lawyer, that's fairly easy to verify. Past that, why actually listen to a lawyer, when you can cite that great legal authority, wikipedia.

If you want to make a legal argument, make one. Simply saying "Loving", does not work, because Loving is different.

For example, in Massachusetts anyone can become a marriage officiant by applying to the governor. There's a form; permission is always granted. As a result, I have performed two marriages.

The better question is, what happens to a civil official who declares that it is against their religion to perform their civil duty?

Religious institutions are not considered public accommodations so they are not required to offer their services without discrimination to protected classes.

But you're also wrong! Polygamy refers to any marriage that has more than two partners, gender identity is irrelevant.

One man many women is polygynyz one woman many men is polyandry. Polyamory is multiple partners.

Yes, I already had noticed this.

> Old Testament law and prophesy is woven deeply in the fabric of the gospels and of Paul's letters.

Just for curiosity, have you ever happened to actually read the Bible? There are plenty of prescriptions in the Old Testament that are not followed by Jesus. Jesus presented himself as "The Truth", and he often said he was giving "a new commandment". To rest on Saturday, to stone an adulteress, to be forced to marry your brother's widow have never been Christian commandments. And polygamy enters in this list.

The fact that for a small amount of time a small minority of Mormons (a small minority in the Christian world, less than 1% of the total) have accepted polygamy does not make this practice "Christian". Otherwise, if one follows the same line of reasoning, encyclopaedias should classify deers as "omnivorous", because in extreme conditions there have been reports of deers eating frogs and small mammals...

EDIT: minor edits.

Every instance of polygamy has a bad ending in the Bible.