The photographs today have nothing to do with the journal writing...

An anonymous reader of yesterday's BLOG post commented:

"If same sex marriages should be recognized due to equal rights issues, why not polygamous unions. What is your opinion on the rights of those who believe in and want to practice polygamy?"

Very good question about a form of marriage which I've not thought about seriously. I'm glad Anonymous has raised the issue. First, off the top of my head, making polygamy or same gender marriage illegal in civil law to keep civil law consistent with religious law would be a violation of the Constitution. I haven't studied the issue, so I don't know what the standard objections are under civil law. Just as there are thousands of couples, both heterosexual and homosexual, who cohabit in casual arrangements,   Polygamy is practiced not widely or formally in the United States and certainly not under any kind of legal civil law, but there are households in which three or more persons cohabit and consider themselves a family unit.  Polygamy as part of religious practice is legal in a few countries.  Considering the Fourteenth Amendment,  I'll certainly give it some thought.  

Thomas Jefferson apparently lived in a polygamous household, fathering children by his legal wife and by a female slave.More recently, Arnold Schwarzenegger, ex-Governor of California acknowledged that he fathered a child with a member of his household staff. The record indicates that those polygamous arrangements weren’t formally arranged and did not have the mutual consent all three people in either case.

More on the subject later. (Just checked: Jefferson is off the hook. He was not a polygamist. Cohabitation with extra benefits with Sally Hemings began after his wife died. More on that later.

On the other hand, maybe this picture from the cactus garden in Balboa Park is appropriate for a consideration of the various forms of cohabiting unions, legal of not, which are possible.

...On my back to my car after a volunteer stint at the Museum of Photographic Arts.