That is indeed a tough one. When you have a nation that supports many religions, boiling down their differences to a 'least common denominator' is tough.
I have no objection to polygamy, between consenting adults, in both directions. But, I'm sure you'd have to place legal restrictions so you don't get people 'gaming' the system, like marrying 50 guys who want into the country. Probably have to have some sort of 'primary' mate...like a 'franchise' player...wait, it's getting too weird...no comment.
Pedophilia is different. We need to protect our children, sometimes with laws that are more limiting than to those of age. I don't think I would be in support of marriage below a certain age.
Btw: the argument in that Islamic paper was that Mohammed was not a pedophile, because he didn't specifically target young women. In fact, some of his wives were downright elderly (50+), and he married them because they were widows and needed someone to take care of them. Since young marriages were also common in Christian nations, I've said that this was not considered unusual in the historical context. There is apparently no real data on when the marriage was consummated, but the social laws seemed to indicate that they would wait for puberty. Anyway, nine years old seems awfully young, and I would certainly not approve of anything remotely near that today. |
