Welcome to the exciting new world of the slippery slope. With the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling this Friday legalizing same sex marriage in all 50 states, social liberalism has achieved one of its central goals. A right seemingly unthinkable two decades ago has now been broadly applied to a whole new class of citizens. Following on the rejection of interracial marriage bans in the 20th Century, the Supreme Court decision clearly shows that marriage should be a broadly applicable right—one that forces the government to recognize, as Friday’s decision said, a private couple’s “love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family.”
The question presents itself: Where
does the next advance come? The answer is going to make nearly everyone
uncomfortable: Now that we’ve defined that love and devotion and family isn’t
driven by gender alone, why should it be limited to just two individuals? The
most natural advance next for marriage lies in legalized polygamy—yet many of
the same people who pressed for marriage equality for gay couples oppose it.
This is not an abstract issue. In
Chief Justice John Roberts’ dissenting opinion, he remarks, “It is striking how
much of the majority’s reasoning would apply with equal force to the claim of a
fundamental right to plural marriage.” As is often the case with critics of
polygamy, he neglects to mention why this is a fate to be feared. Polygamy
today stands as a taboo just as strong as same-sex marriage was several decades
ago—it’s effectively only discussed as outdated jokes about Utah and Mormons,
who banned the practice over 120 years ago.
Yet the moral reasoning behind
society’s rejection of polygamy remains just as uncomfortable and legally weak
as same-sex marriage opposition was until recently.
That’s one reason why progressives
who reject the case for legal polygamy often don’t really appear to have their
hearts in it. They seem uncomfortable voicing their objections, clearly unused
to being in the position of rejecting the appeals of those who would codify
non-traditional relationships in law. They are, without exception, accepting of
the right of consenting adults to engage in whatever sexual and romantic
relationships they choose, but oppose the formal, legal recognition of those
relationships. They’re trapped, I suspect, in prior opposition that they voiced
from a standpoint of political pragmatism in order to advance the cause of gay
marriage.
In doing so, they do real harm to
real people. Marriage is not just a formal codification of informal
relationships. It’s also a defensive system designed to protect the interests
of people whose material, economic and emotional security depends on the
marriage in question. If my liberal friends recognize the legitimacy of free
people who choose to form romantic partnerships with multiple partners, how can
they deny them the right to the legal protections marriage affords?
Polyamory is a fact. People
are living in group relationships today. The question is not whether they will
continue on in those relationships. The question is whether we will grant to
them the same basic recognition we grant to other adults: that love makes
marriage, and that the right to marry is exactly that, a right.
Why the opposition, from those who
have no interest in preserving “traditional marriage” or forbidding polyamorous
relationships? I think the answer has to do with political momentum, with a
kind of ad hoc-rejection of polygamy as necessary political concession. And in
time, I think it will change.
The marriage equality movement has
been both the best and worst thing that could happen for legally sanctioned
polygamy. The best, because that movement has required a sustained and
effective assault on “traditional marriage” arguments that reflected no
particular point of view other than that marriage should stay the same because
it’s always been the same. In particular, the notion that procreation and
child-rearing are the natural justification for marriage has been dealt a
terminal injury. We don’t, after all, ban marriage for those who can’t
conceive, or annul marriages that don’t result in children, or make couples
pinkie swear that they’ll have kids not too long after they get married. We
have insisted instead that the institution exists to enshrine in law a special
kind of long-term commitment, and to extend certain essential logistical and
legal benefits to those who make that commitment. And rightly so.
But the marriage equality movement
has been curiously hostile to polygamy, and for a particularly unsatisfying
reason: short-term political need. Many conservative opponents of marriage
equality have made the slippery slope argument, insisting that same-sex marriages
would lead inevitably to further redefinition of what marriage is and means.
See, for example, Rick Santorum’s infamous “man on dog” comments, in which he
equated the desire of two adult men or women to be married with bestiality.
Polygamy has frequently been a part of these slippery slope arguments. Typical
of such arguments, the reasons why marriage between more than two partners
would be destructive were taken as a given. Many proponents of marriage
equality, I’m sorry to say, went along with this evidence-free indictment of
polygamous matrimony. They choose to side-step the issue by insisting that gay
marriage wouldn’t lead to polygamy. That legally sanctioned polygamy was a fate
worth fearing went without saying.
To be clear: our lack of legal recognition
of group marriages is not the fault of the marriage equality movement. Rather,
it’s that the tactics of that movement have made getting to serious discussions
of legalized polygamy harder. I say that while recognizing the unprecedented
and necessary success of those tactics. I understand the political pragmatism
in wanting to hold the line—to not be perceived to be slipping down the slope.
To advocate for polygamy during the marriage equality fight may have seemed to
confirm the socially conservative narrative, that gay marriage augured a
wholesale collapse in traditional values. But times have changed; while work
remains to be done, the immediate danger to marriage equality has passed. In
2005, a denial of the right to group marriage stemming from political
pragmatism made at least some sense. In 2015, after this ruling, it no longer
does.
While important legal and practical
questions remain unresolved, with the Supreme Court’s ruling and broad public
support, marriage equality is here to stay. Soon, it will be time to turn the
attention of social liberalism to the next horizon. Given that many of us have
argued, to great effect, that deference to tradition is not a legitimate reason
to restrict marriage rights to groups that want them, the next step seems
clear. We should turn our efforts towards the legal recognition of marriages
between more than two partners. It’s time to legalize polygamy.
Conventional arguments against polygamy fall apart with even a little examination.
Appeals to traditional marriage, and the notion that child rearing is the only
legitimate justification of legal marriage, have now, I hope, been exposed and
discarded by all progressive people. What’s left is a series of jerry-rigged
arguments that reflect no coherent moral vision of what marriage is for, and
which frequently function as criticisms of traditional marriage as well.
Many argue that polygamous marriages
are typically sites of abuse, inequality in power and coercion. Some refer to
sociological research showing a host of ills that are associated with
polygamous family structures. These claims are both true and beside the point.
Yes, it’s true that many polygamous marriages come from patriarchal systems,
typically employing a “hub and spokes” model where one husband has several
wives who are not married to each other. These marriages are often of the
husband-as-boss variety, and we have good reason to suspect that such models
have higher rates of abuse, both physical and emotional, and coercion. But this
is a classic case of blaming a social problem on its trappings rather than on
its actual origins.
After all, traditional marriages
often foster abuse. Traditional marriages are frequently patriarchal.
Traditional marriages often feature ugly gender and power dynamics. Indeed,
many would argue that marriage’s origins stem from a desire to formalize
patriarchal structures within the family in the first place. We’ve pursued
marriage equality at the same time as we’ve pursued more equitable, more
feminist heterosexual marriages, out of a conviction that the franchise is
worth improving, worth saving. If we’re going to ban marriages because some are
sites of sexism and abuse, then we’d have to start with the old fashioned
one-husband-and-one-wife model. If polygamy tends to be found within religious
traditions that seem alien or regressive to the rest of us, that is a function
of the very illegality that should be done away with. Legalize group marriage
and you will find its connection with abuse disappears.
Another common argument, and another
unsatisfying one, is logistical. In this telling, polygamous marriages would
strain the infrastructure of our legal systems of marriage, as they are not
designed to handle marriage between more than two people. In particular, the
claim is frequently made that the division of property upon divorce or death
would be too complicated for polygamous marriages. I find this argument eerily
reminiscent of similar efforts to dismiss same-sex marriage on practical
grounds. (The forms say husband and wife! What do you want us to do, print new
forms?) Logistics, it should go without saying, are insufficient reason to deny
human beings human rights.
If current legal structures and
precedents aren’t conducive to group marriage, then they will be built in time.
The comparison to traditional marriage is again instructive. We have, after
all, many decades of case law and legal organization dedicated to marriage, and
yet divorce and family courts feature some of the most bitterly contested cases
imaginable. Complication and dispute are byproducts of human relationships and
human commitment. We could, as a civil society, create a legal expectation that
those engaging in a group marriage create binding documents and contracts that
clearly delineate questions of inheritance, alimony, and the like. Prenups are
already a thing.
Most dispiriting, and least
convincing, are those arguments that simply reconstitute the slippery slope
arguments that have been used for so long against same sex marriage. “If we
allow group marriage,” the thinking seems to go, “why wouldn’t marriage with
animals or children come next?” The difference is, of course, consent. In
recent years, a progressive and enlightened movement has worked to insist that
consent is the measure of all things in sexual and romantic practice: as long
as all involved in any particular sexual or romantic relationship are
consenting adults, everything is permissible; if any individual does not give
free and informed consent, no sexual or romantic engagement can be condoned.
This bedrock principle of
mutually-informed consent explains exactly why we must permit polygamy and must
oppose bestiality and child marriage. Animals are incapable of voicing consent;
children are incapable of understanding what it means to consent. In contrast,
consenting adults who all knowingly and willfully decide to enter into a joint
marriage contract, free of coercion, should be permitted to do so, according to
basic principles of personal liberty. The preeminence of the principle of consent
is a just and pragmatic way to approach adult relationships in a world of
multivariate and complex human desires.
Progressives have always flattered
themselves that time is on their side,that their preferences are in keeping
with the arc of history. In the fight for marriage equality, this claim has
been made again and again. Many have challenged our politicians and our people
to ask themselves whether they can imagine a future in which opposition to
marriage equality is seen as a principled stance. I think it’s time to turn the
question back on them: given what you know about the advancement of human
rights, are you sure your opposition to group marriage won’t sound as
anachronistic as opposition to gay marriage sounds to you now? And since we
have insisted that there is no legitimate way to oppose gay marriage and
respect gay love, how can you oppose group marriage and respect group love?
I suspect that many progressives
would recognize, when pushed in this way, that the case against polygamy is incredibly
flimsy, almost entirely lacking in rational basis and animated by purely
irrational fears and prejudice. What we’re left with is an unsatisfying
patchwork of unconvincing arguments and bad ideas, ones embraced for short-term
convenience at long-term cost. We must insist that rights cannot be dismissed
out of short-term interests of logistics and political pragmatism. The course
then, is clear: to look beyond political convenience and conservative
intransigence, and begin to make the case for extending legal marriage rights
to more loving and committed adults. It’s time.
Fredrik
deBoer is a writer and academic. He lives in Indiana.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/gay-marriage-decision-polygamy-119469_full.html#.VY415FKZaLg?utm_source=Liberty_Headlines_Is_Giving_Your_Site_Free_Traffic_for_Now&AID=7236#.VY415FKZaLg#.VY415FKZaLg?utm_source=Liberty_Headlines_Is_Giving_Your_Site_Free_Traffic_for_Now&AID=7236#.VY415FKZaLg?utm_source=Liberty_Headlines_Is_Giving_Your_Site_Free_Traffic_for_Now
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/gay-marriage-decision-polygamy-119469.html#ixzz3eHJPJtli
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/gay-marriage-decision-polygamy-119469.html#ixzz3eHIzjsvE
Comment
It’s
more likely to see a Democrat campaign to like Muslims and give them the right
to set up Sharia courts wherever they are in the US. Obama has 18 months to pull
this one off and the Muslimization of America is one of his goals. They will
use refugee immigration and religious discrimination laws to make the US “all
things for all people”. The endgame is to destroy America completely in the
same quagmire we find in Europe. They know that assimilation is necessary to
maintain a unified nation, but the goal right now is to destabilize the US to
make room for the UN takeover.
The
only way to escape this is to expose UN Agenda 21 implementation in the US for
what it really is.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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