It’s Time to Legalize Polygamy

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Fredrik Deboer:

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today stands as a taboo just as strong as same-sex marriage was several decades ago—it’s effectively only discussed as outdated jokes about Utah and Mormons, who banned the practice over 120 years ago.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.

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Plenty of LDS in southern Utah are chomping at the bit about becoming legal in their polygamous marriages.

What… you think the left cares about polygamy? Or incest? That would require morals and, well, you know….

@Nanny G: Led the fight in CAL AGAINST gay marriage and are still practicing polygamy in Utah???

@Bill: LDS vote over 75% Repub.—not just Mitt. As politically Conservative as they come..

@rich wheeler:
Rich, I have learned here (in Utah) that there are two major factions of the LDS.
The one centered in SLC which has some polygamists but they are deeply ”in the closet.”
The other one is centered in the rural, desert-y parts of southern Utah and they pretty much flaunt their polygamy.
It is mostly those southern LDS who want polygamy made legal, so they can qualify for things they can’t qualify for as of now.

@rich wheeler: Are they polygamists? The question was about those that have opened the door to a legal argument for polygamy by declaring anything can marry anything will oppose polygamy. I say, why would they; where have they shown ANY sense of morality?

@Bill: Nan says the very Conservative LDS stlll has many wannabe polygamists—don’t know of anyone else. Do you?

@rich wheeler: You tell me; you’re who is telling us which Mormons vote Republicans. What I am saying is that liberals are too morally corrupt to care.

@Bill: You are personally blinded by your hatred of Liberals and Obama.

BTW BHO probably had the best week of his Presidency.. Supreme Court decisions on ACA and same-sex marriage. Not to mention his emotional speech and singing of We Shall Overcome in the Charleston Church.
Better you switch your vitriol to HRC.

@rich wheeler:

Not to mention his emotional speech and singing of We Shall Overcome in the Charleston Church.

At which I could not help but notice that he felt compelled, at a eulogy, to invoke his version of the racist state of the nation and how everyone but the left has been keeping the black man down, wallowing in poverty. What a great week. He must be pretty grateful to have so many lies and so much hypocrisy validated.

As to my question, no answer, huh?

@Bill: Please repeat your question. Thanks

@rich wheeler: Repeat it? It’s not like we’re TALKING here; the question originally posed still exists, in print, right on this page.

Forget it. I got my answer.

@Bill: You seem a bit confused Bill. Everything OK now?

@rich wheeler: I am anything BUT confused.

@rich wheeler: Anyone else?
Just those ”very conservative” Muslims who follow Mohammad as close as possible.
He OK’ed 4 actual wives as well as however many female slaves one could amass.
Sex with all of them is A-OK.
Here in the USA there are already quite a few polygamous Muslims.
But the ”lesser” wives live on welfare (at separate addresses) as if they are unwed mothers with no visible means of support.
The states of Virginia and Michigan and to a lesser extent Wisconsin are reporting these cases.
Muslim men are allowed as many as 4 wives IF they can afford them.
But Western Welfare counts!
So, they CAN afford the full number.
Obama’s own Muslim father was a polygamist, never divorced from the women he was married to in Africa when he married Obama’s mamma.