Opponents of gay marriage have often argued that legitimizing gay marriage will open the doors to polygamy. Supporters have scoffed, but have rarely produced any good counter-argument. The best one I have heard is Andrew Sullivan's "deeper level of consciousness" argument. Here is Charles Krauthammer's summary and rebuttal:
Blogger and author Andrew Sullivan, who had the courage to advocate gay marriage at a time when it was considered pretty crazy, has called this the ``polygamy diversion,'' arguing that homosexuality and polygamy are categorically different because polygamy is a mere ``activity" while homosexuality is an intrinsic state that ``occupies a deeper level of human consciousness." But this distinction between higher and lower orders of love is precisely what gay rights activists so vigorously protest when the general culture ``privileges'' (as they say in the English departments) heterosexual unions over homosexual ones.
Krauthammer is surely right. If it is found to be mere prejudice and a violation of fundamental rights to deny the sanction of marriage to two men, polygamists will press their claim with equal vigor and, I expect, the same result. And in fact the normalization of polygamy is already well under way, with HBO's new series "Big Love" as exhibit A. But its only the most visible exhibit. There is this, by Tim Hartford in Slate:
A little over one in 100 American men are in prison—but there are several states where one in five young black men are behind bars. Since most women marry men of a similar age, and of the same race and in the same state, there are some groups of women who face a dramatic shortfall of marriage partners. . . .
When men are taken out of the marriage market by war or by prison, women suffer. The reverse is probably true, too: When women are taken from the marriage market, men suffer. In China, the policy of one-child families coupled with selective abortion of girls has produced "surplus" males. Such men are called "bare branches," and China could have 30 million of them by 2020. Perhaps polyandry—women with multiple husbands—would be the logical response to the situation in China. What will happen instead is that these lonely, wifeless men will end up sleeping with a relatively small number of women—prostitutes—with severe risks of sexually transmitted disease all around.
Its mostly tongue and cheek, but don't be misled by that. A push for polygamy is coming, and the legalization of gay marriage under the current terms will make it very hard to resist.
But that doesn't mean that gay marriage necessarily ought to be rejected. It just means that the current arguments in favor of it ought to be rejected. The problem is the idea that men have a right to marry men. This is a typical example of the liberal tendency to try to write all their political preferences into the constitutional rule book, rather than to try and persuade voters and legislators that their proposals represent good policy.
Under the status quo, states have a limited power to define marriage. They cannot prohibit interracial marriage, but they can limit marriage to persons over a specified age and I suppose they can exclude marriages between first cousins. Let us then presume that states can, under the Constitution, limit marriage to two people, one male and one female. If a state can do that, then it is free to extend marriage to same sex couples but deny it to any larger partnership. Now you can make your case: persuade us that the arguments against gay marriage are weak, and the arguments for it strong. That, after all, is what we have elections and legislatures for.
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