Don't say we didn't warn you. Now that homosexuals have had some success undefining marriage in their direction the polygamists are next in line:
Hammon, who's involved in a polygamous relationship, is a founding member of the Centennial Park Action Committee, a group that lobbies for decriminalization of the practice. She's among a new wave of polygamy activists emerging in the wake of the gay-marriage movement—just as a federal lawsuit challenging anti-polygamy laws makes its way through the courts and a new show about polygamy debuts on HBO. "Polygamy rights is the next civil-rights battle," says Mark Henkel, who, as founder of the Christian evangelical polygamy organization TruthBearer.org, is at the forefront of the movement. His argument: if Heather can have two mommies, she should also be able to have two mommies and a daddy. Henkel and Hammon have been joined by other activist groups like Principle Voices, a Utah-based group run by wives from polygamous marriages. Activists point to Canada, where, in January, a report commissioned by the Justice Department recommended decriminalizing polygamy.
There's a sound legal argument for making the controversial practice legal, says Brian Barnard, the lawyer for a Utah couple, identified in court documents only as G. Lee Cooke and D. Cooke, who filed suit after being denied a marriage license for an additional wife. Though the case was struck down by a federal court last year, it's now being considered by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, and Barnard plans to use the same argument—that Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 sodomy case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that individuals have "the full right to engage in private conduct without government intervention," should also apply to polygamous relationships.
Oh, if only to have an HBO tv show about your issue!
Quite frankly, they're right, of course. If our society cannot say that sodomy is wrong or that homosexual 'marriage' is a contradiction in terms, it certainly cannot tell polygamists they are wrong. Why, nothing is wrong, other than possibly suggesting that something might be wrong. If you can change the component parts of a marriage--substituting one man and one woman for one man and one man--why can't you change the number as well? Thus marriage is completely undefined, and means nothing.
So, after polygamy, what then?
5 comments:
That's great news! I'm really looking forward for the day that I can legalize my two wives.
Without God, anything is possible.
Dostoevsky
Yeah, I could see this coming. Allow a man to marry a woman, and what's to say you can't allow a man to marry TWO women?
Damned heterosexuals. Give 'em an inch and they take a mile.
You can make your point without profanity, Chuck, or at least I assume you're capable of it. I'll let this one stand, but next time my delete finger will pull quicker.
I think Andrew Sullivan said it best, in reference to polygamy:
I think legalizing such arrangements is a bad idea for a society in general for all the usual reasons (abuse of women, the dangers of leaving a pool of unmarried straight men in the population at large, etc.). I also think it's reasonable for society to say to a heterosexual polygamist: we won't let you legally marry more than one person, but we encourage you to marry one. Now, look at it from the gay point of view. We tell the gay polyandrist: we won't let you marry more than one person, but we won't let you marry one person either. In fact, we will give you no legal outlet for your relationship, and no social support, and do all we can to stigmatize and marginalize it. Is the difference not obvious?
Gay people are not asking for the right to marry anybody. We're asking for the right to marry somebody. Right now, heterosexual polygamists have an option: marry someone. And gay people are told: you can marry no one at all. That cannot be just. It cannot be fair. And it cannot be conservative to refuse to give 9 million people an incentive to settle down and take care of one another.
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