We hear a lot stuff like this: “Among the likeliest effects of gay marriage is to take us down a slippery slope to legalized polygamy.”
This argument is handy for people who want to mask their homophobia by claiming they have nothing against gays—they just think it’s dangerous to “redefine” marriage.
How do we answer that? I’ve got three suggestions:
Define “Redefine”
What’s needed to legalize gay marriage? We know through experience: the California Supreme Court says same-sex marriage is legal, and cities start selling marriage licenses to same-sex couples. What else? Some updates to the gender language in forms and legal codes—but nothing in how the laws function.
Okay, now polygamy. People think of it as a man with many wives, but it could be many men with many women. What if the group keeps getting bigger? We could see marriages of 10 people—or 100—or 100,000. Can current marriage laws accommodate that? Can they deal with issues like child custody, inheritance, Social Security benefits, and financial liability?
No. States would have to create entirely new laws to deal with entirely new situations raised by this entirely new arrangement.
But that’s not necessary with same-sex marriage. And that demonstrates how same-sex is quite different from polygamy.
Experience
Some opponents claim gay marriage is dangerous because society has so little experience with it that we can’t know what the consequences will be. But the opposite is true of polygamy. Its opponents charge it with exploitation, sexual abuse, and rape. These charges are controversial, but they highlight the difference between gay marriage and polygamy: we have little experience with one, and abundant experience with the other. In addition, our growing international experience with same-sex marriage hasn’t revealed hidden dangers while the history of polygamy is abundant with them.
Once again, gay marriage and polygamy turn out to be opposite situations.
Roadblocks
The third argument is more subtle, but probably the most important. What does it mean if someone is fine with gay marriage except for their fear of polygamy? It means they have arguments against polygamy that must not apply to gay marriage at all.
So when question comes up, “If we can alter the definition of marriage to include same-sex partners, then why can’t we alter it to include multiple partners?” then they can just invoke those anti-polygamy arguments – you know, the ones that don’t have anything to do with gay marriage. Ask them what those reasons are, and then point out that they’ve just identified roadblocks on the slippery slope from gay marriage to polygamy. And the better their reasons, the bigger the roadblocks.
Even on liberal blogs it’s common for gay marriage discussions to include talk about polygamy. I started challenging such talk — if polygamy needs to be discussed, I say, please discuss it in a thread devoted to polygamy and its problems or benefits. As a gay man I have no interest in polygamy and don’t see why I need to address it at all. One simple change to marriage (one of the autonomous persons taking out the marital contract would no longer be required to be a different sex from the other) does not open the door to every other possible change, nor should it.
The other thing I do is tell people, If slippery slope is the only argument you have, you have no argument at all. … That one really makes people fuss.
mm. thanks.
It is clear that this is a slippery slope assertion that opponents make. It has, as you well know, no basis in fact. Moreover, there are clear sociological reasons why same gender coupling is better for an industrialized society and even a well populized world. Unless you have high infant portality or need children to maintain the family property (in agrarian societies children are as much commodities as they are offspring to nurture), polygamy is actually quite irrational.
I actually posted on this very issue a while back here if you are interested:
http://notes-from-offcenter.com/2009/03/09/why-polygamy-is-not-an-outcome-of-smae-gender-lovepolygamy-is-not-an-outcome-of-same-gender-love/
I find it disturbing that the same group of people complaining that they do not have equal rights is so quick to judge another group struggling with a similar issue. One of the statements in this blog is “As a gay man I have no interest in polygamy and don’t see why I need to address it at all.”
Think about it. That is EXACTLY how the straight community feels about gay marriage. A bit of a double standard, isn’t it? If you won’t fight for the rights of others, why should anyone fight for yours?
Another statement was “polygamy is actually quite irrational.”
I thought we were saying gay marriage is about love? Why should a marriage be disqualified because some people think it doesn’t make sense?
Ronna, you pulled out a bit of a straw man with Glenn. There’s a BIG difference between being against someone’s rights and not addressing that person’s rights. He says “I don’t see why I need to address it,” as in, “I don’t see why I need to make arguments for or against it.” That is NOT what the straight community feels about gay marriage; in fact, that is the OPPOSITE if it. If the straight community really felt no “need to address it at all,” we would not have had Prop 8 because they wouldn’t have gotten out of their houses to go vote because voting is ADDRESSING it. If anything, the straight community SHOULD feel “no need to address it.” Gay marriage has nothing to do with them; therefore, they should just let gay marriage happen as it does.
And to your statement, “If you won’t fight for the rights of others, why should anyone fight for yours?” I want to ask you, do YOU fight for everyone’s rights? I’m sure there are very few people who fight for the rights disabled, religious freedom, immigrants, freedom of speech, the poor, ethnic minorities, women, sexual minorities, AND the elderly. Are you saying that people shouldn’t support the NAACP just because they don’t actively donate to Asian American organizations? Are you saying that you donate to every charity that you know exists?
Also, Drew was just stating a fundamental difference between the issue of gay marriage and the issue of polygamy.