"Left-wing activists, just as Dracula fears the cross and with interestingly similar reasons, understand at a gut level that once the American public connects gay marriage to polygamy or polyamory and hence the legal vulnerability of their own personal marriage -- gay marriage could quickly become a very dead legal duck. This is why there is no "P" in the alphabet soup of 'GLBT.' As l'affaire Springsteen is vividly illustrating, gay activists understand that lots of Americans may indeed shrug their shoulders at the notion of gay marriage -- but the idea of their own marriage being tampered with is something else again."Perhaps indeed this may be the scary part. Conservative Christians dislike gay marriage, but feel they can repel those borders. They are less confident they can repel polygynists and thus react with teeth baring fear like cornered animals, believe me, I know. You end up having reactions in legislative testimony like this, where the first and last person testifying in the clip ask the question "What's next? POLYGAMY!?!?!" These people are conservative Christians, more worried about Polygamy than gay "Marriage" and they have examples, more examples actually than not, of the heroes of the faith in ancient time having more than one wife simultaneously. Yet the tremble in anger and fright at that prospect, and less so at the propsect of gay marriage, despite the fact that we are losing the court battles.
This is also why I would greatly prefer formally legalized polygamy, with marriage contracts as opposed to "test case" legalization. Do you wish to protect your marriage from what you think is an intrusion and keep marriage laws from being used to attack you and your marriage from the inside? Have marriage contracts legalized. Everything from straight traditional western heterosexual monogamies, with that understanding written into the prenup, or seemingly sexist polygynies where it is understood that guys can have as many wives as they decide to have and women just have to lump it. I'm putting it that way because it's a free country and if an adult wants to enter into what we would call an unequal relationship, so be it. We do it in employment all the time. I predict marriage will become more and more like a job or a sports team you join in terms of it's civil application. We need to be ready for that.
"In the words of the Hoover Institution's Stanley Kurtz in a lengthy 2003 article in the Weekly Standard: 'Among the likeliest effects of gay marriage is to take us down a slippery slope to legalized polygamy and 'polyamory' (group marriage).' Kurtz, in a masterful research job, introduces us all to a world where the legalization of gay marriage effectively ends the concept of marriage as it now exists, and has existed. In a world where gender is no longer sacred, there would be nothing sacred in the least about number. Over time, there would be very little legal leg left to stand on to deny not only the guy who wants more than one wife (hello Bruce Springsteen?) or the woman who wants more than one husband (hello Jersey Girl?) Other legal barriers would be swept away resulting in such rarified new institutions as 'triple parenting' or a world where Bob could marry not only Ted but Alice as well -- at the same time. In a sign that this very thought is gaining speed among the usual cultural suspects one need look no further than HBO's Big Love series (about polygamy) or the recent suggestion in Time magazine that marriage be abandoned altogether. The HBO show, by the way, is being mainstreamed by actor Tom Hanks' Playtone productions."
We're probably not going to be presented with a perfect solution, we being 50 states, and with the foot dragging tantrum pitching resistance of conservative Christianity to the truth, the chances for those better solutions really approach zero. The Time article may be the best solution available where we dump marriage altogether, but that probably will require a change in national tax codes so sweeping as to make it impractical. Someday I'll get to that. Polygynists and Polygamists really need to be against the income tax and insist on a consumption tax. That way the government gets out of the business of snooping into our personal lives, at least, they would loose that tool and wouldn't have to classify us as either married "couples" or single people.
Perhaps it's not fear but disgust at those who twist the word of God to serve the devil of their own egos.
ReplyDeleteMaymunah, I'd love to have that debate with you but you must make that debate from scripture, and probably the more appropriate venue would be, the "Modern Pharisee" blog. Let me know if you wish to do that.
ReplyDelete"...... [traditional marriage advocates]understand at a gut level that once the American public connects gay marriage to polygamy or polyamory and hence the legal vulnerability of their own personal marriage -- gay marriage could quickly become a very dead legal duck. This is why there is no "P" in the alphabet soup of 'GLBT.'"
ReplyDeleteI find the idea that legalized polygamy will somehow make traditional dyadic marriages vulnerable ridiculous and absurd. To what? No one has proposed that traditional marriage be made illegal. People will continue to be free to engage in such arrangements. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that legalizing same sex marriage or multipartner marriage will do any harm whatsoever to traditional marriages. Pure rhetoric. Stanley Kurtz has done his best to create a climate of fear in this regard in an attempt to undermine same sex marriage, and it has worked insofar as some people have become afraid - needlessly so - but it surely looks like it has no power to prevent marriage equality from succeeding.
Speaking as a polyamory community leader, the reason there is no "P" in LGBT is that neither the religious polygamoous or the polyamory community have sought it out. Though our issues are related, they are not the same in many cases. There are even significant differences in values between traditional Mormon polygamists and non-religious polyamorists. The writer oversimplifies the question and clearly has no idaea what they are talking about.
Polygamy and a system of patronage
ReplyDeletethat allowed men to use their bonds for protection from the Roman Empire were both common in Jesus' time and he did not preach against them. This may have been pragmatic,but still, if either had been soooo important, he may have said more.
California Mormons and many in Utah were strongly opposed to the
attempt to toy with the California
Supreme Court and it was so very
divisive that I was flabbergasted
that Monson even tried it--so much
wasted money in the face of a coming depression. The emphasis of
the Church should be on upping food production rather than promoting bigotry of any kind.
In Joseph Smith and the Devil, Parley P Pratt gives this as the
Mormon Creed, "To mind one's own
business and do so exclusively."
Speaking as a polyamory community leader, the reason there is no "P" in LGBT is that neither the religious polygamoous or the polyamory community have sought it out. Though our issues are related, they are not the same in many cases. Indeed, there are probably few communities more opposed to each other as these two communities would be if polygyny was legalized.
ReplyDelete