Your love is teaching me how to kneel
According to the Wikipedia page "Same-sex marriage",
there are currently only five countries in the whole world that have
legalized gay marriage, Canada being one of them. Despite this massive
disparity, in the public debate of Canada the opposition of gay
marriage is almost a thoughtcrime, so I am a bit hesitant to say that I
really don't think that gay marriage is a good idea. But I do have to
admire the sheer skill of the gay marriage advocates, turning something
that was a decade or two ago at best an absurdist skit into something
whose opposition virtually casts the person outside the whole civilized
society, as I wondered in my old post "Two percent is not enough, recruit, recruit, recruit!"
Talk about "framing the message"! Of course, constantly showing us in
the media how the gay couples and their children are good middle-class
consumers and citizens whereas the straight families are ugly and
problematic trailer trash losers helps advance this message of gay
marriage, at least in the minds who are still in the prenumeric stage.
Somewhere out there there are still opponents of gay marriage. They usually argue that if you allow gays to extend the definition of marriage, you will also have to allow other groups to extend it according to their wants and needs, which in practice means polygamists. Oh, sorry, of course I meant "polyamorists", which is, like, totally different. The advocates of gay marriage tell us that gay marriage is totally different from polygamy in the sense that the arguments for legalizing the former somehow do not apply to the latter. Well, they claim this, but I have never seen any one of them actually explaining how it would be different. Once you get the mindset of "anything goes", I can't see how you could allow the former but not the latter.
Many of the gay marriage proponents, especially libertarians, therefore don't even bother, but they also go on to defend polygamy. I argued in my old post "So what if polygamy?" that legalizing polygamy even in the most docile and civilized society would turn that society into a squalid hellhole of everybody's war against everybody else. Since I happen to like this society that has been so good to me and don't want to see it overrun by mobs of young men brandishing AK-47's, I would not be very enthusiastic to see polygamy legalized. The Utahn, Middle Eastern and various Third World examples of polygamy are quite enough for me, thank you, as they validate pretty much all my commonsense reasoning and predictions about the inevitable consequences of polygamy. If gay marriage leads to polygamy, that is enough reason for me to oppose it.
Besides, at least in the civilized countries there are no laws whatsoever left that would prevent two gay men or an alpha male and his harem living together and even publicly proclaiming that they are "married". No inquisition will come to torture these blasphemers and make them repent from their wicked ways, and at least the middle class neighbourhood will mostly leave them alone, so these people are perfectly free to form their unions already. However, what they are demanding is something far stronger, that the rest of us have to behave as if we considered their claim of being married to be true. (It's funny how quickly the remedies for oppression for not being able to do what you want tend to turn to ignoring other people's freedom to do what they want.) Well all right, but in return you will have to start behaving as if I was the Prince of Persia. If I say I am, does it make it so?
In the American gay marriage debate, the "equal protection clause" seems to come up quite often. Simply put, the current marriage law treats straights and gays in an unequal manner because the former group is allowed to marry the person they love, whereas the latter are not. And since this is unconstitutional, the law should be amended to allow gay marriage. Even without the foundations of the American legal system, the same argument can be applied anywhere. Consider the following discussion:
Billy Bigot: The current marriage law already treats all people equally. Both straights and gays can marry a person of the opposite sex, according to our definition what a marriage is.
Gary Gay: Such definition of equality is too narrow. We want equality in the sense that we are allowed to marry the person we love, regardless of sex. The idea that marriage is between two people of opposite sexes is too restrictive and doesn't consider the fact that we gays are attracted to people of same sex, therefore excluding us.
Now convinced, even Billy Bigot agrees to legalize gay marriage, which passes the legislature. Later, we overhear another conversation:
Gary Gay: The current marriage law already treats all people equally. All people can marry one person they love, according to our definition what a marriage is.
Pete Poly: Such definition of equality is too narrow. We want equality in the sense that we are allowed to marry the people we love, regardless of their number. The idea that marriage is between two people is too restrictive and doesn't consider the fact that we polygamists are attracted to several people at the same time, therefore excluding us.
What is the difference? Why is the first argument considered valid, while the second one is not?
There is certainly lots of inherent humour when a gay marriage advocate claims that his extended definition of marriage is somehow more correct than the traditional definition of marriage as an union between a man and a woman, whereas the polygamy advocate's extended definition of marriage is not. And even more so when we look at the massive historical and sociological evidence in the real world. Until relatively recently, gay marriage was nothing but an absurd joke in the level of a talking banana, and at least I find it rather strange and even suspicious that until now, no human society ever seemed to realize that gay marriage is a self-evident and a fundamental human right. As for polygamy, the Wikipedia page "Polygamy" informs us
Somewhere out there there are still opponents of gay marriage. They usually argue that if you allow gays to extend the definition of marriage, you will also have to allow other groups to extend it according to their wants and needs, which in practice means polygamists. Oh, sorry, of course I meant "polyamorists", which is, like, totally different. The advocates of gay marriage tell us that gay marriage is totally different from polygamy in the sense that the arguments for legalizing the former somehow do not apply to the latter. Well, they claim this, but I have never seen any one of them actually explaining how it would be different. Once you get the mindset of "anything goes", I can't see how you could allow the former but not the latter.
Many of the gay marriage proponents, especially libertarians, therefore don't even bother, but they also go on to defend polygamy. I argued in my old post "So what if polygamy?" that legalizing polygamy even in the most docile and civilized society would turn that society into a squalid hellhole of everybody's war against everybody else. Since I happen to like this society that has been so good to me and don't want to see it overrun by mobs of young men brandishing AK-47's, I would not be very enthusiastic to see polygamy legalized. The Utahn, Middle Eastern and various Third World examples of polygamy are quite enough for me, thank you, as they validate pretty much all my commonsense reasoning and predictions about the inevitable consequences of polygamy. If gay marriage leads to polygamy, that is enough reason for me to oppose it.
Besides, at least in the civilized countries there are no laws whatsoever left that would prevent two gay men or an alpha male and his harem living together and even publicly proclaiming that they are "married". No inquisition will come to torture these blasphemers and make them repent from their wicked ways, and at least the middle class neighbourhood will mostly leave them alone, so these people are perfectly free to form their unions already. However, what they are demanding is something far stronger, that the rest of us have to behave as if we considered their claim of being married to be true. (It's funny how quickly the remedies for oppression for not being able to do what you want tend to turn to ignoring other people's freedom to do what they want.) Well all right, but in return you will have to start behaving as if I was the Prince of Persia. If I say I am, does it make it so?
In the American gay marriage debate, the "equal protection clause" seems to come up quite often. Simply put, the current marriage law treats straights and gays in an unequal manner because the former group is allowed to marry the person they love, whereas the latter are not. And since this is unconstitutional, the law should be amended to allow gay marriage. Even without the foundations of the American legal system, the same argument can be applied anywhere. Consider the following discussion:
Billy Bigot: The current marriage law already treats all people equally. Both straights and gays can marry a person of the opposite sex, according to our definition what a marriage is.
Gary Gay: Such definition of equality is too narrow. We want equality in the sense that we are allowed to marry the person we love, regardless of sex. The idea that marriage is between two people of opposite sexes is too restrictive and doesn't consider the fact that we gays are attracted to people of same sex, therefore excluding us.
Now convinced, even Billy Bigot agrees to legalize gay marriage, which passes the legislature. Later, we overhear another conversation:
Gary Gay: The current marriage law already treats all people equally. All people can marry one person they love, according to our definition what a marriage is.
Pete Poly: Such definition of equality is too narrow. We want equality in the sense that we are allowed to marry the people we love, regardless of their number. The idea that marriage is between two people is too restrictive and doesn't consider the fact that we polygamists are attracted to several people at the same time, therefore excluding us.
What is the difference? Why is the first argument considered valid, while the second one is not?
There is certainly lots of inherent humour when a gay marriage advocate claims that his extended definition of marriage is somehow more correct than the traditional definition of marriage as an union between a man and a woman, whereas the polygamy advocate's extended definition of marriage is not. And even more so when we look at the massive historical and sociological evidence in the real world. Until relatively recently, gay marriage was nothing but an absurd joke in the level of a talking banana, and at least I find it rather strange and even suspicious that until now, no human society ever seemed to realize that gay marriage is a self-evident and a fundamental human right. As for polygamy, the Wikipedia page "Polygamy" informs us
According to the Ethnographic Atlas Codebook derived from George P. Murdock’s Ethnographic Atlas recorded the marital composition of 1231 societies, from 1960-1980. Of these societies, 186 societies were monogamous. 453 had occasional polygyny, 588 had more frequent polygyny, and 4 had polyandry.
so if anything, polygamy has a far stronger claim to social acceptability than gay marriage.
Now,
I am not saying that somewhere out there there isn't a good argument
for gay marriage that wouldn't equally apply to polygamy, but I haven't
seen it. Perhaps some friendly soul could point me to the right
direction in the comments. Until then, I think that I shall
respectfully oppose homogamy, for the prudent reason that I happen to
like the society I currently live in, and don't think that it is wise
to nibble away its foundations too much.
Well, I suspect that polygamy will work, but only in societies where males are more docile than they are in the west (which is predominantly occupied by caucasians with a reasonable percentage from Africa and a lesser percentage from Asia).
We can easily think of societies where polygyny was legal up until very recently. Oh, and really, Mao had a great many legal consorts.
Posted by Loki on the run | 1:08 PM
I don't think your reasoning holds water, at least without some additions. The fact that polygamists are able to make arguments that are isomorphic to those of gay marriage supporter's doesn't mean gay marriage would slippery-slope us to polygamy.
Most people understand that legalizing gay sex (not marriage) doesn't slippery-sloper to legalizing pedophilia. This is because it can be convincingly argued that gay sex and pedophilia are qualitatively, not just quantitively, different (since in the latter there's no consent).
Similarly, it can be convincingly argued (as in your post) that gay marriage and polygamy are qualitatively different (since the latter leads to societal problems).
But perhaps not all people understand the consequences of polygamy. Therefore, your argument should probably go more like "gay marriage might slippery-slope us to polygamy since the public is too stupid to understand the qualitative difference".
Posted by Anonymous | 1:17 PM
I think too much authority that previously belonged to the Church has passed to the state. Marriage is one of those areas that should go back. See here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/safranek1.html
However, I would not support any expansion of marriage which results in greater dependency on the government, as is currently the case with a lot of polygamist Mormon families.
Posted by tggp | 3:21 PM
anonymous argues:
Similarly, it can be convincingly argued (as in your post) that gay marriage and polygamy are qualitatively different (since the latter leads to societal problems).
This argument could not possibly work under the current multiculturalist regime. Not logically anyway. Given the hundreds of millions of people around the world who currently (happily, by their own claims) live with at least some of form of polygyny, how can we suggest that it has lead to "societal problems" for them ? Are you some kind of western cultural hegemonist ?
On the other hand, I kind of agree that an obscurantist version of this argument would be used by liberals to stop polygyny. It would then fall into what Lawrence Auster usefully identifies as an "unprincipled exception". Logic has little to do with it.
Posted by Buckaroo | 5:43 PM
An argument often raised by skeptics of gay "marriage" is that if it's a denial of civil rights to not let two men get "married," then how can we then not let one man and two women get married? Gay activists typically answer by saying that marriage by definition is between two people. (Anthropologically speaking, this is backwards: the general opinion of mankind has always been that marriage is between the sexes, but the majority of cultures never considered a two person limit intrinsic or even desirable.)
The real response, however, has been, in effect, that only crazy right wing fundamentalist heterosexual rural Mormon white people want to practice polygamy, and we all know that civil rights don't apply to them. -Steve Sailer
Posted by Glaivester | 6:44 PM
"Now, I am not saying that somewhere out there there isn't a good argument for gay marriage that wouldn't equally apply to polygamy, but I haven't seen it."
Why, the obvious argument would be that gay marriage is not harmful for society (as evidenced by the fact that almost all the countries that have gay marriage or domestic partnership laws are civilized industrialized democracies) whereas polygamy is harmful (as evidenced by the fact that almost all the countries that have legalized polygamy are plagued by poverty, young men with AK-47s, religion of peace and other similar afflictions).
Posted by Vera | 4:59 AM
All i know is that i dont want to marry no pigmys.
Thats gross.
Posted by Beavis | 5:18 AM
You'd be really tall in comparison to a pigmy though. That's gotta count for something. You might even be able to hide it in a backpack or something and not pay to get it in a theater or on a plane.
But you're right about one thing: Khoisan women are where it's at. Can you say steatopygia?
Posted by tggp | 2:44 PM
The line should be drawn at two consenting adults who wish to be married, regardless of sex. Anything else is bigotry. You can go all slippery slop if you want, but I won't stoop to logical fallacy. The definition I have laid out is perfectly fine with me.
Posted by JackGoff | 1:02 AM
should be "slope"
Posted by JackGoff | 1:03 AM
The thing about slippery slopes is that they have to be slippery. We slide towards gay marriage from our current situation because most Westerners, particularly women, are romantics. Love is a high ideal; to stand in its way without strong reason, wrong. Marriage is about love. QED.
But there are other, higher ideals, even than love in our infantile culture. Equality is one such.
Where there is one man and one woman, the woman can claim they are equals. Where there is one man and many women, the women cannot claim to be equals. Even leftists will realize that polygamy means polygyny 99.99% of the time, and polyandy .01%. This is not equal, either. Equality worshipping moderns will not stand for it. Most Western women feel polygyny as an abomination, and would never vote for it.
Absent this constituency, which is 50% of the population, polygyny will never be legalized in a democracy.
Posted by Leonard | 4:36 PM