POLYGAMY AND SSM: Debate at National Review Online blog

Jonah Goldberg: ... I don't want to get into the philosophy of mathematics -- not my expertise -- but aren't numbers more abstract than the actual flesh and blood typologies of man and woman? How is confining marriage to one man and one woman more arbitrary or irrational than confining it to two people?...

A reader: ...I lived for three years in a very small village in Sierra Leone in the late 1970's and can attest--as can many of NRO readers who have similar experiences--that polygamy has a rational basis in poor, agrarian and autonomous regions of the world, where only half of all offspring live to their 5th birthday, where there is a strong need for children to work the fields and, in later years, to care for dying parents, and where there is no social safety net, let along opportunities for employment for young women, to cushion the blows of illness and old age.

The point is, Polygamy does have a rational basis, even if on occasion the multiple wives may bicker among themselves and with the husband. So if the proponents of Same-Sex Marriage consider stability a virtue, then they should also be in favor of polygamy. The only reason for Rep. Frank et al. to oppose it is to suggest that monogamy is culturally superior. But they wouldn't want to say THAT, would they?

A reader: ...W/ all due respect, it seems to me that man and woman, as "typologies" go, (besides being arbitrary at conception) are a couple surgeries and some hormone therapy away from changing in to one another, whereas two is simply two. And we have a habit here of accepting limits set to specific numbers or percentages that are otherwise somewhat arbitrary. ...

Goldberg: I think it's clear that if you read my post, my point was that two-ness is as arbitrary as man/woman. Moreover I disagree that sex is as malleable as this reader suggests. Surgery can help change gender but I'm unaware of any surgery that can make a man into a woman capable of having children or a woman into a man capable of producing viable sperm. In fact, it seems to me it's a lot easier to make 2 into 3 -- just add one! -- than it is to make a man into a mother. As for the rest of his points about the other problems marriage is facing, I think he makes fine points.

Goldberg: While certainly, you're correct that neither restriction is logically more obvious or less arbitrary than the other, in legal terms, one is significantly easier than the other. Allowing same-sex marriage only requires dropping the requirement that the two participants be of opposite sexes. All of the law surrounding marriage assumes two people, and in the more difficult cases like death of one person, or dissolution of the marriage, there is no logical difference whether there's a man and a woman, or two women.

However, if you extend the law to more than two, things get complicated. ...What happens when a marriage of 4 or more splits into two groups? Is there still a presumption of paternity? How does one write income tax schedules for marriages of 3, 4, or n?

Plural marriage requires same-sex marriage, because any marriage of n>2
will have at least two people of the same sex involved, but same-sex marriage does not automatically imply plural marriage. While it does seem to be the politically logical next step, there is strong antipathy to polyamory among some segments of the gay/lesbian community, so that next step may be a long time in coming.
posted by Eve at 6:44 AM | link

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