CANADA AND POLYGAMY DEBATE: Colby Cosh
..."Two men or two women can have the kind of relationship a man and a woman have; one man and five women cannot." Perhaps if this is
chanted often enough, we'll all become convinced that it is true; we'll adopt it as an axiom! That's really all we can do, since it's a statement for which no evidence is offered and no test is possible. Other than
asking some of the world's zillions of polygamists, that is, whether they have intimate, fulfilled, contented relationships.
Gays and lesbians have succeeded in making it impolite to ask whether two men or two women can
really have the kind of relationship a man and a woman have. In truth, I do wonder; nature has arranged things so that roughly equal numbers of males and females are born, and we two sexes appear to possess very different psychologies,
as well as genomes so dissimilar, by some accounts, that we might as well be different species. I regard these things as VERY LOUD clues to the possibility of an innate biological complementarity between the sexes. But I don't think they matter much when we're tackling the question whether gays and lesbians should be
permitted to marry, which is different from the question whether it is wise or prudent or appropriate for them to marry (a question whose answer I leave to my gay and lesbian friends, with my best wishes). And, in fact, these clues were mostly ignored in the debate over gay marriage. The dominant pretext for gay marriage was that
there were same-sex couples who wanted very much to be married. Am I crazy, really, for thinking that that's relevant to the polygamy question--if and when it arises, which it appears to be doing right now?
quite a bit more--all of it growly, contrarian, and interesting
posted by Eve at
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