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 Monday, March 13, 2006
The Big Love Polygamy Debate/Maggie Gallagher
I'm not comfortable, personally, hanging so much on a TV show. It fits too well into the industry's marketing plans among other things. But Stanley Kurtz is quite right we are seeing a sudden quite striking spurt of pro-polygamy talk around Big Love. I think it reflects a combination of the strength of the libertarian impulse around sex combined with a waning belief among intellectual elites that marriage in fact matters very much at all. (More on the reasons for that perhaps, later). I'm also not comfortable making a slippery slope argument about polygamy because as I've said before I think genderless marriage is really an even more striking and destructive departure from our core marriage idea. (And as I told Sen. Biden when testifying I say this as someone who thinks polygamy is a really really really really bad marriage system, for a variety of reasons). But when the core of marriage as a public idea is eroded into something more or less like: "People should live in intimate twosomes" Why? "Because we like it that way," it becomes difficult to understand the reasons why marriage should have any particular shape or structure. Gut the idea of its core public reason, and the external structure becomes extremely fragile. This is one reason why the argument some gay marriage advocates make in response to the slippery slope---SSM is the result of a determined, hard working campaign that took 25 years and there's nothing out there like that on polygamy--is unpersuasive to me. Separating marriage from procreation and paternity is hard work. But once we've established the old core purpose of marriage (making the next generation by uniting the two people who make the baby to each other and the child)is no longer operative, that other cultural values (such as individual rights to form families of choice, or expressing government disapproval of heternormativity) are really more important, then the opposition to further innovation will be much milder and easier to overcome. People who have no problem redefining marriage so it is no longer a union of husband and wife, aren't going to have that much trouble redefining polygamy either. Or as David Blankenhorn once put it, it is just silly to imagine that you can overturn the "Rule of Opposites" the single most universal marriage rule in human history and that the "Rule of Two" which many, many human societies have not acknowledged, will remain fixed and inviolable. posted by maggie at 9:24 AM | link 
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Funny that you think “Big Love” has caused “a sudden quite striking spurt of pro-polygamy talk”. I have yet to see it (except from conservative John Tierney), and you do not include any in your above tirade against “Big Love.” What I have seen is tons of nonsense from people like you claiming that an HBO show can create some sort of movement to legitimize polygamy. No such talk about how “The Sopranos” legitimizes murder and organized crime. In fact, NRO’s The Corner, which has become an anti-“Big Love” web site of late, had a post on Friday extolling “The Sopranos” as a work of Art. So: a show about murder and organized crime is Art; a show about polygamy is destructive to society. Got it.
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The "Rule of Opposites," that's the inviolable and universal principle of Yin and Yang. If you can't hear Moses and Jesus maybe Lao Tzu will mean something to you.
Anon, it's that age old Art debate again isn't it? Either the popular media actively promotes certain destructive ideas among our society, or it is merely a reflection of the ideas that already exist.
To hear you say it, neither one is true!
It wasn't a "tirade", it was a reasoned and reasonable analysis. "tons of nonsense from people like you"? Perhaps considering upping your meds.
The difference between Big Love and The Sopranos is:
1) James Gandolfini can act - well - or well enough, so that we forgive the ocassional unsightly view of Naked Tony. I've seen the first two episodes of Big Love, and no such luck w/Bill Paxton (at least 5 seperate gratuitous shots of Wrinkled Sagging Middle Aged Man Ass).
2) There are no "GOOD" gangsters on The Sopranos. Big Love, OTOH, draws a very clear distinction between 'good' polygamists and 'bad'. It shows the 'good' polygamists as having issues common to all marriages, just in multiples of 3, and in so doing, makes the case that its normative. The Sopranos, by contrast, is a look at a criminal life from the inside - no excuses, no romance, just the gritty reality and common thuggery that inform the Mafioso lifestyle, bottom to top.
Anonymous has no idea what Gallagher thinks about the Sopranos. If Gallaher has herself argued that The Sopranos is a work of Art AND that a show about polygamy is possibly destructive to society, Anonymous might have a point. But she hasn't, and he doesn't. One might as well argue that David Brooks of the NY Times is a hypocrite or illogical because he writes approvingly about X while Paul Krugman writes disapprovingly about Y. But that would be irrational. Anonymous's position is no less so.
In another column Gallagher points to evidence that polygamy is being pushed: "In January 2005 at Yale University (according to the Yale Daily News), Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union, defended the ACLU's fight for legal polygamy: "We have defended the right for individuals to engage in polygamy," Strossen said. "We defend the freedom of choice for mature, consenting individuals." (According to the Chicago Tribune, up to 40,000 Americans practice polygamy right now.) University of Chicago law professor Elizabeth Emens, in a series of legal journal articles (a.k.a. "Beyond Gay Marriage") lays out a new strategy for defending polygamy as both a constitutional right and as a morally acceptable way of life, calling this historic moment a "unique opportunity to question the mandate of compulsory monogamy." So there IS a social agenda that is furthered by "big Love".
But are those who praise the Sopranos as Art part of a movement seeking to legitimize the Mafia and promote their murderous lifestyle? I don't think so.
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"So: a show about murder and organized crime is Art; a show about polygamy is destructive to society. Got it."
Quite to the contrary, as you understand. Society does see murder and organized crime as destructive to society but varied consensual sexual encounters are commonly seen as amusing and plausible. That's how homosexuality gained ground, being introduced humorously at first to gain acceptability, and now they begin to demand "marriage" rights.
The slippery slope is really upside down as Maggie notes. If you can defend ss"m" how can you reason against polygamy and all sorts of other combinations? And with that, inevitably the entire legal marriage system collapses.
The collapse of legal marriage begins with no-fault divorce, receives a death blow from ss"m," and disintegrates as an government institution with the now rationally unstoppable extension to other sexual relationships.
We need the one man one woman Federal Marriage Amendment to prevent the demise of marriage.
One can only hope that "legal" marriage will collapse, so that we may achieve complete separation of Marriage & State.
Marriage is and ought only to be a private contractual and/or religious arrangement among consenting adults.
I don't see the connection between gay marriage and polyamory. The principle supporting gay marriage is "men and women should be treated the same under the law." The principle supporting polyamory is "people can marry whomever they want." Different principles, leading to different outcomes.
Anyone who thinks that "Big Love" was pro-polygamy did not see the show.
The most recent anonymous misses the point. The point is that it is a nonjudgmental presentation of polygamy, and thus a way to normalize it. Doesn't matter if it was pro-polygamy or not. It's not anti-polygamy, which is what's disturbing.
Or as David Blankenhorn once put it, it is just silly to imagine that you can overturn the "Rule of Opposites" the single most universal marriage rule in human history and that the "Rule of Two" which many, many human societies have not acknowledged, will remain fixed and inviolable.
It is just silly to suppose that it will be as easy and painless to change the marriage legislation that is entirely based on only two people marrying, to marriage in which any number of people can become spouses of each other.
No society in history has, to my knowledge, established multi-marriage where all individuals were all equally each other's spouses. Such a change in legislation would be massive, and have obvious, far-reaching effects.
Unlike the simple change which enables two people of the same sex to marry each other, which has no effect on the marriages of mixed-sex couples, as marriage legislation in the US is already, in all 50 states, completely gender-neutral.
The notion that there is some kind of "universal marriage rule in human history" does not hold up to scrutiny. Do a little research on the history of marriage. Maybe start here: http://marriage.about.com/cs/generalhistory/a/marriagehistory.htm
The idealized, 1950s TV-show image of marriage that conservatives are trying to "protect" has a fairly brief history. Society has changed and will continue to change. There's always a lag before society's laws catch up. SSM is already here in everything but name, in quite a few states. Does anybody here really understand the provisions of California's Domestic Partnership statute, for example?
Should be interesting to see how this all plays out over the next couple of decades, that's for sure!
I am wife #1 of three in a family with a single husband. We have children, jobs and lives. Since our economy is making it nearly impossible to support a family on TWO incomes, I think that one day many will find it an acceptable answer to this problem.
It's HARD. It takes a lot of work. We all lend our own skills to the betterment of the house and the children and we all benefit from it.
No member of this family must work 80 hours a week to keep kids we never see in shoes.
Don't you wish you were so lucky?
I am wife #1 of three in a family with a single husband. We have children, jobs and lives. Since our economy is making it nearly impossible to support a family on TWO incomes, I think that one day many will find it an acceptable answer to this problem.
It's HARD. It takes a lot of work. We all lend our own skills to the betterment of the house and the children and we all benefit from it.
No member of this family must work 80 hours a week to keep kids we never see in shoes.
Don't you wish you were so lucky?
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The difference between polygamy and homosexuality is very simple. Polygamy is complementary and natural and homosexuality is an aberration of the natural sexual relationship.
Fact: Worldwide, polygamy is more popular than mongamy.
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