Polygamy debate: How Culture Happens/Maggie Gallagher

The March 28, 2006 NYT Arts section published another pro-polygamy piece, this time a story of women who are or have been in polygamous marriages, watching and reacting to HBO’s “Big Love.”

Selected quotes:

“It's a more realistic view of a polygamous family that lives out in society than people have known," said Anne Wilde, a widow who was part of a multiple family for 33 years. "It can be seen as a viable alternative lifestyle between consenting adults.”

"This is a glimpse of a family that is mainstream," Mary Batchelor, a 37-year-old mother of seven and director of "Principle Voices," a leading polygamy advocacy group, said of the Henricksons. "There are hundreds of these families. It shows an aspect of polygamy nobody ever sees. Before, you saw families in crisis." She referred to media images of men being carted off to jail for beating women or children or marrying child brides.”

"This is making all of America say 'Why is there a law against polygamy?' " said a 55-year-old woman who wanted to be known only as Doris, because she feared repercussions at her new job after years of staying at home with her 14 children in suburban West Jordan. "This guy is just trying to support his family, and the family is just trying to make it."

To me, its quite apparent the success of gay marriage as a public argument is responsible for a. the appearance of such a story and b. the language and rhetoric which these women use to defend their choices.

I think this is true even though I believe most gay marriage advocates have no intention of endorsing polygamy and even though there are numerous ways in which gay marriage and polygamy are different.

Just as gay people were inspired and informed by black civil rights leaders, who had no intention of endorsing a movement to normalize homosexuality, much less gay marriage, polygamists are being inspired by the gay marriage movement to come out of the closet, and their arguments now strike many cultural elites (such as the editors of the New York Times Arts page) as plausible, worthy of being entertained, because of the way they echo the gay marriage arguments.

This in itself marks a cultural shift. It’s ultimate importance and power of course are yet to be determined. I don’t believe polygamy is an inevitable result of the gay marriage debate. But I think the push for gay marriage has already visibly altered our public culture of marriage. Things that were taken for granted, now must be discussed and defended.

For intellectuals, this is hog heaven. But culture consists largely of the things that don’t have to be discussed that much, because they are presumed. Culture consists of shared premises. Institutions shape human behavior by shaping categories of human thought, especially by marking off a huge category of possiblities as “not necessary to think about.” E.g. should New York bring back slavery? Not necessary to think about.

Its set me to thinking about describing how culture change happen. Next post.
posted by maggie at 8:49 AM | link

1 Comments:

At 3/29/2006 1:27 PM,  Bezuhov said...

But this can work the other way too. Trying to figure out what exactly it is about gay marriage that rankles can help us remember what exactly marriage itself was for in the first place. I doubt think it should be against the law to play tennis with a violin, but doing so doesn't make one a musician.

 

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