From "Polygamy? It's positively biblical..." by Martha Nussbaum, posted 5/18/08 at the Philadelphia Enquirer
What is wrong with polygamy?
Nineteenth-century Americans coupled it with slavery, calling both "the twin relics of barbarism." Today, it is used as a scare image to deter people from approving same-sex marriage, lest it lead down a slippery slope to that horror of horrors.
But what, exactly, is bad about it? Looking at the Texas sect at the Yearning for Zion ranch, so much in the news, will not tell us, because that sect allegedly forced underage girls into marriage. The case then becomes one of child sexual abuse, a crime hardly unknown in the monogamous family, although it gets less splashy publicity when it occurs there. Disturbing things are fun to contemplate when they can be pinned on distant "deviants," but threatening when they occur in families like one's own.
...All this shows us a deplorable, if ubiquitous, human tendency: People who feel threatened by a new group demonize the group by imputing to it allegedly nefarious practices in the areas of gender and sexuality. Think of anti-Semitism in European history, Islamophobia, and - perhaps above all - fear and loathing of gays and lesbians. (That would be us insecure, conservative, Bible believing Christians, of course...)
But what should we say about polygamy itself, in our own time? What, if anything, is really wrong with it?
...The history of Mormon polygamy shows us that the state and public opinion are very bad judges of what adult men and women may reasonably do. When people are insecure, they cling to the "normal" and vilify those who choose to live differently. Someday down the road, we may recognize that adults are entitled, as John Stuart Mill saw long ago, to conduct such "experiments in living" as suit their own plans and projects, as long as they inflict no harm on nonconsenting parties. The state must protect vulnerable dependents: children and the elderly. It must also protect adult men and women against fraud and force. Beyond that, it should leave the field of intimate sexual choice to a regime of private contractual arrangement.
It was all too predictable...
If consent and adulthood really are the only criteria for marriage, then there should be no problem with adult consensual incest.
You laugh? A brother and sister and Germany are fighting to get it legalized.
Remember when Senator Rick Santorum caught holy hell for warning that if the laws criminalizing sodomy were struck down, there would be no avoiding the slippery slope?
Here's what he said:
"If the Supreme Court says you have the right to consensual sex within your home," he told a reporter, "then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything."
It brings me no pleasure to say he was right...
Homosexual activists have made it no secret that their goal is the destruction of monogamous, heterosexual marriage as our societal ideal. Their online manifesto calls for the legal recognition of just about any sexual arrangement people dream up - including polygamy. Read it HERE and weep.
Is Polyamory (multiple partners) Going Mainstream?
Marriage: At the Bottom of the Slippery Slope
Lawful Incest May be on its Way
