As Boris says, what about if we also allow polyandry? Or group marriages? This kind of gets around the unequal treatment issue.

For those interested in the “poly” debate, I discussed this over at Catallaxy in the lead up to the election.
Room for Poly in the LDP bed?

What if it is allowed both ways?

Hmmm - this doesn’t make much sense as an argument against gay marriage.

Polygamy leads to a more unequal society in quite profound senses.

Besides, it’s a non issue. The obvious inequality is clearly offensives, there is no serious pressure for it, it potentially changes the rules for all existing marriages in a quite unequal way and the clear tendency — even in societies which permit it — is for polygamy to decline.

Actually, there was a good case of the opposite of this in Indonesia a few months back. One of their parliamentarians had got a second(?) wife, and people were complaining about it. As it turns out, if I remember correctly, she was a single mother with 3 children. I imagine this is not the easiest thing to be in Indonesia. Is he such a bad guy for this?

I might point out too that the idea of older (or younger for that matter) men maltreating their wives is hardly something specific to polygamy. Just open a book on social statistics and look up the prevalence of violence.

Unlike same-sex marriage., which merely allows couples previously excluded from marriage to also be able to get married without changing the legal “contract” terms of any existing marriage.

The Catholic position that JH advances is based on so many falsehoods it is hard to know where to start. First, lots of societies have recognised various forms of same-sex marriage. Second, none of those societies found that such got in the way of raising children. Third, the exclusion of same-sex relationships from legal standing in monotheist societies is not some “natural” evolution. For millennia in the lands of the “peoples of the book”, if two men put up their hands and said they were in a sexual relationship they were, depending on time and place, liable to being burnt alive, buried alive, drowned, hanged, castrated, flogged, gaoled or some combination thereof.

The exclusion of same-sex relationships from the law of relationships is based on persecution and brutality. Bigotry sanctified by longevity. A notion of the “sacredness” of marriage based on burning people alive.

We are experiencing centuries of brutal monotheist social engineering breaking down. Excluding same-sex oriented from the law of relationships is no more a “natural” social evolution than enslaving blacks, denying women the vote or banning Jews and Catholics from political office. It is merely “natural” in the sense of “what I am used to”. And what Western civilization has been used to on this matter is contempt and oppression, leavened by brutality and sustained by lies.

How did the Levitical prohibitions against same-sex activity get to be the only bit of the Holiness Code to make it into the New Testament. Because St Paul decided to “show off” his learning by referring to same sex activity as “unnatural”. Where did that come from? Plato’s false claim in *The Laws* that animals of the same sex did not have sex with each other married via the homicidal misogyny (see http://www.well.com/user/aquarius/philo-speciallaws.htm ) of Philo Judaeus (c 20 B.C. - c 45 A.D.) to the Levitical prohibitions.

Catholics claim they are “respecting” human nature. On the contrary, they are editing it, since sexual variety is clearly part of human nature. They just don’t get to edit it as brutally as they used to.

Whether gays and lesbians will have relationships and build lives together is not at issue. That will happen. The only thing at issue is whether they will have the equal protection of the laws in doing that.

“Won’t somebody please think of the children” is usually a cry of scoundrels, along with calls to patriotism and descriptions of opponents as evil, but in this case it has some merit. The special treatment of marriage is in part due to the state wishing to enhance the wellbeing for the next generation.

In the context of this question, however, it is interesting. Whilst there is majority support for recognition of civil unions and marriage it would be interesting to see how much support there is for adoption, IVF and whatnot for gay couples.

On balance personally, I would not oppose polygamy for the few people who might want it. However, I would not support it like I do gay civil unions/marriage, which I think would provide real social benefits.

appealing to the tyranny of the majority is hardly a great arguement against polygamy etc. If we were to use this argument, then the probablility we are going to see gay marriage is approximately 100%. In addition, you seem to have written “religious believers” when I assume you mean “believers of my religion”.

Put any one of those ideas onto a campaign platform and watch the voters run. You’d have to dig into the depths of the Evangelical-fundamentalist web to find social conservatives espousing complementary ideas that toxic.

I reject religious fundamentalism. Andrew, I know, rejects atheist/libertarian fundamentalism. I am surprised by the unhinged responses that his otherwise very solid blog has attracted here.

If some of the more egregious commentators ever find themselves anywhere near real voters, they should prepare for LDP-style humiliations.

No one votes for contempt.

- JH