On Gay Marriage, Polygamy Arguments, and Likely Outcomes

[Annie]

Kruthammer has a piece out that has everyone on the blogosphere in an uproar. BTW, he is agnostic or atheistic, no one is sure. He has an interesting take, coming from where he does. It provoke Althouse and this response. Well more than just this, as the number of comments hours ago show. For those interested, follow the links:


http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_03_12-2006_03_18.shtml#1142624607

[Eugene Volokh, March 17, 2006 at 2:43pm] 1 Trackbacks / Possibly More Trackbacks
Same-Sex Marriage and Polygamous Marriage:

Ann Althouse responds to Charles Krauthammer's slippery slope argument:

If Krauthammer has been writing about this subject for 10 years, it boggles the mind that the obvious distinction has not yet dawned on him.

Legal marriage isn't just about love, it's an economic arrangement. Having the state authorize your union is not the same thing as having your friends and neighbors approve of you and your religious leaders bless you. It affects taxes and employee benefits -- huge amounts of money. A gay person with a pension and a health insurance plan is incapable of extending those benefits to his (or her) partner. He (or she) can't file a joint tax return. That's not fair. A polygamous marriage, however, puts a group of persons in a position to claim more economic benefits than the traditional heterosexual couple. That doesn't appeal to our sense of fairness. . . .

t's not all about love and who respects what. It's also about economics. And in that dimension, it's easy to distinguish polygamy.

I generally much like Prof. Althouse's work, but here I'm unpersuaded. She gives a good argument for not giving polygamous families more benefits than two-member families have. But it's easy to exepct what polygamous families would say in response:

We're not asking for benefits that would extend to all the spouses in the family. All we're asking for is what two-member families get. We want the symbolic value of having our marriages recognized as marriages, which doesn't impose economic costs on anyone. We want other no-cost or very low-cost benefits. And for the costly benefits, such as insurance and pensions, we'll be happy if the law just covers two members of our marriage; we'll take care of the other members on our own.

We don't want coverage for three, four, or five members. We just want coverage for two, just like the rest of you get. But it's unfair if you entirely reject our marriage, and give us coverage only for one.

I've argued in my Same-Sex Marriage and Slippery Slopes that polygamous marriages are indeed unlikely to be recognized in the U.S., even if same-sex marriages are recognized. If the same-sex-marriage-recognition movement wins, and especially if it wins by stressing certain kinds of arguments, those arguments may indeed be logically usable by polygamy-recognition forces. But, as I argued, "It takes more than a plausible argument to win battles like this, either in the legislature or in court. It makes more than a plausible argument plus some slippery slope effects. It takes a broadly supported political and legal movement (whether of a majority or a committed substantial minority) of the sort that gay rights advocates have managed to muster. I doubt that there’ll be such a movement for polygamist rights, even with the potential slippery slope effects I describe."

Nonetheless, though I'm not terribly impressed by the slippery-slope-towards-recognizing-polygamy arguments, I don't think they can be dismissed as easily as Prof. Althouse suggests. It's not enough to come up with a plausible distinction between what one supports and the extreme version of what others support. One also has to deal with the more modest versions that the others will come up with in response to your distinction.
62 Comments

 

[Nienna]

I don't have anything to reply, other than that I think allowing anything other than traditional marriage WILL start a slippery slope.

And that polygamy has a high "ick" factor. :shiver:

 

[Annie]

I don't have anything to reply, other than that I think allowing anything other than traditional marriage WILL start a slippery slope.

And that polygamy has a high "ick" factor. :shiver:

Thanks Mom, did you check out †he links?

 

[Kagom]

I don't have anything to reply, other than that I think allowing anything other than traditional marriage WILL start a slippery slope.

And that polygamy has a high "ick" factor. :shiver:

I disagree to an extent. I think if civil unions (marriage if people want to be so picky as to the name) are granted, it won't happen. Polygamy in and of itself causes a lot of emotional trauma (okay, it did for me) and yes, the "ick" factor weighs in kinda heavily there too.

 

[Annie]

I disagree to an extent. I think if civil unions (marriage if people want to be so picky as to the name) are granted, it won't happen. Polygamy in and of itself causes a lot of emotional trauma (okay, it did for me) and yes, the "ick" factor weighs in kinda heavily there too.

And your point? Hard to tell with this waffle post.

 

[liberalogic]

I disagree to an extent. I think if civil unions (marriage if people want to be so picky as to the name) are granted, it won't happen. Polygamy in and of itself causes a lot of emotional trauma (okay, it did for me) and yes, the "ick" factor weighs in kinda heavily there too.

That's a bit unfair to say because how many people use the "ick factor" against gay marriage? And the trauma that you felt from polygamy-- how many people aren't going to say that gay marriage won't cause the same trauma? Not many-- in fact that's the reason why many people here are against it; they don't want the children to "suffer." As "icky" as both gay marriage and polygamy are to me, I still support both because I believe that a legal marriage should only be confined to consent (which is how I fend off the morons who compare gay marriage to fucking your dog). However, to support one and not the other is hypocritical because both are deviations from the "traditional" marriage, but are still within the boundaries of consent.

Perhaps the best point in the article is the issue of marriage as an "economic" union. Many devout religious followers will claim that marriage is derived from religion, therefore it should remain traditional to its roots. The problem with that argument is that marriage, once in the hands of the state, has no religious boundaries. If it did, then why is adultery legal? The fact remains that marriage by the state is the union of individuals through a LEGAL standard, not by God's standard. If you want to be married by God, then you go to the church and do it. And by no means have I ever supported gay marriage in church-- that's a private institution and it has every right to define marriage as it sees fit.

Once again, I emphasize the economic standpoint of marriage by the government. Why can't two gay people have the same economic advantages as a straight married couple? There is no reasonable answer to that.

The only objection that I would have with polygamy is that only two of the married bunch should be granted the economic sanctions by the government. How would it be fair if most people marry one spouse and get those benefits, but then the polygamists can marry everyone in Utah and have a huge advantage with the benefits? If we legalize polygamy (which, of course, we won't), all people within the marriage should be legally recognized, but only two should get the benefits. Or they can spread out the benefits for two amongst all (I'm not quite aware of the intricacies of marital benefits, but the spreading out thing sounds good if possible).

 

[ho hum]

If you want to argue polygamy from a "Biblical" perspective, you would be hard pressed to deny that it was a common and sanctioned practice in Israel. If you want to do the same for homosexual marriages, you couldn't do it.

If you want to remove religion from the argument, you can do whatever you want.

 

[Charles_Main]

Gay marriage - sure let em I don't care.

Polygamy among consenting adults - sure let em I don't care

Polygamy when kids are involved - NO!!

 

[Shogun]

oh I dunno.. David and Johnathan were, uh, pretty close...

 

[Gunny]

If you want to argue polygamy from a "Biblical" perspective, you would be hard pressed to deny that it was a common and sanctioned practice in Israel. If you want to do the same for homosexual marriages, you couldn't do it.

If you want to remove religion from the argument, you can do whatever you want.

And if you wanted to remove the fact that none of the posters from 2006 that posted above regularly posts here anymore you might have someone to argue with.

 

[Shogun]

i tellya.. sometimes people dive DEEP for some of these olden threads.

 

[Gunny]

i tellya.. sometimes people dive DEEP for some of these olden threads.

Graverobbers.

 

[Shogun]

It cracks me up to think about what some forum member, years after i've moved on, will think of my posts..

teeheehee.

 

[Gunny]

It cracks me up to think about what some forum member, years after i've moved on, will think of my posts..

teeheehee.

It just trips me out to see some of the names. Kathianne's is not so unusual. Why I didn't pay particular attention. But someone dredged up a thread by CP and I was like WTF? He hasn't been here in two years or so.

 

[Ravi]

That used to happen a lot at another forum I was at. Some doofus was always dredging up ancient threads.

 

[ho hum]

Okay, so I'm a doofus because I'm new, saw the thread on the bottom of the page and didn't read the dates and posted. Thanks for the welcome.

 

[Ravi]

I didn't call you a doofus. Please reread my post.

Though...it's hard to believe this would have been at the bottom of the current events page.

 

[ho hum]

I didn't call you a doofus. Please reread my post.

Though...it's hard to believe this would have been at the bottom of the current events page.

Not directly... No big deal, we're on the net and everybody is 6'3" and 260 lbs of muscle....

It was on the bottom of the page of the current thread about polygamy on the Religion and Ethics forum.

 

[Ravi]

Not directly... No big deal, we're on the net and everybody is 6'3" and 260 lbs of muscle....

It was on the bottom of the page of the current thread about polygamy on the Religion and Ethics forum.

ahh...welcome, even if you aren't 6'3".

 

[Charles_Main]

Not me, I am 6'4'' but only 180 pounds. when I fart I get air!