Love + Marriage
October 24, 2009
Is there a conservative case for polygamy?
It is an article of faith among social conservatives that efforts to extend the rights of marriage to gay and lesbian Americans will inevitably lead to legalized polygamy. After all, the argument goes, if gay and lesbian Americans cannot be denied marriage rights due to the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, then how can a polygamous grouping be denied the same rights?
Logically, a polygamous grouping cannot be denied such rights. Regardless of how one feels about the extension of marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples, it seems clear that once gay-rights activists successfully make a grand-scale legal argument in favor of equal marriage, polygamous entities will also begin to make legal requests for equal marriage, requests that by all rights will have to be granted.
Despite the image represented by the mainstream media, there are quite a few prominent conservatives (including a former Vice President) who support the concept of extending marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples. However, if polygamous entities began pressing for marriage rights, how would the right respond?
In a secularized society, it’s a bit difficult to conceive of a compelling governmental interest in prohibiting polygamous marriage. There’s a fairly obvious compelling governmental interest in prohibiting incestuous marriage, of course. However, what would be the state’s rational purpose behind preventing polygamous marriage?
Conservatives who support same-sex marriage rights (but who don’t want to openly say so for fear of being ostracized by the “family values” faction of the conservative movement) sometimes argue that the government has no business determining what does or does not constitute a marriage. If that is indeed the case, then how could these conservatives object if a polygamous grouping filed a federal lawsuit challenging an anti-polygamy law as violating the Equal Protection Clause?
“Polyamory” may be a bizarre concept to some, but it does exist—just ask Mark Sanford. In a society with no official religion, a society theoretically built on the platform of freedom, why should an individual who falls in love with more than one person not have the right to be married to more than one person simultaneously?
Can it not be argued that, within the context of a secular society, extending marriage rights to polygamous entities would accord some degree of financial protection to the participants in such a marriage? Can it not be argued that allowing polygamous marriages would reduce the likelihood of adultery, the principal destroyer of marriage?
It’s not the sort of argument for a weak stomach, I grant you. However, just as the only real barrier to the national expansion of same-sex marriage would be the establishment of an American theocracy (which obviously could not be successfully implemented in the US), so too would the expansion of marriage rights to polygamous entities only be thwarted by the official replacement of the Constitution with the Bible.
Since the legal argument in favor of polygamous marriage could only be obstructed by a theoretical Christian equivalent of Shari’a, one wonders if the day will ever come in which mainstream conservatives stop worrying and learn to love the concept of legally sanctioned polyamory. I’m not sure how comfortable I am with such an idea.
If polygamous marriage is legalized, what psychological impact will such legalization have on the children of such marriages? I’m concerned by this, which is a bit odd because I don’t have such reservations when it comes to the children of gay and lesbian couples. I admit to subscribing to the, yes, liberal view that if two parents provide love and attention to their children, those children will turn out just fine regardless of the orientation of those parents; for all we know, Mary Cheney’s son Samuel could turn out to be more well-adjusted than even Malia and Sasha Obama. (I can’t envision Cheney taking young Sam to Trinity United Church of Christ to hear a radical pastor call down God’s vengeance on America, can you?)
However, at some point liberalism must yield to traditionalism. Two parents can effectively raise a child, but not three. One doesn’t need to be a social scientist to envision a scenario in which children of polygamous marriages will grow up wondering just what the hell is going on.
I’m not thrilled with the concept of polygamous marriage—but how can this concept be stopped in a secular society? Between freedom and tradition, which value has greater force? And if we have polygamous marriage, what about polygamous divorce?
