The Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage has started the United States on a slippery slope. The SCOTUS decision has helped activists achieve one of the central goals of social liberalism. What is the next advance?
Now that the marriage definition “isn’t driven by gender alone, why should it be limited to two individuals,” argues Fredrik DeBoer in Politico. “The most natural advance next for marriage lies in legalized polygamy.”
During the debate over same-sex marriage, gay activists opposed the idea that legalizing same-sex marriage would lead to other types of marriage legalization including polygamy. But that argument is illogical.
Chief Justice John Roberts even mentioned it in his dissenting opinion. “It is striking how much of the majority’s reasoning would apply with equal force to the claim of a fundamental right to plural marriage.”
Polygamy is still a strong social taboo, yet the moral reasoning behind that is as legally weak as opposition to same-sex marriage, says DeBoer. Gay activists approve of any two consenting adults sexual or romantic relationships, but oppose the formal, legal recognition of those relationships. “If my liberal friends recognize the legitimacy of free people who choose to form romantic partnerships with multiple partners, how can they deny them the right to the legal protections marriage affords?”
“Polyamory is a fact,” wrote DeBoer. “People are living in group relationships today. The question is whether we will grant to them the same basic recognition we grant to other adults: that love makes marriage, and that the right to marry is exactly that, a right.”
Why the opposition, from those who have no interest in preserving “traditional marriage” or forbidding polyamorous relationships? The answer: short-term political need. Gay marriage advocates did not want the legitimization of the argument that gay marriage will start the nation on the slippery slope to every other kind of relationship. That would have hurt the movement.
“In 2005, a denial of the right to group marriage stemming from political pragmatism made at least some sense. In 2015, after this ruling, it no longer does… The next horizon,” argues DeBoer is the “legal recognition of marriages between more than two partners. It’s time to legalize polygamy.”
“Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot…” Luke 17:28
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