anyway, I just skimmed through Corvino’s “PIB” paper (not PIV).

Unlike him, I very much liked Rauch’s argument that polygamy is inherently undemocratic. I think there might be ways to rescue it, so that it continues as a critique in pure reason, even.

If not, I’d be prepared to concede that ground and still keep the argument. So much so, that it is one that I think the consequentialists could win. Even in court. To qualify for heightened scrutiny, polygamists would have to do more than a showing of “I love you! and you! and you!”, right? We certainly did! Even if they were able, it does seem that they would face considerable challenges from consequentialists.

I think the bestiality objections that get raised are so stupid they are not serious, either as questions of law or morality.

Consequentialists have their own sticks, things that they can question that George cannot. You can debate whether they would want to waive them or not, to “win” the debate, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I’m not going to make a list here, but think it over.

“apt observation belongs” s/b “apt observation _may_ belong”

Our final task, in this series or otherwise, is not just to agree our collective impression of what he says, but to actually come up with and share ways to develop a successful, well-formed, and good faith set of alternative appeals.

For instance, the “arbitrary standard” criticism can be a _central_ criticism. However, for our purposes, it is not an apt appeal, as is. People don’t *feel* like their marriage is “arbitrary”. In this context, for a host of reasons, people don’t “feel” like arbitrary is unfair (cf. “marriage equality”), yet. To the contrary, many still *feel* like is a just defense of a moral good.

To my own mind (and, to be clear, for multiple personal reasons, I left off moral philosophy a loooong time ago – would you have wanted to spend your life, say, “arguing” with the likes of Robbie P. George?), I think a more cutting critique lies in “needlessly exclusive”. In this way, unlike others, I don’t need to deny his premise, just his supporting logic.

In this paper, he’s hiding his ‘final good’, I submit, so that people get lost in the weeds, perhaps, where he can tiger-bait them.

And, I’m grateful to Rob for this series. It helps us to hone our thinking/skills.

For instance, suppose you concur that some [loving] relationships are to be excluded at law. How do you do it? Some might be on principle, some might be pragmatic. It might include observations like the acceptable risk to the children that nongays sanction to let people remarry and create step-parents. We might make an argument that some relationships are of trivial interest to the law, no matter what our moral view of them.

We might have to specify which of these relationships is subject to heightened scrutiny (are all private, self-declared love relationships subject to more searching forms of scrutiny?) and why. What is the compelling interest of the state, such that it denies some – if there are any others?

I believe these are all manageable questions. But, thinking about them, does help. (For one, the development and codification of a commonsense view of them helps take the risk out of high profile court decisions, in a way, making them seem to confirm widely-rationalized beliefs, rather than creating them).

For instance, Ben (above) says that incestuous relationships are bad for family reunions and that there is no clamoring class of the incestuous, just to pick two. How one answers the questions that frame the debate might influence how you slot those observations and come up with the best set of appeals we can, for now. By that I mean, the state doesn’t have a compelling interest in the harmony of family picnics, so that apt observation belongs in another class of considerations/appeals.

Implicit in – and inseparable from – the idea that “there is no general right to marry the person you love” is the assumption that the right to marry the person you love is restricted and one must in some way attain that right.

To George, there is only one way and only one way to earn that right. It is a simple step, one that isn’t much of a burden on most people. The one step that one takes to be heterosexual.

And, actually, that’s what George’s entire argument consists of: finding ways to say “marriage is only for heterosexuals” without having to admit that his standard is arbitrary.

So he plays a game of synonyms.

The couple must be complimentary. Well, how is that defined? By being opposite sex.

Or the requirement is that should they ever engage in sex together, it will be of the kind that in some people results in contraception. Oh, and what kind is that? It must be opposite sex.

At some point is begins to be apparent that he’s just listing what he thinks are differences between the couples and trying to pretend that they are reasons.

It’s all a bit like a third grader explaining why her schoolmate was the only one not invited to her birthday party. “Oh, it’s nothing personal, Gloria, it’s just that this year’s theme was ‘people who aren’t named Gloria’”.

I have to agree with Marcus. I don’t get warm and fuzzy when I think of family. Usually it’s as the First Betrayers, the First Bullies.

But my husband’s family is wonderful– and though he is very close to them, he is basically a loner like you. I have many friends whose families are incredible, supportive, loving– you name. As a boy, I was blessed with the people i called my foster parents. Were it not for them, I would have turned into the same kind of emotional wrecks as the rest of my family.

That being said, I don’t think the polyamorous communities in this country referred to by various people can be compared the the polygamous marriages of the mormons, or the polygamous marriages of African Christians, or anyone else’s. There are very few polyandrous societies left, if any, and there weren’t that many historically. Those polygamous marriages fit your paradigm. Men have more power than women.

This is where my comments on the legal difficulty of poly-anything marriages that do not fit the patriarchal model.

Revising slightly what I said earlier:

“Polygamous marriage would make a hash out of all related family laws, and create legal nightmares we probably couldn’t resolve. If John marries sue and sue marries Bill, is john married to bill? Is same sex marriage then legal? If sue and bill get divorced, are john and bill divorced as well? Is Bill responsible for John and sue’s kid? And so on. Every single law would become a quagmire (giggity).

The only way to resolve the problem is the way it is currently resolved. The man marries the women, they are not married to each other, and he basically owns them. It is serial marriage without divorce, and polyandry may be, but probably won’t be in the offing. The thought of all those men married to the same woman would probably excite way to many homosexual fantasies that would then need to be repressed, and the wanna-be-straight-but-ain’t's are way too busy already.

not to mention, it does not fit very well in line with our notions of sexual parity.

Pleading ignorance isn’t an argument, any more than it is when “I’ve never heard of a homosexual who wasn’t an unhappy, abused sex addict” is used by anti-gay activists.

If you (general you) honestly believe that legalizing polygamy would cause any of this to happen:

1. The monogamous majority will become polygamous.
2. But only the men, and not the women.
3. Americans will embrace the culture of fundamentalist Mormons, the Taliban, or whatever backwards polygamous society you’re thinking of.

Then I suggest you support the abolition of monogamous marriage right away. The vast majority of monogamous societies throughout history – and today – have been patriarchal, authoritarian, and deeply sexist. Women and girls have been treated as exploitable goods in most monogamous marriages throughout history. By embracing monogamy, then, America is opening the floodgates to God knows what.

Priya Lynn, I’m sorry for whatever you’ve been through with your own friends or family. It doesn’t give you the right to denigrate the relationships of people who do have close non-marital relationships. And not everyone can or wants to get married.

The anecdotal evidence says they are. The abusive aspects of polygamy are apparent in every polygamous community I’ve heard of and I have yet to hear about any polygamous community where abuse isn’t a primary feature of its marriages.

Lucrece said “Especially since the whole argument that since there are only 2 people you can only rely on one another doesn’t fly in the slightest. There are always best friends/family to resort to and in fact many married couples do become healthy by not expecting to get everything out of a partner but rather what you need of each type of relationship”.

No there are not always best friends/family to resort to. My family rejects me and my relationship and as a loner I only have my husband to rely upon. I’m sure I’m not alone in that. Family and friends almost never have the same level of committment to a person that their spouse does, you simply cannot rely on family and friends to provide what a spouse will – you are not the primary relationship in their lives.

MarkusT said “Lucrece, thanks for your point about the value in different relationships. My instinct is that many people would be happier without the idea that your marriage has to be your best and closest relationship in every conceivable way, and that friends or family aren’t as valuable.”.

Spoken like someone who’s never been married. Friends and family aren’t as valuable. Just because you share genetics doesn’t mean you share any sort of committment to each other. I’ve never met anyone who considered any friend or family member as a closer or as close a relationship as their spouse. To suggest that’s the case is wholly unrealistic in the vast majority of the time.

Lucrece said “If you’re going to cite sects as a reason to ban polygamy, I might as well cite you the 50% of marriages that end in divorce due to bitterness, abuse, and plain financial disagreements (i.e. greed) as a reason to ban marriage as an institution.”.

If there are polygamous marriages apart from sects I haven’t heard of them. One simply does not hear about healthy stable polygamous marriages. Of those marriages that end in divorce a small portion of them are due to the kind of abuse that seems to be typical in polygamous marriages. Most marriages are entered into as an agreement between equals thus limiting the systemic abuse one sees in typical polygamous marriages where there is a huge power imbalance.

MarcusT said “Apparently you think that legalizing polygamy will lead to a bunch of polygamous men grabbing all the women. I don’t know where you live, but where I come from (America), both men and women decide who they marry. And the vast majority of American women aren’t interested in sharing their husbands any more than most men are interested in sharing their wives.”.

Polygamy DOES lead to a few men taking most of the women and leaving many young men alone and targets for rejection from the society. Polygamy is common in some communities and virtually absent in others. In those communities where its common or the norm it causes serious problems with disaffected young men with no marriageable partners. Legalizing polygamy would likely lead to more of this and deprive more young men of spouses.

The Church, didn’t want to compete for wealth with the children of priests, and the Church also gave concession to wealthier homosexuals (who had to contract to bequeath to the church on condition of these marriages), who usually didn’t have children.

Clearly, celibacy for priests, inheritance for the Church from the gay couples they married, was a mercenary act of coveting wealth for itself, not some higher calling for God.

Gay people have always been confronted with something conditional to just participate in what other people do all the time without such conditions.
CU’s and DP’s are another example of those conditions, all the responsibility, but still without all the privileges.
Our society, despite how ‘family’ orgs. treat gay people as if never or incapable of contribution, benefits greatly from gay people, especially those who don’t have children or who adopt them.
Credit isn’t given where it’s deserved.

However, if all we ever do is reply to it with some quick talking point, we will sound like we are avoiding the subject because we are vulnerable on it. One thing we could do is turn it into a counter-attack, perhaps in the parry-and-thrust manner.

Perhaps the thing to do is to say that “while I/we have little interest in polygamy/polyandry as an issue and while it is irrelevant to what we are advocating for, legal secular same sex marriage between two people, I/we should note that there are some good public policy reasons for not allowing polygamous marriage (perhaps summarize a few of them), but there are no good reasons for not allowing gay marriage between two people. [That's the parry. Next comes the thrust.]

“But it should also be noted that polygamy is always a heterosexual arrangement.” And bring in the points very ably made by the posters here on that subject, emphasizing how patriarchal and heterosexist polygamy is. Perhaps talk about how polygamous arrangements are always male supremacist, and connect that to the overt male supremacist doctrine of those who are central to the push for straights only marriage (Protestant fundamentalists, conservative Catholics, doctrinaire Mormons, and whichever straights only marriage advocates have espoused male supremacy at any time). Basically, turn it back on heterosexist straight people, like we do with other things the ‘phobes attack us for.

An alternate or additional thrust could be to mention that the polygamy/polyandry argument is the good old slippery slope logical fallacy, and it’s also a way of associating homosexuality, and therefore gay marriage, with types of sexuality that most people are against.

The most important thing is to not get caught up in discussing this with the anti-gays at length. It’s a trap that we need not get stuck in.

Now the non-procreating hetero married couple is one of the best weaknesses of the procreationist anti-gay marriage argument. That one we need to hammer on relentlessly and creatively. We need to talk about all different kinds of non-procreating hetero couples. If possible, we should saddle the whole procreationist argument with non-procreating hetero couples so thoroughly that the procreationist argument becomes a laughing stock. The best scenario would be that we would be so successful at it that the moment most people, including most straight people, saw the beginnings of the procreationist argument, they’d start cracking jokes about all the restrictions we don’t have against non-procreative marriage or about different types of non-procreating married people.