Nausea/Belly Laugh: You Decide!
In today's Washington Post, we have: Pandora and Polygamy, by Charles Krauthammer—One of Those Conservatives Who Knows Nothing About Sex But Feels Free to Spout Forth.
And now, polygamy.
Not the icky patriarchal Mormon kind, but The Ethical Slut kind, Charles?
With the sweetly titled HBO series Big Love, polygamy comes out of the closet. Under the headline "Polygamists, Unite!" Newsweek informs us of "polygamy activists emerging in the wake of the gay-marriage movement." Says one evangelical Christian big lover: "Polygamy rights is the next civil-rights battle."
Big Love... will this be another feminist visionary series like Sex and The City?
Polygamy used to be stereotyped as the province of secretive Mormons, primitive Africans, and profligate Arabs.
Fan yourself, Chuck!
With "Big Love" it moves to suburbia as a mere alternative lifestyle.
You mean nice white people?
As Newsweek notes, these stirrings for the mainstreaming of polygamy (or, more accurately, polyamory) have their roots in the increasing legitimization of gay marriage.
No, they don't. Sexual liberation advocates the end of criminalization for consensual behavoir and family arrangements. The end of discrimination. Social justice, that sort of thing. Not all of us want to get married. We just want you to bug off.
In an essay 10 years ago, I pointed out that it is utterly logical for polygamy rights to follow gay rights.
Ten years ago, my, my.
After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender, and if, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one's autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement -- the number restriction (two and only two) -- is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice.
This line of argument makes gay activists furious.
No, it doesn't. Who are you talking about?
I can understand why they do not want to be in the same room as polygamists. But I'm not the one who put them there.
But if only you were invited, Charles!
Their argument does. Blogger and author Andrew Sullivan,
Oh dear...
who had the courage to advocate gay marriage at a time when it was considered pretty crazy,
Mary, Please!
has called this the "polygamy diversion," arguing that homosexuality and polygamy are categorically different because polygamy is a mere "activity" while homosexuality is an intrinsic state that "occupies a deeper level of human consciousness."
Andrew Sullivan is neither role model nor leader for sexual liberation. He's a conserva-queer who shames other gay people while he put his own kinky ads in the personals and hoped that no one would find out. He can go stick his head in a five-tier wedding cake.
...Posit a union of, say, three gay women all deeply devoted to each other.
Been there! Loved it.
On what grounds would gay activists dismiss their union as mere activity rather than authentic love and self-expression?
None.
On what grounds do they insist upon the traditional, arbitrary and exclusionary number of two?
We don't. You need to get out more.
In case you're wondering, Krauthammer favors a popular vote on questions such as gay marriage. Thank goodness he wasn't around for interracial marriage legislation... that STILL wouldn't pass today.
