{"id":6653,"date":"2011-12-17T21:19:08","date_gmt":"2011-12-17T21:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=6653"},"modified":"2011-12-17T21:23:20","modified_gmt":"2011-12-17T21:23:20","slug":"gay-marriage-and-polygamous-marriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/gay-marriage-and-polygamous-marriage\/","title":{"rendered":"Gay marriage and polygamous marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rod Dreher asks: If same-sex marriage, why not polygamy?<\/a> I think an excessive legalistic focus in this area confuses. Rather, if we focus on the ends<\/b> then the distinctions are obvious:<\/p>\n

– Same-sex marriage is not the human norm. Polygamy is very common, even dominant as the ideal, across human societies (at least until recently)<\/p>\n

– Many men who would not enter into same-sex marriages because they are not homosexual in a biological sense may in fact find polygamy congenial to their biological imperatives!<\/p>\n

Legally in terms of liberty<\/i> I think one makes a good case that there isn’t that much of a difference between same-sex marriage and polygamy when you take normative Western traditions off the table. But when it comes to ends, a moderately liberal friend of mine once observed: “How come polygamous societies are always shitty societies?”<\/p>\n

Conventional social conservatives are wont to suggest that gay marriage, and gays more broadly, threaten their way of life. As a generality I think this is wrong, because aggressive anti-heterosexual cultural radicals in the gay community are no longer dominant. And, straight people are born straight. In contrast, I do think that the polygamist is a threat to the monogamous way of life.<\/b> For elite males serial monogamy is already relatively common. For underclass individuals institutional monogamy is an uncommon part of their lives. A solemnized polygamist alternative may seem attractive to many. But like law school, many males may enter with aspirations, but few exit to success, in these societies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rod Dreher asks: If same-sex marriage, why not polygamy? I think an excessive legalistic focus in this area confuses. Rather, if we focus on the ends then the distinctions are obvious: – Same-sex marriage is not the human norm. Polygamy … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[873],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6653"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6653"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6660,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6653\/revisions\/6660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}