By
Rod Dreher • December 16, 2011, 2:08 AM
A few years ago, I had a friendly argument with a colleague who believes same-sex marriage ought to be legalized. I made the standard argument that if our current marriage laws — this was before gay marriage had spread to some states — were based on nothing but irrational prejudice, as he maintained, then there was no reason to deny some sort of marital union to polygamists and polyamorists. Ridiculous, he said.: “Marriage is between two people.”
“But why?” I pressed. “Isn’t that arbitrary?”
He honestly didn’t understand my objection. He thought it inconceivable that any court would grant what to him was sheer crackpottery. The very idea of polygamist marriages being sanctioned in law! Inconceivable! Which is what they said not 20 years ago about same-sex marriage. Anyway, I’ve found over the years that people who argue that restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples is wrong because bigoted and because mutual consent should be the only barrier to marriage often do not know what to say when the slippery slope to plural marriage is mentioned. They don’t seem to appreciate how the premisses and the logic that leads them to back same-sex marriage — particularly the belief that marriage is merely a social institution — makes it difficult to make a principled argument against other alternative marital arrangements.