Throughout the history of the gay rights movement, critics have lobbed more or less the same criticisms at it. One of the most popular is that if we let the gays marry, pretty soon we’ll be permitting polygamy, incest and bestiality.
The latter two are ridiculous when thought about seriously due to the impossibility of meaningful consent. But the left really shouldn’t be as quick as it is to call polygamy comparisons a slippery slope.
At the very least with the possibility of same-sex marriage being legal nationwide, prominent supporters of the movement should start to explain the differences rather than just dismissing the argument out of hand.
If, as the marriage equality movement holds, the government has no business preventing people from marrying who they want to and are in a position to give consent regardless of what public opinion, the religious views of the majority or the voters of a state say, why can’t a person marry more than one consenting party?
Let’s go through the arguments against polygamy. The majority of the public disapproves? The campaign for marriage equality holds that public opinion shouldn’t dictate whom individuals can and can’t marry. Religiously condemned? That hasn’t done much to stop the tide of gay marriage, and for what it’s worth, Solomon did have a few hundred wives. Marriage has been defined for centuries and shouldn’t be changed? The whole point of the argument for marriage equality is to oppose this notion.
In terms of the remaining arguments against polygamy, most are rather flimsy on their own or are also regularly dismissed by supporters of marriage equality. If we were seriously concerned about imbalances of power within a marriage that all parties could consent to, virtually every marriage from before the '60s would need to be retroactively invalidated.
And, as far as I’m aware, the U.S. has never denied a consenting marriage on the grounds of power imbalance. That has literally never been an issue and raising it as one here is dubious.
In terms of domestic abuse potential, at least one study has also suggested that same-sex couples may have higher rates of domestic abuse than opposite-sex couples, but marriage equality supporters have generally dismissed this as a valid argument against same-sex marriage. As such, it’s hard to believe that a supporter of marriage equality would suddenly be willing to oppose polygamy on the grounds that it has higher domestic abuse rates.
So, really, all points against polygamy that remain intact when the arguments not recognized by the marriage equality movement are invalidated boil down to policy. Yes, it would be harder to figure out how credit scores and tax incentives work with polygamy than it is for same-sex marriage.
But since the main victories of the marriage equality movement have been in the courts rather than the legislatures, it is reasonable to assume that the constitutional questions of polygamy are far less important than the political ones.
With marriage equality in all 50 states being a possibility in the near future and the skeleton of a legal polygamy movement forming, it is ridiculous to keep dismissing the issue out of hand.
While this reality might be unpleasant for liberals hoping to win in the court of public opinion where polygamy remains deeply unpopular, it is more irresponsible of them to keep ducking the question than it is for conservatives to keep asking it.