“You are resorting to scare tactics!”
“No one is arguing for the legal recognition of polygamous or polyamorous relationships as marriages!”
“Recognizing same-sex partnerships does not open the door to changing fundamental marital norms. It will not change the nature of marriage as a monogamous and exclusive union—-it will simply make marriage as we’ve always understood it available to more people.”
That was then; this is now. Have a look at the article by Jillian Keenan in the perfectly mainstream online magazine Slate :
The definition of marriage is plastic. Just like heterosexual marriage is no better or worse than homosexual marriage, marriage between two consenting adults is not inherently more or less “correct” than marriage among three (or four, or six) consenting adults. Though polygamists are a minority—a tiny minority, in fact—freedom has no value unless it extends to even the smallest and most marginalized groups among us. So let’s fight for marriage equality until it extends to every same-sex couple in the United States—and then let’s keep fighting. We’re not done yet.
I will be accepting “I have to admit it: You told me so, Robby” messages. (See here .) While I’m at it, I’ll hazard another prediction, though I’d love to be wrong: The Slate article will not produce a single serious critique by a major scholar or activist in the SSM movement arguing that marriage is not completely plastic, and identifying a principled ground for rejecting the legal redefinition of marriage to include multiple-partner sexual relationships.
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