Friday, August 3, 2007

I thought this post would be longer

Legal experts say that gay marriage won't necessarily lead to legalized polygamy. Of course, these are Canadian legal experts, so who knows how they think?

Still, it's true that gay marriage shouldn't lead to polygamous marriages. A lot of people like to claim so--as if that were a valid argument. "Recognizing something I don't like might lead to recognition of other things I don't like" is absurd on its face. It is a seductive sort of argument: if it's wrong to deny this kind of marriage, then it's wrong to deny this kind of marriage.

However, there's an important difference between the two. Gays are being denied the right to marry at all (despite all hollers of "they have the same right to marry someone of the opposite sex as the rest of us"). This is obviously not true of polygamists--you can't claim that you're being denied the right to marry if the obstacle is that you're already married.

No comments: