polygamy and homosexuality

Gordon Fitch gcf at panix.com
Fri Feb 8 07:55:03 PST 2002


dlawbailey:
> ... All I need to feel completely comfortable about homosexual
> marriage in an American context is a coherent argument that makes the case:
> homosexual marriage - yes, polygamous marriage - no. I cannot, for my own
> part, find a way to express why a homosexual marriage between consenting
> adults is right but a polygamous marriage among consenting adults is wrong.

What do you mean by _marriage_? If it's just some kind of a contract, and one believes in equal access to the rights of association, any instance of it between informed, consenting, competent parties would seem to be okay. (In a liberal context, anyway.)

As I was once told some French writer wrote, "The burdens of marriage are such that they are far too great for two -- and can scarcely be borne by three!" I can't find it on Google, though.

The problem with many forms of polygamy is that in fact it's polygyny based on women being assigned an inferior status (and thus are not really consenting).

-- Gordon



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