Gary Fitch wrote:
"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.)"
Right, so equal access to contractual relationships would include both polygamists and homosexuals as well as plain old heteros. This I can accept.
"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)."
The problem is that this last bit is a dodge. Obviously it's no better to impugn the motives of polygamous couples than it is to impugn the motives of homosexuals. If we dismiss polygamists as sexists, why not dismiss homosexuals as perverts? Certainly polygamists have tradition and history on their side while I don't know of any culture in history that has sanctified homosexual unions.
The fact is that many people marry, have sex with and have children with more than one person (even of more than one sex). If homosexuals deserve the legal protection for their families that heterosexual couples enjoy, why don't groups of more than two deserve that same protection?
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