Same-Sex Marriage: Opening The Door To Polygamy

By Gregory J. Sullivan, For The Bulletin
Friday, April 17, 2009

With the decision by the Iowa Supreme Court and an enactment of a statute Vermont Legislature sanctioning same-sex marriage, a great deal of commentary, filled with understandable but unwarranted optimism, has appeared on the possibility of same-sex marriage being legislated in additional states, including New Jersey.

Advocates are dismissive of the slippery-slope argument — that is, by allowing same-sex couples to marry, then any restrictions on a parent marrying his child or his couch will logically fall. Such views are easily ridiculed if not rebutted, but the next logical step in this debate — namely, polygamy — is not readily dismissed and must be honestly considered by those who favor same-sex marriage.

We tend to think that culture wars are a unique affliction of our unsettled age. In the 19th century, however, the country was engulfed in a moral struggle not only against slavery but also — and often with comparable fervor — against Mormon polygamy. From Joseph Smith’s revelation in the early 1830s that included plural marriage to the official repudiation of this teaching by the Mormon Church in 1890, Mormons were furiously persecuted and relentlessly prosecuted for their practice of polygamy. the rest