"Legalized Polyamory"

[elfs]

In National Review, the unofficial organ of Catholic American conservatism and the flagship outlet of William F. Buckley, Stanley Kurtz wrings his hands at an impending Canandian court case that would recognize familial rights to three people (two women and one man) with respect to a child.

Legalized polyamory means still another radical increase in the difficulties of children. And polyamorists are already organized and ready to take advantage of any opening in the law.
...
The logic of gay marriage leads inexorably to the end of marriage, and the creation in its place of an infinitely flexible series of contracts. Monogamous marriage cannot function if it is just one of many social arrangement. Marriage as an institution depends for its successful functioning upon the support and encouragement that the ethos of monogamy receives from society as a whole. If anything can be called a marriage -- including group marriage -- then the ethos of monogamy that keeps families together will have been broken, and the social reinforcement that is the essence of marriage itself will be gone. Again, it is children who will pay the price.

Read the rest at Heather has 3 Parents.

Agree or disagree with Kurtz, it's important to keep track of what he and people like him are saying as oppositional arguments to the matter.

Comments

[damiana-swan.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. He's arguing that polyamorous marriage shouldn't be legalized because monogamy only works if it's the only game in town.

Monogamous marriage cannot function if it is just one of many social arrangement. Marriage as an institution depends for its successful functioning upon the support and encouragement that the ethos of monogamy receives from society as a whole.

Doesn't have much faith in the moral strength or ethical values of monogamous folks, does he?

[aprivatefox.livejournal.com]

Along much the same line, from further down the article:

The ethos of monogamy is delicate and under threat in the best of circumstances.

Wow; the lack of faith he's showing in monogamists is stunning. Apparently the hundreds of years of monogamous marriage as a social institution are to be destroyed, overnight, by this one court decision. Now, I'm not an expert, but it seems to me that either monogamy is a lot more stable than he's making it out to be (in which case his argument in this piece is without merit), or monogamy has already been eroded by forces exterior to this court case (in which case his argument in this piece is missing a much larger point). In either case, it seems to me that he's building this case up for his own rhetorical purposes.

Never mind that his argument as to why monogamous families are better is a sidelight (paragraph 4 seems to be his token defense of the axiom, and it's got very little backup) - we're expected to accept the intrinsic correctness of that statement, while simultaneously assuming that this superior institution is fragile enough to be washed away in the rising tide of multiple marriage (which, again, he provides scant evidence of).

I'm predicting that if the case goes through, perhaps a few hundred n-ary families will fight their way into existence against public opinion, nasty looks from the neighbors, and a general sense of disapproval from America At Large. And marriage will continue going on, because at the end of the day social inertia beats the courts, hands-down.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's necessarily even social inertia.

Just as left-handedness is a natural but uncommon expression of human dexterity, or homosexuality a natural but uncommon expression of human sexual desire, or a fondness for capcascin a natural but uncommon expression of human tastes, so to are n-ary relationships a natural but uncommon expression of familial relationships. Even if n-ary marriages had legal support, I doubt they would become popular. It's hard enough maintaining the respect, intimacy, and love that's needed between two; I doubt that trying to do it with three or more would ever become more than a minority sport.

Kurtz's complaint is that people's experimentation will result in children getting hurt by their loss of any understanding of what it means to be in "a relationship." But history shows us that children are adaptable. Yes, some will get hurt in the process; no more than get hurt now by the serial monogamy we currently practice, I'd warrant, and possibly a whole lot less from the experiment itself.

[aprivatefox.livejournal.com]

Point granted; I'll certainly agree that for the vast majority of people, monogamy is and should be a reasonable default.

The idea Kurtz seems to be ignoring (quite possibly deliberately), and what I meant by "social inertia" is this: Monogamy is not a new thing. It's not a delicate thing, really - even when people break from lifelong monogamy in our culture, the pattern of serial monogamy takes its place.

I didn't really see the stance that children will be hurt as being the critical assertion of the article; to my reading, it looked like his stance was slightly more "slippery slope." I read the article's fundamental stance as one of protecting marriage: that to allow any form of familiy with more than two members, one of each sex, is an irrevocably damaging blow to the stability of monogamous heterosexual relationships as a whole. I think, honestly, that he'd have more of a place to debate from, had he been arguing the effect on children - but it reads to me like he's arguing from a point of social order, and that argument is flawed.

[jenkitty.livejournal.com]

He's arguing that polyamorous marriage shouldn't be legalized because monogamy only works if it's the only game in town.

Particularly when you consider that poly-whatevery is still alive and kicking with all of this monogamy around all over the place...

My god! If people were given options other than monogamous marriage, they might take them! And then where would we be?