"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

[wendor.livejournal.com]

I find the quote "Monogamous marriage cannot function if it is just one of many social arrangement." to be particularly interesting. Kurtz offers no argument whatsoever giving value to "the ethos of monogamy", yet maintains that children "will pay the price" should it be weakened. And most tellingly, seems to be saying that monogamous marriage is so fundamentally flawed or weak that it cannot survive and exist if any other options also exist. Am I seriously misreading him or is he actually saying that monogamous marriage owes it's continued existence and usefulness to forcing people to choose between it and nothing? That a vacuum of choices is preferable to free will? If so, I hope they use his argument against it as evidence FOR the case in Canada.