In the wake of today's Supreme Court opinions, I am disheartened. Some Facebook friends rejoice in what they perceive as equality winning the day by among other things, posting an image of Bert and Ernie against the backdrop of a red equals sign. Thanks for turning an fun, innocent friendship (Bert and Ernie always had separate beds) from a children's show into a sexual relationship. Sigh. I understand where my friends are coming from--our jurisprudence for the past few decades as well as a massive cultural shift made these outcomes nearly inevitable--and there is some cruel behavior towards homosexuals which should be discouraged. I believe that we can genuinely love people while not condoning all their actions, but some critics of homosexuality clearly don't and have done horrid things (Westboro Baptist Church, for example).
Furthermore, I believe that we humans are more than our bodily impulses, especially our sexual ones, and that redefining the institution of marriage as is currently happening further loosens both reasonable and religious restraints on sexual intimacy. Despite the sexual revolution and modern medicine's advances, STDs remain dangerous and spread exactly as the name indicates. Those who study the Bible know that Jesus taught we should avoid even lustful thoughts and that both Jewish law and the early Christian apostles taught that we should not engage in homosexual acts. Why do we as a society place so much importance now on giving in to sexual urges? What happened to the ideals of self-control and platonic friendship? In current U.S. culture, two women can't live together as mutually supportive, dear friends without being "in love", while couples who can't be sexually intimate are justified in divorce, per Pat Robertson. What happens to children's legal rights to be with their parents (by definition, at least one of a child's biological parents is generally excluded from that child's day-to-day life in a same-sex family) when marriage includes homosexual couples? I guess my thoughts seem hopelessly outdated, but I will not give up my conviction that there is far more purpose and joy in seeking and following God's will rather than embracing
hedonism.
One of the primary arguments against permitting the redefinition of marriage to include same-sex marriage has been that it would allow for the eventual legalization of polygamy. This "slippery slope" argument has been roundly mocked and treated as impossible and alarmist. But what seems "impossible" now can become reality surprisingly fast. When Congress passed DOMA, it seemed unnecessary to most because U.S. culture considered gay marriage "out there"; civil partnership laws were just beginning to gain acceptance back then, which really wasn't so long ago. The Supreme Court's holding today in
U.S. v. Windsor upholds the nearly exclusive right of a state to pass its own laws relating to marriage and strikes down a federal law that did not even forbid same-sex marriage. DOMA "impose[d] a disability" on same-sex couples, and that was enough to invalidate it. In the wake of
Windsor, there is literally no legal justification to uphold a law such as the federal
Edmunds Act of 1882, which made polygamy a felony. The federal government may not make laws invalidating a state's laws on marriage absent an infringement by the state on a fundamental right.
Polygamists are going to push hard now for societal sanction of their relationships. They have even more to gain from legalization of their marriages then do gay marriage advocates because they have been risking imprisonment and the removal of their children by child welfare authorities. The same media entities that helped normalize homosexual relationships have already been doing the same thing for polygamy. Just in the past few years, we've had
Big Love and
Sister Wives. And let's not forget the immigrant communities in the USA that
quietly continue their traditional polygamous practices. They will likely also fight for legal status now that it appears attainable.
I do not support legal recognition for plural marriage. First, once an arbitrary limitation on numbers to a marriage is taken away, marriage will cease to be indistinguishable legally from a business partnership and spousal benefits (like SSA, tax treatment, health insurance, etc.) will slowly disappear as they become financially problematic. Second, I think polygamy--polygyny to be specific--deprives a wife of her husband's companionship to an intolerable degree. Yes, I know, ironic stance for a Mormon, eh? But our doctrine does not require plural marriage. In fact, the Book of Mormon teaches that polygamy is an abomination except when the Lord commands it to "raise up seed" (see
Jacob 2:23-30), which He did in Old Testament times and for about 50 years in the 1800s. Thanks to modern science and early feminism successes, we latter-day women do much more with our lives than serve as too-often-short-lived baby-making machines and pawns in property exchanges.
My non-support of an elastic definition of marriage is unlikely to make any difference in what actually happens. I believe in the rule of law and accept the will of the people and stare decisis, no matter my preferences. I point out, though, to Virginia and 49 other states that the slippery slope argument against same-sex marriage was a valid argument and we can now fully expect to go down that slope as a nation.
