When Harry Met Sally … Becky and Jan

When Harry Met Sally … Becky and Jan June 10, 2006


Charles Krauthammer writes…

Polygamy used to be stereotyped as the province of secretive Mormons, primitive Africans and profligate Arabs. With “Big Love” it moves to suburbia as a mere alternative lifestyle.

In an essay 10 years ago, I pointed out that it is utterly logical for polygamy rights to follow gay rights. After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender, and if, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one’s autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement–the number restriction (two and only two)–is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice.

This line of argument makes gay activists furious. I can understand why they do not want to be in the same room as polygamists. But I’m not the one who put them there. Their argument does. Blogger and author Andrew Sullivan, who had the courage to advocate gay marriage at a time when it was considered pretty crazy, has called this the “polygamy diversion,” arguing that homosexuality and polygamy are categorically different because polygamy is a mere “activity” while homosexuality is an intrinsic state that “occupies a deeper level of human consciousness.”

But this distinction between higher and lower orders of love is precisely what gay rights activists so vigorously protest when …

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Thanks to FWD from blog reader, Paul.


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