Friday, April 10, 2009

From Gay Marriage to Polygamy

Via Pundette, don't miss Mark Steyn's key essay, "We’re in the fast lane to polygamy":

What’s my line on legalized polygamy? Oh, I pretty much said it all back in 2004, in a column for Ezra Levant’s Western Standard. Headline: “It’s Closer Than They Think.”

Well, a mere half-decade down the slippery slope and here we are, with the marrying kind of Bountiful, B.C., headed for the Supreme Court of Canada. Five years ago, proponents of same-sex marriage went into full you-cannot-be-serious eye-rolling mode when naysayers warned that polygamy would be next. As I wrote in that Western Standard piece:

“Gay marriage, they assure us, is the merest amendment to traditional marriage, and once we’ve done that we’ll pull up the drawbridge.”

Claire L’Heureux-Dubé, the former Supreme Court justice, remains confident the drawbridge is firmly up. “Marriage is a union of two people, period,” she said in Quebec the other day. But it used to be a union of one man and one woman, period. And, if that period got kicked down the page to accommodate a comma and a subordinate clause, why shouldn’t it get kicked again? If the sex of the participants is no longer relevant, why should the number be?

Ah, well, says Mme L’Heureux-Dubé, polygamists don’t enjoy the same societal acceptance as gays. “I don’t see a parade of polygamists on Ste-Catherine Street,” observes the great jurist, marshalling the same dazzling quality of argument she used back in her days as the Supreme Court’s most outspoken activist on gay issues. A decade ago, she and Justice Michael Kirby, Australia’s most senior gay judge, traipsed from one gay-rights confab to another like the Elizabeth Taylor and Roddy McDowall of the international judicial cocktail circuit. But perhaps, back home in Canada, her ladyship ought to expand her excursions beyond the Ste-Catherine Street gay pride march. If you check in with, ahem, certain cultural communities in Canada, you will find polygamy not just “accepted” but government funded. It was confirmed last year that in the province of Ontario thousands of polygamous men receive welfare payments for each of their wives. There are many more takers for polygamy than there ever will be for gay marriage ....

While Mme L’Heureux-Dubé’s objections may be sincere, the Government of Canada gives the distinct impression of going through the motions. Its objection to polygamy rests on the great wobbling blancmange of “Canadian values.” Polygamy is supposedly incompatible with “da Canadian value,” as M Chrétien used to call it. But surely da Canadian value is that we have no values. We value all values. To do otherwise would be profoundly un-Canadian.

There's more at the link.

I like that, "We value all values." That's perfect.

By the way, this might be a good time to review my earlier essay, "How Does Gay Marriage Affect Me?"

4 comments:

  1. Notice, that the justice immediately tosses out the notion of polygamy as unacceptable in society. Conservative? Willing to draw the line to say what is right and what is wrong?

    How can one make that statement after being a supporter of gay marriage?

    Kind of ironic and hypocritical at the same time don't you think?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I should add that you have no leg to stand on. This is the very definition, a perfect illustration of the slippery slope scenario.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Go easy on the slippery slopes, please. If same legalizing same-sex marriage is truly a bad idea in and of itself, you should not need to bring in polygamy, incest, pedophilia, bestiality or marriage to a tree/rock/can opener etc. as reasons to oppose it. None of these are options where marriage is defined as the union of two consenting adults, as is the case in Canada for example.

    As is the case with all debates that are more complex than meets the eye, there are some valid points to be made in favor of traditional marriage. But sincen one of them have anything to do with slippery slopes, your entire argument will be undercut if you start likening gays to criminals or psychopaths.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Natural law establishes the foundational building block of society, that being the procreation of man and woman. It would seem polygamy is closer to this than same sex unions. Where does the "two" persons come from exactly? What about gay polygamists? Leave them not out.

    ReplyDelete