Look, as a matter of personal morality I agree with you. I think homosexual acts are wrong, and polygamy is wrong also. I approve of civil unions as a matter of law and government policy, but that’s different from my personal moral beliefs.

That said, I do think that polygamy is a more direct and obvious attack on the Western ideal of marriage than homosexuality. We actually sent the army into Utah, in large part to wipe out polygamy; it’s hard to imagine us literally going to war against gay marriage. The ideal of marriage in the West, at least since the Middle Ages, is bound up with the ideas of romantic love, partnership, and seeing the image of the divine in the beloved. It’s certainly true that romantic love and self-giving characterize many homosexual relationships, even if you believe that love is misplaced or incomplete. On the other hand, polygamous marriages have historically been about many things- sex, efficient division of labor, property, procreation, the union of bloodlines- but the one thing they _haven’t_ typically been about is romantic love. The very idea is somewhat contradictory. A polygamous man might love his senior wife in some sense, but he surely can’t love each one of his wives “as Christ loved the church.” For that and other reasons, I think that polygamy is a greater danger to healthy marriages than gay marriage, and I have faith that the courts- as corrupt, prideful, and at times plain stupid as they are- will see that as well.

That’s just what Robert is doing by insisting that whatever a case says, the real reason for the ruling is the judge did whatever they wanted. It saves him having to read the case and possibly being wrong, and since he’s clearly in a pissy mood, he threw in a personal swipe or two.

I am an attorney too

Then you have surely mastered the art of actually reading a case, rather than relying on the West keynotes or on media reports of what the case said? In Re Marriage Cases wasn’t “oh look, a right for same-sex couples to marry!” In large part it turned on the fact that California law gives so many rights to same-sex couples that there’s no way to make the argument about Upholding Traditional Relationships with a straight face. (Har.)

It won’t be through the legislature

Probably not, but since my entire lifetime could involve another half a century, I’m not going to absolutely rule out some radical change in public opinion, for one reason or another.

The idea of poly marriage seems to really stress you out.

The idea of poly marriage as mandatory slippery slope “stresses me out,” as you put it. The idea of poly marriage does not “stress me out” in the sense that I’m freaked out by the fact that it exists anywhere in the world.

… I think it’s put forward by people who don’t want to admit that they’re not really very open-minded after all.

When it comes to the possibility of having the law governing my marriage altered in a way that makes my marriage less egalitarian, no, of course I’m not open-minded. And that’s what the scary slippery slope hypothetical of “same-sex marriage is going to lead to a court ruling that you have to recognize polygamous marriage” is about; it’s about pointing to distinctly non-egalitarian polygynous households as the place that marriage has to slide, if same-sex marriage is allowed. It’s about people who are scared of same-sex marriage because it undercuts distinct gender roles looking for something that they can try to argue as being on the same slope that undercuts egalitarian gender roles. (Polyamory shows up as the way to make this remotely plausible, since people who approve of consensual same-sex relationships also often approve of consensual polyamorous ones. But it’s the traditional hierarchical polygynous households that are the issue here, in “slippery slope” argument terms - they’re what provides the fear factor.)

And, of course, court-ordered recognition of FLDS polygynous marriages, in the same institution as regular old monogamous ones, would threaten to make marriage less egalitarian - they want different rules for their marriages, and if you tried to make marriage have rules more friendly to their households, it would be less friendly to mine. But, for that very reason (among others), court-ordered recognition of FLDS marriage rules isn’t going to happen.

If legal recognition of polygamy ever comes in my lifetime, it will be brought in legislatively, it will be brought in with equal rules for both sexes, and it will be brought in with consideration for doing it in a way that doesn’t suddenly give monogamous couples different property or decision making rules from what they previously had. (And, incidentally, though I think legal recognition of polygamy any time in the near future is extremely unlikely, I don’t rule out the possibility that any sort of legal recognition of polygamy could happen in my lifetime; what I rule out is a) the possibility that such recognition will be brought in by a state supreme court decision similar to Goodrich or In Re Marriage Cases, and b) the possibility that it could happen without a strong shift in public opinion to support it. There is no way this is going to come by a judge pulling a new right out of his ass.)

Folks, if the courts can handle VERY complex business partnerships, they can certainly handle poly marriage.

Business partnerships are one offs, each designed with its own lengthy set of rules. Marriage is not; it’s a default contract provided by the state, with a standard set of rights, benefits, and obligations, and limits to what you’re allowed to alter in a prenup. And the current set of rules assumes two people and in some cases has defaults that would be unfriendly to multi-person households (even egalitarian polyamorous ones). It is, of course, possible to change those rules to allow polygamous households with more customized contracts - but that would be an enterprise complex enough to require legislative, not court, action (besides the fact that, though such a thing can be accomplished by legislation, a court would have no grounds to require it as a matter of constitutional right).

None of this prevents a legislature from drafting laws that would allow polygamous marriages (which would need to be done in ways that wouldn’t alter the defaults about custody, property settlements, medical decisionmaking, inheritance, etc. in monogamous marriages, and also - this is the easy part - not suddenly permit formerly monogamous spouses to marry again while ignoring the wishes of their existing spouse). Nor does it prevent individualized contracts between polygamous households that don’t