Not long ago, hundreds of progressive academics and activists
issued a manifesto calling for health care and jobs for all,
universal peace, an end to hunger, and the equal recognition of all
relations among sentient creatures. Robert George, a prominent
natural-law professor at Princeton who opposes gay marriage, took
this rather stale document as fresh proof that gay marriage will
lead to polygamy.
George understands the radical argument for gay marriage. It
claims, as he notes, that "love makes a family" and that making any
legal distinctions among people who love each other is unjustified.
George concludes that this love-makes-a-family ideology "is central
to any principled argument" for same-sex marriage.
That's wrong. While George understands the most open-ended
argument for gay marriage, it does not appear that he has taken the
time to understand more careful, restrained, and conservative
arguments for gay marriage, like those advanced by Jonathan Rauch,
Andrew Sullivan, me, and others. I won't repeat the substance of
these arguments here, but suffice it to say they do not easily lend
themselves to support for polygamy; they certainly involve more
than saying simply, "love makes a family."
George complains that we have not made what he calls
"principled" arguments about why the recognition of same-sex
marriages does not entail the recognition of polygamous ones.
Instead, we have made what he calls "pragmatic" and "prudential"
arguments, emphasizing differences between SSM and polygamy in
terms of their respective histories, expected effects on society
and marriage, and predicted benefits to the people involved.
When you read modern natural-law writings about marriage, you
find that by "principle" something like this is meant: "Marriage
must be between a man and a woman because only they can procreate;
as for sterile male-female couples, they are included because they
can have sex of a reproductive kind." Sex "of a reproductive kind"
is sex that involves a penis and a vagina, even if it can produce
no more babies than could a male and a male or a female and a
female. The conclusion of the argument is embedded in the
"principle" and then offered as if it's an argument.
In his scholarship, George has asserted that male-female
marriage, and only male-female marriage, has an "intrinsic value"
that "cannot, strictly speaking, be demonstrated." Its value "must
be grasped in noninferential acts of understanding." This
"noninferential understanding" that "cannot be demonstrated" is
unavailable to some people, argue modern natural-law theorists.
Another natural-law writer, Professor Gerard V. Bradley, adds that,
"In the end, one either understands that spousal genital
intercourse has a special significance as instantiating a basic,
non-instrumental value, or something blocks that understanding and
one does not perceive correctly."
This amounts to saying: "Same-sex 'marriage' is not marriage
because only male-female marriage can be marriage. Trust me." The
modern natural-law argument against same-sex marriage at bottom
thus appears to rest on revelation of some pre-cognition reality to
the initiate and only to the initiate. This seems to me very close
to saying that marriage just is the union of one man and
one woman and cannot, no matter the arguments, be defined any other
way.
But advocates of a logical slide to polygamy need to show the
necessary "principle" uniting the causes of same-sex marriage and
other unions, like polygamous ones. Yes, you can imagine such a
principle ("love makes a family") and even find support for it in
slogans and in the writings of some academics and activists who say
they favor gay marriage but also favor many other reforms. The
manifesto that has George so excited actually says very little
about polygamy, but prominently calls for an end to "militarism,"
and repeatedly for a wide range of government social-welfare
measures. Must gay-marriage advocates who didn't sign the manifesto
produce position papers and principles against state-controlled
universal health care, too? Same-sex marriage is no more
necessarily tied to polygamy than it is to all of these
other proposals.
And when it comes to crafting public policy, why don't pragmatic
and prudential considerations count as serious arguments? If
same-sex marriage will benefit the individuals involved, any
children they're raising, and their communities, all without
plausibly harming marriage, does this not matter as against a claim
that a conclusory principle stands in the way?
If polygamous/polyamorous marriage raises a host of different
questions about harm, practical administration, and about
historical experience, none of which depend necessarily on how
we've resolved the debate about gay marriage, why must gay-marriage
advocates definitively address it?
The way we frame the debate about gay marriage matters not just
for the ultimate outcome, but for the shape and attributes of that
outcome. Those of us who have been making a conservative case for
gay marriage do so, fundamentally, because we believe in marriage.
We do not want to see it harmed and we do not think that this
reform means every proposed reform of marriage, including
potentially harmful ones, must be accepted.
Ironically, George and the manifesto-signers agree that gay
marriage means anything goes. I don't expect that George and other
conservative opponents of gay marriage will hold to that position
when gay marriage is actually recognized (indeed, they'll strongly
resist the supposed slippery slope to polygamy then), but the
damage they are doing now by making a tactical alliance with
marriage radicals and arguing the line cannot be held will not have
been helpful.