Quote:

the G-man said:
National Review

    Looks like it's not only The Netherlands that's headed down the slippery slope to polygamy. A new study for Canada's federal justice department has just recommended that Canada legalize polygamy.

    This would involve not only the abolition of anti-polygamy laws, but also the regulation of polygamy. That is, it is recommended that the law provide "clearer spousal support and inheritance rights" to polygamous families. Obviously, that would be a major step toward eventual full recognition of polygamous marriages.

    The study in question was authored by a professor at Queens University named Martha Bailey. Bailey was a key author of "Beyond Conjugality," the report of the Law Commission of Canada I discussed in "Beyond Gay Marriage."

    "Beyond Conjugality" directly suggested moving to a partnership system that would put multi-partner unions on a par with marriage.

    The funny thing about this news story is that it refers to a second report that scoffs at the idea of a slippery slope from same-sex marriage to polygamy. Polygamy, this second report says, undermines equality for women. Yet the first report clearly contradicts this view. It says that polygamy per se is not the problem, and that abuses within polygamous marriage can be dealt with by other sorts of laws. And again, if the proposal is to tailor new laws of spousal support and inheritance rights to polygamous families, can calls for formal recognition be far behind?

    Right now Canada's conservatives are on track to unseat the liberal government. If so, don't expect to see these reforms enacted into law right away. But the direction Canada's liberals want to move in is clear.


You might recall conservatives fretting that a recognition of gay marriage could soon lead to legalizing polygamy and incest. Those concerns were typically scoffed at by liberals.



The American Spectator reports that a group of "sexual pioneers" and gay rights advocates have released a statement admitting they want to move beyond homosexual marriage rights into what appears to be polygamy:
Released last month, the statement specifically endorses "committed, loving households in which there is more than one conjugal partner," among many other sexual alternatives.

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In their statement, they advocate a "new vision for securing governmental and private institutional recognition of diverse kinds of partnerships, households, kinship relationships and families." This new vision, they hope, will move the nation "beyond the narrow confines of marriage politics" as they exist today. Naturally, they want a "flexible set of economic benefits," regardless of the nature of the association, "conjugal" or otherwise.

By focusing extensively on "economic benefits" and "social justice" in their statement, these advocates appear to be saying that their primary goal is not just sexual equality, but yet-another attempt at traditional socialism:

... their larger drive for social justice [attacks] "corporate greed, draconian tax cuts and breaks for the wealthy, and the increasing shift of public funds from human needs into militarism, policing, and prison construction."

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The "push to privatize Social Security and many other human needs benefits" also is "at the center of this attack," the statement asserts.

This admission, assuming the public hears about it, could prove to be a roadblock to the gay rights movement.

Many of the movement's gains have been made by appealing to "libertarian" streaks in the conservative movement, republicans and independents who may not agree with homosexuality but who try to avoid government intrusion into personal lives.

Socialism and wealth redistribution, however, are direct intrusions into our lives, and reveal a certain hypocrisy in the gay rights movement.

By advocating for these intrusions now, when many Americans are still undecided about the gay rights issues, the movement may have overreached and may find themselves coming up short.