Immoral Homosexual marriage will lead to further re-definitions of marriage
Opponents of same-sex marriage resist it because it amounts to redefining marriage, but also because it will invite future redefinitions. If we embrace same-sex marriage, they argue, society will have surrendered any reasonable grounds on which to continue forbidding polygamy, for example.
In truth, proponents of same-sex marriage have never offered a very good response to this concern. This problem was highlighted at the Supreme Court last month in oral argument over California’s Proposition 8, the state constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a union of a man and a woman.
Surprisingly, the polygamy problem that same-sex marriage presents was raised by an Obama appointee, the liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Sotomayor interrupted the presentation of anti-Prop 8 litigator Theodore Olson to pose the following question: If marriage is a fundamental right in the way proponents of same-sex marriage contend, “what state restrictions could ever exist,” for example, “with respect to the number of people . . . that could get married?”
In response, Olson tried to set up a clear distinction between same-sex marriage and polygamy, suggesting that the kinds of governmental interests that justify a prohibition of polygamy are irrelevant in the case of same-sex marriage.
The Court has said, he contended, that polygamy raises “questions about exploitation, abuse, patriarchy, issues with respect to taxes, inheritance, child custody” and therefore “is an entirely different thing” than same-sex marriage. Moreover, Olson argued, when a “state prohibits polygamy, it’s prohibiting conduct,” but if “it prohibits gay and lesbian citizens from getting married, it is prohibiting their exercise of a right based upon their status.”
Justice Sotomayor’s concerns about the possibility of a path from same-sex marriage to polygamy may arise from the fact that there is already a case in federal court challenging Utah’s anti-bigamy law as unconstitutional. In any event, she should be just as concerned about this question after oral argument as she was before it, because none of Olson’s distinctions can reasonably justify a prohibition on polygamy if the Court finds a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. To see why, it’s first useful to note a crucial distinction that Olson overlooked, as well as the most famous Supreme Court case regarding polygamy, which he failed to mention.
Olson’s words to the Court suggest that the state somehow “forbids” same-sex marriage today just as it “forbids” polygamy. This is not true, as Adam MacLeod noted on Public Discourse earlier this week. Under current law and Supreme Court precedent, no state has constitutional authority to punish anyone for entering into a same-sex relationship. No state in fact “prohibits” same-sex marriage. If any persons wish to enter into such a relationship and call it a marriage, they are perfectly free to do so.
The real issue, the real complaint in the case that Olson represents, is that the state simply refuses to bestow on same-sex unions the same recognition that it gives to heterosexual marriages. In stark contrast, the law in many American jurisdictions not only refuses to recognize polygamous marriages; it actively punishes them. Enter into a same-sex marriage and the government will simply ignore you. Enter into a polygamous marriage an
d the law permits the government to prosecute you for a crime.
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| English: Sonia Sotomayor, U.S. Supreme Court justice (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Unlike the distinctions Olson raised, this one is real, and it positively undermines his assurance that we can have same-sex marriage while still banning polygamy. Common sense makes it hard to see how this could be done. In Olson’s view, the state may not officially prefer heterosexual marriage by a policy so mild that it does nothing other than to leave same-sex couples alone while declining to formally recognize their unions. By what reasoning, then, could it have a right to prefer some definition of marriage by actually punishing those who choose to disregard it?
Moreover, in his summary of what the Supreme Court has “said” about polygamy, Olson omitted to mention the single most famous case dealing with this question, Reynolds v. United States (1879). In that case the Court upheld the federal law forbidding polygamy in the territories of the United States, and declined to find that the free exercise clause immunizes those who practice it for religious reasons.
Most of the Court’s argument is dedicated to the original meaning of the Constitution’s religion clauses, but also noteworthy is its passing comment on the basis of the law in question, a basis that the Court at that time apparently found unquestionably legitimate: “Polygamy has always been odious among the northern and western nations of Europe . . . and from the earliest history of England polygamy has been treated as an offense against society.”
Reynolds has never been overturned and indeed has been cited as an authority by the modern Supreme Court. In it the Court tells us straightforwardly the basis of laws prohibiting polygamy: moral disapproval of the practice. This raises a serious problem for the defenders of same-sex marriage.
A number of the Court’s precedents defending a “right of privacy” have already strongly undermined the idea that the majority’s moral convictions are a sufficient basis for law. If the Court finds a right to same-sex marriage, it will practically dismantle the whole concept of morals legislation. But if moral preference for heterosexual marriage cannot be a reasonable basis on which to afford it a formal recognition denied to other unions, then how can moral disapproval be a reasonable ground on which to forbid and punish polygamy?
Let us turn now from the distinctions Olson overlooked to the ones he emphasized. In the first place, Olson contended that polygamy raises serious concerns about “exploitation,” “abuse,” and “patriarchy” that aren’t relevant to same-sex marriage. Presumably he was referring to the “abuse” and “exploitation” of the children and perhaps wives of plural marriages. Yet, under the constitutional theory of marriage Olson has tried to sell, none of these considerations would be sufficient to forbid polygamy. Olson insists that marriage is a fundamental right. Standard Supreme Court doctrine holds that fundamental rights can only be infringed to defend a “compelling state interest” and that the regulations made to protect that interest must be drawn as narrowly as possible.
Everyone would concede that prevention of abuse and exploitation of children and wives is a compelling state interest. On the other hand, nobody would contend that such abuse and exploitation is the very essence of polygamy. After all, abuse and exploitation can be found in monogamous marriages, too. The most one could say is that these problems are dangers to which polygamous unions are more or less prone. In any case, under the “fundamental rights” doctrine on which Olson relies, the least restrictive means to remedy such dangers would be to recur to already existing laws punishing such abuse and exploitation, rather than going so far as to ban polygamy altogether.
Olson may also have been hinting that the state could reasonably fear that abuse and exploitation of children is more likely to arise in families where the children are not related by blood to all of their parents. This is a reasonable concern, but it could be raised just as easily in relation to same-sex marriages, where at best, only one parent can be biologically related to each child.
Similar problems arise if we consider Olson’s invocation of “patriarchy” as a justification for forbidding polygamy. We might ask: What’s wrong with patriarchy?
The most straightforward answer to this question that Olson could muster is that patriarchy is morally offensive in a liberal, egalitarian society. But, as we have seen, the case for a right to same-sex marriage depends on the Court’s willingness to expel moral sentiments as a basis for law. Or is the Court to hold that the things that offend traditional moral sensibilities are impermissible as bases for law while the things that offend progressive moral sensibilities are fine? This would be to reduce constitutional jurisprudence to naked partisanship and ideology.
Be that as it may, there is no necessary connection between patriarchy and polygamy, at least under the constitutional and legal regime now prevailing. Under the modern interpretation of the equal protection clause, any “right” to enter plural marriages would be held equally by men and women. It would not be a patriarchal right of some men to have multiple wives, but a right of both men and women to have multiple spouses of their own choosing.
Moreover, given the ease of access to divorce, there would be no serious reason to fear that women who entered plural marriages would be unable to escape from them if they found them unsatisfactory. And again, if the creation of a “right” to polygamy opened a social space in which some patriarchal subordination of women could develop, this problem could be corrected by legal remedies falling far short of banning polygamy entirely.
Olson also suggested that a ban on polygamy is made reasonable by certain technical and legal challenges that it raises, challenges involving “taxes,” “inheritance,” and “child custody.” Again, the distinction here between same-sex marriage and polygamy is underwhelming. Because same-sex marriages are prone, like polygamous marriages, to have children who are not biologically related to all of their parents, they are also prone to complications involving inheritance and child custody.
Perhaps by referring to “taxes” Olson meant to suggest that polygamous unions have a potential to produce enormous families and thus to drain federal revenues by entitling single families to hitherto unheard of numbers of tax deductions and credits. This fear, however, assumes that the standard polygamous union will feature one husband with many wives. This may not turn out to be the case. At any rate, as noted before, if marriage is a fundamental right in the way Olson’s words suggest, such problems would have to be remedied by the least-restrictive means, and mere reform of the tax provisions is far less restrictive than an outright ban on such marriages. (For example, dividing spousal benefits by the number of spouses.)
Finally, Olson argues that laws forbidding polygamy target behavior, while laws refusing to recognize same-sex marriage prohibit the exercise of a right based on people’s status. This distinction is entirely spurious. If laws against polygamy can be understood as targeting behavior, the same can just as easily be said about laws defining marriage as a union of a man and a woman.
Such laws refuse to bestow official recognition on a certain behavior—entering into a same-sex relationship—in which the state believes it has no vital interest. Conversely, if laws defining marriage as a union of a man and a woman can be viewed as singling out a specific class of people—gays—then anti-polygamy laws can equally be presented in the same sinister light: They refuse the right to marry to people of a certain status—polys—those who desire to marry multiple people.
As these reflections suggest, there is very good reason indeed to believe that the declaration of a “right” to same-sex marriage will set us on the path to polygamy. To allay these concerns, the proponents of same-sex marriage sometimes respond that they are only seeking what married heterosexuals already have: access to marriage understood as a union of two people. But this reassurance utterly misses the point: All the arguments by which they seek that end can easily be turned to the purposes of those who might next seek polygamy.
