Opening Marriage

Do same-sex unions pave the way for polygamy?

Cathy Young from the March 2004 issue

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Boaz confirms that he would indeed favor such a limitation. "Two people seems like a good number for a marriage," he says. "People should be allowed to make just about any contracts they want among themselves. But the laws that relate to 'marriage' reflect society's desire to support marriage as an element of stability in social order and the raising of children." For that purpose, he believes, the government has a right to place some restrictions on which contracts it will recognize as marriages -- at least as long as special laws related to marriage continue to exist.

But that brings us back to square one in the gay marriage debate: Recognizing the legality of a marriage implies its endorsement by society. A partial deregulation of marriage is unlikely to satisfy either conservatives or libertarians. But then, true privatization of marriage would likely generate furious opposition as well. Conservatives would see it as the final destruction of the family. Meanwhile, many advocates of same-sex marriage would no doubt feel that the marriage rights they had won were reduced to an empty prize. They might even suspect that the heterosexual majority was willing to destroy the institution of marriage rather than open it to gays.

Whatever the philosophical merits of such a proposal, the chances of privatizing marriage in the foreseeable future are virtually nil. Far from being depoliticized, marriage is likely to remain a major battlefield in the culture wars.