Polygamy: It's God's Plan

Okay, let's talk about that whole "one man one woman" thing. Despite the history-denying hypocritical Mormons and their support of California Prop 8 with that very slogan, the entire Right Wing is up in arms over the "destruction of marriage" by Teh Gay.

Usually I consider it beneath me to comment on this (yeah, right), but I read something today, AFA Hopes To Save Marriage From The 'Forces Of Evil' on RightWing Watch, that kind of peckered up my interest, so to speak:

The American Family Association placed a full-page advertisement in today’s edition of the Washington Post, in which the group warns the Supreme Court not to “bend what God designed merely to suit the desires of man, knowing that you do so at the expense of children, perhaps even civilization itself.”
The AFA’s Fred Jackson, who was guest-hosting “Sandy Rios In The Morning,” hailed the ad’s “forceful message” to the court and claimed that gay marriage undermines what God established in the Garden of Eden about 6,000 years ago.
“So for at least 6,000 years, people have understood marriage as between a man and a woman and it is only fairly recent history and certainly in this country have the forces of evil attempted to change all of that,” Jackson said. “It is absolutely amazing — one of the saddest facts is how many denominations, church denominations in this country, have succumbed to this pressure.”

Yeah, I know, "Adam and Eve, Not Adam and Steve". I get that. But what I don't get is this: "for at least 6,000 years, people have understood marriage as between a man and a woman". [emphasis added]

There's obviously a typo in there, since it should read "a man and women". Even a casual reading of the so-called Word of God, the "Holy Bible", shows that polygamy was not only tolerated by God but accepted as no big deal, if not actively encouraged. See What the Bible says about Polygamy for a few of the references to multiple wives and "concubines" in The Book.

One of the main arguing points that the wingnuttery pops up with regularly is that legalizing so-called Gay Marriage (or, as we over here in the Reality-Based Community call it, "marriage") is that it will lead to any number of "icky" things -- like polygamy. For some reason polygamy is generally number one on their list, followed closely by Rick Santorum's celebrated "man-on-dog sex" and so on down the increasingly-disgusting line.

But we need to take a step back here and look at this. Despite it being given a bad rap by child-raping assholes like Warren Jeffs and others in Fundo-Mormon and other cults, is there really anything fundamentally wrong with it? I'm open to all the usual arguments -- it demeans women, it removes too many fecund pubescent girl-children from the breeding pool, etc. etc., but if three (or more, in any combination of genders) people want to set up a household together and have the legal and contractual advantages of "marriage", why shouldn't they?

Interestingly enough, ironically enough, if the agenda for so-called "religious freedom" gets through the state legislatures and through congress, the unintended-consequence backlash may be more than the Religious Right has bargained for. For example: "My particular religion demands that I must strictly follow the practices outlined in the Old Testament. I can't eat shellfish, I can't plant my field with different crops, I can't wear two kinds of cloth, but I can and do have multiple wives. You say I can't do that? Sorry, Charlie, but The Law says I can..."

As I said the other day, be careful what you ask for -- you just might get it.