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[Prism]

32. It's trickier

For a host of reasons.

The reason gay marriage worked successfully is because you had a lot of things going for it.

1. Intrinsic biological disposition. Orientation is an easier argument to make for sex/gender attraction. Polygamy is actually a choice (just as monogamy is a choice).

2. Insertion into an already established structure. Marriage and family law already exist to handle two person couples. Polygamy would require family laws to be rejiggered in profound ways. Does anyone want to see a three-parent custody battle? Gay marriage argued for inclusion into the already established institution. Polygamy would create something new.

3. Numbers and profusion. Gay people are not only a significant percentage of the population, they exhibit their orientation early on. People have gay children. It is an identity that suffuses through just about every family in America in some way when the individuals are young (modern evolution of this social acceptance, of course). I cannot imagine you're going to see polygamists in the kinds of numbers you see LGBTers or as deeply ingrained in American families and workplaces over time. Without those numbers, a political movement is very hard to get to gain traction.

4. Gay marriage doesn't have a known history of abuse. At least, not more so than any other union. Polygamy has a known history of disparate impact, particularly on women.

Those are just the four big ones I can think of off the top of my head. Absent a court decision (and who knows there), I can't see it. But, you know, people said the same thing about gay marriage, that the day would never come because the notion was too radical. I can easily be wrong.

At this point in time, I'm not in favor of it. Polyamory is fine. People can make their own relationship choices. I'm a gay man in an open relationship, so I'm certainly not running around judging anyone for their arrangements. But the dramatic restructuring of law, the potential for abuse, and the potential of a slippery slope (at what number do we draw any lines?) have me in the "no" column at this point in time.

But I'm not going to hate on anyone who wants it or agitates for it. If they achieve it, more power to them.