Reality-based conservatism

[nancylebov]

David Frum concludes that same sex marriage doesn't damage heterosexual marriage.

Is there anything else in American politics which is dependent on as weak an argument as opposition to same sex marriage? The war on drugs is based on a wild over-estimation of government power, but it doesn't quite have that weird "I'll make up a definition and insist that it's realer than what can be observed" quality.

Link thanks to nwhyte.

Comments

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Marriage is traditionally a method of transferring property and managing inheritance, of ensuring that the right person gets your shit when you die.

Adding a third person breaks a TON of assumptions built in to marriage laws. I've got nothing against it - in fact, I think multiple marriage seems a perfectly reasonable thing to let people who want to do it do. The catch is, it *will* require a complete rewrite from the ground up of a metric ton of law, to eliminate all of the situations where the inherent assumption of two-and-only-two breaks something.

As such, polygamy and polyandry are MUCH harder to work than jsut letting any two adults be the two adults in question.

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

Also, traditional polygyny hasn't been all that egalitarian--current poly models are hindered by that history. Or I should say, by that backstory, since we still have more traditional polygynous marriages in many countries. I think I'm like David Frum on this one--I could see being swayed in favor of poly marriage if I saw a whole lot of them that were awesome. (Well, my standard might be higher than his! He changed his mind on same-sex marriage after it turned out not to hurt marriage as an institution.)