Heard this on the radio this morning and about DIED!
This lady is so stupid.
It’s a little long… but you have to listen to the whole thing to fully appreciate her stupidity.
She basically says the legalization of gay marriage in Minnesota is comparable to infidelity and polygamy. Really.
:smack:
Meh, that’s an old one. People need to come up with something new, like the guy who likened it to people wanting to marry ice cream.
I wouldn’t recommend the honeymoon take place somewhere tropical.
My response to the “what about polygamy?” question that always come up is; if you want to make polygamy legal, come up with good legal arguments, file a suit and go for it. It’s not my job to be either for or against it.
OTOH, nobody in a straight marriage has ever been unfaithful or polygomous.
What specifically is being mocked here?
The prediction that gay marriage will lead to widespread acceptance of infidelity?
The prediction that polygamy will inevitably follow?
The lady’s opposition to gay marriage, period?
That is, are you mockers saying, “She’s being ridiculous- infidelity and polygamy will NEVER be embraced. Gay marriage will change NOTHING”?
Or are you saying, “Anyone who opposes gay marriage is an idiot who deserves mockery, and the accuracy of her predictions is irrelevant?”
That is, IF 20 years from now, polygamy is legalized and adultery becomes widely accepted, will you STILL think she’s an idiot? Will you be aghast at how wrong you were? Or will you shrug, “What’s wrong with polygamy? And what’s so great about pure monogamy, anyway?”
Are you mockers saying, “She’s nuts- that will NEVER happen?” Or are you saying, “So what if it DOES happen?”
See… I happen to think she’s absolutely right. And in private, a lot of gay people fully agree. Dan Savage is just one of many prominent gay spokesmen who support gay marriage while insisting we have to get over this monogamy and fidelity stuff.
I mock that the implication that there is a causal relationship - that the slippery slope argument is valid.
Gay marriage will no more ‘lead to’ infidelity than me choosing muenster over cheddar on my next cheeseburger.
Infidelity exists and will continue to exist and be judged the same amount as it is today.
Polygamy doesn’t legally exist, but some places it does de facto (without legal protections).
Besides, us liberals are hellbent on marijuana next. Polygamy will be after we’re dead - it’s a future generation’s worry.
We’re mocking her for overstating the case, and for phrasing it in apocalyptic terms. We’re mocking her, because she calls attention to the mote in others’ eyes, while ignoring the beam in her own. We’re mocking her because she uses a triviality as a lever to try to deny others their legal rights.
When straight marriages have cleaned up their own house, then they may look to clean up the houses of others. Until then, this is mere hypocrisy.
Plurality in relationships without deception is not infidelity. I don’t think Dan Savage endorses deception, but I don’t read him that much, so throw me a cite if I’m wrong.
Why can’t we have both??
Just checking- did you listen to all 11 minutes of this? I didn’t- I gave up after 2 or 2:30. So maybe you heard some stuff that I didn’t. What I did hear is this: the caller says she’s in a long-term relationship with one guy, then met another guy and started dating him at the same time. If gay marriage is legal, why can’t she tell the two men about each other and have them file a joint tax return? (Also, she looks great with both of them and nobody’s getting hurt because they don’t the guys don’t know she’s cheating on them.) Her logic fails on a couple of points but I think she’s asking why the government can’t recognize polyamorous relationships. As far as I’m concerned there’s no reason it shouldn’t .
That idea deserves to be mocked: that horse left the barn long ago. I wouldn’t say infidelity is widely accepted, but I’d say it’s normalized, or something like that. We accept that it happens, and that it may be wrong, but it’s not the end of the world. I think there are places where it’s against the law, but if so, those laws haven’t been enforced in a long time. That’s about as “accepted” as deceiving people is going to get.
There are a bunch of points that need addressing here: for one thing you’re taking something you insist Dan Savage said in public as evidence of what a lot of other people think in private. That’s a attribution error and a poll would be a better way to support your opinion, if you can find one. And I think you’re mischaracterizing Savage anyway.
Monogamy and fidelity aren’t the same thing. Savage doesn’t take issue with monogamy itself, and no relationship advice columnist would say fidelity is something people have to “get over.”
And plenty of people have said in public that they’re OK with the idea of the government recognizing polyamorous relationships. The idea doesn’t bother me at all. I don’t think it’s going to happen any time soon, though.
I think the problem with this is that most of the arguments for gay marriage also apply to polygamy. It’s intellectually dishonest to argue, as many people do, that we should support gay marriage because people should be able to marry who they love, but say that the same argument doesn’t apply to a group of three people (who love each other and want to get married).
Ideally, it wouldn’t be about coming up with a legal argument. It would be about convincing people that this is the right thing to do. Yet, while the tide is turning swiftly towards gay rights, people are still overwhelmingly opposed to polygamy. Why is that?
The lady on the phone is an idiot, though.
I don’t say the arguments apply or don’t apply. What I’m saying is it isn’t my fight. If people actually want it, it’s their fight to begin. The people generally making the “support of gay marriage means you must support polygamy” argument are saying neither deserves support, not people who may legitimately want legal polygamy.
Why not polygamy? Because recognizing gay marriage is just a matter of crossing off 'husband" and “wife” on the forms and substituting “spouse.” Polygamy would require an entirely new set of contractual rules to cover employment benefits, survivor rights, distribution of assets on the dissolution of the partnership, and any number of other things which “traditional” marriage has worked out over the past few centuries.
Polygamy is a different type of relationship and will require much more lawyering to become fair and workable.
At a guess: You’ve now convinced me that my beloved child might grow up with an overpowering Born-This-Way desire for a same-sex relationship, even in the face of persecution. Would she quietly live a life of closeted desperation over, like, some kind of Joining A Harem orientation? Uh, no; I think that has to be indoctrinated.
No, the argument for gay marriage is that if gay people can’t marry each other, they can’t get married at all. A distinct minority group is being discriminated against and having its rights violated. But if you want more than one spouse, tough luck. You can bloody well make do with just the one like everyone else.
It has victims. In places where polygamy is practiced, very young girls are often pressured into marrying the local patriarch and the relationship is usually very unequal. Meanwhile the young males often get run out of town.
Monogamy is one of the great levelers in society. Wealthy powerful men have enough privileges. You can have all the money but you can’t have all the women.
The argument is that marriage is and always has been one man married to one woman.
If you have to modify that definition to include these particular people who you personally believe are perverse and sinful and immoral, on what grounds can you possibly refuse to again expand the definition to include the next group of perverse, sinful, immoral people?
I think it’s pretty logical. I don’t agree, but it’s logical.
That is one cultural model of polygamy. I’m pretty confident that a 21st-century, gay-friendly, Western model would look different.
Your use of the word “absolutely” has an interesting implication. It suggests that not only do you share her belief that normalization of “infidelity and polygamy” are necessarily inevitable consequences, but that they are also bad consequences. Do you?
The fact that you go on to include your opinion that “in private a lot of gay people fully agree” suggests that your view may be a bit more nuanced than that, but I’d like to get some clarification from you.
For now, we can glean at least that you accept her premise that a cultural trend away from “monogamy and fidelity” is an inevitable consequence of the legalization of SSM. Do you oppose the legalization of SSM on those grounds?
Thank you in advance for your candid response. 
And of course, does she think that preventing same-sex couples from marrying is somehow a strengthening of monogamy and fidelity? How does that work?
I’ll take “All of the Above.”
This is dumb because an acceptance of gay marriage is in no way going to lead to a greater acceptance of infidelity. It might lead to a greater acceptance of non-monogamous lifestyles, which is very much not the same as infidelity. But that’s also dumb, because the trend towards accepting gay rights didn’t cause the trend towards accepting non-monogamous lifestyles. “There’s nothing wrong with open relationships,” and “There’s nothing wrong with gay relationships,” both sprung from “What two people do in their bedroom is no one’s business but theirs.”
This is also dumb, because the few cultures in the world that currently practice polygamy tend to be massively hostile towards gays, which pretty clearly demonstrates that these are two separate issues, and progress on one does not necessarily mean progress on the other.
This, of course, is the dumbest of all, for reasons that don’t need explaining.