When New York became the largest state in US to legaliize gay marriage, conservative critics rolled out their usual dire predictions.
The 'slippery slope' argument was one of their favorites. Extending legitimate marriage to homosexuals would inevitably lead to the next stage, legalizing polygamy and incest. (They haven't quite got to bestiality yet, but that must be on the near horizon.)
The problem is that our traditional concept of marriage has all but disappeared.
It is easy to see that both polygamy and incest are harmful in many of the situations that we hear or read about.
When polygamy means a bullying religious figure snapping up all the local nubile young teenagers, sometimes before they reach the age of consent, it is clearly an example of patriachal exploitation.
When incest involves an adult - usually the father, but also commonly an older brother, or even less commonly, the mother - taking advantage of a juvenile child, again it is easy to recognize that this is exploitation.
Each of these cases is morally, and in Western countries, legally wrong. Get caught, you go to jail.
These are black and white cases. But, as in most of life issues, around the borders of the black and white cases, is a fuzzy gray area.
Take polygamy. In the past it has usually involved a rich and/or powerful ruler maintaining a harem. Or, a wealthy man with two or three wives. These examples were out in the open. The situation has persisted into modern times, but just not in an obvious way. The rich and powerful have maintained concubines, mistresses and parallel families.
Take these examples: Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States, had six children by his black slave Sally Hemings. Francois Mitterand, the longest serving French President, had a parallel family with his long term mistress, Anne Pingeot, and an illegitimate daughter with her. Nelson Rockefeller, heir to the family fortune, and 41st Vice-President of the US, died of a heart attack at the age of 70, reputedly while shagging a housemaid. Kerry Packer, at the time of his death the richest man in Australia, maintained several long term mistresses, including Ita Buttrose and Julie Trethowan, to whom he left millions in Sydney real estate.
And these are just some of the most famous examples.
The hard fact is that far from exploiting women, polygamy can actually be beneficial.
To explain this, consider the Marriage Supermarket, a simplified version of the real world of marital hookups. In the Marriage Supermarket are 100 men and 100 women. Each has a grade. The most desirable man - by virtue of wealth, age, height and appearance, is Male 1. The most desirable woman - by virtue of her looks and age - is Female 1. And the rest are numbered 2 - 100. In the normal course of events, Male 1 mates with Female 1. But if this is a polygamous society, and Male 1 has the resources to support more than 1 woman, then Females 2 and 3 may calculate that they are better off being subsidiary wives of Male 1 than they are being sole wife of Male 2 or 3. This improves the chances of Female 4, because she can now get to pick Male 2. All the women get a higher ranking mate. The ones who miss out are Males 99 and 100 (who are inclined to get a bit stabby at the unfairness of it all.)
This isn't an abstract argument - women in non-Western societies make these sort of calculations all the time. Better to be the third or fourth wife of a rich man than the wife of a beggar.
Incest is also not totally cut-and-dried, although the 'grey-area' situations are a lot less common.
What I'm thinking of is the cases where a grown-up daughter traces her long-absent father. The father left the home when the daughter was very young, or even before she was born. By the time the two meet again, the daughter is a post-menopausal adult. They decide to live together. There is no possibility of offspring, so the genetic argument which is usually cited as the reason why incest is taboo, does not apply. The couple are both consenting adults so the argument of coercion does not apply.
So yes, this breaks the law. And yes, almost everyone finds the situation "icky". But precisely why is it wrong?
So the conservatives are partly correct - we are witnessing an expansion of the traditional ways of looking at marriage. Fifty years ago, many Americans regarded interracial marriage as "icky", though they couldn't give a rational explanation for the emotional reaction. What will the picture look like in another fifty years?
The 'slippery slope' argument was one of their favorites. Extending legitimate marriage to homosexuals would inevitably lead to the next stage, legalizing polygamy and incest. (They haven't quite got to bestiality yet, but that must be on the near horizon.)
The problem is that our traditional concept of marriage has all but disappeared.
It is easy to see that both polygamy and incest are harmful in many of the situations that we hear or read about.
When polygamy means a bullying religious figure snapping up all the local nubile young teenagers, sometimes before they reach the age of consent, it is clearly an example of patriachal exploitation.
When incest involves an adult - usually the father, but also commonly an older brother, or even less commonly, the mother - taking advantage of a juvenile child, again it is easy to recognize that this is exploitation.
Each of these cases is morally, and in Western countries, legally wrong. Get caught, you go to jail.
These are black and white cases. But, as in most of life issues, around the borders of the black and white cases, is a fuzzy gray area.
Take polygamy. In the past it has usually involved a rich and/or powerful ruler maintaining a harem. Or, a wealthy man with two or three wives. These examples were out in the open. The situation has persisted into modern times, but just not in an obvious way. The rich and powerful have maintained concubines, mistresses and parallel families.
Take these examples: Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States, had six children by his black slave Sally Hemings. Francois Mitterand, the longest serving French President, had a parallel family with his long term mistress, Anne Pingeot, and an illegitimate daughter with her. Nelson Rockefeller, heir to the family fortune, and 41st Vice-President of the US, died of a heart attack at the age of 70, reputedly while shagging a housemaid. Kerry Packer, at the time of his death the richest man in Australia, maintained several long term mistresses, including Ita Buttrose and Julie Trethowan, to whom he left millions in Sydney real estate.
And these are just some of the most famous examples.
The hard fact is that far from exploiting women, polygamy can actually be beneficial.
To explain this, consider the Marriage Supermarket, a simplified version of the real world of marital hookups. In the Marriage Supermarket are 100 men and 100 women. Each has a grade. The most desirable man - by virtue of wealth, age, height and appearance, is Male 1. The most desirable woman - by virtue of her looks and age - is Female 1. And the rest are numbered 2 - 100. In the normal course of events, Male 1 mates with Female 1. But if this is a polygamous society, and Male 1 has the resources to support more than 1 woman, then Females 2 and 3 may calculate that they are better off being subsidiary wives of Male 1 than they are being sole wife of Male 2 or 3. This improves the chances of Female 4, because she can now get to pick Male 2. All the women get a higher ranking mate. The ones who miss out are Males 99 and 100 (who are inclined to get a bit stabby at the unfairness of it all.)
This isn't an abstract argument - women in non-Western societies make these sort of calculations all the time. Better to be the third or fourth wife of a rich man than the wife of a beggar.
Incest is also not totally cut-and-dried, although the 'grey-area' situations are a lot less common.
What I'm thinking of is the cases where a grown-up daughter traces her long-absent father. The father left the home when the daughter was very young, or even before she was born. By the time the two meet again, the daughter is a post-menopausal adult. They decide to live together. There is no possibility of offspring, so the genetic argument which is usually cited as the reason why incest is taboo, does not apply. The couple are both consenting adults so the argument of coercion does not apply.
So yes, this breaks the law. And yes, almost everyone finds the situation "icky". But precisely why is it wrong?
So the conservatives are partly correct - we are witnessing an expansion of the traditional ways of looking at marriage. Fifty years ago, many Americans regarded interracial marriage as "icky", though they couldn't give a rational explanation for the emotional reaction. What will the picture look like in another fifty years?