Gay Marriage vs. Polygamy

Uh oh. Conservatives are starting to hyperventilate again. You know the symptoms: In a haystack of right-wing dominance, they find a needle of radicalism, declare it a mortal danger to civilization, and use it to rally their voters in the next election. First it was flag-burning. Then it was the “war on Christmas.” Now it’s polygamy. Having crushed gay marriage nationwide in 2004, they need to gin up a new threat to the family. They’ve found it in Big Love, the HBO series about a guy with three wives. Open the door to gay marriage, they warn, and group marriage will be next.

My friend Charles Krauthammer makes the argument succinctly in the Washington Post. “Traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender,” he observes. “If, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one’s autonomous choices,” then “on what grounds do they insist upon the traditional, arbitrary and exclusionary number of two?”

Here’s the answer. The number isn’t two. It’s one. You commit to one person, and that person commits wholly to you. Second, the number isn’t arbitrary. It’s based on human nature. Specifically, on jealousy. (source) Emphasis, my own.

It is that simple, isn’t it? Yet, people look at gay marriage as the slippery slope that will lead to polygamy, bestiality, incest, and other socials ills that are beyond this writer to comprehend or imagine. I view myself as a fairly creative person, but some of the things people come up with truly amaze me.

What always bothers me is the lack of understanding in basic human psychology. That psychology says that, in most every person - gay, straight, or bisexual - is the need for companionship. Many people fill that need in various ways. Some people go to bars to meet people. Some take people home from bars. Both gay and straight people do this.

Some gay people are highly closeted and won’t even go to a gay bar for fear of being seen by someone that may know them. Many of these people resort to other means of meeting people for friendship and/or sex. They use methods that many straight people just can not understand because straight people don’t have to hide in fear - they go to a park or a secluded place to meet people. Some of these people are gay, but many are straight closeted married men who want to answer the call to their true nature - their gayness.

I came across this story, and was moved by it.

“The big problem is this is a hangout for homosexual men,” said Dale McKinney, the Herald & Review reported. “Sometimes 15 to 20 cars will be here at once. One car will pull in, back up to a parking space and another one will pull in next to it. Then the guys go out in the back of the park together.” Sheriff’s Capt. Steve Jones said the area is being patrolled, but when a marked squad car shows up, everyone scatters. Gay activists in other locations have often complained that police target gay men in public parks for cruising, which is not illegal, rather than for actual sex in public.

Of course, I would advise these people that cruising in parks is highly dangerous, aside from the side of possible arrest and public humiliation. Some guys who have been caught have been so humiliated and disgraced by their friends, family, and co-workers finding out that they were arrested in a park cruising gay men, let alone the fact that nobody even knew they were gay, that they end up attempted or committed suicide. The other side of course is that this would be a good place for gay bashers to go. It’s a bad situation from anyway you look at it. The good citizens who complain about this don’t give a rats ass about these men. They just want the “problem” cleaned up so it doesn’t drive down their property value and give their neighborhood a bad name.

Isn’t it time to come out of the closet on this? The reason these men do this is not because it’s a thrilling thing to cruise in a dark, dangerous, isolated place. The reason they do it is because we as a society have made it shameful for people to be who they really are.

But the real irony here is that the very congressmen who want to pass laws to makes these acts illegal and punishable by severe sentences are the same congressmen who will turn right around and sponsor a constitutional amendment against gay marriage.

The real answer to this issue is to embrace what people are and to tell them that it is okay to be what they are. And also, to encourage them in every way possible that if they do find a mate they are compatible with, that society will do it’s part to nurture that relationship - not tear it down with all the legal roadblocks they can put into place. Gay cruising is dating that has been pushed underground. No one should have to live with that kind of shame and fear.