Back in 2005 in Ezra Levant’s Western Standard magazine I wrote a piece on polygamy that began:
Guess who’s coming to dinner? Looks like Bob and Carol and Alice, but not Ted. Ideas matter, and polygamy is a bad one whose time has come.
Why? Simple. We recently switched quite abruptly from regarding marriage as something that existed independently of our wishes to one defined by them. In the case of gay marriage we said “If two adults love one another, it should not matter that they are of the same sex.” Well, what if three adults love one another?
People tend immediately to dismiss this line of reasoning as absurd… probably because it’s just about their only defence against it. At any rate, the Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association (CPAA) is about to host its first ever national conference full of practical advice on managing the emotional and financial aspects of “polyamory” in Canada. Meaning it’s already here and not just in breakaway Mormon communities or among some recent Muslim immigrants. As the National Post notes, the CPAA regards the recent B.C. Supreme Court ruling as a victory because it banned formally marrying more than one person but let you live as if you had; in fact on its web site the CPAA calls the ruling “the legalization of polyamory”.
Now, remind me again why we can redefine marriage when it comes to the gender of participants, but it’s absurd to suggest we could do it respecting the number.
Oh right. Because we don’t want to think about it.
