The inevitability of polygamy?

Regarding the three-way “civil union” between a man and two women that just took place in the Netherlands, Ken Hechtman writes from Canada:

There’s a pro-polygamy op-ed (written by a feminist, no less) in the print edition of today’s McGill Daily. In the good old days, it took at least 20 years to go from liberal to conservative by the process of not changing your opinions about anything. Now, the ink isn’t even dry on Canada’s gay marriage legislation—passed exactly three months ago today—and the New Democratic Party [a leftist party in Canada] is already being trashed as “unprincipled hypocrites” because we didn’t push hard enough to get polygamy included in a bill we weren’t sure would pass in the first place.

If I had to predict the timeline, it would go like this: If it’s in the campus press now, it’ll be in the indy press in a year, the straight press will pick it up in two years, the NDP will introduce a private member’s bill in three or four. By 2010, the Liberals will convene another Royal Commission, but this one will hear from Muslims, African animists and the polyamory lobby, not just a few Jack-Mormons living in the woods. The Supreme Court will add polygamy to the Charter of Rights before the Commission report is in and the Liberals will be forced to legislate it by 2015. The Conservatives will thunder that marriage is the sacred union of one man or woman with one other man or woman, but nobody listens to them.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 30, 2005 01:14 AM | Send