Taking same-sex marriage step by step

Whether you call it polygamy, or polyamory, or consensual nonmonogamy, multiple partners in a single relationship is just over the horizon.

Australian activists for same-sex marriage have always insisted, that it will not lead to polygamy or polyamory. Never, ever, ever. Gay marriage is just like traditional marriage, except for the sex of the spouse. Activist Rodney Croome wrote last year that “studies show most LGBTI people want to be part of a two-person marriage, while partners in polyamorist relationships (most of which begin as heterosexual unions) say they don’t want their relationships recognised as marriages.” Former Greens leader Bob Brown described a push for polyamory as “nonsense”.

This is a crucial point for supporters. If they were to concede that same-sex marriage would ultimately lead to polygamy and more imaginative forms of marriage, they would prove that there is a slippery slope. So they are forced into vehement denials.

How odd, then, that a Polyamory Action Lobby (PAL) has been founded in Australia “to combat the image of poly people as relationship bogeymen”.

PAL is testing the waters by spruiking a public petition on Change.org, an internet site for activists. “For too long has Australia denied people the right to marry the ones they care about. We find this abhorrent. We believe that everyone should be allowed to marry their partners, and that the law should never be a barrier to love. And that's why we demand nothing less than the full recognition of polyamorous families.”

PAL contends there is no rational reason adults should not be able to form committed relationships with more than one person. “Polyamory often isn’t a choice; if people love more than one person, they can’t help it,” says its manifesto. The argument for same-sex relationships runs in the same groove: it can’t be helped; it can’t be denied; it is wholesome and loving.

“We’re sick of being treated like the bottom of a slippery slope, the fat end of the wedge and the scary inevitable consequence of legalizing same-sex marriage,” it continues.

As far as the law is concerned, PAL says that the government must not restrict relationships for consenting adults based on love and respect. “The legal, health and financial protections enjoyed by a spouse in a monogamous relationship must be extended to all partners in a family.” And in a sentence which has been repeated endlessly in arguments for “marriage equality”, the document adds, “A family should be about security, stability and love; not about its structure.”

Are these activists serious? Is this an elaborate hoax?

Read More at Mercator.Net.