"And So The Campaign For Polygamy Begins"

The American Conservative

Edmund Burke might not approve.

Within three hours of Diana Adams's interview appearing on The Atlantic's website yesterday, Rod Dreher at The American Conservative was warning that we're just going to see more of this kind of thing from the fawning, nonjudgmental media.

I've spoken in the last six weeks at the Arisia SF con, Open Love NY, and Poly Living East. Each time I said that intelligent conservatives know they've lost the war against gay rights, so they are turning their aim to the next thing down their slippery slope, namely us (or "polygamy"). In each venue, people in the audience said "Bring it on!" or words to that effect. I sense that the poly awareness movement is confident, secure, eager to declare its message, and spoiling for a fight. We're not likely to get the Stonewall moment that people talk about — but I've heard talk of looking for some nice high-profile legal fight if we can provoke the opposition into doing something stupid, as the Kody Brown family did so spectacularly with group cohabitation in Utah. I hope this isn't hubris we'll come to regret.

Anyway:

And So The Campaign For Polygamy Begins

By Rod Dreher

Now that same-sex marriage is all but a fait accompli in the US — come on, do you really think that Justice Anthony Kennedy is going to miss his chance to be the swing vote on constitutionalizing SSM? — it is time to move on to the next frontier: legalizing polygamy....

Well, now that [same-sex marriage advocates have] just about won this thing — and I don’t know anyone on my side of the SSM debate who, at this point, holds out serious hope that gay marriage is not going to be the law of the land soon — it is becoming politically and culturally safer to argue for polygamy. As with gay marriage 10 to 15 years ago, the groundwork for accepting polygamy will be laid by stories and essays in the media seeking to challenge the taboo.

Example 1: Jillian Keenan’s essay in Slate last year....

Example 2: this puffball interview on the Atlantic’s website today, in which the journalist queries a Brooklyn polyamorous lawyer who fights to advance the cause of polyamorous rights. Excerpt:

...Why does polyamory work for you?

I remember from a very young age realizing that I was bisexual, and that I tended to be attracted to many different people at the same time. I really think that polyamory for me is an orientation, like being heterosexual or homosexual. Humans in general have a hard time with monogamy. We used to have a sense that it was acceptable for husbands to go out and have other lovers, but with the shift to egalitarianism, rather than to say that woman could do that too, we’ve gone in the other direction....

There’s not a single question that remotely challenges anything Diana Adams, the lawyer, thinks, believes, or is working towards. It’s all so cuddly and warm and embracing. Get used to this kind of thing in the media. We’re going to be seeing a lot more of it in the years to come. This is how you prepare the public to accept something radical that would have caused them to recoil in the past....

Cuddly and warm and embracing, that's actually us. Read the whole article (Feb. 19, 2014).

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