Justin,

You, as a fundamentalist Catholic, may have more in common with Islamic fundamentalists than do gay activitists.

Well, Joel, so "may" anybody. It isn't the sort of thing that's proven by allusion.

Striving to change the nature of society, which both Islamists and gay activists are trying to do, is sometimes a necessary and useful process. The abolitionists of the 19th century were radically altering society, but I think, Mr. Katz, you agree with me that so terrible a society that allowed slavery needed to be changed. Indeed, it was the Christian thing to do.

I wonder, Mr. Katz, why you feel the need to make so inflammatory a comparison between "Islamic fundamentalists and gay activists." Conservatives are rightly appalled to be compared to Islamofascists--the Taliban wing of the Republican party and other assorted slurs. If it's wrong to compare conservatives to Islamofascists, why do you think it's acceptable to compare gay activists to Islamofascists? It seems especially repugnant, given that Islamic fundamentalists try to stone and murder homosexuals at every turn, for you to compare the two.

Curious, Mr. Hubbard, that a comment that asks me why I "think it's acceptable to compare gay activists to Islamofascists" begins as follows:

Striving to change the nature of society, which both Islamists and gay activists are trying to do, is sometimes a necessary and useful process.

That looks like a comparison to me. And a positive one, at that!

I don't, as a matter of fact, believe it to be inherently "wrong" to compare conservatives and Islamofascists. Context is, of course, all important. Suffice to say that there's a bit of space between "this group is like the Taliban" and "I mean this post to make no profound statement of comparison between the two interest groups nor to assign relative importance to the threats that they represent."

If it seems "especially repugnant" for one group to be compared with another, perhaps the offended group ought to take care when pursuing similar or related ends. (I don't know your politics, Mike, but note that I did specifically mention "Leftists," a group that has periodically found common cause with the Islamofascists in recent years.)

To be honest, your comment reads like a deliberate distraction. There are real matters of importance, here, and while it may be in particular causes' interest to sweep them away, it isn't prudent to do so.

(I, too, by the way, have been baffled by some liberals' willingness to ignore the affronts of the Islamicists when reacting to world events.)

Steyn's point is that if marriage can be re-defined to accommodate gays, why can't it be re-defined to accommodate muslims? Or Mormons for that matter? Once the horse is out of the barn, just where does it stop, if it stops at all?

The problem for gays is that judges read the newspaper. If they suspect that a decision in favor of gay marriage will result in a barrage of suits by muslims for recognition of polygamous marriages, those judges may be very careful in what they do. And gays believe, rightly I believe, that those judges will tread carefully, and may not be so anxious to re-define marriage if it opens the door to other consequences with which they aren't quite so comfortable.

Who says those judges are uncomfortable with those sorts of consequences or even change MD? As a matter of fact, I'd say they didn't find any discomfort at all making that judgement in Massachusetts.

The question for you Mike Hubbard is - why do you find it so inflammatory to have it noted that Islamic fundamentalists and gay activists share a common goal. It is not as if Justin were comparing gay activists to jihadists in their disregard for laws and life. Having that common goal pointed out, maybe it would be better to ask yourself what the possible outcome could be when two such totally divergent ideologies seek the same goal of redefining marriage.

I think these developments are alarming, and I hope that states in the US learn from the failed European model and close the proverbial barn door before it is too late..

To say that Islamic fundamentalists and gay activists have the same goal is akin to saying that Franklin Roosevelt (in locking people up through internment camps) and Adolph Hitler (in locking people up in concentration camps) had the same goal.

Or that because the white Christian identity movement claims the same savior, Christ, as Southern Baptists that the two have the same goals.

Comparing gays to Islamic fundamtalists simply preaches to a very narrow choir, encourages violence against gays and attempts to short circuit any attempt to persuade or engage in rational argument.

Except, Joel, that the more "rational" of the members of your analogies (Roosevelt, the Southern Baptists) denounced and worked against the less rational members. What we see daily is that your "rational" SSM advocates are simultaneously defending and in fact hampering the work against the less "rational" Islamists (who will be just as delighted to see them dead under heaps of stones).

SMM,

The Massachussetts court didn't rule in favor of polygamous marriage. That's the issue addressed by both Steyn and Justin's original post.

MD,
And you really think that the honorable justices that have once tried to redefine marriage law from the bench will be reticent to do so again if polygamists approach them? I hope you are not calling me naive.

"And you really think that the honorable justices that have once tried to redefine marriage law from the bench will be reticent to do so again if polygamists approach them? I hope you are not calling me naive." I won't call you naive. :-) But I think you are missing an essential element. The judges were not merely approached by homsexualists. They were approached by homosexualists and asked to do something they wanted to do and were able to manufacture some excuse for doing. Let them be approached by all the polygamists in the country; so long as they don't want to rule in their favor, the black-robed masters of Gaymarriagechusetts will manufacture some excuse not to do it.

ELC,
Okay, let me rephrase the question...

And you really think that the honorable justices that have once tried to redefine marriage law from the bench will be reticent to do so again if fundamentalist Islamics approach them to allow them some religious freedom?

Excuse me, but I will believe that when I see it.

And you really think that the honorable justices that have once tried to redefine marriage law from the bench will be reticent to do so again if fundamentalist Islamics approach them to allow them some religious freedom?

Ignoring for the moment the fact that the judges actually legislated from the bench (which I don't believe happened), polygamy, especially of the Islamic kind, is very anti-feminist. I really don't see a liberal court legalizing polygamy, even if a logial argument can be made from legal SSM. It would be considered an undue burden on society and on women in general, unless they could make it such that each wife would have equal standing to her husband. All divorce would have to go through Western courts, not sharia, and most likely the children would go to the mother, not the father and really what Muslim who wants to practice polygamy would go for that?

Michael,

But who says polygamy would be merely a multiple-wives affair? Really, you shouldn't be so sexist! What about lesbians who wish to bring their gay-male sperm donor into the household? What about polygamous relationships that involve people entirely of the same sex?

Or are we to believe that, while straight men might desire multiple wives, straight women would never desire multiple husbands and homosexuals of either gender would never desire multiple spouses?

I've suggested before that all current marriage law was developed with the understanding that it was an opposite-sex institution. That goes for the cultural standards of marriage, as well. In a post-SSM world all of the standard cultural arguments become moot.

SSM,

In my experience, judges not only consider the case before them, they also consider the consequences that decision may have on future cases (its precedential effect).

As for what a particular court might do with polygamous marriages, I don't know. Maybe I am naive.

If courts approve of polygamous marriages, the next demand (as in Canada) will be that such marriages must be regulated within the framework of Sharia. One thing leads to another.

What you are really saying, Michael, is that judges rule on whatever suits their fancy. There need be no logical consistency to their rulings, only that it does not comport with their feminist ideology or whatever other view they happen to hold.

On this point, I agree. It ain't right, but it is accurate.

Joel,

I think you misunderstand the comparison. The fact is, Muslims (not even Islamofascists) and gays do share the same goal - redefining marriage to include forms other than one man one woman. That is simply a fact that no amount of misguided indignation can undo. To use your Hitler example a bit, it is an undeniable fact that Stalin and FDR shared the same goal of stopping Hitler. That does not mean that Soviet Communism and American Republican Democracy were equivalent forms of government. It simply means, for good or ill, they shared a common goal on one point - Hitler.

Likewise with Gays and Islam - they share a common goal on one point - redefining marriage. That may be the only thing they share.

What you are really saying, Michael, is that judges rule on whatever suits their fancy. There need be no logical consistency to their rulings, only that it does not comport with their feminist ideology or whatever other view they happen to hold.

I would not malign the judges that way by saying they rule on whatever suits their fancy. That implies whimsy. But yes, they do rule on decisions in part by their interpretations of liberty (as well as precident, etc). A judge with liberal leanings might see SSM as logically extending from "equal rights" whereas they would look at motivations of and for polygamy and see them as being deliterious towards equal rights of the citizens, women in particular. If a logical argument of "if SSM then polygamy" can be made (and I don't think it can), a court still may find that the equality of citizens might be compromised by allowing polygamy.

But ruling however suits their fancy? I'm glad I'm not a judge because I would seriously be offended by that assumption.

MD,
If you must abbreviate my nom de plume, please take care that you abbreviate it to SMM (as in Static Multistate Matrix) instead of SSM (as in Same Sex Marriage) especially given the topic that we are discussing.

When you say that judges also consider the consequences that decision may have on future cases (its precedential effect), that does not prevent any judge with an agenda from ruling in a manner consistent with intent to influence later cases via precedent. This is part of the problem. This is how they legislate from the bench. They create precedents that lend a favorable atmosphere for future interpretations in the same general trend. And Heaven forbid that any judge would come along afterward and ignore or overrule that precedent if it were deliterious and the right thing to do. The rest would eat him alive.

I wouldn't say that you are naive... I've just got a tendency toward cynicism. That's what leads me to view Michael's comments about how the court MAY find that polygamy would compromise the equality of citizens with a skeptical eye. His comment suggests that as long as SSM is approved, he could not care less whether or not polygamy is then approved.

For the first five, or perhaps ten, years after SSM is legalized, the courts will not legalize polygamy, for only one reason: so that SSM opponents can't say "I told you so" while there is still any hope of reversing it. But that attitude will not last as SSM opponents are increasingly marginalized.

The denials that polygamy may be the next step remind me of the way ERA proponents during the 1970s kept insisting that the idea that SSM was next around the corner was absurd. (Of course, the fact that SSM is being taken seriously even without the ERA tells us something: that defeating a bad law means nothing if its underlying ideology is absorbed by the courts and the elites anyway).

I think that many people, both pro- and anti-SSM, do not realize just how easy it would be to make a publicly persuasive case for polygamy.

One of things SSM advocates have been very skilled at doing is turning the arguments of traditionalists right back against them. For instance, they will note that traditionalists have usually argued that a child's parents should be married rather than unmarried. Therefore, it is argued, these people are being hypocritical for not applying the same standard to gays raising children.

Similarly, one of the arguments opponents of SSM make now is that children need both mothers and fathers. How easy it will be to accuse them of hypocrisy for denying, say, the father of a child to enter into a three-way marriage with that child's mother and her lesbian spouse, especially when all three are in favor of it. Oh, those hypocritical right-wingers, how they talk about children needing fathers, but turn around and deny the need for fathers completely if the family structure is somehow not to their liking. Or so it will be said.

From there, it will be an easy road toward the idea that polygamous marriage is an "idea whose time has come", especially if the union appears to lack the inegalitarian trappings people generally associate with it.