POLYGAMY AND SSM: PRACTICE VS. IDENTITY: Tom Sylvester

Jonathan Turley tries to sound clever and oh-so-contrarian in an USA Today op-ed on polygamy. Turley, a law professor (surprise!), argues:
"For polygamists, it is simply a matter of unequal treatment under the law."

I don't see it, of course. Polygamists aren't a "minority" in the sense that, say, homosexuals are a minority. Most gay men probably realize they are gay sometime around puberty (maybe earlier? I don't know). It's not as if a 15-year-old thinks, "I'm a polygamist." Polygamy is just not analogous to race, sex, national origin, or sexual orientation. A homosexual is a homosexual whether or not he acts on those desires. A white person is white. A woman is a woman. One becomes a polygamist through the act of marrying more than one person. The law prohibits all sorts of behaviors and acts. How does equal protection apply? ...

Quite frankly, I'm baffled as to why he thinks he has an argument here. He first slides to polygamy from the right to engage in consensual sexual activity with "any number of partners." But the Lawrence decision was rooted in privacy rights and equal protection. Marriage isn't about privacy--as a social institution, there's an important element of public recognition and support. We have the right to do a lot of things in the privacy of our home (maybe we should have more rights), but that doesn't mean the state has to recognize and affirm those acts.

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posted by Eve at 6:30 PM VOTE

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