Three’s a Crowd Ethics 01B

Chronicles Magazine ^ | Tuesday, September 27, 2005 | Thomas Fleming

[A. Pole]

It was bound to happen, but I always thought that Utah would be the place that legalized polygamy, not the Netherlands. But, as Belgian journalist Paul Belien has been pointing out, Belgium and the Netherlands are, at least so far as corruption and degeneracy are concerned, the West’s cutting-edge. His new book, A Throne in Brussels, is one of the most important political books of the past five years.

Belien’s BENELUX nightmare is coming true on schedule. Belgium and the Netherlands, which were the first countries to give marriage rights to homosexuals, will soon be enjoying one of the fruits of their culturally enriching Muslim populations: polygamy. On his excellent website, The Brussels Journal, he reports on the case of “First Trio ‘Married’ in Netherlands.” One Victor de Bruijn, bald and ugly as a frog, has “married” two pig-snouted sisters in a civil service that while not quite marriage is close enough for Dutch government work. To give a sharper point to their mockery, the sisters, both practicing bisexuals, are gussied up in the traditional white lace. Victor, however, says he is “one hundred per cent heterosexual” and insists the threesome will be taking their “marriage obligations seriously.” Wait till Bianca or Mirjam introduce their pet potbellied pig.

Well, who cares? Isn’t marriage a contract between consenting adults, and after all, as we have been told by every liberal since J.S. Mill, what two people do in the privacy of their own home is none of anyone else’s business. How many errors do you spot in this argument?

First, getting hitched in front of the cameras in a public ceremony that confers the government’s dog license is hardly a private matter. They could hardly be more public if they consummated their union on the streets of Amsterdam—though who in Amsterdam would notice, I cannot imagine.

Second, marriage, though based on a sexual union, is a social, not an individual act. One might imagine a very liberal society that troubled no one for what he did in private but did crack down on both public sex and on any deviant relationships that became notorious. I can imagine the magistrate saying, “Shack up if you must, but do not tell the world or try to get a license.”

Third, marriage is a word that actually means something. It does not refer to every random coupling that serves utility or relieves glandular pressure. It has always been defined as a permanent (at least in intention) union of male and female for the purpose of producing children who will perpetuate the family or families of the spouses. As a father, I pay for my daughter’s wedding in the belief that she will give me the grandchildren who confer earthly immortality.

Fourth, until recent centuries, a marriage arrangement required the agreement of the parents of at least one of the spouses. Thus it was not a union of individuals but of kindreds and from that union society is constructed. To the extent it is fair to speak of a society or community or nation, that society (or community or nation) must take a serious interest in setting the terms by which people can be married and add to the population of citizens. Even though today an illegal immigrant who drops a baby on US soil within hours of arrival can impose that child as a welfare-dependent “citizen” on the nation, the state of Texas or New Mexico still retains the residual authority to determine who can marry whom. Up until recently, this authority was taken for granted, if only because it contributed to public order. If I may marry two sisters, what is to prevent me from marrying my own two sisters or my two Scotties?

The family creates society that constructs the state. States have only recently assumed the power to regulate marriage, a power that previously and more properly belonged to kin-groups and Churches. Now that states like the Netherlands and Massachusetts are misusing the authority they have usurped, it seems to me that there is no alternative, as it becomes clearer we are losing the fight, to ignore the state’s authority or obey it only for convenience sake, in the same way that we buckle up when we get in our automobiles. And, just as we do not regard the man who buckles up as virtuous or patriotic simply because he does what the government tells him to do, we need not regard two people who are content to shack up with only the benefit of a state license as entitled to the respect of a married couple.

We have to do what the government compels us to do—that is the nature of tyranny—but we do not have to pretend to like it, and, in what is left of our private life, we can still act according to our principles. When I said something like this, apropos of divorce, to a Newsweek reporter, he described me, in his article some ten or more years ago, as beyond the pale. Deluded conservatives who thought we could stiffen divorce laws, by contrast, constituted the respectable opposition. At that point, I realized my approach had to be correct. Marriage existed as a moral and social institution thousands of years before governments appropriated the power to regulate it, and Christians had better learn to view the modern state’s claim to regulate marriage in exactly the same light as Christians in the time of Diocletian regarded the Empire’s authority to regulate religion

[A. Pole]

Polygamy bump!

[Mike Darancette]

Maybe this is the only way that Old Europe can get their birth rate up. The Muslims will get to have harems again.

[D.P.Roberts]

Not to worry; bigamy is its own punishment.

[narses]

[43north]

Bigamy is having one too many wives. So is monogamy...