“Part of liberalism is tolerating illiberality,” Mr Freiman rightly says. In the absence of credible evidence that plural marriage in America today would be any more inegalitarian or socially harmful than the old-fashioned patriarchal monogamous marriages that millions of Americans already have, it’s hard to justify, at least on liberal grounds, our legal prohibition against more than two consenting adults freely entering into a marital arrangement. As I’ve argued before, many of the unseemly and unhealthy aspects of existing American polygamous “marriages” are a side-effect of our having made them illegal, and a target for disgust and contempt, much as homosexuality was within living memory.<\/p>\n
Perhaps there are other, excellent arguments against legalising plural marriage. But for now, not even extremely sophisticated liberals are making them. Messrs Rauch and Macedo’s claims about the harms that would ensue from legalising plural marriage have the same speculative character as some conservative arguments against legal gay marriage. This ought to pique some concern.<\/p>\n
Fredrik deBoer, writing in Politico, speculates that liberal opponents of plural marriage remain “trapped … in prior opposition that they voiced from a standpoint of political pragmatism in order to advance the cause of gay marriage”. This is probably right. Now that gay marriage is finally legal from sea to shining sea, it’s time for liberals to refine their arguments against polygamy. We need better, more rationally compelling arguments if we wish to be fair in shutting against would-be polygamists the libertarian door that we’ve just blasted open.<\/p>\n