Sherif Girgis, Ryan Anderson, and I (and others) have been asking this question—or posing this challenge—to advocates of the re-definition of marriage for some years. No one has been able to answer the question or meet the challenge. So far as I am aware, only Jonathan Rauch has made a serious effort—and completely failed. The truth is that on the premises that one must put into place to generate the concept of “same-sex marriage,” the argument the women in the story below make on behalf of their own “polyamorous marriage” goes through without a hitch.

The story of a female throuple in Massachusetts (with a baby on the way) provides further confirmation, as if any were needed, of the proposition that “ideas have consequences.” Once one has abandoned belief in marriage as a conjugal bond (with its central structuring norm of sexual complementarity) in favor of a concept of “marriage” as a form of sexual-romantic companionship or domestic partnership (“love makes a family”), then what possible principle could be identified for a norm “restricting” marriage to two-person partnerships, as opposed to polyamorous sexual ensembles of three or more persons?

Sherif Girgis, Ryan Anderson, and I (and others) have been asking this question—or posing this challenge—to advocates of the re-definition of marriage for some years. No one has been able to answer the question or meet the challenge. So far as I am aware, only Jonathan Rauch has made a serious effort—and completely failed. The truth is that on the premises that one must put into place to generate the concept of “same-sex marriage,” the argument the women in the story below make on behalf of their own “polyamorous marriage” goes through without a hitch. (And they do a great job of making it, by the way.)

Logically scrupulous and candid ssm advocates (Judith Stacey, Masha Gessen, Elizabeth Brake, Victoria Brownworth, the 300+ self-identified LGBT scholars, activists, and allies who signed the “Beyond Same-Sex Marriage” manifesto—including Gloria Steinem, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Kenji Yoshino) recognize this.

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