The Polygamy Canard

Christopher Orr fires back at Dreher:

There was a time, not that long ago, when it was possible to imagine, however inaccurately, that gay sex was in and of itself a self-destructive pathology, something no happy, healthy person would willingly engage in. That time is past.

The evidence of stable, loving relationships between well-adjusted, successful people is all around us. Indeed, this abundant evidence--and not the tides of the sexual revolution, which peaked more than three decades ago and have since receded--is the reason that gay rights, and in particular the question of gay marriage, have moved so quickly in recent years. Dreher fails to grasp this, prefering to imagine a straight line from the sexual experimentation of the 1960s and '70s to the gay marriage question of today to the, yes, polygamy debates of tomorrow.

...This is an argument impossible to falsify, but it's worth noting that Dreher's assertion that actions often have unanticipated consequences (and, again, I think gay rights are only peripherally a consequence of '60s sexual liberation) isn't an argument for the consequences Dreher foresees, it's an argument that the consequences may be unanticipated.

Dreher imagines that the "next logical step" is polygamy, an assertion for which there is no evidence beyond Dreher's own apocalyptic vision, and a goal for which there is virtually no support among proponents of gay marriage. I, by contrast, believe we will see the incorporation of same-sex couples into what Dreher calls the "moral order," an assertion for which I think there is already considerable evidence, and a goal explicitly held by virtually all gay marriage proponents. We will see who is proven correct.