" Where does the next advance come?" he asks in an essay at Politico. "Now that we've defined that love and devotion and family isn't driven by gender alone, why should it be limited to just two individuals? The most natural advance next for marriage lies in legalized polygamy.... Gay marriage remains illegal in Australia, most of Asia, Africa, and Oceania, and parts of Europe and Mexico; the most liberal of those countries strike me as the most natural places for "the next advance" of marriage. I'd urge my fellow gay-marriage proponents to focus their efforts there––and legalizing group marriage in America right now would strengthen the hands of gay-marriage opponents abroad, confirming slippery-slope arguments that were raised and rejected here. If it ever made sense to avoid this fight as a matter of political strategy, it still does; if gay marriage was ever a more important priority than plural marriage, it remains so." ~ Freddie de Boe...
Comments
There are both plays and films that in various ways advocate "menages a trois" or even more "open" relationships. My own reaction to all I've seen is that they gloss over an essential selfishness that motivates the "openness." And they also fail to treat their subject realistically. Certainly some would accuse me of approaching the issue with my own biases, and of course we all do that. Nevertheless, I still think I may be seeing something people who'd suggest monogamy may be too rigid are missing.
Getting back to the larger point, however, I agree that the "freedom" rhetoric is permissive rather than liberating, and that the erosion of social absolutes has the negative effect of "everything is okay" - when we can see that, in effect, it is not, or open relationships would have swept the world by now.