here come the brides

[MaraC]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Conten...6/494pqobc.asp

Triple wedding, group marriages, and not a peep in mainstream US media.
Not that I did not see something like this coming, it looks like, ah, the word seems strangely out of place though! - a "normal" progression to what is already on the horizon?

This is important because the Dutch campaign for same-sex marriage was famously premised on a "small step" strategy, with each small increment of recognition creating an impetus for further steps. As Israeli legal scholar Yuval Merin tells it in his 2002 book Equality for Same-Sex Couples, the popularity of cohabitation contracts among Dutch gays in the 1980s helped create laws in the early 1990s forbidding employer discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation--including discrimination between married and unmarried couples in the granting of benefits.

So the use of cohabitation contracts was an important step along the road to same-sex marriage in the Netherlands.

....

When it comes to marriage, culture shapes law. (It's a two-way street, of course. Law also influences culture.) After all, Dutch same-sex marriage advocates still celebrate the foundational role of symbolic gay marriage registries in the early 1990s. Although these had absolutely no legal status, the publicity and sympathy they generated are now widely recognized as keys to the success of the Dutch campaign for legal same-sex unions and ultimately marriage. How odd, then, that American gay-marriage advocates should respond to the triple Dutch wedding with hair-splitting legal discourses, while ignoring the Dutch media frenzy and subsequent signs of cultural acceptance--for a union with far more legal substance than Holland's first symbolic gay marriages. Despite the denials of gay-marriage advocates, in both legal and cultural terms, Victor, Bianca, and Mirjam's triple union is a serious move toward legalized group marriage in the Netherlands.

[MaraC]

in the wake of the new HBO series has this has a new relevancy, here is a link to Krauthammers article from Fridays Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...031601312.html

Newsweek wrote about it as well.
"Polygamy activists emerging in the wake of the gay-marriage movement."
I guess I was a bit ahead of the times.

I wonder what the gay-marriage proponents among you have to say about this. Krauthammer thinks if we allow the one we can't deny the other.
What do you think?

[garfieldshome]

oh my god.... i just read the thing - still can't believe it, especially the part with the husband and 3! wives in belgium. i couldn't do it. would be way to jealous.but that's only one side. the other is the legal side. i mean i knew the netherlands were very open in such matters but that they allow polygamy is news to me. wondering what happens next.

[VegasGirl]

Good article Mara, thanks for posting!
It's exactly the point we've (we being the ones speaking against acceptance of gay marriage) been trying to make numerous times... we're does one draw the line?

[garfieldshome]

i see marriage as a binding relationship between TWO people, not 3 or any other number. for me it doesn't matter what sex they have but only 2.

[VegasGirl]

Well, I see marriage as a binding union between 2 people, a man and woman... not man and man or woman and woman.

What makes my opinion wrong but yours athe same time right? Why should your definition have more validity than mine?

And thus the Pandora's box has been opened...

[garfieldshome]

well different people, different opinions - that's life i guess

[VegasGirl]

Exactly and that's why the content of the above article is dead on!