Those who predicted that changing the definition of marriage would open the floodgates to just about anything the human mind could imagine were dismissed as reactionary, alarmist troglodytes. The back and forth has only intestified since the greater Indiana RFRA freakout, and progressives feel a lot safer intesifying the vilification of the conservatives' warnings.
But consider, as this woman does, some of the things already on the table. An organization representing prostitues in California is in court arguing that the right of consenting adults to have whatever sex they want in private (already established by the Supreme Court) also gives them to right to pay for or be paid for sex. In August, a federal court in Utah struck down that state's polygamy ban. A lesbian "throuple" (three persons) is openly defing that state's anti-polygamy law.
In Lawrence v. Kansas (recognizing the right of consenting adults to engage in private, homosexual sodomy), Justice Scalia's dissenting opinion predicted all kinds of challenges to traditional marriage, inccluding polygamy, prostitution, even incest. Think about it: Using the same logic and reasoning justifying same-sex marriage, can anything that people want to do be denied?
I'm not saying this is good or bad, merely that it is reality. You might be surprised at how latitudinarian I can be. We are rushing headlong into something we don't begin to understand. If everything's a right, then nothing's wrong, and, brother, that will be dangerous:
Should the courts be “constitutionalizing” these sexual activities, or allow the political process to play out? One state, Nevada, has statutorily allowed prostitution in certain places, pursuant to state regulation.
Being a libertarian, I see the policy arguments for enacting statutes like Nevada’s. But being a constitutionalist, I think there are some democratic dangers to giving unelected federal judges the power to constitutionalize every “liberty” claim, which cuts short the political debate inherent with legislative change. And the mother in me (which is inherently conservative) –with a teenage daughter– gets a little worried when I think of a world in which prostitution and polygamy are legal. The times, they are a-changin.’
Indeed they are.
