Karr, Jeffs

Well, that was fun. Not. John Mark Karr is not only a hairless sociopathic perv, but a big fat liar, as many people suspected even before Colorado taxpayers subsidized his first-class flight back home from Bangkok. But you know, I find it hard to imagine what else the Boulder DA's office could have done under the circumstances. Read what the DA said today. They weren't sure about Karr, but they had reason to suspect him, and felt compelled to move in after believing that he was about to molest a Thai girl with whom he'd become obsessed. This case reminds me of investigators who move in on suspected terrorist cells, even when the evidence is not as strong as they'd like, because they fear the cells are going to pull off a crime. Maybe I'm going too easy on the DA, I dunno. But I'm glad John Mark Karr is off the street, and, one hopes, headed to jail in Sonoma County on child porn charges.

Anyway, not a moment too soon the cablers have a new weird-sex-nut to obsess over: freaky-deak polygamist cult leader Warren Jeffs, arrested today on charges related to his alleged arrangement of marriages to underage girls. Now, Jeffs crossed the legal and moral line if he's guilty of what he's being accused of, but let's consider polygamy among consenting adults for a second.

Sacralists have no trouble explaining why it's wrong. On what grounds, though, would naturalists show that it's wrong? If marriage is in its essence no more than a social and legal construct that confers certain benefites and obligations on parties to the marriage contract, why deny consenting adults the right to "plural marriage"? Especially if you think gays should have the right to marry? Nadine Strossen, president of the ACLU, has said, "We have defended the right for individuals to engage in polygamy. We defend the freedom of choice for mature, consenting individuals."

There is compelling logic here. Seriously. If gay marriage is enshrined into law -- and it would be done so on the basis that 1) same-gender is not a legitimate legal barrier to marriage, and 2) marriage is a merely human construct that in infinitely malleable -- then on what basis do we draw the line at polygamy? As Charles Krauthammer put it in a column:

In an essay 10 years ago, I pointed out that it is utterly logical for polygamy rights to follow gay rights. After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender, and if, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one's autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement -- the number restriction (two and only two) -- is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice.

This line of argument makes gay activists furious. I can understand why they do not want to be in the same room as polygamists. But I'm not the one who put them there. Their argument does. Blogger and author Andrew Sullivan, who had the courage to advocate gay marriage at a time when it was considered pretty crazy, has called this the "polygamy diversion," arguing that homosexuality and polygamy are categorically different because polygamy is a mere "activity" while homosexuality is an intrinsic state that "occupies a deeper level of human consciousness."

But this distinction between higher and lower orders of love is precisely what gay rights activists so vigorously protest when the general culture "privileges" (as they say in the English departments) heterosexual unions over homosexual ones. Was "Jules et Jim" (and Jeanne Moreau), the classic Truffaut film involving two dear friends in love with the same woman, about an "activity" or about the most intrinsic of human emotions?

To simplify the logic, take out the complicating factor of gender mixing. Posit a union of, say, three gay women all deeply devoted to each other. On what grounds would gay activists dismiss their union as mere activity rather than authentic love and self-expression? On what grounds do they insist upon the traditional, arbitrary and exclusionary number of two?

Now that would be a discussion worth having on the cable shows! Similarly, I would like to hear a debate about the limits of religious liberty in this country, and the challenge posed by polygamy.