Same-Sex Marriage Opens Door For Polygamy, Family Experts Warn

by Bill Fancher and Jenni Parker
March 17, 2004

(AgapePress) - Pro-family advocates are worried that legalizing homosexual marriage will lead to other perversions of the family. They feel there is cause for concern among defenders of traditional marriage that legalizing same-sex marriages could lead to a push for polygamy.

Peter Sprigg is senior director for the Family Research Council's Center for Marriage and Family Studies. He feels that within the next 15 to 20 years, a major effort to legalize polygamy will be underway in the U.S. He also believes that if homosexual marriage is made legal, the push for polygamy could become accelerated. "It's not unlikely that if we get same-sex marriage, we will see a push for polygamy 20 or 30 years from now, if not sooner," he says.

There have been a few isolated attempts by various radical fringe groups, regional minorities, and notorious individual polygamists to challenge anti-polygamy laws in the U.S. -- with some of the most notable resistance coming from polygamist Mormon individuals and groups. Even a handful of political figures have cautiously taken a stand in favor of the practice, such as former Utah Governor Mike Leavitt, who has publicly suggested that polygamy may be a constitutionally protected right.

Nevertheless, such opinions have remained isolated and unpopular in the mainstream. Even the official Mormon church, now known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS), has officially abandoned and forbidden the practice of polygamy. Since the LDS enacted its ban on plural marriage more than a century ago, there has been little force or momentum behind any drive to establish a right to plural marriage in the U.S.

Sprigg explains why a major and sustained effort to legalize polygamy has not been tried before now. "We have a large, well financed, 30-year-old social movement pushing for same-sex marriage," he says. "If polygamists were as well organized, as well connected in the media as homosexuals are, then we'd be seeing a push for polygamy too."

But now, Sprigg feels the advocates of polygamy are only waiting to get a foot in the door, and he fears that the homosexual activists may be giving them just the opening they need.

Family Research Council (FRC) president Tony Perkins agrees and says FRC spokesman as well as other pro-family leaders have been confronting same-sex marriage advocates about the slippery slope downwards from homosexual marriage to polygamy and other distortions of the God-ordained family. And the answer, he says, has been silence.

Perkins notes that when Tucker Carlson, host of CNN's "Crossfire" pressed Human Rights Campaign President Cheryl Jacques on the polygamy issue, all she could say was, "I don't approve of that," which Perkins considers a curious response coming from the group pushing a policy of which 65 percent of Americans "don't approve."

Perkins feels the truth is simple and undeniable. "The fact is that once you legally open the door for same-sex couples to marry, other groups will inevitably be clamoring for the same rights too," he says."

The pro-family leader says homosexual activists are hoping Americans will follow them blindly down the road toward same-sex "marriage," a road that he and other defenders of traditional marriage can clearly see leading to a dead end.