On 21 Mar 2006, "Sound of Trumpet" <soundoftrumpet@mail2world.com> wrote:

http://nationalreview.com/kurtz/kurtz200603130805.asp
March 13, 2006, 8:05 a.m.
Big Love, from the Set
I'm taking the people behind the new series at their word.
It's getting tougher to laugh off the "slippery slope" argument - the
claim that gay marriage will lead to polygamy, polyamory, and
ultimately to the replacement of marriage itself by an infinitely
flexible partnership system. We've now got a movement for legalized
polyamory and the abolition of marriage in Sweden. (See "Fanatical
Swedish Feminists.") The Netherlands has given legal, political, and
public approval to a cohabitation contract for a polyamorous bisexual
triad. (See "Here Come the Brides.") Two out of four reports on
polygamy commissioned by the Canadian government recommended
decriminalization and regulation of the practice. (See "Dissolving
Marriage.") And now comes Big Love, HBO's domestic drama about an
American polygamous family.

It has been argued that Big Love is just a harmless drama, no more
likely to promote social acceptance of polygamy than the Sopranos is
likely to promote crime. But we know that Big Love's own creators and
stars don't see it this way. They clearly intend their show to
challenge and change America's way of thinking about the family.

Big Plans
Will Scheffer, co-creator of Big Love, wrote Falling Man and Other
Monologues, a play about gay life, as a direct response to the public
battle over same-sex marriage. Commenting on Falling Man, Scheffer
said, "The voice from the conservative right is getting louder and
louder, so I think we have to state who we are in our lives, especially
with the reversal of the marriage thing in California." Scheffer sees
Falling Man as an entry into the gay marriage battle, and he and his
co-creator, Mark Olsen clearly see Big Love the same way.
Speaking to The Washington Blade, Olsen said he and Scheffer wanted to
address our culture war over the family by trying to "find the values
of family that are worth celebrating separate of who the people are and
how they're doing it." In other words, family structure shouldn't
matter as long as people love each other. Scheffer adds that what
attracted him to the Big Love project was "the subversive nature of how
we deal with family values....I think what's really exciting about the
show is the nonjudgmental look we have on our characters." Now maybe
cultural radicals are mistaken when they claim that they can change
society just by shaping the movies, plays, and television we watch. But
clearly this kind of cultural transformation is exactly what Scheffer
and Olsen have in mind.
The one thing that doesn't ring true is Scheffer's claim that he had
initially resisted Olsen's idea for a show about polygamy because he
thought the practice was "yucky." Given the fact that Scheffer's
Falling Man and Other Monologues includes a scene in which noted serial
killer, necrophiliac, and cannibal, Jeffrey Dahmer, gives cooking
lessons from his "kitchen in heaven," the idea that Scheffer found
polygamy "yucky" is a bit hard to credit. In any case, it makes sense
that Scheffer and Olsen like to tell that story. The notion they're out
to promote is that polygamy seems "yucky" at first, but is actually
just fine once you get to know some really nice polygamists. Or, as
Olsen told Newsweek. "The yuck factor disappears and you just see human
faces."
It isn't just Big Love's co-creators who think of it as something that
will influence our cultural, legal, and political battles. Big Love's
actors seem to feel the same way. Ginnifer Goodwin, who plays one of
the wives of Big Love, says that for many women, polygamy "is the
answer to their problems, not a problem in and of itself." Big Love
lead, Bill Paxton, says: "This show talks about the freedom in this
country. Are we free to choose who with want to live with? Well, yes,
but we can't have legal rights together." Paxton seems to be pretty
clearly arguing for decriminalization of polygamy, and probably for
direct legal recognition as well.
In one episode, Big Love directly addresses the legal-political issues
at stake. A polygamist leader explains to fictional reporters that
judicial recognition of privacy rights for homosexuals would have to be
extended to polygamists. "We're just like homosexuals," the man then
explains to his shocked wives. As for the fictional Henrickson family
(headed by Big Love star Paxton), Olsen and Scheffer "want people to
fall in love with these characters and to root for this family." Says,
Olsen, "If people in the gay community want to embrace the show,
identify with their struggle, so be it."
So if conservatives treat Big Love as a serious attempt to deconstruct
the American family, rather than as a harmless drama with no cultural,
legal, or political implications, they are simply taking the creators
and stars of the show at their word.

Public Support
But is it fair to treat a television show or a movie as something that
can change public opinion, and through public opinion our laws? I think
it is. Certainly such claims are not new. The Dutch gay community's
official history of the same-sex marriage movement notes how important
a turning point it was when a gay couple appeared on a popular Dutch
honeymoon show. That appearance helped pave the way for legal gay
marriage in The Netherlands. So why shouldn't we take Big Love as a
significant breakthrough for polygamy?
We don't need to talk about all the claims for the cultural
significance of Will and Grace or Brokeback Mountain. Have a look at
this fascinating piece from the Salt Lake City Tribune, "Will the
polygamy debate ever be the same?" The Tribune draws an analogy between
Big Love and the first appearance by a black in a television
commercial. That appearance was arranged by Vice President Hubert H.
Humphrey, through his then intern, Ed Frimage. Now a law-professor
emeritus at University of Utah's law school, Frimage has long advocated
the decriminalization and regulation of polygamy. Once you get an black
on television to sell refrigerators, argues Frimage, "the game is
over." The Salt Lake Tribune wonders out loud whether, after Big Love,
the same might now be true for polygamists. As the Tribune reports,
there are already legal challenges to anti-polygamy laws based on the
Supreme Court's Lawrence v. Texas decision. It's likely we'll see more
in the future. It's hard to believe that changing public attitudes in
the wake of Big Love won't have an influence on those battles in years
to come.

Glamorization
Some deny that Big Love "glamorizes" polygamy at all. It's true that
the show is frank about abuses. The Henrickson family is at odds with
the polygamist "compound" where the show's hero grew up. And the
Henricksons obviously abhor abuses seen in the compound, like marrying
off very young girls to much older men. But this hardly stops Big Love
from being "pro-polygamy." On the contrary, Big Love mimics the
position of most polygamy advocates: prosecute individual abuses, but
don't attack the practice itself. By setting up a contrast between good
polygamy and bad polygamy, Big Love puts forward a case for
decriminalization, recognition, and regulation.
The last line of defense against the slippery-slope argument is the
claim that there is no prospect of a national movement for polygamy
that could match the movement for gay marriage in wealth, clout, or
intensity. This claim, too, is getting tougher to credit. Polygamy is
supported in principle by the American Civil Liberties Union, hardly an
insignificant player on the national scene.
And that article from the Salt Lake Tribune makes it clear that serious
legal challenges to anti-polygamy laws are already afoot. In 2004, when
it looked as though a polygamy case might be headed for the supreme
court, George Washington Law School professor Jonathan Turley called
for decriminalization in USA Today. This past Saturday, New York Times
columnist, John Tierney, endorsed polygamy and tied his endorsement to
support for same-sex marriage. Just like Big Love star, Ginnifer
Goodwin, Tierney argued that, for some women this is the answer to
their problems, not a problem in and of itself.
More important than any of these individual responses is the advance
critical acclaim for the show. Mostly we've seen rave reviews, even
from conservative outlets. Actual objections to polygamy have been few
and far between. This general chorus of praise for the show is a
telling sign of change in a country that once viewed slavery and
polygamy as the "twin pillars of barbarism."

Collapsing Taboo
It's also important to remember that support for polygamy and polyamory
(approval of one is bound to help licence the other) cannot be tracked
in a simple, linear fashion. This is not something that can be judged
by open support, like public opinion during an election campaign.
Polygamy is illegal, and polygamists are still afraid to identify
themselves by name to reporters.
We are dealing, not with an election campaign, but with the possible
collapse of a social taboo - something television is ideally suited
to achieve. Social taboos may erode gradually over the very long haul,
but up close, and especially toward the beginning, you get little
collapses - the quick and unexpected falling away of opposition. What
used to be hidden emerges with startling rapidity, because much of it
was there all along. Polygamy, and especially polyamory, are already
widespread on the Internet. Both practices are pushing toward a major
public taboo-collapsing moment. We can't know when "critical mass"
might be reached, but Big Love has got to be getting us there a whole
lot quicker than we were.

Deconstruction Crew
Even so, it would be a mistake to treat Big Love as fundamentally about
polygamy. The truth is more complicated. Consider Martha Bailey, the
professor who advocated the decriminalization and regulation of
polygamy in Canada. Bailey herself does not "approve" of traditional
"patriarchal" polygamy. On the contrary, Bailey is a radical feminist
who would like to abolish marriage and replace it with an infinitely
flexible relationship system, neutral with respect to gender, number,
or even the presence or absence of a sexual relationship between
partners. Although Bailey has forged a tactical alliance with
practitioners of patriarchal polygamy among Canada's Muslim immigrants,
she is hardly a fan of patriarchy. Instead Bailey is using Muslim
immigrants as a lever to achieve her long-term goal of deconstructing
Canadian marriage.
I think something like this is going on with Big Love. Superficially,
the show is a complex defense of polygamy. More deeply, Big Love wants
to claim that, so long as people love each other, family structure
doesn't matter. So Big Love's lovable polygamists also serve as subtle
standard bearers for gay marriage, as the show explicitly notes from
time to time. But that's not all. Big Love's pro-gay marriage message
emphatically fails to echo the so-called "conservative case" for
same-sex marriage. Big Love signals the surprisingly early re-emergence
of a rift that split the gay community at the very start of the
movement for same-sex marriage.
Behind the seemingly unanimous support for same-sex marriage in the gay
community lies (at least) a three way split. "Conservative" gays say
they favor marriage because they admire this bourgeois institution.
Radical gays reject marriage as an outdated and oppressive patriarchal
relic. These radicals favor gay marriage as a gesture of public
approval for homosexuality, yet oppose the idea of actually getting
married. Then there are gays who agree that marriage is outdated and
oppressive, but who see a chance to radicalize the institution from
within (say, by using sexually open unions to break the link between
marriage and monogamy).
All indications are that Big Love is a product of this radical
sensibility. The goal is not to adapt couples to an already existing
institution but, in Scheffer's words, to "subversively" transform the
institution of marriage from within. So by highlighting the analogy
between gay marriage and polygamy, Big Love simultaneously builds
support for same-sex marriage, while also deconstructing the very
notion of monogamous marriage itself. It's a radical's dream come true.
This means the real challenge we face is not from a huge, nationally
based movement of so-called "Mormon fundamentalists." (These renegade
polygamists are emphatically not members of the mainstream, Mormon
Church.) Instead, as in Canada, the challenge will come from a complex
coalition: gay radicals who favor same-sex marriage but who also want
to transform and transcend marriage itself, feminists (like Canada's
Martha Bailey) who feel the same way, Hollywood liberals like Tom Hanks
(an executive producer of Big Love) who want to use the media to
transform the culture, civil-rights advocates like the ACLU and
ex-Humphrey aide Ed Frimage, libertarian conservatives like John
Tierney and an ever-larger number of young people, fundamentalist
"Mormon" polygamists, and the ever-growing movement for polyamory
(which features both heterosexuals and large numbers of bisexuals), and
perhaps someday (as in Canada) Muslim and other non-Western immigrants.
This complex coalition ranging from old-fashioned Humphrey-style
liberals to anti-marriage feminist radicals, to libertarian
conservatives, is what will power future efforts to radically
deconstruct marriage. And we're only at the very beginning of these
efforts. For the most part, cultural radicals are holding back, knowing
that anything they say may jeopardize the movement for same-sex
marriage by validating slippery-slope fears. The remarkable thing is
that, at this early stage, the radicals have forced themselves so
openly into the cultural argument. That is a sure sign that if same-sex
marriage were to be safely legalized nationally, the way would finally
be open to a truly concerted campaign to transform marriage by opening
it up to polygamy and polyamory, or by replacing it with an infinitely
flexible partnership system. Whatever we're seeing now is only the
barest hint of what will happen once the coast is clear.

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AREN'T YOU GLAD that Jesus told us that when you see homosexual marriage,
the abomination standing in the holy place (of matrimony), as foretold by
the prophet Daniel whilst in ancient Babylon, the exponential acceleration
of the *desolation* of the old empire -- by the Elements, by Fire -- which
is wholly superseded by the fifth (His eternally-youthful, Dominant reign)
"...is near, even at the doors..." "then shall the end come... for then
shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the
world to this time, no, nor ever shall be." [ref. Matthew 24ff AV]

Just remember, the Gods are NOT mocked. And gives thanks to God that our
moderate-to-conservative dominated U.S. Supreme Court will shoot this and
other anarchistic outrages, like murdering unborn children, down in

Enjoy!
Daniel Joseph Min
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x2B1CCFE7

*Download Min's Banned (Freeware) Books:
http://www.2hot2cool.com/11/danieljosephmin/

*NEW! Take Min's Spiritual I.Q. Test:

*Min's Google-Archived Home Page On The WWW:

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And gives thanks to God that our
moderate-to-conservative dominated U.S. Supreme Court