Calgary Herald is Anti-Equality

The Calgary Herald published an editorial calling for the denial of marriage equality.

The British Columbia Supreme Court must rule that Canada's law forbidding polygamy should stand. The case should be decided taking into account the greater good of society and gender equality.

In a country that has gender equality, granting the freedom to marry more than one person would not diminish that. Rather, it gives people more choices, more freedom to be who they are.

Let's face it -- there is nothing noble about the cause of polygamy, and much that is ignoble about it.

There’s nothing noble about wanting to marry your lovers and raise children in within a legal marriage? Your bigotry is showing. But let’s set aside “noble.” How about fairness and equality?

Polygamy is about men wanting to have sex with as many women as they like in a marriage. It is rarely about women having more than one husband.

So what? Why not grant people, men and women, the freedom to decide for themselves? Most heterosexual men want to have sex with as many women as they like. Some are rebuffed, some choose one at a time for the sake of what they consider personal discipline, religious or family pressures, or because they find that to suit them. What is so bad about someone who finds monogamy doesn’t suit him wanting to marry both or all of the persons he loves, if they agree?

And in the case of Bountiful, the case which spurred the hearing on polygamy now taking place in Vancouver, it is about men having sex with under-age girls, cloaking themselves in the thin veneer of religious freedoms -- a veneer which should fool few.

I’m all for setting an age of consent and sticking to that, enforcing it with law. Doesn't Canada already do that? What does that have to do with consenting adults?

Polygamy is about the sexual exploitation of women and girls.

The way some men choose to practive polygyny may be that way, but this is as bigoted of a statement as saying that same-sex marriage is about one man exploiting another, or that interracial marriage is about one race exploiting another. Some people want more than one spouse based largely on sexual considerations. So what? For others, it is more about love, friendship, cooperation, and a million other things. Why should they be denied this freedom to marry?

Those involved in polyamory protest that laws against polygamy need to be dropped to accommodate them. One is free, in this marvellously free country, to take as many concurrent lovers as one wishes.

Interracial couples can still be lovers without getting married. Same-sex couples can still be lovers without getting married. Well so can heterosexual couples of the same race. But they're allowed to marry. You’re denying marriage to consenting adults for no logical reason.

But we need to draw the line at the sanctity of marriage, for if Canada does not stand for something, then it stands for nothing at all.

That is exactly what the bigots said six years ago about the freedom to have a same-sex marriage. “Consenting adults” is a great line. What is wrong with that line?

And Canada stands for marriage being between two people only, two consenting adults and no more than that.

On what basis must it be limited to two? Since when is the Calgary Herald the authority on who should have the freedom to marry? To determine which adults relationships are worthy and which ones are unworthy?

What a disappointing editorial.