Big Love

Charles Krauthammer, though Jewish, loves to pontificate. Friday, he is ranting about how we can't accept gay marriage because it opens the door for polygamy. Conservatives love to hold back societal progress by claiming "it's a slippery slope". Pandora's Box

First of all, Charles Krauthammer is an anti-gay bigot. Like George Will, he may couch his bigotry in more sophisticated arguments than Falwell or Dobson, but the bottom line is: my religious beliefs (in this case, Conservative Judaism) prevent me from seeing homosexuality as anything but evil.

Second, he apparently has not seen the show he is condemning. This is typical of people. I'm guilty of it, as I refused to see "The Passion" because I'm not into sado-masochism. "Big Love" is anything but an infomercial for polygamy. Bill Paxton is a sympathetic character, as are most of his family members (I hate that Nikki bitch, though). However, none of them seem happy in their lot in life, even Bill himself. The heterosexual fantasy harem seems more of a burden to him than a joy to the big guy. Even the older children seem unhappy with their family role.

Paxton's family is ideal compared to the real polygamists they show. He and his first wife, Barb (Jean Tripplehorn), have rejected the repressive environment where between 50,000-100,000 people live in Utah, Idaho and Arizona in real life. Barb seems disgusted with the 14 year old brides marrying their much older male relatives. Bill, himself, was thrown onto the streets of Salt Lake City when he was 14 to prevent competition. His dad justifies this by saying, "You know the old men all get the pretty young girls." The show is only 2 weeks old and already the Fundamentalists seem more like a Mormon version of the Sopranos.

Third, Krauthammer et al. throw the polygamy in our face as if giving us rights someone will lead to the destruction of society. They leap forward to polygamy or marrying goats to mock us. Instead, we can step back and see how those arguments were used to defeat ERA in the 1970s, as it would lead to gay marriage. Today, they wouldn't dare openly say that women don't deserve equal rights. Step back another decade and you see the fight against interracial marriage as another destruction of society.

Krauthammer's religious beliefs prevent him from accepting what most gay people will tell you: it's not a choice. I never chose to be gay. Being Mormon, however, is obviously a choice. Mormons send out thousands of missionaries every year to do that. Imagine if gays tried to pull that stunt!

Polygamy is clearly a choice. Bill chose to have 3 wives, and his wives voluntarily married him. The young girls in the compound don't really have a choice, but that's because the State of Utah refuses to prosecute these old bastards for statutory rape. I could never be happy in a heterosexual marriage, but no one is hard wired for polyandry. You can't tell me I can legally marry a woman, like eHarmony told me when I protested their heterosexist policies. It won't work for me, and why should some poor women be saddled with a gay man for her romantic partner. I can tell you that polygamy is certainly a choice, and Big Love seems to imply that Bill might have been happier if he had just stuck with one woman instead of fulfilling Brigham Young's Eternal Order.

Finally, maybe polygamy should be legally. It's not illegal now to have more than one sexual partner. There certainly is a strong civil liberties argument for it, and Bill's family appears to be harming no one. In exchange, I would demand that those old bastards who are abusing young girls be arrested and tried for rape, kidnapping and welfare fraud.

Utah needs to stop being embarrassed about its polygamist past and route out these barbaric societies where young women are chattel and young men are surpluses to be dumped on the streets of Salt Lake City. Many of these boys are kicked out at age 14 to fend for themselves, becoming wards of the state or prostitutes. These are human rights violations going on in the hills surrounding Happy Valley and Zion.

Perhaps Krauthammer needs to watch a little more TV and spend a little less time pontificating about things he knows nothing about. Then again, what good conservative doesn't know what's right, and what's right for everyone else?