The Parade of Horribles vs. the Party of Five

By Maria Padhila

I’m a little shaky writing this, so I’m hoping readers will forgive in advance any shakiness in construction or expression. I’m still traveling, and today I faced driving in the mountains. I have a driving phobia. It’s a combination of hyper-vigilance — I’m too aware of everything that can go wrong — PTSD, and just plain messed-up brain. I do various behavioral techniques to deal with it, and on a day-to-day basis, they work. On a road with a drop to a river on one side and sheer rock on the other, they don’t.

I won’t take drugs for it — once, a therapist suggested Xanax. I countered with the suggestion that perhaps instead I try two shots of bourbon before getting on the road. Even if I weren’t sure that drugs like that aren’t for me, it seems ridiculously irresponsible to drive under the influence of what’s essentially tricked-out Valium, even if it is legally prescribed.

Isaac, because of his disability, can’t drive, so he’s stuck with me, as I scream and curse and hyperventilate when the going gets tough. The campground where we’d been promised wireless didn’t have it, so it was back in the car to find a café. I highly recommend the Terminal Brewpub in Chattanooga, which serves mostly locally sourced hippie food, and I wish I could relax and enjoy it, but I’m still shaky. The three-hour panic attack set off on a talking jag over dinner that had me going into all kinds of awful memories, like the time a dear colleague and friend and I were working under a blatant harasser and she was told she was supposed to “put up with it, you’re in a tough business.”

(On top of that, we were doing all his work for him, while he pulled down big checks. Such was life.) I am glad most of that is in the past, though it obviously continues to inform my behavior and emotions.

Perhaps some coffee will help, right? Great idea! I’m not looking forward to the drive back to the campground. But I am looking forward to the tent and the cicadas and the clear, rain-free night.

When I checked my email earlier, I had a message from Planet Waves about a suit filed by Kody Brown, the guy from the reality show Sister Wives. I haven’t seen it, but people on email lists and blogs about polyamory that I follow talk about it.

Brown and his four wives — one legal, the other four “spiritual,” in their words — have been targeted since going on the reality show. The state says they’re breaking Utah law on polygamy. They are members of the Apostolic United Brethren Church, a fundamentalist Mormon group that officially abandoned polygamy as a practice more than 100 years ago. The family, which has 16 children, has been under criminal investigation for a year. There never was nor is there any evidence of abuse or allegations of abuse. The family is not seeking any legal recognition of its bonds. It appears simply that the state has decided it is criminal for five adults to live together and call themselves husband and wives.

Every time I’ve read about the way some polyamorists eat up the Sister Wives show, I’ve discounted the whole phenomenon, thinking, “what does a spiritually based practice among people who are probably wild right-wingers have to do with polyamory as I know it?” Well, plenty, if I’d manage to shift my ass out of my own limited perspective. Like Larry Flynt and feminists uniting over free speech, this issue too makes for some strange bedfellows.

I had a distinct sense of déjà vu — my own thoughts coming back at me — when I read this in The Economist blog:

Imagine the family of a twice-divorced, thrice-married woman with one child from each union. Let’s say she’s a stay-at-home mom who has custody of all the kids, and gets child-support payments from her first two husbands. So, children with three different fathers live together in a single household, supported by a portion of three different mens’ income. How is this not de facto polyandry? How significant is it, really, that her first two husbands don’t happen to live with their kids and her third husband? Suppose they move in. What then? Is it okay as long as they pay rent? As long as they no longer love the mother of their children, or vice versa? I say it’s okay as long as everyone involved says it’s okay.

In a news release, the Loving More national nonprofit educational organization, said:

Though religious based polygamy and secular polyamory come from very different backgrounds and basis, they share in common the belief that people can love romantically and spiritually more than one person.
…

The unfortunate truth is Mormon polygamy has often been associated with child sexual abuse and abuse against women. Loving More recognizes this problem and does not condone adults engaging with anyone underage in a sexual relationship, polyamorous or otherwise. Many monogamous unions based in fundamental religious practices suffer similar and even the same abuses.
…

‘I believe it is important to separate the issues of personal relationship choice, abuse of women and children and sexual abuse,’ says Robyn [Trask, the group’s executive director]. ‘Abuse against children and women is rampant and is an issue unto itself, though sometimes linked to fundamentalist Mormon sects, it can just as easily be linked to both radical religions as well as mainstream organizations such as the Catholic Church. It is my hope this case will sever the issues of polygamy, polyamory and abuse.’

I tried to call Trask tonight, but it’s late in Colorado, and her voice mail is full — hopefully by reporters looking for comments, and not haters.

Some say (some includes the New York Times) that coming down on polygamists is a way to help garner more support for same-sex marriage, by showing that other ‘deviant’ behavior will not flood society as a result. That is, that state laws “based on moral choices,” as Justice Antonin Scalia put it, are not all threatened by same-sex marriage. Here’s how it works: Opponents to same-sex marriage contend that making gay marriage legal will lead to all kinds of other problems (the infamous congressman Rick Santorum was actually one of the first to throw this one in the mix), such as legalized bestiality.

Ignorant, insulting, and absurd, this argument is known as the “parade of horribles.” Sadly, some supporters of same-sex marriage appear happy to let the parade keep marching on after they’ve made their case clear. Their issue isn’t part of the parade, but mine is. Witness this from the Times: “Such arguments, often referred to as the ‘parade of horribles’, are logically flawed, said Jennifer C. Pizer, a professor at the law school at the University of California, Los Angeles, and legal director for the school’s Williams Institute, which focuses on sexual orientation law.’’

So far, so true. But then:

“The questions surrounding whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry are significantly different from those involved in criminal prosecution of multiple marriages, Ms. Pizer noted. Same-sex couples are seeking merely to participate in the existing system of family law for married couples, she said, while ‘you’d have to restructure the family law system in a pretty fundamental way’ to recognize polygamy.”

Yes, such arguments are “logically flawed” — but that flaw applies across the board, not simply to the flawed practice of denying same-sex couples the right to marry. Here’s what Brown’s lawyer, Jonathan Turley of George Washington University, has to say, from the same article:

“Professor Turley called the one-thing-leads-to-another arguments ‘a bit of a constitutional canard’, and argued that removing criminal penalties for polygamy ‘will take society nowhere in particular’.”

That is, people will keep on marching to the same drummers they’ve been inclined to march to — no parades, but no prosecution, either. Just families putting themselves together in the ways that work for them.

Yet in their haste not to be touched by the scandal of polygamy, same-sex marriage advocates rush to separate and differentiate themselves from this. I’ve even said to myself: Screw it, the rights of gay people are just more important than those of polyamorists right now. After all, we’re not getting arrested, blackmailed, discriminated against, prosecuted, beat up — and they have been, for way too long.

Except, umm. Well. A family under criminal investigation for a year. Well.

I really, really don’t want to be in the position where my right not to be prosecuted for having two men in my life jeopardizes one of my friends’ rights to have a lovely legal marriage with her girlfriend. Why do these decisions need to be made from a position of scarcity, as if there were only so many rights, so many good outcomes to go around? When I find myself in arguments with ‘conservatives’ or family members (sometimes one and the same) about the issue, say, of slavery among agricultural workers (which really is slavery and which goes on more often than you might realize), they often make the ‘argument’ that “these people are just happy to have a job.”

“They WANT these jobs,” one argues. “They come all the way here, illegally, to get these jobs!”

Well, um, OK. I want people to have the jobs they want, too. I just don’t want them to be literally worked to death, sprayed with pesticides that cause permanent damage and birth defects, locked in trailers or shacks until they die of the heat, denied clean water and education, stuff like that. Who says it’s impossible to have it both ways?

I’ve been having it both ways for a while now. And it is possible. What you need are reasonable people who try to communicate and negotiate. It helps a lot to know how to do this. It helps a lot to have a certain level of resources so you can have a secure place to live and decent sleep and food. It helps more to have a network of support or know how to access information that can help you. But it starts with simply having people who are willing to talk and have the desire to make it possible.