He said (I paraphrase) if the polygamists want marriage equality, they should advocate their cause. And he said he believes poligamy to be harmful for the larger society for some specific reasons. Maybe in the future some polygamy activist would be able to change his views. He doesn't appear to be an unreasonable person with immutable stances. He also said if same-sex marriages prove to be harmful, he'd have to reconsider his opinion. I'm citing examples from this very video. You should re-watch.

We don't know what he's teaching his son. I expect he's teaching him to form his own opinion, because he did the same for me. My position on polygamy is very different from his, although he taught me a lot about human sexuality. Is Brian Brown teaching his children to form an opinion based on information and rationality? I hope so! But in this video, BB says he won't reconsider his views even if ss marriage proves to be beneficial. So...unlikely. Rewatch, man.

I think it is incorrect to see marriage simply as a legal institution.

Yes and no. Much about my wife's and my marriage has nothing to do with the law. But so far as my marriage is legally recognized, it is a legal institution. And while the extra-legal aspects of my marriage couldn't be more different from, say, the long-absent Seattleblues's matrimonial sham, the attendant legal benefits and recognitions are essentially identical.

The aspects of marriage that are strictly legal sit at the heart of the current marriage dispute. Couples or groups who fall outside current legal definitions can arguably already enter into social or spiritual matrimony, provided that they can find communities willing to bless such unions.

People have been getting married for a lot longer than they have been making laws.

And not always, we might note, according to strict one man/one woman definitions.

Modern legal institutions like a corporation or even the notion of land ownership are incomprehensible to tribes of hunter-gathers. Not so with marriage.

Obfuscating, though I think not deliberately. Once you have a tribe, you have a de facto government. At the very least, reference to tribes amounts to a concession that it is a social construct.

Brian Brown and Maggie Gallagher argue that marriage is a universal human institution that transcends any single faith or culture.

Perhaps. But the cultural institution of law, particularly in a society that claims to honor free exercise of religion (and therefore irreligion) oughtn't to turn the blunt instrument of the state to the niceties of transcendence. If the state is to recognize marriage at all, it should limit itself to its material implications. I know of no one qualified to act, alone or through government, as my moral or metaphysical arbiter . . . or as yours.

The argument is that marriage equality will make marriage more about the emotional gratification of the adults involved in the relationship and less about the responsibility parents have to bring up their children.

Doesn't allowing the elderly, medically infertile, or voluntarily childless to marry already do that? It seems to me that such allowances display a recognition that the other social benefits provided by married households (they tend to commit fewer crimes, rely less on social services, raise property values, etc.) are worth preserving even in the absence of progeny.

I'm not even sure why making more organisms constitutes a socially desirable condition. I can make a better argument than most for the foundational value of protecting life once it already exists, but it seems like the making of more is value neutral on any but the most subjective bases. Offering some incentive to raise children, once born, in "stable," multi-parent households seems like a net positive--if people are gonna eek out womb-rats, best to make sure someone's raising 'em--but this is accomplished by allowing gay couples who adopt, or who have a child by one partner or the other's prior heterosexual unions, the benefits of marriage . . . and is pointedly NOT accomplished by the current allowance of marital rights and benefits to childless unions.

The one constant is that marriage always involves one man, one or more women, and babies.

Except that babies are not a constant; nor can we say in good faith that babies have ever been a constant. At any given time, less than half of all marriages have progeny. Now we might account for new marriages where children simply haven't been born yet, or marriages in which children had been planned for but haven't arrived for medical reasons, but the fact remains that, statistically, most marriages at any given time are childless, and some percentage of those childless marriages were almost certainly intended as such.

It's worth mentioning, also, that various matrifocal societies practice polyandry (in which case there is one woman and one or more man). This undermines your argument less, but it does hint at a broader spectrum of marital arrangements than your bourgeois (no judgment there; we are ALL bourgeois, n'est-ce pas?) lens registers.

If those who oppose same-sex marriage wish to argue either that the state should only recognize marriage in cases where there are progeny (or should make all marital benefits contingent on a child being either born to the married parties or adopted), or that the state oughtn't to be recognizing marriage at all, that's one thing. The current argument has no leg to stand on but fluid, subjective ideologies which true "free exercise" would not allow to be codified.

And for the record--not because anyone has asked, but because I'd rather circumvent anyone putting it to me later as if there's anything I haven't already considered--I absolutely support the legal recognition of polygamous (including both polygynous and polyandrous marriage, or any other configuration to which all parties consent) marriage; indeed, despite my moral and visceral revulsion at incest, I'm not even convinced that the state has a compelling interest in outlawing consanguineous marriage.

@113 - I arguably already accounted for that in #112 (where I outline the empirically demonstrable social benefits of childless marriage) and #114 (where I point out that the majority of marriages at any given time are, in fact, childless). To whatever degree that doesn't cover the matter, I'd go on to say that a state that recognizes that it cannot reasonably keep a man and woman from marrying (or staying married) for love, financial security, what-have-you is already parsing moral boundaries suggesting that configurations involving members of the same sex or more than two partners cannot "marry" on the same basis.

One more point on @113, Ken:

On the other hand, in his view, homosexuals are a group of people who do not and can not advance the interests of society by forming proper families.

Again, I have to ask--what is a proper family? What is the empirically demonstrable benefit to society of making progeny; what foundational value--that is, what "objective" value (no such thing, really, since all value is assigned, but for our purposes, "objective" can refer to that which satisfies the broadest possible array of subjective values), without which society cannot cohere, does making more organisms serve? Conversely, could we not say that any two or more people who forgo the benefits of single lifestyle in the interest of forming stable households, consolidating resources, and offering civilization all of the benefits I cite in #112 constitutes a "proper family," so far as we're suggesting that proper families constitute a social good?

@116 - And that's a perfectly fine argument to make to your family, in the pulpit, through your art and/or writing and/or public service, what-have-you. The benefits of traditional sexual morality are fine fodder for moral discussions--discussions at which matters of governance have no seat. Law maintains a condition of civic balance--a utilitarian condition that makes morality possible by protecting the right of the individual to pursue his or her own moral vision, to align himself with groups and viewpoints that support that vision, but do not codify any portion of that vision into law except insofar as it protects the moral sovereignty of the citizen. Legal marriage simply represents an acknowledgment of the material realities and socialized benefits of the formation of stable households--with or without children--and thus provides a format into which children may be born or adopted and raised under what appear to be closer to optimum circumstances.

@112, 113

Why should everything be juged by the amount of 'social good' it provides? Everyone should butt out as long as it's not hurting anybody (e.g. pedophilia) or 'taking anything away from the others' (e.g. incest. Normalization would have an effect on the relationships in other families. It's not a 'natural' boundary after all, rather societal and learnt).

And just for the sake of honest argument, I get what BB is trying to say about childless marriages. They don't erode the man-woman notion of marriage, that 'unique' and 'beautiful thing' he frothes over. They fit his comfort zone regarding gender roles. He fails to see that same-sex couples do too complement each other; there's harmony... call it a compatibility of personality type, an optimal combination of masculine and feminine energy (no man/woman is a 100% male/female), or pure desire to share and witness. It's a beautiful thing too. If you can't see it BB, that's your problem.

Why should everything be judged by the amount of 'social good' it provides?

Not everything should. But in the case of the legal marriage contract, special rights are bestowed. If government is going to give something--through subsidy, special rights, whatever--it seems like it should have to pass some sort of test. And better "social good" than "moral good," right?

Everyone should butt out as long as it's not hurting anybody (e.g. pedophilia) or 'taking anything away from the others' . . .

I absolutely agree, so long as we're talking about what should be allowed. But so far as marriage is something we allow, gays are "allowed" to be married--they can hold a ceremony, open a joint account, move into a house together, and so on. Once we get into the web of legal rights that accompany this contract, we're talking about something else--a bestowal, if you will. Now, I happen to think that same-sex couples should receive this, and I think my arguments as to why are pretty clear.

I don't think anybody except, perhaps, a Ron Paul-libertarian would argue that facilitating the formation of stable two-parent families is not a legitimate public policy goal.

I don't know about that. I'm a mass-transit hungry, universal healthcare supporting, same-sex-marriage advocating sort, and I'm not particularly convinced that stable two-parent families represent a public policy interest. But I believe that it CAN be a legitimate public policy interest, depending entirely on what we're comparing it to. What I'm saying is that it stable two-parent families cannot be demonstrated to be preferable, in any way that legitimately falls under the heading of civic law, to childlessness. It is preferable (probably) to procreating willy-nilly without regard to commitment or the creation of stable households, but that interest is no less served if same-sex couples are granted the same recognitions as the childless heterosexual couples, from which they are functionally indistinguishable, currently receive.

@123 - Then Jesus-Monkey-Fucking-Christ, Ken, what are we even arguing about? :)

No, I get it. You're trying to show me/us that social conservatives make these arguments from reasonable premises and good faith. For the record, I've always been pretty well aware of that. But reasonable premises and good faith do not make an argument fundamentally sound, irrefutable, or legally binding. At some point, you need to be able to figure out how everyone (or as close to everyone as possible) can function according to their own reasonable premises and good faith, or the reasonable premises and good faith of the groups with whom they voluntarily associate.

@125 - Yeah, but every time you assert that, you essentially dodge the issue that MOST marriages at any given time are childless; this couldn't possibly be true if some significant portion of them weren't permanently so. Indeed, given how steeply marriage rates have declined (or so I seem to recall reading somewhere), the fact that childless marriage are increasing means that we can no longer assume that statistical anomaly is the result of new marriages that just don't involve children "yet."

That is to say, the issue of child-rearing and the issue of marriage are connected, but they really aren't the same issue.

I think that those who raise children responsibly, so that those children are, in turn, of some use to society when they get older, are engaged in a noble endeavor. Objectively, a human life is no more valuable or exalted than the life of a virus; subjectively, I like a good many people considerably more than many of the viruses I've fought off, and the pleasures of art, religion, and sex play in my life could hardly be possible if I did not belong to so . . . innovative a species. So by all means, reward people for making the choice to raise children responsibly. But to reward them for consolidating their resources and committing, in one degree or another, to the abstraction of an intimate relationship while disingenuously tying that reward to some nebulous (if persistent) principle that doing so will one day lead to more organisms--thus excluding certain groups who seek to so commit for precisely the same reasons--strikes me as both bad policy and profoundly mushy philosophy.

@127 - Life is all about cost, Ken. When I say I'm an ontological nihilist, I'm pointing out that the only premises that survive scrutiny are those that posit that suffering, destruction, and chaos are necessarily intertwined with joy, generation, and order. There is no benefit that does not bring harm in its wake.

What I think we have to ask socially and morally (not necessarily politically; I think it's quite necessary to keep those spheres separate) is which of the two conditions you describe can be remedied as a society matures. I can imagine social mechanisms that can make the life of a child of a single parent better. I can imagine no recourse for the oppressed homosexual, the battered woman, or the ostracized polyamorous. What ills do you accept? The ones that can be most effectively mitigated.

That said, I think that we can have greater freedom and still suggest that those freedoms be enjoyed responsibly. It seems to me that same-sex marriage and polygamy are actually steps towards that, in that it rewards constraining the erotic within the boundaries of stable households.

Some of the people from here should go to the NOM youtube video of this debate and talk to the people there.

@99: Glad to know my heterosexual marriage isn't a real marriage because it's not about babies, and never will be. Does this mean I can get an annulment if I change my mind in 40 years?

@130 - I think Ken's getting at that having been part & parcel of the historical definition of marriage. He's still factually incorrect, I think (though the exceptions are few), but I don't think there was any malice with regards to your marriage, or even any deterministic sense of what marriage "should" be. That is, I think he's articulating the basis of our opponents' argument. I've seen him say several times that he's (more or less) for legal recognition of same-sex marriage.

Correct me if I've misrepresented your position, Ken.

This reminds me of the time I was asked if I had a family, and I said yes, and then they asked how old they were, and I got all confused and said, "oh, you mean do I have children?!"

What is a family, indeed!

@102 Re: "Anthropologists have studied tribes of hunter-gathers living in remote regions of the Amazon rainforest and the island of Borneo. Is it really so far fetched to assume that, in the distant past, people who survived using similar tools formed similar societies?"

Your assertion was that people had been getting married longer than they had been making laws, which is a) not a testable hypothesis, and b) doesn't sound like a reasoned assumption at all. If other [nonliterate or preliterate] societies included similar institutions, then they would also probably include traditions resembling law, much like other nonliterate societies from more recent history have demonstrated. It is more reasonable to assume that marriage, in its various forms, has always been a civil institution, as it has been in our own Western traditions.

That is, earliest extant texts on marriage as a civil institution::ancient nonliterate marriage-like traditions as earliest extant legal texts on other topics::ancient nonliterate law-like traditions on other topics.

It may well be the case that marriage, like law, is a "universal human institution," as you put it. It does not follow that that universal human institution everywhere and always excludes same-gendered pair bonds, because that is demonstrably untrue. It has always been a constant that it involves one man, one or more women, and babies, but only if you disregard all the times that it involves some other configuration that doesn't conform to that constant.

Brian and Maggie have faith in one definition of marriage, and that definition has not been a constant across time and culture, as they like to believe and restate ad nauseum. John Corvino addresses this adequately in the book he co-wrote with Gallagher.

@131: Yes, and I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek myself. I was trying to illustrate that the primary purpose of marriage can't simply be "babies," because not every married couple has, or wants, babies. Likewise, people have been having babies without getting married for a very long time, and one of the reasons one might not marry their babymama has to do with not wanting to owe money/property to said progeny. It also continues to be true most places in the US that unless a court decrees otherwise, the father of a child is the person married to the mother, not necessarily the person who provided the DNA. Marriage has always been about material assets, and babies are just another asset.

@63 I totally agree and felt that frustration.

I knew Brian Brown wouldn't have any road-to-Damascus conversion, but I did hope (naively, I know) that he might at least disown some of the rabid bigotry spewing from his own side of the debate. Dan confronted him with it, but because it was one of a series of things Dan said, Brown was able to sidestep it and then moan about being accused of bigotry. Anyone with a halfway decent capacity to understand English will see that Brown was disingenuous about the bigotry question, but this is what passes for honest debate nowadays.

And the conflation of the religious and civil was also frustrating. Brown's whole position on marriage was based on "marriage" as this particularly defined ideal thing - kind of a Platonic "Form" if you're into that - and so Dan's marriage can't be a real marriage because it doesn't fit the definition. Dan rightly pointed out that civil marriage allows for a much broader definition of marriage. Dan was arguing the legality, Brown was arguing the religious position, they were talking at cross purposes and neither could "win" without turning half of the debate over to the church/state division. And even then I'm not sure, because religious people tend to play down or deny any such division.

I think it's cute that someone would attempt to have a rational discussion with a true believer.

Transcription available at http://wp.me/p2weSH-42 - enjoy

When was the last time a christian hosted a sit down dinner/debate with a gay activist? Oh let's see... maybe never? Dan has given the reasonable people proof that while WE can invite these christianists into our homes for a civilized discussion, THEY cannot. I'm very proud to be on the side of civility and not standing with the likes of Westboro Baptist Church.

Okay, I’m such a dweeb and a dufus, I watched it and took notes. This to me is the modern day equivalent of Anita Bryant being invited to Harvey Milk's house for dinner ... that happening alone would have been unthinkable and historic, right? But to boot, the public is let in on it? I'm just so proud to be on the side that made this happen. Yes, it sucks that Brown was so flippant afterwards, essentially saying ‘what made those liberal wusses think I’d change my mind, anyway?’

Have to say, this one thing drives me nuts. A definite weakass moment, Dan saying right off the bat, "Was I bullying? The Economist says 'no'." And, "I don't think I was bullying."

Holy shit man, of *COURSE* YOU WEREN'T BULLYING!! Stand the fuck UP and point this out as a FACT, in strongest possible terms! You just come off weak and whiny in saying that, see, some random magazine says I wasn't bullying, so that makes it so. You sound like a lilly livered jackass. What I wish you'd said was, 'For fuck's sake, be real, Brian, We ALL know what does and does not constitute bullying, right? Thought perhaps *I* know a bit more about that than you, and by NO STRETCH OF ANY SANE PERSON, or even IDIOT's imagination could what I did be fairly described as anything close to bullying.' AND then follow up by pointing out how obvious it is that the ONLY reason this claim has been made by the other side, is to try to, of all things, discredit the great work you did with IGB, plain and simple, by spreading the lie that it's founder is himself a bully.

Dan's opening 15 min bit was great. Sloggers have heard these arguments before, but it struck me just how flat out amazing it is for the president of NOM to be sitting hearing them first hand.

Some stronger bits were the part about not bearing false witness - to say, again, to the NOM president, that his organization does not just bear false witness but does so 'routinely', and that they, or at least FRC, explicitly conflates homosexuality with pedophilia. And the shocking bit about Reverend Willie Owens saying that "Support for gay marriage is condoning child molestation." And the pointing out that the pushing of homo = child molestation being "poison" that NOM injects into the culture and that real lgbt kids suffer and die as a result, was just excellent.

Also well put was the bit about Falwell in the 70's saying homos were a threat because they didn't have kids and therefore were not invested in the next generation and only focused on the next orgasm - and that Dan's father said this to Dan when he was young! And then the tables being turned - now it's the fact that homos want to marry and have families that makes them a threat, and that you can't fucking have it both ways. Great point. So many young people today won't know what Anita and Falwell tried to claim back then, or who they even are.

Brian opens 15 minutes by trying to capitalize, immediately, which I felt was such a tacky move, on the Family Research Counsel shooting that had occurred that same day. I wish Dan had responded to this by saying, um, Brian, do you have ANY clue how much violence is and has always been used against my community? Vs yours? Ridiculously easy point that should have been hammered home.

One small unrelated observation: 21 min's in you can spot on the wall in the background behind B, the David Rakoff papercut Dan recently tweeted a link to, that David had made for D&T on their 10th anniversary. So sweet.

I think we need a non-partisan fact checker here, as well, re the take on the Regenerus study - B says even the people who criticize it say it was absolutely properly done; D says it's been criticized for in fact absolutely not being properly done.

B use of the phrase "elite culture" was such a fucking groan worthy moment. You only come off sounding like Bill O’Reilly when you say this shit. Come on, define 'elite' for us, Brian. You mean like ivy league fratboys Mitt Romney and George W Bush? Or is it just anyone who's been to college? Would that perchance include you, the guy with the master's degree from Oxford?

B: "I'm in your home. I'm stating my beliefs. I'm not trying to attack you." Once again, define your terms, Brian. If trying to deny gays their basic civil rights isn't an 'attack', then what is?

B, repeatedly: "Something unique and special about men and women coming together." The point I think B misses is that what he's talking about, aside from reproduction, is, I think, yin and yang - THAT is 'natural law', if anything is. I felt like D should have maybe pointed out what he's said before on This American Life and other places, about the dynamics re he and Terry - that D goes out and earns the money (traditional husband role), and T stayed home with DJ from day one, cooks, cleans, does the laundry (traditional wife role). Illustrating that yin and yang does not necessarily itself correspond with gender, ie that you can have both qualities of the masculine and the feminine even between and amongst people of the same gender.

At 25 min's in, B addresses D directly re the high school conference. "Come on, Dan. Saying someone's religion is BS, and my understanding is that you were not brought in to talk about the bible ... Why did you do this? It doesn't further your argument."

Have to agree with B here. Had Dan merely said there was "nonsense" in the bible, or things that weren't accurate, or used language other than "bullshit", to a room full of kids as young as 14 - of COURSE parents and adults there are going to be upset. As smart a guy as I think Dan can be, this was dead stupid - he fed it to them. Total fodder for the right - we can't expect them NOT to run with it.

Another non partisan fact checking needed here: B says a number of secular scholars and experts say the bible did not condone slavery, that at most it was indentured servitude for a set/limited number of years. B also says all of the abolitionists (Harriet Beecher Stowe, etc) pointed to the bible re Paul telling whomever to take back his slave as a brother. I’m not biblical scholar, so maybe we need a debate between biblical scholars on this point.

B references again and again, the ‘bringing together of the two halves of humanity’. This is a patently weak argument. Other than for reproductive reasons, he does a completely shit job of telling us WHY this is so terribly, terribly important and critical to the world. Or why the existence of this terribly critical thing justifies in any way, the lack of equality for lgbt folks, in marriage and otherwise.

Great comeback for D, quoting directly from FRC saying that gay rights activists goal is to abolish all age of consent laws, and that that is the reason they were labeled a hate group by SPLC, NOT because they oppose gay marriage (as does Catholic church, Boy Scouts, etc, yet those groups not labeled hate groups.)

Great moment at 35 min's - D saying if Leviticus says stone the non-virgin on her wedding night, then why don't we hear about it? Why only the abomination crap? Why the cherry picking - and he then says it and even points a finger directly at B: "I don't think principled oposition to gay marriage is necessarily bigotry, but THAT (pointing to the FRC statement on the table) IS bigotry.”

Adoptions by same sex couples have tripled in the past 10 yrs, D says. That's a staggering stat - I had no idea. As was stated later in the debate, this is the way history is going – gay marriage is coming, people, no matter if the right kicks and screams.

One of the best moments: Around 37 min's, the crux of Dan's argument is perfectly crystalized by stating that the state gave he and Terry the right to adopt and made them DJ's legal parents … yet that same state will now allow them to marry, even a civil marriage. The fucking debate should have ended right here - need anything else be discussed, really?

B's arguments begins to fall especially flat: "Marriage is the institution that allows children to know both their mother and their father." Yes, duh, but in cases of adoption - those kids are awaiting parents they don't already have - or they wouldn't be up for adoption. Of course it's ideal that the kid knows both his or her parents, but you have to define 'parents'. I think generally speaking, an adopted kid usually considers his adopted parents to fucking BE his parents. Just because there isn't a blood doesn't make that not so.

At 40 min's, B makes an even poorer argument: Marriage is and can only be between male and female, and gays are saying 1) that's wrong, and 2) that makes you a bigot, so DON’T ACT SURPRISED when a Catholic Charities adoption agency is closed down because they won't allow gay adoptions. "If your new idea of marriage is encoded into the law, it will be used to oppress, marginalize and punish us.”

Oh, boo hoo, Brian. For god’s sake, on what basis do you have to be ‘surprised’ and angry and outraged that legal remedies exist to correct wrongs? Do you think the owner of Woolworth’s would have been justified had he been angry that the government, or some lawyer, was ‘forcing’ him to serve blacks? HOW IS THIS ANY DIFFERENT??

The whole Counsel of Jerusalem conversation was fascinating. Christians did not need to follow all of the Jewish laws. Yet no one felt that homosexuality was acceptable, says B. At this point, around 44 min's in, the moderator then gets into the argument. While I completely agreed with his point and admired and was cheering him on when he repeatedly tried to finally NAIL Brian down re what is perhaps the main question ie tell us just exactly how gay marriage impacts or harms straight marriage? - I feel him interjecting himself into the debate, and showing which side he was on, was a mistake. This does nothing but provide fodder for B's followers to claim the whole thing was rigged and that Dan hand picked the moderator so that same would 'spin' this thing. Bad move. This is the Savage/Brown debate, not the Mark Oppenheimer one.

That being said, one of the clearest and best points is made by the the latter at 45:50 - "Other laws got kept. The rationale for which laws were kept and which ones weren't is not immediately apparent”. And the bit about NOM not trying to stop divorce as much as they're working to stop gay marriage. If there was any justice in the world, in response to this, the moment at 47:56 should haunt Brian Brown:

"Because you believe something is wrong, doesn't mean you make it illegal".

This should be on bumper stickers!

Strange and so lame that the knee jerk slippery slope "well why not marry 4 people, then" argument has to be raised, and that when D calls it a slippery slope, B denies that he said it was.

At 57 min's, that the biggest harm B can come up with that gay marriage would supposedly cause to straight marriage, is that kids would be taught in school that it's the same thing for little Mary to grow up and marry a girl as to marry a boy, and if you disagree, you're called a bigot ...

Honest to god. Wow. These people really are going down.

Bringing the two halve of humanity together, comes up again, twice, in the last 5 minutes. B again, never states what the hell he means by this, and why this is so damned critical.

Overall, I wish the thing had been 2 hours. There was SO much more to be said. But I’m thrilled and we all should be proud that this occurred at all. One hopes that in seeing Dan and his family in their home and breaking bread with them, B can’t help but recognize their humanity and right to exist and be treated equally – even if he doesn’t admit it to anyone, even if it only comes out later. Perhaps the seed will have been planted right here. Like Oppenheimer said in the NYT piece, Brown’s cohort Blankenhorn changed his views on gay marriage after speaking with gay parents, so it is actually possible.

Sorry for the ridiculous length of this post. I apparently need to get out more.

@17 No way was Dan's anti-polygamy explanation similar to Brian Brown's anti-same-sex marriage. Brown was unable to come up with any empirical reasons, just personal sacred-to-him shit. Dan came up with a non-personal, logical, empirical reason against polygamy: destabilization of social relations due to larger numbers of unattached single males. Look it up, that happens in some middle eastern societies especially where they can't have sex if they can't marry, quite a problem.

I personally don't agree with Dan -- but Dan made his point well. My view: in a modern society with equal gender roles and no restrictions on premarital sex, you'll find as much polyandry as polygyny and it won't be destabilizing. Adults are adults why not let polyamorous folks enjoy the same privileges and responsibilities in terms of property, inheritance, immigration, etc.

Dan says he goes to lots of poly weddings but not to many anniversaries -- maybe because there's no poly marriage.

Anyway, excellent video and excellent interview, really illustrates how the leader of the NOM has nothing other than his own personal interpretation of scripture. Dan was measured although the clip they showed on the NYT makes it look like Dan kept interrupting and was rude, when you see the whole video he was just fine. Great job!

I think I would have punched Brown with his smug sanctimony. Hello, freedom of religion = freedom from religion.

@145 - If everyone quit their day jobs to write novels or make films or sculpt or dance, no one would grow/raise our food, or defend our borders, or research to cure diseases. Indeed, if everyone did any one of those things, some aspect of what makes society function would go away. That doesn't suggest that any one of these things is not of value, either to any given individual or to the whole body politic.

Married individuals, with or without kids (who are of no more objective value than any other organism), commit fewer crimes, rely on fewer social services, tend to do a better job of maintaining properties (even if they're renting!), and so on. Add in the statistics illustrating that homosexuality occurs at nearly identical rates from culture to culture (meaning acceptance or proscription does little-to-nothing to encourage/discourage the anomaly--there are as many gays per capita in Iran as in the Netherlands), and it seems to me that same-sex marriage offers the broader social good of encouraging those who would likely be just as gay if there were penalties simply for engaging in homosexual activity to participate above board in the socially stabilizing act of household building, commitment, and the consolidation of resources.

@147 - It's odd how you seem to think you're responding to my post when you don't actually address any of its content.

Of course, everything I have to say on the matter is a matter of record, since I actually registered and have left my activity public (heck, if you read back far enough, you can probably even find my real name [which is, in fact, buried in my moniker]). I'm happy to be accountable for all I've said, but I'm not interested in repeating arguments you and your ilk haven't bothered to address in the first place. I can't enlighten every ill-educated reprobate who believes he's even nominally qualified to act as moral arbiter (or, doG forbid, intellectual paragon) for the rest of us.

It seems to me that Mr. Brown's argument comes down to this: If gay people get their way, something bad will happen to people like me, specifically, we will be called bigots.
So, if the argument is basically that one has an important right (nay, a responsibility) to fight anyone who, in ones opinion, is going to make something bad happen to one, then gay people have an important right (nay, a responsibility) to oppose organizations such as NOM and FRC, which have as their goals, doing something bad to gay people, i.e. depriving them of civil rights.
I also notice that Mr. Brown didn't find himself called upon to actually answer that last, and very difficult question. He just flat disregarded it, and used the time given him to answer it to trot out the same old talking points. He even doubled down on a discredited study -- in the face of a clear explanation of why it was discredited.
He also completely failed to address Dan's point about the statements his organization has made conflating homosexuality and paedophilia. Of course he didn't: they are indefensible and he must know it.
Altogether, he made a poor showing.