Christians Started the Wedding Wars

Defenders of traditional marriage used the law to persecute polygamists. Now they’re the ones under attack.

- Stephanie Slade

A MAN WHO lived with more than one woman was anathema in the 19th century; the media called polygamy an “act of licentiousness” that deserved to be categorically denounced, its adherents disenfranchised. In 1885, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a federal law making plural marriage a felony, declaring that “the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony [is] the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization.” A New York Times editorial celebrated that result, observing cheekily that “we had not supposed there had ever been any serious question.”

Today, it’s the old-timey view that marriage is between one man and one woman only—and that sex should be reserved to that union—that raises the Grey Lady’s ire. When Californians sought to ban gay marriage in 2008, the editors of the Times called the initiative a “mean-spirited” effort “to enshrine bigotry in the state’s Constitution.”

Even assuming you think the paper was right the second time around, the reversal is striking. But while the norms have clearly changed, the desire to punish anyone who refuses to comply with those norms appears to be forever.

As the nation goes to war over birth control mandates and gay wedding cakes, many religious supporters of traditional marriage and sexual mores understandably feel their rights are being trampled. But so did the Mormons a century ago. To justify the anti-polygamy laws forbidding that group to live out its faith, Christian traditionalists stretched the First Amendment to precarious lengths. Now, the arguments they created and employed are being turned against them.

DISCRIMINATION NATION