Banner of the ‘poly-pride’ brigade

Who said this would not happen? Of course, it was inevitable. But who thought it would only take four days?

Time magazine reported yesterday that on Tuesday, Nathan Collier went to the Yellowstone County Courthouse in his hometown of Billings, Montana, to register to get married to his partner Christine. The problem? Collier has been married to wife Victoria since 2000. And under Montana law, bigamy is outlawed except for faith reasons; Collier is not marrying Christine and Victoria due to his religious beliefs, making his marriage license illegal under bigamy laws.

It is the march to polygamy, polyandry and polyamory. The optimists among us now have to take the line – to preserve our optimism – that all this will have to get much worse before it gets better. Someone said last week that the only way out of the chaos which the Irish referendum – destroying marriage as we knew it – was to descend into deeper chaos. Macbeth summed it up for us when he said:

All causes shall give way: I am in blood

Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,

Returning were as tedious as go o’er.

The Montana trio, ‘Time’ tells us, argue that under Friday’s landmark US Supreme Court recognizing same-sex marriage across the country as legal, their polygamous relationship should be legally recognized and guaranteed the same rights as heterosexual and homosexual marriages. “If you read the justice’s statement, it applies to polygamists,” Collier said.

He’s referring to the dissent by Chief Justice John Roberts, who argued that the reasoning for giving same-sex couples the right to marry “would apply with equal force to the claim of a fundamental right to plural marriage.”

Roberts got it right of course and puts to shame the silly posturing of Judge Anthony Kennedy.

This thruple are using the Supreme Court ruling to argue their case and we can only wonder what torturous reasoning the lawyers are going to use to try and wriggle their way out of the predicament they now find themselves in. They may succeed in holding the line for a while but eventually their faulty ramparts will collapse and they will have to cave in to poly-whatever-you-want.

County clerks initially denied to give a marriage license upon learning that Collier’s marriage with Victoria had not been dissolved. But the clerk returned afterwards, saying that they would refer to the county attorney’s office before making a decision. The county’s chief civil litigator is looking to have a formal response by early next week.

Victimhood, as was the case with the relentless campaign for gay marriage, is the posture of choice in this campaign as well. Collier, Victoria, and Christine claim that the way they were treated at the courthouse made the family feel “violated.” He said, “We feel entitled for a legal legitimacy and for [the Yellowstone County Courthouse] to deny this is a violation of our civil rights … We feel the marriage equality law applies to us.” Given the Constitution of the land as it is now interpreted by its highest court they are right.

Collier says that all his family seeks to do is be legally recognized and not live in fear of prosecution anymore. If that means that he can bring polygamous relationships to the national conversation, Collier says he’d be willing to be arrested or sue the state if his license gets denied. “Ours is a happy, functional, loving family,” he said. “I’m not trying to redefine marriage. I’m not forcing anyone to believe in polygamy. We’re only defining marriage for us. We just want legitimacy.”

So what’s the agenda. More marriage “redefinition”, of course. Watch this space.