One Man Divided by Four Wives

In a discussion with an advocate of SSM I pointed out that polygamy is a series of husband-wife unions. I noted that polygny and polyandry were both two-sexed.

The SSMer said that does not support the argument that marriage is a union of one man and one woman.

Actually, it does support that argument but my point had been that marriage, monogamous or polygamous, is comprised of both sexes, as per the count of human cultures. She has yet to address that point and has yet to explain her switch to a different (albeit related) point. Such switcharoos are far too common not to be recognized as either sleight of hand or incompetent reasoning.

Well, perhaps there are other possibilities and among them one is suggested by the SSMer's description of a logical absurdity (her term). She said that to be intellectually consistent, we should agree that -

"Polygamy is a series of unions between, say, 1/4 of a man and a woman, and 1/4 of a man and another woman,  and 1/4 of a man and yet another woman, and 1/4 of a man and yet another woman."

The series began with one husband and one wife. Each subsequent union added to the husband's count of wives but did not subtract from the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th unions which were formed as incomprehensive. If the first union was formed contingent upon additional wives, then, it too was not comprehensive. If it became contingent on that, then, its comprehensive nature was violated. In this way, of course the series is an absurdity.

My initial point still stands that polygamy is two-sexed.

However, given that the immediate context for the discussion of polygamy was the discussion of the reality of bodily union as necessary for a comprehensive union, the question arises: is this quartering of the husband to be taken literally or metaphorically?

Where polygamy is allowed, the husband is not physically quartered into bits and pieces. He remains intact. As does each of his unions that followed his first. So this looks like a metaphor.

In practice, the four wives each form a union with the one man but not with each other. Suppose the fourth wife divorced the husband, or the husband divorced the third wife. He'd remain in a marital union with the first wife and also with the second wife. These remaining wives do not reclaim his previously amputated limbs or internal organs and split them fifty-fifty. He remains intact even when two of four unions in the series are severed. At issue is the type of relationship.

This points to the problem of polygamy. It denies each wife a comprehensive union with a man divided amongst them. There is no possibility for the man to fully give himself (bodily, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually) because there is no other bodily union between two human beings other than the procreative type of act and that is limited by the number two because of the complementarity of man and woman.

Ask yourself if the children of a mother of four each get just 1/4 of a mom. Or if four individuals literally wrip a common fifth friend into bits and pieces. Then ask yourself why the SSMer said (and thought) what she did about  the polygamist husband. Perhaps deep inside she has an inkling that there is a natural bodily union that is real for the husband and wife but unreal for the husband and his many wives. If so then she might be struggling with how a sex-segregative union could be comprehensive given the lack of real bodily union. How is it unlike the divisibility of mothering; or unlike the divisibility of other types of friendship?

Our exchange on polygamy took place under another SSMer's blogpost in which he claimed that bodily union was just a metaphor and as such was a sure sign of a faith-based argument. He quickly and emphatically declared that to be out of bounds.

The metaphorical quartering of the polygamist husband would appear to be yet another example of an SSMer doing what SSM argumentation claims to be invalid.

However, reasoning by metaphor is not what produces the argument from bodily union.
Such union is no myth. As Robert George suggested, ask a zoologist or a farmer. And as I would suggest to the doubter, sit down with someone you trust and ask about 'the birds and the bees'. Use basic reasoning and sort the metaphors from the reality of bodily union.

The conjugal view is not guilty as charged and it is well within bounds.

But the SSMer who lept in to brazenly correct me with her own metaphorical, 'faith-based', comment about the mythical polygamist divided into quarters by four wives has gone uncharged. Her figurative language proposed that an actual absurdity existed by dint of an apt metaphor. Her remark surely was not intended literally.

The habit of mimickry led her to earnestly adopt, as her own, a strawman manufactured by another SSMer who is bent on rooting out the religous argument from the secular argument for bodily union. The bodily aspect is part of the comprehensiveness of marriage. But he confused this and renamed bodily union as "comprehensive bodily union". Bodily union can occur in a noncomprehensive relationship. But it is essential to making a relationship comprehensive.

He dismissed bodily unio as a myth and a metaphor. But in his next breath he talked metaphorically of bodily union in a same sex relationship and thus completely missed the point. He mimicked, too. He tried to patch up the problem by citing physical effects on each participant in a same sex relationship but nothing he cited would depend on the limit of two or even depend on sexual gratification.Nor would it comprise effect on the pair as a whole rather than as two individuals.

Not a surprise. Two SSMers embarrassed themelves with little, if any, prompting, and no tinge of incivility, from us. Perhaps you'd be surprised to learn that the two SSMers are none other than the FSB guest bloggers, Fannie and Barrie Deutsch (aka Ampersand).

They've each used insults and sneers against Opiners, misrepresented our arguments, attributed ill-motive, and now they blog at FSB under the pretense of moderating civil discussion. Discussions, mind, where my comments have been blocked and where Fannie has wondered how come she has not seen my comments in response to an issue she raise about something I had said. This she described as silence. Maybe she meant it metaphorically.

Their mimickry of strawmen serves to point to their search for the meaning of SSM in the context of their own incomprehension of the core meaning of marriage. I will have more to say about this in future blogposts, but for now I want to stress that it is not just Fannie and Barrie who exhibit this habituation to mimick strawmen. It is very common among much more sophisticated SSMers.

The root of this problem, I think, is distortion of moral principles and using the distortion to misrepresent the real thing; and then to use this or that distorted moral principle to attack moral goods and other moral principles. The effect is to make it appear that morality is at war with itself ... that there is a wide and divergent spectrum of moral truths and in such confusion society ought to retreat to supposed moral neutrality.

It is what induces issue fatigue and so it becomes a deliberate strategy of the SM campaign. This is wreckless but it can be effective politically.

If there is merit to the type of same-sex sexual relationship that they have in mind, then, SSMers owe it to themselves to show how it is distinguishable - before affixing a name and a special status on it. Their current aproach is to deride the meaning of marriage and then to wander around in a dismal fog of SSM meaninglessness. Mimickry does not suffice; mimickry of strawman arguments is idiocy. Mimickry of a core meaning that they reject as bigot is, well, intellectually inconsistent and self-defeating.

They should make the independent claim for the type of relationship they have in mind.

More later  on the SSM campaign's distortion of morality.