While referencing Utah’s dismally low same-sex marriage acceptance, Em & Lo quipped

Apparently polygamous marriages are okay, but only 22% of the state agrees with gay marriage.

They said it here.

This is actually a pretty not-unreasonable snark based on a non-illogical syllogism: broader society tends to brand both homosexual and group marriages as deviant, and defenders of the “between a man and a woman” standard see permitting gay marriage as a slippery slope gateway to polygamy, (overwhelmingly so!) therefore would-be practitioners of one should be supportive of the other.

I’m going to do a little U-Turn on that position and say that while it’s a perfectly reasonable line of thought it’s also almost completely mistaken: same-sex marriage and Utah-style polygamy couldn’t possibly, possibly be more different. In fact public disapproval is the only thing they have in common!

First of all let’s clear up one other minor misunderstanding. Long-term popular public opinion, as collated, for instance, in the egregiously cis-centric Purity Tests that emerged during the dawn of the networked-computer era, assume that either homosexual or multiple-partner experiences are fetishistic, “kinky,” perverted, or otherwise a departure from “vanilla” normalcy. The first obvious problem being that the vast majority of LGBT community members are as vanilla as cafeteria pudding*. And contrary to any possible myths or fantasies, religious polygamists are just as likely as religious monogamists to have a “for reproduction only” approach to sex. Point being that popular culture’s fantasies of deviancy or licentiousness notwithstanding, actual average gay or polygamist individuals don’t consider themselves “kinky” at all.

But to get to my main point, I think the biggest reason gay marriage is least tolerated in areas that would most tolerate historically polygamous marriage isn’t so much homophobia (though there’s obviously that) but a complete and diametric understanding of the purpose of marriage and the functional roles spouses inside of marriage.

The essence of gay marriage is the love in the subtitle of Stephanie Coontz’s Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage. Whereas the essence of historic polygamy, especially religious polygamy in the American inter-mountain west, was (and, where still practiced, is) the acquisition, consolidation, or transfer of property, wealth, or obligations between (pretty much exclusively male) heads of families.

For traditionalists, the way two men would exchange property or obligation would be to do a standard business deal or, if they’re a little more old-fashioned, to arrange a marriage between subordinate family members. And for traditionalists, who historically believed women have no autonomous legal, personal, or property rights, letting two marry is as pointless as letting a man’s cattle marry his house.

Meanwhile I think you’d have to look long and hard to find many same-sex couples who want to marry for reasons larger than to legally and socially cement their personal relationships with each other.

This is not to say that polygamists don’t value love for each other, nor that same-sex couples don’t value tax breaks, powers of attorney, and succession of estates. But it is to say those aren’t the essences of the respective forms of marriage.

So. I think the real question isn’t so much why Utah, with its tradition of polygamy, is so antagonistic to same-sex marriage: the purposes are so diametrically opposed it should be no surprise at all. The real question might instead be whether same-sex couples would be similarly antagonistic to efforts to legalize Utah-style patriarchal, property-based polygamy.

My guess would be yes, same-sex couples would probably be particularly antagonistic. All the more reason, then, not to be surprised that same-sex marriage is least popular in Utah.

Just sayin’

* Quentin Crisp’s flamboyant visibility notwithstanding, for instance, there are far more gay men like the quiet “marines, scaffolders, and rugby players“ he partnered with.