“Progress!” The World’s First Three-Way Gay Marriage

Three homosexual men have “married” each other in Thailand in what is being billed as the world’s first three-way same-sex “marriage.” This was, of course, inevitable. It’s inevitable in every country that redefines marriage as anything but one man and one woman. When the culture’s only standard for “marriage” is that the parties love each other, then all sorts of novel configurations are possible. Look for this to come soon to a country near you.

Under the banner of the gay-rights rainbow, the new cultural revolutionaries are not only redefining marriage but also, to borrow from the popular term of 1960s radicals, “smashing monogamy.” What’s to stop these three non-monogamous married men from taking on added spouses? If three is fine, why not four? Or five?

This is, of course, a blatant I-told-you-so moment. This is what we gay-marriage opponents have been warning about. But it’s especially revealing of something else I’ve warned about for a while.

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Those of us opposing same-sex “marriage” for reasons like this were told by gay-marriage advocates that we were nuts. Our claims that the redefining of marriage would lead to polygamous marriage and other arrangements were ridiculed. We were denounced as homophobes and bigots who simply hate. We were not just cold-hearted but hysterical. They shouted at us that they would never advocate arrangements like these. We were crazy to even suggest they would support anything but two gay people marrying one another.

But we know better. Those of us who have studied the ideological train-wreck called “progressivism” know better. We’ve watched how progressives “progress.” The only thing you really know about progressives, and that they know about themselves, is that they’re always changing, evolving. Where they stand now, on any given issue, is, by progressivism’s own definition, subject to change.

I often give the example of Margaret Sanger’s Planned Parenthood. It was launched in the 1920s as the American Birth Control League, with Sanger’s interests being birth control and eugenics. Sanger insisted that she and her organization were against abortion. “It is an alternative that I cannot too strongly condemn,” she wrote in January 1932. “Some ill-informed persons have the notion that when we speak of birth control we include abortion as a method. We certainly do not.”

Yet, for progressives, what began as birth control needed only a few decades to snuff out life after conception. They “progressed” to where Sanger’s organization rapidly became America’s largest abortion provider. And where do “pro-choicers” stand today on abortion? Now they tell you that you must not only support its legalization but pay for it. If you disagree with them, they smear you as favoring a “war on women.”

This is their “progress.” As for those of us who have not changed with them, who even favor positions that progressives themselves once held, we are deemed the extremists. Where progressives start is never where they finish. They can never tell you their ultimate end-goal because their goalpost is always moving. They cannot tell us where they will stand on issues X and Y in 20 years. They will tell us when they get there.

But we do know this much: what is seemingly inconceivable to all of us right now, including to progressives themselves, can become the dogmatic position of progressives in a generation. The once-unimaginable absurdities become reality, and when they do, the progressive shrugs and then shouts—at you. If you suggest that a certain impossible position might become progressives’ position in, say, the year 2035, they will laugh, insisting they could never hold such an intolerable stance. Alas, when they arrive at that position in 2035, they will tell you that you are the crazy one; more than that, you are the vile extremist for disagreeing with their newfound, enlightened position. And they will attempt to force your compliance under the coercive power of the state.

They’ve done this with abortion and are doing the same with marriage. Give progressives the power to redefine marriage—once the province of nature and nature’s God—and there will be no end to the redefining. The definition will always be in a state of progression.

Worse, in the ultimate tragedy, this progressive rot, this dangerously addled “thinking,” is now pervading a larger secular world that has lost God and lost its dedication to moral absolutes. “When God does not exist,” said Dostoyevsky, “everything is permissible.”

That brings me back to what happened in Thailand. As soon as I saw the article on the man-man-man marriage, published in Britain’s Daily Mail, I immediately went to the readers’ comments (i.e., popular perception) to confirm my worst expectations of modern humanity. Yes, it would be wonderful to go to the comments and find serious mea culpas, “Wow, the conservatives are right! Our support of gay marriage is leading to this craziness! OMG!” or “I hate to admit it, but opponents of SSM were right all along. This is going to make a mess of marriage and the family.”

No, sorry. That is not how these minds operate. Remember: When they finally “progress” to the state they once swore impossible, and had once attacked you for even suggesting they’d arrive there, expect no apologies or reevaluating. No, expect them to be on board for the latest permutation. Expect them to applaud the next destination in the cultural train-wreck. And, of course, expect them to (yet again) denounce you as an uncaring brute.

Anyway, to that end, here were some of the readers’ comments posted at the Daily Mail article:

The first, ironically, came from a Puerto Rican man named Elijah, who is indeed a prophet for our times. He wrote of the new three-person couple: “I’m happy for them. I hope the day comes when we can all love as freely as we can and be recognized by our world laws.”

Here’s a comment from someone named Louis in South Africa, another herald of the times, who is inspired to give thanks to the Creator who made them male and female: “Thank God for these people—the world needs more love. All the best to them and many, many years of happiness. They make a beautiful marriage. May they experience God’s favour in their lives every day of their lives and I hope they have a big family one day to share in their love!”

From Nicky in Australia: “Good luck to them hope they r happy :)”

From another person Down Under: “The heart wants what it wants. I hope they’re happy together.”

And note this assessment from Laura in the UK, whose ambivalence gives way to the it’s-okay-if-they’re-happy standard that now defines marriage: “I’m all for gay marriage … but 3 people getting married to each other? I just don’t understand how that can possibly work. And how you could love two people equally as passionately as you would if you were to marry one person. If it works for them and they’re happy then fair enough but [it’s] all very bizarre!”

Spot on, Laura, that’s the progressive spirit!

Those examples are pulled from only the first roughly dozen comments. I didn’t look for more. It’s too depressing.

But, in short, there you go. They’re on board. All aboard the exhilarating train of progress! No apologies, no regrets.

What’s the next stop in this three-way same-sex “marriage?” What’s the next progression? It will be the adoption of children. And if you object to that, then you will be excoriated as an intolerant obscenity of a human being.

After all, proponents will insist, why can’t three married men raise kids just as good as a married man and woman? They can put a roof over the kids’ heads, take them to soccer practice, make them dinner, wash their dishes, get them out of bed and on the bus, pay their college, and on and on. And if you object that a three-married-man trifecta is not an ideal model of virtue, morality, chastity, purity, parenthood, fatherhood, motherhood, and, dare I say, manhood, then you will be judged a loathsome creature.

This, my friends, is secular progressivism. It is at long last coming to full fruition in an increasingly post-Christian world. Thailand today, America tomorrow. Welcome to its glorious train-wreck. Let the cultural carnage commence.

(Photo credit: Caters News Agency)

Author

  • Paul Kengor

    Paul Kengor is Professor of Political Science at Grove City College, executive director of the Center for Vision and Values. He is the author, most recently, of The Devil and Karl Marx (TAN Books, 2020).

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