And this is a problem because......?
Granted, Santorum's logic isn't syllogistically sound in the comparison he makes here between the two. It doesn't follow that if you can marry anybody you want, you therefore can necessarily marry any number of people you want. But that's a far cry from saying that the basic proposition for which he makes an admittedly flawed argument isn't sound.
Both polygamy and same-sex "marriage" are abandonments of the understanding of the very nature of marriage maintained by Western civilization for millenia: a legally-sanctioned and binding relationship between one man and one woman. No state in the nation- or nation in the Western world, with the exception of the essentially antinomian society of Holland- has ever before treated marriage as merely a contract between individuals, whose nature was subject to negotiation between the parties. On the contrary, it has always (again, with the exception of Holland in recent years) been treated as an institution in which by its very nature no more than two people could participate, and only then if they were of opposite genders.
Because same-sex "marriage" in the United States has always been imposed by radical judges rather than adopted through the democratic process (The sole exception beingts adoption by the narrowest of legislative margins by the State of New York),- the rational discussion of the actual merits of altering the age-old nature of foundational institution of society has scarcely even been joined. The wholly false assumption- shared by such diverse people as the Iowa Supreme Court and Ron Paul- that marriage is merely a contract between individuals whose terms are variable, rather than an institution whose structure and nature have consequences for all of society and thus are a fair subject of legislation by the government, is simply assumed by those advocating same-sex "marriage," and is absolutely as valid an argument for polygamy as for "marriage" between people of the same gender. In neither case is it historically valid
That being the case, it seems to me that those who say that there is a problem with comparing multi-party marriage with single-gender marriage- both of which are modifications of what Western culture has seen from time immemorial as the very nature of marriage- need to explain exactly what that problem with Santorum's point is, besides registering a very valid dissent from his precise argument.. Same-sex "marriage" and polygamy seem to me to be quite comparable when it comes to the essential issue at stake here: the fact that they both represent abandonment of Western society's understanding, not of the mere details of marriage, but of its very legal and social nature.
So how about it? If marriage is merely a contract between individuals, why does that not argue as much in favor of polygamy being legal as same-sex "marriage?" Why should people not be as free to conclude a contract among several people as between only two? Why is Santorum's basic point (as opposed to the admittedly flawed logic he uses to support it) wrong? If marriage is merely a contract whose terms are extrinsic to its essential nature, then any number of people of any number of genders ought to be able to conclude such a contract on any terms they choose!
And on the merits- not on the basis of a logically dubious argument about "discrimination" (gays and lesbians are just as able under traditional law to marry people of the opposite sex as anyone else- and the nature of marriage has been understood for millenia to be such that people of the opposite sex are the only people it is possible to marry), why is same-sex "marriage" even a good idea? It's not that the statistics from the states which allow it, after the first year or two, show it to be all that much in demand. Nor are gay men in or out of "relationships" exactly notorious for their fanatical committment to monogamy. The institution of marriage seems to me to be under quite enough pressure already without altering it to include a population among which, for the most part, monogamy is passe'.
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