Why Fear The Minority?

John Corvino joins the monogamy debate:

While monogamy may be hard, it’s not so hard that a monogamous couple (straight or gay) can’t look at a non-monogamous couple (straight or gay) and conclude, “Nope, that’s not right for us.” After all, people read the Bible without deciding to acquire concubines. More generally (and realistically), people encounter neighbors with different cultural mores while still preferringand sometimes having good reason to prefertheir own.

As our opponents are fond of reminding us, gays and lesbians make up a relatively small minority of the population. Coupled gays and lesbians make up a smaller minority, coupled gay males an even smaller minority, and coupled gay males in open relationships a smaller minority still. As Jonathan Rauch has written in his excellent book Gay Marriage: Why it is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America, “We might as well regard nudists as the trendsetters for fashion.”

Or put it this way. Which couples are more likely to be monogamous: gay men with no social, familial or legal support for their relationships - or couples married under law in front of their families, friends and neighbors? In some ways, you could argue that lesbians have, from the perspective of sex alone, the least need for social support for their relationships, heterosexuals need more, but gay men need it the most of all. And whose mores are likely to define an existing institution: the 98 percent of those already in it, or the 2 percent trying to join?

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