Catherine Seipp can’t control an instinctively feminist reaction:
You may think you’ll hate Big Love, HBO’s new family drama about Utah polygamists that premieres Sunday, but I’ll bet you won’t. I was certainly prejudiced against it, because I’ve grown irritable with that common libertarian response to the anti-gay marriage argument: So what, I sometimes hear, if legalized gay marriage leads to legalized polygamy? My answer is that legalized polygamy is legalized slavery (or at least official chattel status) for women and children, and I don’t see how you can support liberty and also support that.
Unless you believe that marriage to one woman is enslaving, (or at least official chattel status for that woman and her children), how can you conclude that marrying a second wife is slavery? This is merely a nominally conservative woman whose feminist instincts are reacting to the realization that the power balance between men and women is about to shift dramatically again in American society.
We have already witnessed the first stage, as both feminists and anti-feminists now realize that men are not so easily reprogrammed to suit the feminist vision of the future. Now, the Law of Unintended Consequences is about to fall with a vengeance upon those who sought to overthrow the traditional Western family in favor of an egalitarian model more to their liking.