anyone have a link to the transcript ?

video is not so good for the worky work.

Sloggy is not good for the worky work.

transcript, please!

Hillarious! Stewart really did totally cream him. I loved the comment (regarding divorce) that 50% of marriages do not end in gayness

partial transcript:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/06/07.html#a8614

So, way back in 2004, Dan Savage wrote a piece for the Playboy forum that was really good. Can someone post this?

Josh, are you a polygamist who is being dissed by society's not having a legal framework for your preferred form of relationship? Do you have your two or mor e soulmates all lined up?

Do you know of [other] would-be polygamists, other than the male-dominant female-subserviant (enslaved as a teen) types, who have been together for years but feel discriminated against because of current inheritence, parenting, and spousal advocacy rights.

Or is this just a cutsy moral relativist philosophical question like "Perhaps we should oppose gay marriage rights because it will hamper true gay self-actualization free of society's unnatural strictures?"

Wow, Jon Stewart is so cool. It is a sad reminder of how much thought and effort must go into keeping sharp-quick-intelligent people out of the media.

Josh,

Having read your earlier post, I agree with Sims that legalizing polygamy is off-point, especially politically. I am reminded of an argument I have made about dealing with using race for university admission, that in part or in whole, university admission is based on criteria in some sense subjective. To counterpose "merit" based criteria, particularly grades or test, to other kinds of criteria is false. Yet rather than closing or winning the debate with conservatives, this move simply opens up the question because it creates more questions, esp. for people with conservative (and literal) mindsets.

But I have still more reservations about how polygamy is practiced, since the only areas where it is practiced, it effectively is a version of extra-strength patriarchy, often with teenage girls being married off without their consent. And let's think beyond the symbolic value of marriage, which can be conferred by ritual on any pairing we can imagine (though you do not have the array of choices of ritual). There are tax and legal benefits to being married. It seems to me that the state should only be involved in two-person units, because the number of legal issues involved would be better handled individually and case-by-case.

A better argument is that
what distinguishes same-sex relationships from other illegal or illicit ones is that there can be a symmetry of power, that is, at its base, it requires the consent of both parties just as opposite sex unions do. Every other relationship that supposedly follows has , at its roots, an asymmetry of power. Polygamy, pederasty, bestiality--what have you--all start with an asymmetry, even in practice they seem symmetrical. The fundamental issue is that, having sanctioned marriage between two adults, the government has no compelling interest in discriminating based on sex preference. Society does have a compelling interest, though, in at least not sanctioning power differences in relationships, as exemplified by the workplace and schools. Some of us believe the government has no compelling interest in sanctioning a religious ceremony in the first place, but this is a similarly radical position that only confuses the issue for the opposition.

Kudos, Josh, for trying to apply reason to a issue subject to so much unreason.

I think you overlook, though, an even simpler rational alternative to current marriage law. The government should simply abolish legal marriage. Oh, people could still hold whatever hippy-dippy or deeply religious ceremonies they wanted to, but they would be of absolutely no legal consequence. People (of any sex or number) who actually wanted to share property or confer a medical power of attorney could sign contracts to that effect. We already have a well-established set of laws governing the rights and obligations of unmarried parents. Tax law would become simpler (and the "marriage penalty" would be eliminated) because we would tax people as individuals. Employers and employees would have to negotiate over just who is eligible for benefits, but employers and employees already negotiate over compensation.

Once one accepts the premise of Lawrence, that the government can't ban some kinds private consensual relationships, it seems a small and reasonable step to the conclusion that the government shouldn't endorse and encourage other kinds of private consensual relationships, either. Indeed, it is hard to see why the government of any society that values individual liberties should be issuing stamps of approval on prefered relationships.

Some people may agree in principle, but consider my position so politically far-fetched as to be uninteresting. But I don't think that's necessarily true. Certainly I expect that many right-wing traditionalists would rather have the government stop endorsing relationships than have the government endorse homosexual relationships. And I can't think of any objections to the elimination of the patriarchical "institution of marriage" from a left-wing perspective.

David: Regarding your "And I can't think of any objections to the elimination of the patriarchical "institution of marriage" from a left-wing perspective."

I think a left-wing community-based perspective still must see the biological parents of a child as the logical default entiities responsible for caring for the the child and raising it. Marriage laws allow for a default legal framework for all of these rights and responsibilities, bearing in mind that default marriage laws are also default death laws. Leaving aside creche based child rearing by government employees as extreme, to do away with default marriage law would still require seperate parent law. I think it just makes sense from the perspective of creating a sustainable stable society (the objective of "left" political structures as I understand them, and I dont mean traditional anarchist) to have there be a default relationship of marriage that can be taken on as a one size fits all, but which the parties can modify by contract to some degreee. Divorce decrees or post-divorce child rearing agreements are examples of such court-ordered or monitored civil contracts.

Libertarian free and independent contracting for every relationship instead of the default "institution of marriage" doesn't look particularly "left" to me.

The above thoughts ignore your labeling of the "institution of marriage" as patriarchal. Current trends within the "institution" point to its not necessarily needing to be patriarchal to be functional or popular, which seems to be a "truth" that particularly bothers right-wing evangelical types and their running dog co-bigots.

I really wish people would stop conflating polygamy with polygyny. The terms are not synonymous.

Geni:
I think we are on it here. Polygamy is the catch all with polygyny being male with multiple females, a subset of polygamy. I think. I guess.

Wikipedia seems pretty clear about polygyny but offers more confusing definitions of polygamy depending on whether you are a socio-anthropologist or a sociobiologist.
Wikipedia