I told you that this would lead to something worse...

A cartoon about the gay marriage debate showed a hick sitting on the front porch in his rocking chair saying that all these problems began with giving women the right to vote and to drive.  In the next frame of the cartoon, he shouts through a window to his wife cooking and cleaning in the kitchen, "I told you this would happen!  Give women the vote and a driver's license and it was bound to lead to something worse..."  Well, it was funnier if you saw it...

The world is filled with folks with dire predictions of things that will go wrong, of domino effects that start in one place and end somewhere else.  When I grew up it was communism.  You had to stop it somewhere, or else...  Well, most of those old theories of the world's demise have come and gone.  Women vote and drive and have for a long time and not all the world's ills can be blamed on this.  But there are areas in which precedent does matter.  It matters with respect to the law.

If you are like me and have had to force yourself not to watch "Sister Wives" (about as impossible as turning away from the train wreck on its way to destruction), now you can say it.  "I told you this would lead to something worse..."

After the show began airing, Utah law enforcement officials suggested the family was under investigation for violating the state law prohibiting polygamy.  Now the Brown family is planning to file a lawsuit to challenge the polygamy law. They are not seeking that the state recognizes polygamous marriage. Instead, they are appealing to a 2003 United States Supreme Court decision, Lawrence v. Texas, in which state sodomy laws were struck down using as justification the unconstitutional intrusion on the “intimate conduct” of consenting adults. They arae seeking help from the federal courts to order states NOT to punish polygamists for their own “intimate conduct” as long as they do not break other laws (like those regarding child abuse, incest or multiple civil marriage).

In this case, one decision which at the time seemed fairly reasonable even though you may not like it will be used to force acceptance of something unreasonable which no one even likes to talk about (except those who watch "Sister Wives."  And this is but the tip of the iceberg...  Remember Bork and the big discussion of the right of privacy which may or may not be constitutional?  Well, here we go again.  Now how to prevent one argument from being used to justify something nearly everyone finds shocking and objectionable -- I do not know and I am not sure the Supreme Court will be able to figure this out either...