Psychiatrist Keith Ablow claims that
allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry has led to the demise of marriage.
The 52-year-old Ablow, a regular
contributor to Fox News, wrote in an op-ed, titled Marriage Died
in 2013, that last month's federal ruling striking down part of
Utah's anti-polygamy statute was the natural result of gay nuptials.
“More than a year ago, when states
began to legalize gay marriage, I argued that polygamy would be the
natural result,” Ablow
wrote. “If love between humans of legal age is the only
condition required to have the state issue a marriage license, then
it is irrational to assert that two men or two women can have such
feelings for one another, while three women and a man, or two men and
a woman, cannot.”
The decision “will officially make
marriage the Wild West.”
“Marriage is over.”
“It was always at least a little
funny that a huge percentage of people swore to stay together until
death, then divorced and remarried.”
“But, now, it is, officially,
judicially, a joke.”
“If two men can marry, and three men
can marry, and five women and a man can marry, and three men and two
women can marry, then marriage has no meaning.”
Media Matters' Carlos Maza argued that
Ablow was misrepresenting the facts in the ruling to increase
opposition to marriage equality.
“Like many right-wing commentators
hoping to cite the Utah case as an example of the consequences of
marriage equality, Ablow failed to mention that polygamous marriage
is still illegal in Utah,” Maza
wrote. “Waddoups' decision decriminalized polygamous
relationships, but polygamists in Utah, as in the rest of the
country, are still limited to one marriage license at a time.
Waddoups' decision cited a significant pro-gay Supreme Court
decision, Lawrence v. Texas, but it didn't rely on court
decisions legalizing same-sex marriage to conclude that polygamous
families in Utah should be free to arrange their private personal
relationships in whichever way they choose. In fact, the kind of
cohabitation legalized in the Utah decision has been legal in most of
the United States for many years.”