What is not schtoopid is that if the fight for gay marriage is won on the grounds that any impediment whatsoever to consenting adults marrying whom they will is unconstitutional, then polygamy rides in on the coattails of gay marriage.

Legalizing polygamy would be a huge mistake. It would hurt the standing of women in society. It would encourage the spread of doctrines that are oppressive to women. It would exacerbate beyond endurance the “winner take all” aspect of American society.

What is the poor man to think, when not only a hugely unequal share of the money, but an unequal share of the wives, gravitate to the rich?

If gay marriage is to become federal law, best it be done by way of a Constitutional amendment defining “marriage for purpose of federal and state law, taxation, inheritance law, [and so forth, thus by enumeration confining itself to secular matters that are properly the concern of State authority, and excluding any implication that churches might be required by law to solemnize gay unions], as the union of two, and exactly two, consenting adults who are biologically separated at least as far as second cousins are.

Sloppy writing of law encourages uses of the new law in ways that strike its authors as preposterous. So what? Courts go by the letter of the law, and if the letter allows preposterous uses, that’s somebody else’s problem.

As things now stand, nothing in the Constitution warrants the judiciary to redefine marriage along the lines outlined above. Now we can, if we like, get around this by arguing that the Constitution is worthless and that whenever something comes along that the majority wants, or even a vehement minority, they ought to get their way, and that the way to do that is to get judges to reinterpret any provision of the constitution that stands in the way.

The trouble with that is that then you don’t really have a constitution. You have a document that means nothing, because it means only whatever the current climate of opinion wants it to mean.