NOW that the federal goverment recognises the marriages of same-sex couples from enlightened states, what's next? Polygamy? Well, polygamists are hopeful. And it does stand to reason. DOMA was struck down in no small part because it picks out a certain class of people and, by denying them recognition of their marriages, denies their families equal freedom and dignity. Can it be denied that polygamous families, whose marital arrangements are illegal, much less unrecognised, are denied equal liberty and are made to suffer the indignity of active discrimination? Joe Darger, a Utahn with three wives, has said, "Our very existence has been classified as criminal… and I think the government needs to now recognize that we have a right to live free as much as anyone else". Presumably, Mr Darger's wives agree. The powder on this slope is fresh, and the view from the bottom is fine. Why not slip-slide away?

Matt K. Lewis of the Daily Callerstraps on his skis:

What’s magical about the number two? In fact, you could argue that there is an even better argument for polygamy than for same sex marriage. For one thing, there’s a long tradition (just look at the heroes of the Old Testament.) It’s also intimately tied to religious practice, which means that by prohibiting polygamy, we might also be undermining the “free exercise thereof.” Why should we impose our values on others?

Well, some values, such as gender equality and individual autonomy, are worth vigilantly defending, if not exactly imposing.

As a former tour-guide at Mormon historic sites, I have encountered more than one fundamentalist Mormon family in which the strutting husband seems to regard his flock of servile wives like glorified property. We're not wrong to want to discourage this. Moreover, those remote compounds in which exile fundamentalist communities brainwash their girls and discard their surplus boys are intolerable horrors. But this is all the more reason to bring polygamy out from the margins of our society. As with sex work, the horrors here have little to do with anything inherent in the practice and almost everything to do with the fact that we've made it illegal and dishonourable.

Same-sex-marriage activists have wisely sought to separate themselves from advocates of even more exotic marital arrangements. However, as Mr Lewis suggests, the idea that marriage is an inherently heterosexual institution is less plausible than the idea that it is inherently exclusive to couples. If a man can love a man, a woman can love a woman and a man. And if they all love each other... well, what's the problem? Refraining from criminalising families based on such unusual patterns of sentiment is less than the least we can do. If the state lacks a legitimate rationale for imposing on Americans a heterosexual definition of marriage, it seems pretty likely that it likewise lacks a legitimate rationale for imposing on Americans a monogamous definition of marriage. Conservatives have worried that same-sex marriage would somehow entail the ruination of the family as the foundation of society, but we have seen only the flowering of family values among same-sex households, the domestication of the gays. Whatever our fears about polyamorous marriage, I suspect we'll find them similarly ill-founded. For one thing, what could be more family-friendly than four moms and six dads?