A federal judge has struck down parts of Utah’s anti-polygamy law as unconstitutional in a case brought by a polygamous star of a reality television series. Months after the Supreme Court bolstered rights of same-sex couples, the Utah case could open a new frontier in the nation’s recognition of once-prohibited relationships.

The moral foundation of the gay marriage crusade seems to be the contention that to deny same-sex couples the right to marry is a violation of their civil rights. However, if civil rights are the basis the courts use to decide in gay marriage's favor – on what basis do the courts then deny three people or two siblings or a divorced father and his daughter etc., etc., the right to be married? They are in love, they live or intend to live together, and they are citizens who also have civil rights.

Imagine two brothers who, after some family tragedy, try to provide a loving household to a child. What they are doing is certainly praiseworthy, and may even deserve some forms of governmental support. But their relationship is not a marriage, and treating it as such furthers no intelligible purpose. That conclusion would not change if the men were unrelated and having sex with each other. . . Still less is there a justification for treating one of these hypothetical pairs as married but not the other. – National Review Editorial October 2010.

In our “rush to justice”, shouldn’t this question be addressed? Once marriage is framed as a civil right, it is drop-dead certain that a trio or some such combination will go before the courts and demand the same rights as a duo. Thus opened, I believe this Pandora’s can-of-worms will result in the permanent mutation of marriage from an ancient, tradition-based male/female institution into a wide-open, anything-goes civil rights-based one.

When I recently voiced these concerns to a friend of mine, he thought for a moment and then said he "didn’t really have a problem with polygamy or whatever". So now perhaps we come to the real question for the ages: In a civil rights-based universe, what is wrong with expanding the institution of marriage to any sort of combination of people who are so inclined?

I am not at all sure how to answer this question. Maybe "traditional" marriage is done for anyway. Whatever sanctity (sanctity: The condition of being sacred or holy) and life-long commitment it was rooted in seems to have nearly evaporated. As if to compensate for this loss, young couples now seem ever more determined to replace that sanctity and that ”till-death-do-us-part” part with grand-gestured in-public marriage proposals and preposterously expensive, P.T. Barnum-esque ready-for-prime-time weddings -- sort of like getting some crazed running start on an attempted leap across time that everyone secretly regards as being unlikely to succeed.

But, returning to my original concern: Somewhat like opening up a small crack in a great and ancient dam -- I worry that by using civil rights as the chisel, this small crack may ultimately result in bringing a deluge of social-fabric-ripping toxic floodwaters down upon our idealistic heads.

I believe we should accommodate gay marriage -- not as a civil right -- but with laws enacted by a majority of voters -- voters who have concluded there is absolutely nothing wrong with same-sex unions. We are surely almost there, and we must be wary of impatiently asking the courts to accelerate this transition by ruling that marriage is a civil right.

James Q. Wilson, a social scientist I greatly admired, wrote that nearly all cultures evolved some variation of the institution of marriage as a way of keeping fathers locked into caring and providing for their children. That rings true to me. I can’t imagine any culture anywhere ever instituted marriage for the purpose of providing government-backed benefits, tax breaks, or rights.

However our society decides to reshape marriage, I believe we must bear in mind that this ancient institution’s primary intended beneficiaries were children, and that such legally/culturally locked families are the bricks & mortar of civilization.