Whole lotta love?

How well we remember the words of the Impressive Clergyman on that grand and popular topic, marriage:

Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder today. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam... And wuv, tru wuv, will fowow you foweva... So tweasure your wuv.

But what is true love, anyway? 

I ask because the question has been lingering in the air since the push began for same-sex marriage throughout the West. Years ago Canadian genius Mark Steyn predicted that this would lead to successful pushes for marriages among multiple partners, as once you start redefining that holy state, there's no natural stopping point. That no argument for same-sex marriage could not also be made also for bigamy, incest, and other such things.

I expected Steyn was right, but the push in the United States for bigamy has kind of stalled. Sure, there's been some desensitization going on -- favorable press for its practitioners ("thruples" and the like), stupid shows like Sister Wives on the Freak Channel TLC -- but it just doesn't seem to be catching on. I think it's more of an issue in Steyn's other home of England, where more of the hordes spilling over the border are Muslims. And the reason that's a big issue is that families with a dad and thirteen moms can apply for vast welfare benefits. Dad is, after all, unlikely to make enough money to pay for his brood of thirty-four children on his own, so the British taxpayer must step in.  

At least that's the state of play these days, and I wonder if bigamy will really be the bridge too far, or at least the bridge too far for now. After all, science fiction writers like Robert Heinlein had predicted future states with marriages among multitudes decades ago. Then again, the more Heinlein I read in my youth, the more I got to think that he'd want any kind of future that would assure him a constant supply of broads for his boudoir. 

On the other hand, long before Heinlein, science fiction writer Jules Verne had something to say about bigamy, although not in one of his futuristic novels. Around the World in Eighty Days is a great book, fast-paced and fun. We in America tend to forget that what made the improbable wager of Phileas Fogg possible when the book saw print in 1872 was the completion of many great railroads -- including the completion in the United States of the Transcontinental Railroad just three years earlier. Because of that, Fogg was able to board a train in San Francisco and cross the continent (with some adventures along the way) to New York City in a week.

The reason I bring up that particular book is a scene that's always stuck with me, when Fogg and his French manservant Passepartout arrive in Utah. Following a short note on the polygamous rules among the Mormons of the time, our heroes pop into Salt Lake City to take in the sights: 

Passepartout could not behold without a certain fright these women, charged, in groups, with conferring happiness on a single Mormon. His common sense pitied, above all, the husband. It seemed to him a terrible thing to have to guide so many wives at once across the vicissitudes of life, and to conduct them, as it were, in a body to the Mormon paradise with the prospect of seeing them in the company of the glorious Smith, who doubtless was the chief ornament of that delightful place, to all eternity. He felt decidedly repelled from such a vocation, and he imagined—perhaps he was mistaken—that the fair ones of Salt Lake City cast rather alarming glances on his person.

Surprising that a Frenchman would be so frightened of the idea of multiple ladies at his beck and call? But Passepartout, like Sancho Panza, is a most levelheaded sidekick, and aware of the many possible downsides of a family with that many wives. 

Then, this:

At four the party found themselves again at the station, took their places in the train, and the whistle sounded for starting. Just at the moment, however, that the locomotive wheels began to move, cries of “Stop! stop!” were heard.

Trains, like time and tide, stop for no one. The gentleman who uttered the cries was evidently a belated Mormon. He was breathless with running. Happily for him, the station had neither gates nor barriers. He rushed along the track, jumped on the rear platform of the train, and fell, exhausted, into one of the seats.

Passepartout, who had been anxiously watching this amateur gymnast, approached him with lively interest, and learned that he had taken flight after an unpleasant domestic scene.

When the Mormon had recovered his breath, Passepartout ventured to ask him politely how many wives he had; for, from the manner in which he had decamped, it might be thought that he had twenty at least.

“One, sir,” replied the Mormon, raising his arms heavenward—“one, and that was enough!”

Ah, mawage! A dweam wifin a dweam.