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Given that we have functional polygamy, with people having relationships and kids by multiple partners, I can see someone arguing for "the conservative case for poly marriage" ('conservative' here the way Andrew Sullivan argued the 'conservative' case for gay marriage).
Instead of Jackson knocking up a string of baby mamas/Janelle having a string of baby daddies, they can now have a recognised legal relationship that gives them rights and duties. It will be more stable for the kids to have both (sets of) parents in the home. Janelle can now have her new guy move in, become part of the family unit, be there for his kids. Jackson can do the same with his new girl. There's no need for jealousy or competition or that Janelle can't cohabit with the father of her (third) child because that means she would lose her social welfare payments. It makes economic sense, it is better for the children, and it means men can't skip out on their responsibilities to the women and children in their lives, and women can't dump the father of their children with ease.
Sure, we're going to have to rejig the entire set of laws about divorce, property, custody, social benefits and the rest of it, but hey, isn't that what the courts are for, when the first cases about this happen?
We're going to the polls in March in my country to fuck around with the wording in the Constitution about the family because it's sexist and outdated. "Based on marriage"? Nah, "durable relationships" are the new thing! Nobody has given a definition of what constitutes a "durable relationship", but hey, isn't that what the courts are for, when the first cases about this happen?
You say that:
Hillary didn't want to touch same-sex marriage in 2008, but her views 'evolved', as did those of other politicians. When there's enough of a push and the straws are blowing in the wind, then it's worth it for the politicians to get involved.
See? Going from "declaring that she was unwilling to support legalized marriage" to "running as a forceful advocate for the LGBT community and a full-fledged supporter of same-sex marriage."
If the polling says the people want poly marriage, the politicians will 'mature their views' on it:
So give the books and book reviews and think pieces in the media and appearances on chat shows time to soften them up, same as with gay marriage. Mona and Rupert just had a glowing puff-piece in the NYT about their twenty-year long 'unmarriage' where both of them manage to have upper middle-class careers, two children, and seventeen different lovers in varying degrees of partnership and relationship levels, this is the future of marriage, society just needs to recognise the changing mores and enable them to have legal rights for their boyfriend, boyfriend's girlfriend, and girlfriend's pan enbyfriend as part of their 'unfamily'. Those are the people with the money, time and networks to get involved in pushing the politicians. It's not the single mothers with three kids living in social housing in council estates that are pushing for the Constitutional change on "women in the home" in my country, and it won't be them pushing for poly marriage in other countries.
But they'll be used as "it'll make things so much better for Jackson and Janelle" rationales by the people who wouldn't go within ten feet of where Jackson and Janelle live.
Honestly, I have to laugh here. And just exactly what did you think had to happen, to permit same-sex marriage? "No, for a thousand years anybody could rock up to the local druid, priest, or minister and say 'me and the boyfriend wanna get hitched' and that was cool, it just wasn't formally written in to the legal code!"
The scale change to require a man to marry a man using the same mechanism already codified is very different than having to rewrite for multiple people. All the existing legal structures work exactly the same way.
I also think you've pointed out how changes can happen but not be a slippery slope.
If the peoples opinions shift to redefine family is that because of gay marriage, or was gay marriage a symptom of the same thinking? If gay marriage isn't causative then it wasn't the first step on the slippery slope people were saying it was.
If the draft is abolished and you say, this is a slippery slope, it will mean we won't have the soldiers we need to fight a war, and then there is a war and you don't have enough soldiers, because Congress slashed military funding because the people decided they disliked war hawk politicians. Then your slippery slope diagnosis was wrong. You were seeing the symptoms of a populace whose opinions on war were changing. Abolishing the draft didn't CAUSE you to have too few soldiers, having a populace that was against war caused both. But funding being slashed could have preceded the draft being revoked, therefore the draft did not cause it.
Just to be clear you might still be right to oppose the policies, but you were wrong about being on a slippery slope. It wasn't that A would lead to B, it was that you were in the middle of a sea change, where A, B, C and D were all getting more popular.
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