RUSH: A piece today in… what is the website? Slate.com. Slate, Salon, what’s the difference. You know, Salon is the place where the guy, Sirota, wrote a piece before we’d found the two perps in Boston (paraphrasing), “Gee, I hope the terrorists are white guys ’cause if they’re not, it’s really gonna set back liberalism.” You remember that piece.

Now, in Slate.com we have a piece here by Jillian Keenan that we just found. It was actually posted on tax day, April 15th. And the headline of this piece is: “Legalize Polygamy! No. I am not kidding.” And here’s how this piece begins.

“Recently, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council reintroduced a tired refrain: Legalized gay marriage could lead to other legal forms of marriage disaster, such as polygamy. Rick Santorum, Bill OÂ’Reilly, and other social conservatives have made similar claims. ItÂ’s hardly a new prediction — weÂ’ve been hearing it for years. Gay marriage is a slippery slope! A gateway drug! If we legalize it, then whatÂ’s next? Legalized polygamy? We can only hope.

“Yes, really. While the Supreme Court and the rest of us are all focused on the human right of marriage equality, letÂ’s not forget that the fight doesnÂ’t end with same-sex marriage. We need to legalize polygamy, too. Legalized polygamy in the United States is the constitutional, feminist, and sex-positive choice. More importantly, it would actually help protect, empower, and strengthen women, children, and families.

“For decades, the prevailing logic has been that polygamy hurts women and children. That makes sense, since in contemporary American practice that is often the case. In many Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints polygamous communities, for example, women and underage girls are forced into polygamous unions against their will. Some boys, who represent the surplus of males, are brutally thrown out of their homes and driven into homelessness and poverty at very young ages. All of these stories are tragic, and the criminals involved should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But legalizing consensual adult polygamy wouldnÂ’t legalize rape or child abuse. In fact, it would make those crimes easier to combat.”

Folks, I am fairly confident I’m not reading to you here a piece from The Onion or satire. It’s Jillian Keenan, Monday, April 15th, 5:35 in the morning at Slate.com.

“In a United States with legalized polygamy, responsible plural families could emerge from the shadows — making it easier for authorities to zero in on the criminals who remain there. … ItÂ’s also hard to argue with the constitutional freedom of religious expression that legalized polygamy would preserve. Most polygamous families are motivated by religious faith, such as fundamentalist Mormonism or Islam, and as long as all parties involved are adults, legally able to sign marriage contracts, there is no constitutional reason why they shouldnÂ’t be able to express that faith in their marriages.”

Okay, so you’ve got a babe here who wants to legalize polygamy, and she’s got a well-constructed argument. Yeah, right. She’s basing it on, hey, you’re exactly right, once we get to gay marriage, hey, let’s keep going. She’s not running away from that at all. The people that said, “Hey, legalizing gay marriage, what’s next, marrying your dog?” Bring it on! And then throw the cat in there. We can make a case where it’s constitutional, because it’s religious, and it’s safer for the women and the children.

“We have a tendency to dismiss or marginalize people we donÂ’t understand. We see women in polygamous marriages and assume they are victims. ‘They grew up in an unhealthy environment,’ we say. ‘They didnÂ’t really choose polygamy; they were just born into it.’ Without question, that is sometimes true. But itÂ’s also true of many (too many) monogamous marriages. Plenty of women, polygamous or otherwise, are born into unhealthy environments that they repeat later in life.

“As a feminist, itÂ’s easy and intuitive to support women who choose education, independence, and careers. ItÂ’s not as intuitive to support women who choose values and lifestyles that seem outdated or even sexist, but those women deserve our respect just as much as any others. … The definition of marriage is plastic. Just like heterosexual marriage is no better or worse than homosexual marriage, marriage between two consenting adults is not inherently more or less ‘correct’ than marriage among three (or four, or six) consenting adults.” Who’s to say? “Though polygamists are a minority — a tiny minority, in fact — freedom has no value unless it extends to even the smallest and most marginalized groups among us.”

So they’re making no bones. They’re coming out of the woodwork now. Gay marriage, damn right, all for it. That’s gonna lead to polygamy. Damn right, bring it on, here’s the case. Look, the Mormons do it. Where was this during the campaign? Can you imagine if this had come out during the campaign, Romney might have actually benefited from something like this. You never know.