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My recent post “Virginity, Polyamory and the Limits of Pluralism” provoked more comments than any previous one. Almost all the comments latched on to a single sentence: “Once you legitimate same-sex marriage, you open the door to any number of alternatives to marriage as a union of one man and one woman,” from polygamy to polyspecies. I prefaced this statement by saying that it provided empirical support to the warnings of conservative Cassandras (of whom I am not one), whether one agreed with their philosophy or not.  When it comes to hot-button issues in the public discourse, nuanced positions are likely to be...