A Throuple is the Logical Next Step

The headline caught my attention: “Montreal throuple wants Quebec to legally recognize them as parents.

Three men in a “polyamorous” relationship wanted to foster a child but eventually found an agency that, as one man put it, “learned that we are a little different because we’re three, but we’re not different from any other family.”

Not different from any other family…

That phrase reveals something deeper than legal debates about marriage and family. It raises a question about human nature itself.

The Inevitable Expansion

When the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage ten years ago, conservative commentators warned that the Court’s reasoning would open the door to endless variations. Progressive voices dismissed such concerns as alarmist fear-mongering. 

Gay couples only want what all couples want, the argument went. No need to worry about imaginary scenarios.

The Heritage Foundation noted that the “Respect for Marriage Act” would “require federal recognition of any one state’s definition of marriage without any parameters whatsoever. This would include plural marriages, temporary marriages, open marriages, marriages involving a minor or relative, platonic marriages, arranged marriages or any other novel marriage definition that a state legislature or state supreme court chooses to adopt.”

Well, here we are. The Montreal throuple isn’t an aberration; it’s the logical conclusion. Once you remove the definition, any form becomes legally permissible. The critics were right. When anything can mean everything, nothing means anything. This progression reveals something important: this isn’t just about evolving social norms. It’s about hearts curved inward, demanding that reality bend to desire.

The Heart’s Natural Curve

In the early church, Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. described humanity’s fundamental problem perfectly: cor incurvatus in se—”the heart curved in on itself.” Martin Luther would later echo the phrase.

Apart from God, our desires bend backward toward ourselves instead of outward. We were designed to thrive by loving God first, then others. But remove God from the picture, and that love has nowhere to go. Since we were created to worship something, it curves back on itself. The self becomes the object of worship. 

This is why, once we abandon God’s design for relationships, there’s no logical stopping point. If personal desire becomes the ultimate authority for defining marriage and family, every configuration becomes equally valid. A throuple today, something else tomorrow.

We were created to be mirrors of God’s love, but when the heart curves inward, the mirror turns back on ourselves. Like Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, we fall in love with our own reflection. Distorted love asks, “How does this make me feel? What do others do for me?” But that’s ultimately empty, because real love gives itself away. It’s not self-obsessed.

The Irony of Three

Divine love is so radically self-giving that it leads to new life. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—eternal love itself—brings humanity into being, not from loneliness, but because giving is the very nature of love.

Which makes the Montreal story especially ironic. One might argue that three men better express the Trinity’s love than a complementary man and woman. But this “family” cannot bring forth life on its own. They must adopt to multiply. Their union lacks the generative, complementary difference that makes divine love fruitful.

Humanity reflects God’s image, but it’s not an exact mirror. We were designed to reflect divine self-giving love through marriage: two beings the same in nature (human) but different in kind (male and female). They complement rather than duplicate. Each brings what the other lacks. When they give themselves fully body, mind, and soul to one another, new life comes forth and a family is born.

Yes, sin has led to distortions through death, divorce, or infertility. But that doesn’t negate the fundamental design. Marriage oriented toward God’s design, even when marked by brokenness, still points toward what we were created for.

By contrast, homosexual and polygamous relationships attempt to redefine reality in their very design. They may feel good—after all, why can’t people just love who they want, how they want?—but they ultimately fall short of the flourishing for which we were made. Not because the rules are arbitrary, but because the design reflects something true about divine love: it is generative, complementary, and other-oriented. It creates rather than merely mirrors.

Turning the Mirror Around

The Montreal throuple has turned the mirror of love back upon themselves. Rather than reflecting God’s self-giving design outward—like sunlight bouncing from a mirror into a dark room—they see only their own image looking back. Their desires and practices of marriage reflect themselves, not the ultimate love of the Triune God.

Until our hearts are straightened out, first oriented toward God, then toward others as He designed, we’ll keep creating variations on the same theme: the self as ultimate authority, and mirrors of ourselves as references for distorted love.

That’s a recipe not for human flourishing, but for human confusion.

The good news is a better story is available—one where love flows in the right direction and creates the kinds of relationships our hearts are actually longing for.

Cor versus ad Deum.

A heart turned inward versus a heart turned toward God.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Further reading

Marriage, Trinity, & the Imago Dei

Marriage, Trinity, & the Imago Dei

Some thoughts and musings on traditional marriage, human sexuality, the Trinity and the Image of God… The US 6th Circuit Court upheld state...