True. But then why can’t pedopheliacs say “We want what adult-adult folks have”? The gay rights groups are trying to change the traditional “one man, one woman” definition of marriage. Once that becomes fluid, there’s nothing, really, to stop pedophiles from claiming more “rights”.
Well, yes, a line has to be drawn. But from today’s “we want rights, you give rights” culture, it is not unlikely that it will be drawn for the benefit of the few children who want “rights”.
And morals change, especially in today’s accepting society. The same “it will always be immoral” arguments you use were once used when applied to gay marriage.
Yes, but morality is about the prevention of harm, so you’d have to prove harm when it came to homosexuality. Good luck with that. You’ll need it. Mainstream psychology gave up considering homosexuality harmful back in the seventies, and all arguments to the contrary are rooted in religion.
Religion certainly isn’t a valid reason to discriminate in my country (I don’t know how things work on Andor, which you list in your location line), and freedom of religion automatically means freedom from the dictates of another’s religion. Otherwise, that freedom is meaningless.
As long as it is a grey area, I think most people would prefer to be “better safe than sorry.” We might quibble about the age of consent (in Canada, it’s 14), and the legal age for marriage, but I don’t think you’ll find many people – and you certainly won’t find many psychologists – who think that a child can consent at any age.
There’s no such grey area with adult homosexuality.
All the same arguments could also be applied to heterosexuality. Allow heterosexuality and heterosexual marriage, and you’ve already begun to slide down that slippery slope.
Clearly, the only thing to do is ban all sex and marriage, declare love illegal, reproduce entirely through artificial insemination, and raise kids in communes run by childcare professionals, who know what they’re doing.
Silly argument? Enormous leaps? True. But it’s exactly how the paedophilia argument looks to me.
I don’t see any of our SDMB resident lawyers in this thread(none that I recognize as such at least) so let me see if I can help give a better picture of the legal issue. IANAL, but I have discussed this issue at length with more than one.
Laws against “deviant sexual practices” such as sodomy, incest, bestiality, pedophilia, necrophilia, etc. restrict the freedom of citizens. The state must have some rational basis for restricting freedom. In the case of freedoms which are not explicitely protected(as is the freedom of speech) the bar that needs to be jumped to restrict that freedom is rather low. It is called the “rational basis” test and it says that the state must have a rational basis for this law. For many many years “the majority of the community finds this behavior immoral” was considered a rational basis for making something illegal. That changed with Lawrence v. Texas. The SCotUS held that community moral standards were not sufficient basis to abridge the rights of two adults to engage in consensual sodomy in the privacy of the home.
Now this has weakened the “community morality” justification for making something illegal. If someone wanted to challenge laws forbidding bestiality they could come before the court saying that the fact that Barney and Betty find it immoral is not sufficient basis to abridge Wilma’s right to boff Dino in the privacy of her own home. They would probably have to prove that Dino suffered no harm from such activities(clearing the bar for animal cruelty charges), but the basis of “it offends the morals of the community” may no longer hold up.
The Supremes tried very hard to keep this case from beginning a slippery slope. The majority opinion explicitly said it was overturning this particular law not all laws based on morality, but the legal fact is that once community morality has been thrown out as the basis of law in one case it can be done again. Most laws with this basis as their sole underpinning may be vulnerable to challenge. I don’t expect it to be the case with pedophilia because a strong arguement can be made that it causes harm to minors. The state has a interest in preventing harm to minors which is compelling enough to justify restricting freedom in the bedroom. Other “victimless” crimes like consensual adult prostitution are actually more likely to be vulnerable to challenge without the underpinning of community moral standards to hold them up.
I don’t think this has any real impact on prohibition of pedophilia. Laws prohibiting pedophilia are not solely based on community morality as the anti-sodomy laws were.
Enjoy,
Steven
But there is an extremely fundamental difference between consenting people and non-consenting people (and for the above mentioned legal necessity, some - ie mature teenagers - consenters will be lumped in with the nons).
This difference will always exist, however our society develops.
No, it’s not to say that homosexuals can’t be insured. Insure 'em. Insure 'em all, I say.
It’s to say that increasing the number of people who are ALLOWED the institution of marriage means that it creates a larger pool of potential dependent (in the industry, this simply means people covered under the insured’s policy) spouses, because now a segment of my insured population that was previously ineligible for coverage now is eligible by dint of being married to my policyholder.
So, to cover the cost of an increase in my insured population, I raise my rates.
Yeah, but wouldn’t you do that anyway? I’m getting married in February. My wife and I will merge our insurance policies. While an excellent driver, I tend to drive a little faster than the law and my insurance company are comfortable with. After marriage am I a higher or lower risk?
Actually, this is something that should always be considered in these sort of arguments.
Simply put: What is immoral today may not be so tomorrow. Morals are essentially a matter of group definitions of societal norms. As such, they are subject to change just like all human ideas.
Honestly, currently priests cannot marry. If we decide that priests CAN be married does that mean all previous priests were living outside of God’s will?
Or the flip side. If we suddenly decide that heterosexual marriage is a bad thing does that make a prior participants in heterosexual marriage somehow ‘sinful’?
Or what about all those folks who purchased papal indulgences in the past? Do we still acknowledge that one can get off of sins by buying our way out? If we do NOT believe that do we now believe that all those people are condemned to hell? Do we believe that even though previous generations believed the opposite?
Why would such a marginal increase in the number of married couples raise rates? I mean, if around 7% of people are gay, and most of them are gay men, and most gay marriages are amongst gay women, you’re dealing with very small increase in the size of the “married” pool. Perhaps 2 to 3%, tops.
Sorry- maybe I should be a little more specific.
A&H (accident and health) is not like life or auto insurance, especially not when you administer a group plan, like I do. I don’t get to choose who I cover and I don’t set different rates for the people I cover. Everyone in the group pays (actually, their employer pays on their behalf as part of a collective-bargaining agreement, but you get the idea) a set rate, whether you are single or married or married with dependents. The only qualification for the coverage is that you be employed by the shops whose coverage I administer. You can be a single, 25-year-old non-smoker in the prime of health and with a clean driving record, and your employer pays the same for you as it would a 96-year-old, pack-a-day smoker with an of-suspended license, a hemophiliac spouse, and seventeen diabetic children. Those two extremes are factored into the rate (actuarially speaking), and it’s still cheaper for the total cost to be calculated that way.
What you are giving me, when you legalize gay marriage, is a reason. Not an earth-shatteringly pressing reason, mind you, but a reason nevertheless. Because even a small increase in the potential pool of insureds is reason to jack the rates. Its statistical significance may be debatable, but its presence is all the reason needed.
Spectrum, it makes no difference in the gender of the same-sex couple. Women do work these days, and there are quite a few of both genders in my pool that would jump at the chance to get married. And I stand behind their right to do so. I’d go to the weddings if invited.
But, the right to be treated as a married couple under the law means the right to be treated as a married couple actuarially.
Yep the more liberal we become the more dangerous… soon women will demand orgasms ! Imagine having to satisfy women’s desires ! It’s absurd.
I don’t think sleeping with kids comes as too natural to us yet. We might in 100 years… but for now I think the legal protection and current morality more than guarantee Pedofiles aren’t acceptable.
We’ve ALREADY started down the slippery slope to moral degradation. Once you let a man & a woman marry, anything else goes. Pretty soon other people will be coming out of the woodwork asserting their rights, too.
Outlaw all marriage, I say. It’s the only sane thing to do to save mankind from total destruction.
Yes, ya got trouble, my friends. Trouble with a capital T. Either you’re closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated by the presence of a married couple in your community. Heed the warning before it’s too late! Watch for the tell-tale sign of corruption! The moment your son leaves the house, does he rebuckle his knickerbockers below the knee?..etc.
Dude, that show just announced that Steve Tyler pulled this stunt with a 14-y/o. OK, now we straights can really be proud…
Isn’t it a sufficient rebuttal to the original argument to point out that homosexuality and pedophilia are unrelated in any real world examination of human behavior?
I mean, I was just wondering.
Tris
Why would this be sufficient? I mean, all the real world evidence we have of evolution and the real age of the earth won’t convince them of anything, either. Also, I think that for a certain type of person, homosexuality and pedophilia are related, in terms of “things that are evil”. They see homosexuality as evil, and, to their eyes, pedophilia is the next rung on the ladder of evil. :rolleyes:
Would that this were the case. The legal world is more like a mathematical model of reality than a mirror of reality. Instead of just reflecting what is there, they try to re-create the world starting from the basic axioms of interpersonal relations and going on up. This model does not behave like reality and changing some of the axioms it is based on, such as community morality being a rational basis for outlawing behavior, changes things in a way we don’t see in the real world. The fact is, in the legal model of reality, the two are related in a more fundamental way.
Enjoy,
Steven
I can’t even begin to comprehend the link between gay marriage and pedophilia, or why the same arguments couldn’t be applied to heterosexuals.
The more suitable comparison to draw (and it has been) would be between gay marriage and interracial marriage. According to this article
though I’ve got the feeling that many people against gay marriage aren’t too fond of interracial couples, either.
If nothing else, START, hopefully this thread makes the problem with slippery-slope arguments clear. And that’s just about all the anti gay-marriage people have going, in my book.
They can SAY whatever they like. That was always the case. The difference is whether the population will go along with it (doubtful) and whether the courts will go along with it (even more doubtful).
Why? Anybody can claim rights. I don’t see how the American courts would possibly overlook the factor of harming children, which is the reason it’s illegal to have sex with them. Sodomy wasn’t illegal because of harm, it was because of religion.
Cite? Or give some basis for saying ‘it’s not unlikely?’
Don’t worry…I’m female, and that was my first thought too. 
I can’t think of a better illustration of the fallacy of slippery slope arguments than this one; just because something could happen, doesn’t mean it is an inevitable consequence (or any other kind of consequence) of the alleged ‘first step’.