Ignoring putting together “Santorum” and “slippery” for the moment, I was listening to Santorum use the slippery slope argument against gay marriage. If we allow gays to marry, then do we have to allow polygamous marriage as well?
It occurred to me that if we accept one slippery slope argument we’ll have to accept all of them, so it’s safer to not accept it. Case closed?
I’m not sure I agree.
Heterosexual marriage is a union between two consenting adults, neither of whom were in a (current) marriage before becoming married to each other. Gay marriage is a union between two consenting adults, neither of whom were in a (current) marriage before becoming married to each other. Yes, it’s a difference in the relative genders of the parties, but you’re still not changing the basic math of the union.
Polygamy changes the basic math of the union.
Sorry, not getting the argument. If we only accept one type of marriage, we don’t have to accept any others, but if we accept any number of types greater than one, we have to accept all of them? I don’t see why that would be.
There seem to be sound arguments in favor of allowing gay persons the rights and ceremonies of marriage. There don’t appear to be any sound arguments against it. The situation may be quite different for polygamous relationships. I don’t see where one follows naturally from the other.
You’re missing the joke, guys:
If we accept Santorum’s slippery slope argument, then we must accept all slipper slope arguments. Or something like that.
It depends on the argument used. If the argument is “consenting adults can agree to any sort of marriage they wish,” then it’s hard to see how the line is drawn to include same-sex marriage but not to include plural marriage.
When sodomy statutes were overturned by Lawrence v. Texas, it was because conduct in the bedroom falls within the right to privacy that earlier cases had established. If any state has a statute forbidding three-ways, surely it must be struck down on the same reasoning.
I completely agree. Once we accept one slippery slope argument, it’s only a matter of time before we’ve accepted them all. We’ll be living in a world where everybody is married to everyone else, all the books are reduced to ashes, we all live in huts without plumbing or electricity, and nobody can ever again enjoy the simple pleasure of eating a cheeseburger. Sound like fun? Do you really want to be married to that one guy at work and living in a hut with nothing to read or eat??? Is gay marriage really worth all that???
I’ve developed a reflex against the ‘slippery slope’ idea over the years. If you’ve ever been hurtling headlong on a slippery slope, then you know that the conclusion is not foregone - any bump in the path can send you off another way very quickly.
And allowing same-sex partnerships as well as opposite-sex partnerships requires no new laws, really, or just one small change in the law. When it comes to children, spousal inheritance, taxes, benefits, etc, everything is set up for a union of two people who may or may not have children. Allowing those two people to be of the same gender is a minor tweak.
Changing it all so that three or more people are included in laws relating to all of the above would be far more difficult. It’s not a slippery slope - it’s a whole different slalom course.
I guess I was being too meta. My observation was that the slippery slope argument in and of itself contains an inherent contradiction in an ironic (and perhaps not as amusing as I thought) way.
If we accept the slippery slope argument about gay marriage then we need to accept the slippery slope argument that the right to bear arms allows everyone to have nuclear bombs, or that allowing the government to censor pornography will mean that they can censor right wing talk radio.
I saw what you did there and smiled. Pretty funny argument, actually.
As for unconventional marriage, I am a pragmatist. If you can show me significant harm done by a form of marriage, then I am against it. In societies where polygamy is practiced, there is almost always a gender-power divide that widens. Richer men have all the power (and use wives as a status symbol, further accruing power), and poor men and boys are deprived mates and expelled from society. Girls are raised to be obedient sex slaves for their eventual husbands and the scarcity of eligible bachelorettes leads increasingly to adult men marrying very young girls. In some cases, desperate polygamous societies will even abduct woman from outside the society or buy girls or women as slaves. Chinese infant girls are still very commonly trafficked. If Mormons had never been forced to abandon the practice, I suspect there would be daily shipments from Shanghai to Salt Lake City.
Polygamy is not inherently bad, and there are some polyamorous groups that genuinely do work out. But I think we can say from the experiments done by humanity so far that it’s a dangerous practice to make the rule, rather than the exception.
Gay marriage actually has zero evidence it’s more damaging than straight marriage, as far as I’m aware.
There, Rick. That’s the answer to your stupid slippery slope argument about polygamy. Fuh~
I’m all in favor of polygamy being legal. I don’t understand the reasoning behind the idea that it’s okay for someone to fuck a whole bunch of different people, but not okay to be married to them while doing so. It’s lunacy.
I largely agree, but as I alluded to in my earlier post, I think the history should give us pause.
In our modern, post-sexual revolution world, I suspect legalized polygamy would be rarely practiced at first. Eventually, though I’d be pissed my tax dollars are going to build bigger stadiums to accommodate the NFL and NBA players’ harems.
“If we allow gay marriage, then we HAVE to allow people to get married to their neighbor’s dog.”
Fundamentalist conservative thought is so quaint. And hey, if you’re attracted to the twinkle in the eye of that Great Dane next door, I say go for it.
This guy came in SECOND in Iowa?
Sheeesh
Oh, not really. The polygamists can call themselves married and perform whatever ceremony they like, but marriage as a legal construct carries hundreds of rights of responsibilities that become unworkable when applied to a group. I’ve suggested before, and will do so now, that legal polygamy should not branch off of existing marriage law, but existing partnership law, i.e. a group marriage should be a modified version of a legal partnership, like a law firm, where clearly defined mechanisms exist to allow partners to come and go. Compare this to a “divorce” in a group marriage - what share of assets should wife #4 get when she wants to leave? What happens if husband #2 and wife #3 want to split off and form their own marriage? Legal partnerships have the tools to address situations like this, divorce courts currently do not.
Heh, there are conventional marriages that take years to dissolve, if the spouses are acrimonious enough and the assets are valuable enough. I can only imagine what happens in a group marriage with collective assets of, say, $20 million, and enough hurt feelings all around to keep waging the battle indefinitely. The lawyers will end up with it all, decades later.
And besides, let’s not overlook how group marriage will inevitably be applied. Sure, there may be some truly communal group marriages with multiple members of both sexes but in practice, the majority of cases will be one husband with multiple wives. If the husband dies, are the surviving wives still “married” in some sense? What, if any, obligations do they have to each other (and each other’s children) before and after the husband’s death? If one of the wives wants to take a new husband (or a new spouse, to be general), does she have to clear it with all the others?
Come up with a good generalized legal framework for how to deal with issues like this in group marriage before you start calling things “lunacy”. I have no moral issue with group marriage, I just recognize that legal divorce alone is a minefield, and it represents just a fraction of the potential difficulties that could have family courts spinning their wheels for years on end.
We have gone over this before.
It basically comes down to that if morally polygamy may be just as defensible as SSM, in practice it is a huge can of worms.
My position remains that any law criminalizing poly arrangements are unjust and should be removed, but if poly folks want their unions legally recognized they need to work out all the details of how it should work. That is a big bump (probably more of a gravel patch) in the slippery slope.
If we limit marriage to one man and one woman, it will lead to limiting marriage to one white man and one white woman, or one black man and one black woman.
“Slippery”? Santorum? (snicker)
Corporate law. You just add in details of determining paternity, responsibility of the parent of said kid/s in case of dissolution of that female and her get from the family corporation, any child support to be paid and other needs [medical and special needs as required] dower property and assigns.
Honestly, modern ultrarich have detailed legal contracts drawn up, they are called prenups. They detail all of this information. Not a big jump to just turn it all into a form of contract law. After all, we do refer to it as a marriage contract.
And as long as the law states ‘consenting adults’ with adult defined as over the age of 18, marital puppies is not going to happen as I have actually never seen a Great Dane over about 15, large dogs tend to shorter lifespans. Of course the little yappie lap rats can get to the age of 18 … and as they can’t actually talk, they can’t give consent … :dubious:
We’ve got enough problems with Republicans trying to make corporations into people, and you’re trying to make them into families, now? Be honest, are you Frank Luntz?
Slippery Slope is only a fallacy when there is no slope.
In the case of the OP, there is slope if we are logically consistent, but we aren’t and so we ignore the slope. Polygamists don’t have a big enough lobby. Yet.