So you’re not gonna support her dreams of being a space marine, huh?
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Your meta argument is interesting but once we accept one meta argument in the Dope it is only a matter of time. I don’t want to live in a meta-meta-meta world.
I wrote a long post that compared defense-of-marriage to trade protectionism, but by the time I got to the end I realized it was terrible. So I’m gonna ask about this:
It’s obvious to me that gay marriage is neither a slippery slope, nor even a slope at all, but it gets me wondering - are there any genuinely slippery slopes in the world? Or are they so vanishingly few that they’re not worth mentioning?
In before all mention of hills, sleds, and sidewalks and junk!
Santorum really should know better than to characterize anything as “slippery,” he’s just asking for it.
Personally speaking, I would accept line marriages or other forms of polyamory if the proper legislation was in place. In some projections of this, women would be in charge. In others, it would be a power-sharing situation. This isn’t inconsistent with how we are wired. Humans are not basically monogamous. Males certainly are not. Females may or may not be. But, why should should the norm be monogamy? Is it only to have a nuclear family to provide for the welfare of children? Is this way things have to be?
Go back far enough, it’s probably because women insisted on it.
Hmmm. Interesting thread. Damn if Santorum doesn’t have a point: even if allowing gay marriage does not lead immediately to polyamory, it definitely bolsters the argument for it: if you can allow fiddling with the participants of marriage in one way, why not another? Clearly, we HAVE done so in the past, in the matter of black/white marriages.
The point on which the slippery slope argument fails is social utility. In the case of polyamory, we can point to many societies in which it has existed and does exist, and ask if we want to be more like them. (Answer: “NO!”) We can show definite potential harm in polygamous societies.
So what is the harm that could be caused by allowing same sex marriage? I have not seen any arguments about the practical harm of allowing same sex marriage advanced anywhere: has anyone? All I have seen is reference to some cult’s holy book, which if followed to the letter would also permit us to keep slaves and to beat them with sticks until they were not able to rise to their feet for three days. (More than three days is right out!)
It IS a very powerful cult though.
The complexity and effort is not a good reason to make something illegal, it is a sufficient reason not to codify something. We currently have a one size fits all marriage that can be applied to either SSM or OSM with only some pronoun changes. Fact is that the argument that it requires no change in the legal nature of marriage is an argument for SSM that can not be applied to polygamy. At this point there is no consensus that I have ever heard of how poly marriages should be structured and limited.
There is a “slope” between any two slightly related things. How slippery and how steep is the issue. The slope from decriminalizing sodomy and legalizing SSM is actually pretty steep and slipperly because it is really only attitudes that need to change. To get from SSM to poly requires not just attitude change, but also a lot of actual work. That makes the slope a lot less slippery. There is also the fact that poly people have no organization. Who is advocating for poly marriage? Who is lobbying? Most involved in a poly relationship are still in the closet, so to speak. There is no public discussion on this which makes the slope a lot more gradual.
There are many slippery slopes. Most just aren’t bad. Those that argued that by stopping the prosecution of gays we were starting down a slippery slope to SSM were in fact right. Once you accept that there is nothing inherently wrong with being homosexual, it is almost inevitable that they deserve the same rights and privileges as heterosexuals.
Not if that “something” is a fundamental right. Which is the argument made for SSM.
Sitnam: Sorry, I thought we were talking about hypothetical person, not an actual daughter you already had.
Equality before the law is a fundamental right. Being able to file a joint tax return is not.
The SCOTUS, in Loving, said marriage was a fundamental right, but there is nothing inherent in marriage, as a right, that requires the married couple to be able to file a joint tax return. The idea being that the state needs to have a significant interest when preventing people from marrying. I can’t think of any significant interest the state has in limiting marriage to 2 people, other than that it takes a certain amount of work to align the laws to make that possible.
Santorum to Rosa Parks: “Well, next you’ll want us to let dogs sit in the front of the bus.”
Most cultures in the world and throughout history have practiced polygamy. That is one man, multiple wives. Very few have had one woman, multiple husbands.
I can see that various employment and death benefits would change dramatically for polygamy, but I don’t see why the bare fact of polygamy is so weird to us. Me included. It seems really weird. But logically it doesn’t make any sense.
Joke: The punishment for polygamy is having multiple spouses.
See Spot run. Run, Spot! ** RUN!!**!
And of course gays should be allowed to marry. They have every right to be as miserable as the rest of us!
Don’t know as that’s true. At least they are marrying the gender they have a plausible basis for presuming to understand. Men are simple, nookie, a sammich, the game, can of beer, we’re good. There are no emotional undercurrents for a sammich, no nuances for a can of beer, if there were, we would be perplexed and confused.
We try, of course, because we love. Testosterone impairment doesn’t prevent love, it simply prevents any understanding of the subtleties, the complex fractals of affection. Look at a collections of women’s shoes, for the life of you, you couldn’t know which set of shoes is appropriate for lunch with her sister, and which for a midnight screening of Twilight with the girls. Guys have two sets of shoes, shoes that are comfortable, and shoes for pretending to be a grownup.
I have typed too long, I have more important things to do. Don’t know what they are yet, but just about to find out. Yes, dear?
You have two sets of shoes!?!?!? Why, that’s practically metrosexual!
I’m not sorry at all. If Sitnam won’t let his daughter join the space marines, the next thing you’ll know, no parent will let their child join the military and the U.S. will be army-less and navy-less and space-marine-less and get overrun by a coalition of Chinese, Indian and Cuban imperialists.
And then it’ll be man-on-dog… by law!