Juan Cole Gets It

[Rspaight]

Yes, yes, yes. I've been saying this for a long time. This is the way it should be done.

http://tinyurl.com/6vaay

For instance, a lot of Democrats would like to see gay marriage or at least civil gay unions passed into law. This is a matter of equity, since gay partners can't even get into a hospital to see an ill partner because hospitals limit visits to close family.

This issue scares the bejesus out of the red states.

But if Democrats were sly, there is a way out. The Baptist southern presidential candidate should start a campaign to get the goddamn Federal government out of the marriage business. It has to be framed that way. Marriage should be a faith-based institution and we should turn it over to the churches. If someone doesn't want to be married in a church, then the Federal government can offer them a legal civil contract (this is a better name for it than civil union). That's not a marriage and the candidate could solemnly observe that they are taking their salvation in their own hands if they go that route, but that is their business. But marriage is sacred and the churches should be in charge of it.

If you succeeded in getting the Federal government out of the marriage business, then the whole issue would collapse on the Republicans. You appeal to populist sentiments against the Feds and to the long Baptist tradition of support for the US first amendment enshrining separation of religion and state.

But the final result would be to depoliticize gay marriage, because the Federal government wouldn't be the arena for arguing about it. The Federal government could offer gays the same civil contract status as it offers straight people who want to shack up legally but without the sanction of a church. As for gays who wanted a church marriage, that would be between them and their church (remember, the Federal government is not in the business, but would go on recognizing church-performed marriages as equivalent legally to the Federal civil contract). The Unitarian Universalists could arrange it for them. The red states' populations can be hostile to the UUists all they like, it wouldn't translate into a victory at the polls for a Republican president.

The final outcome would be both more progressive (the Federal government should not in fact be solemnizing a religioius ceremony like marriage) and also advantageous to the Democrats, and it would leave gays actually better off.

[Patrick M]

Ideally, that's how I would like it to work, too.

However, I'm not sure it would fly. I think a lot of people *want* this stuff codified in law.

[Rspaight]

However, I'm not sure it would fly. I think a lot of people *want* this stuff codified in law.

True. But I suspect that if it were framed as "don't let the government tell your church who they have to marry," that might change.

Ryan

[Dob]

What do you guys think of this argument? I admit that I have no idea as to whether this is a real possibility or not...or if it is, whether it should be a cause for concern.

"Among the likeliest effects of gay marriage is to take us down a slippery slope to legalized polygamy and "polyamory" (group marriage). Marriage will be transformed into a variety of relationship contracts, linking two, three, or more individuals (however weakly and temporarily) in every conceivable combination of male and female. A scare scenario? Hardly."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/P ... 8xpsxy.asp

[Patrick M]

Ahhh, the conservative "slippery slope" argument.

"If we let the liberals outlaw personal nuclear weapons, they'll be wanting to take away our toenail clippers next!"

[Xenu]

"Among the likeliest effects of gay marriage is to take us down a slippery slope to legalized polygamy and "polyamory" (group marriage). Marriage will be transformed into a variety of relationship contracts, linking two, three, or more individuals (however weakly and temporarily) in every conceivable combination of male and female. A scare scenario? Hardly."

And as long as these arrangements are amoung consenting adults...?

[Rspaight]

"Among the likeliest effects of gay marriage is to take us down a slippery slope to legalized polygamy and "polyamory" (group marriage). Marriage will be transformed into a variety of relationship contracts, linking two, three, or more individuals (however weakly and temporarily) in every conceivable combination of male and female. A scare scenario? Hardly."

Which is why disconnecting government from marriage makes sense.

After all, what's wrong with polygamy, like Xenu says, as long as everyone involved is a consenting adult? Let 'em do what they want. If they can find a church to marry 'em, let the religious right unload their ire on that church, not the government.

I say let the churches beat each other up. Leave the rest of us out of it.

Ryan

[Ess Ay Cee Dee]

I like that idea. If two women are dumb enough to marry the same guy, I say more power to 'em. Society's not going to break down because of it. I could see this being a very rare occurrence.

That whole "slippery slope" argument is bullshit. They start by mentioning how gay marriage will lead to polygamy, and then at some point they bring out the big guns and suggest it will lead to legalized bestiality, with people marrying dogs and such. That reasoning is so flawed that it's not even worth the effort to refute it.

[Dob]

Ahhh, the conservative "slippery slope" argument.
"If we let the liberals outlaw personal nuclear weapons, they'll be wanting to take away our toenail clippers next!"

That whole "slippery slope" argument is bullshit...at some point they bring out the big guns and suggest it will lead to legalized bestiality, with people marrying dogs and such. That reasoning is so flawed that it's not even worth the effort to refute it.

First off, let's resist the urge to ridicule the "slippery slope" argument by leaping to the most extreme reductio ad absurdum examples (nuclear weapons/toenail clippers).

"Slippery slope" arguments are projections into an unknowable future. We cannot know the long-term future social effects of legalizing gay marriage. All we can do is examine the assumptions that lead to each "slippery slope" step and decide whether those assumptions are reasonable. Unfortunately, our reasoning is almost always flawed and those flaws are multiplied with each succeeding step.

Let's consider the brief history of gay rights:

1962 Illinois becomes the first state in the U.S. to decriminalize homosexual acts between consenting adults in private.

1973 The American Psychiatric Association removes homosexuality from its official list of mental disorders.

1982 Wisconsin becomes the first state to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

1996 The Supreme Court strikes down Colorado's Amendment 2, which denied gays and lesbians protections against discrimination. According to Justice Anthony Kennedy, “We find nothing special in the protections Amendment 2 withholds. These protections . . . constitute ordinary civil life in a free society.”

2000 Vermont becomes the first state in the country to legally recognize civil unions between gay or lesbian couples. It stops short of referring to same-sex unions as marriage.

2003 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that sodomy laws in the U.S. are unconstitutional.

2004 Same-sex marriages become legal in Massachusetts.

Try and put yourself back in 1962 and imagine how difficult it would have been to predict this sequence of events. I would guess that anyone making the "slippery slope" argument that the 1962 Illinois decision would lead to legal same-sex marriages by 2004 would have been brushed off as a crackpot.

Now imagine a person (who believes that any legitimization of homosexuality is wrong) living through this and seeing it all unfold. Is it any wonder that he would believe (or at least be hesitant to deny) almost any "slippery slope" argument?

[Ess Ay Cee Dee]

Those are good points, Dob. However, I'm not sure the analogy really holds water.

The history you're delineating there is a natural progression. Though people considering this issue in 1962 may have thought that gay marriage was unbelievably radical, it makes sense when you look at the big picture. Each milestone you mention is an example of homosexuals taking baby steps toward having the same rights as all other Americans.

However, there is no natural progression from gay marriage to polygamy. The "slippery slope" argument leads into totally unrelated territory here, because there is no logical connection between gay marriage (or civil unions) and polygamy. As a matter of fact, the "slippery slope" argument being made would make more sense if it showed gay marriage leading to my ridiculous scenario of man-dog marriage. It has more to do with who is marrying than how many entities are involved.

[Rspaight]

However, there is no natural progression from gay marriage to polygamy.

I disagree -- there *is* a logical progression there, and it's one I have no problem with.

Maybe it's a logical progression toward consenting adults doing whatever they want if they're not harming anyone else.

Maybe it's a logical progression toward laws protecting persons and property, and not moral beliefs.

Maybe it's a logical progression toward (gasp) freedom, which we're supposedly delivering to Iraq from the barrel of a gun.

Nah, that's probably too much freedom for this country to handle.

Ryan

[Patrick M]

First off, let's resist the urge to ridicule the "slippery slope" argument by leaping to the most extreme reductio ad absurdum examples (nuclear weapons/toenail clippers).

But I was having so much fun with it...

[Dob]

The history you're delineating there is a natural progression...Each milestone you mention is an example of homosexuals taking baby steps toward having the same rights as all other Americans.

In 1962, homosexual activity was considered a crime (in all but one state), homosexuality was regarded as a mental disorder, and homosexuals were widely despised and hated...similar to how child molesters are regarded today (back in '62, many people probably thought gays were child molesters). A typical prediction might have expected to someday see a cure for homosexuality, rather than acceptance.

In hindsight, it is tempting to see many events as predictable, even inevitable. But let's consider another "slippery slope" sequence, which has nothing to do with gay marriage but demonstrates the bizarre turns that events can take, once the dominos start to fall:

1932 - James Chadwick demonstrates the existence of the neutron.

1934 - Leo Szilard files patent application describing the use of neutron induced chain reactions to create explosions, and the concept of the critical mass.

1939 - Niels Bohr announces the discovery of fission. Germany invades Poland, beginning WW2, and Roosevelt receives the "Einstein Letter," which warns him of the possibility of nuclear weapons and urges him take action to prevent Germany from gaining an advantage.

1941 - Pearl Harbor is attacked. The US declares war on Japan, and 10 days later the first meeting of the S-1 project is held, dedicated to the full scale development of fission weapons.

1944 - Drop tests of dummy atomic bombs begin from specially modified B-29s.

1945 - Truman issues the Potsdam Declaration, requiring unconditional surrender of the Japanese armed forces. The Japanese government refuses. 8 days later, Hiroshima is bombed, 3 days after that Nagasaki is bombed, killing approximately 200,000 and maiming many more, mostly civilians.

Who could have forseen these events happening 13 years after the seemingly innocuous discovery of the neutron? Although it's probably more accurate to ascribe the opening of the "Pandora's Box" to the discovery of the neutron's bomb-making potential -- which was only 11 years before Nagasaki. It boggles the mind.

[Dob]

And as long as these arrangements are among consenting adults...?

Maybe it's a logical progression toward consenting adults doing whatever they want if they're not harming anyone else.

How do you guys feel about the legalization (or the decriminalization) of prostitution?

[lukpac]

How do you guys feel about the legalization (or the decriminalization) of prostitution?

Well, it's already legal in Nevada. And regulated by the government.