Not only do the homosexual militants go ballistic when you mention a slippery slope in action, but even friendly critics advise that we not use the term. Well, I do not care much about the mere terminology – it is the reality which I really am concerned about here.
And there most certainly is a slippery slope in action. If you don’t like the term, use another, such as the open door effect. It is real and it is happening all the time. The more the militants deny it is happening, the more we see it taking place.
When the US Supreme Court handed out its decision on marriage last week, including its attack on the Defence of Marriage Act, the polyamorists instantly came out in force. They demanded – quite logically – that if homosexual marriage is a goer, then there is no reason why group marriage cannot be legalised as well.
One article on this written just before the Court decision offers some revealing quotes: “Anita Wagner Illig, a longtime polyamory community spokesperson who operates the group Practical Polyamory, is unsure of the direct impact of a ruling that would legalize same-sex marriage nationwide. Until recently, she noted, ‘the polyamory community has expressed little desire for legal marriage,’ but now more options seem possible in the future. ‘We polyamorists are grateful to our [LGBT] brothers and sisters for blazing the marriage equality trail,’ Illig said.
“Illig believes there is indeed a ‘slippery slope’ toward legal recognition for polygamy if the court rules in favor of nationwide same-sex marriage, an argument typically invoked by anti-gay marriage advocates. ‘A favorable outcome for marriage equality is a favorable outcome for multi-partner marriage, because the opposition cannot argue lack of precedent for legalizing marriage for other forms of non-traditional relationships,’ she said.”
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who is representing a polygamist family, said this: “There is no reason that the decision should impact polygamy and particularly the Brown case in Utah. Polygamists are where homosexual couples were before 2003 and the Lawrence [v. Texas] decision” – a case striking down laws against homosexual relations.
Another article quotes more excited polyamorists: “Anne Wilde, a vocal advocate for polygamist rights who practiced the lifestyle herself until her husband died in 2003, praised the court’s decision as a sign that society’s stringent attachment to traditional ‘family values’ is evolving. ‘I was very glad… The nuclear family, with a dad and a mom and two or three kids, is not the majority anymore,’ said Wilde. ‘Now it’s grandparents taking care of kids, single parents, gay parents. I think people are more and more understanding that as consenting adults, we should be able to raise a family however we choose.’
“‘We’re very happy with it,’ said Joe Darger, a Utah-based polygamist who has three wives. ‘I think [the court] has taken a step in correcting some inequality, and that’s certainly something that’s going to trickle down and impact us.’
“Noting that the court found the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional because the law denied marriage rights to a specific class of people, Darger said, ‘Our very existence has been classified as criminal… and I think the government needs to now recognize that we have a right to live free as much as anyone else’.”
Wilde can see the clear logic in all this, and the clear slippery slope in action: “I’m not a fortune-teller, but it seems like if more people are accepting of gay marriage, it would follow that polygamist marriage wouldn’t be criticized quite so much.”
Even the Economist magazine, which is in favour of homosexual marriage, had an article on this recently, and yes they too used the term “slippery slope” at the very outset. “Now that the federal government recognises the marriages of same-sex couples from enlightened states, what’s next? Polygamy? Well, polygamists are hopeful. And it does stand to reason. DOMA was struck down in no small part because it picks out a certain class of people and, by denying them recognition of their marriages, denies their families equal freedom and dignity.
“Can it be denied that polygamous families, whose marital arrangements are illegal, much less unrecognised, are denied equal liberty and are made to suffer the indignity active discrimination? Joe Darger, a Utahn with three wives, has said, ‘Our very existence has been classified as criminal… and I think the government needs to now recognize that we have a right to live free as much as anyone else’.”
Matt K. Lewis of the Daily Caller asks: “What’s magical about the number two?” Quite right. Once you jettison gender in the marriage equation, why not abandon number as well? Indeed, why worry about things like age as well?
The Economist piece concludes with a hearty endorsement of polyamory: “Same-sex-marriage activists have wisely sought to separate themselves from advocates of even more exotic marital arrangements. However, as Mr Lewis suggests, the idea that marriage is an inherently heterosexual institution is less plausible than the idea that it is inherently exclusive to couples. If a man can love a man, a woman can love a woman and a man. And if they all love each other… well, what’s the problem? Refraining from criminalising families based on such unusual patterns of sentiment is less than the least we can do.
“If the state lacks a legitimate rationale for imposing on Americans a heterosexual definition of marriage, it seems pretty likely that it likewise lacks a legitimate rationale for imposing on Americans a monogamous definition of marriage. Conservatives have worried that same-sex marriage would somehow entail the ruination of the family as the foundation of society, but we have seen only the flowering of family values among same-sex households, the domestication of the gays. Whatever our fears about polyamorous marriage, I suspect we’ll find them similarly ill-founded. For one thing, what could be more family-friendly than four moms and six dads?”
When mainstream journals like the Economist start talking this way, then you know we have a slippery slope in action. The militant homosexuals can keep pretending it does not exist, but as I have just documented here, and in so many other articles, the slope is most certainly alive and well.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/06/24/polyamorous-advocate-gay-marriage-blazing-the-marriage-equality-trail
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/polygamists-celebrate-supreme-courts-marriage-rulings
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/06/slippery-slopes
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