The slippery slope argument that same-sex marriage will lead to polygamy is a staple of anti-equality organizations like Focus on the Family. As former Senator Rick Santorum queried earlier this year, “If gender doesn’t matter anymore, why does number matter?”
I haven’t had a good grasp on the merits of this argument – until now.
From the book “How To Win An Argument” by Michael Gilbert:
You will slide down the Slippery Slope unless you remember that different statements need different reasons… Is each of the steps exactly the same?
There are always two questions to be asked about a slippery slope:
1. Is the slope truly slippery?
2. Should the first step be taken?
If each of the steps is just like the previous one, the next question is: Should the first step be taken? If the slope is slippery and the first step must be taken, there is nothing you can do but enjoy the slide and then come at the problem from another direction.
If the first step can be avoided, however, then you should not take it to begin with. In all cases, always reserve judgment on whether the slope is indeed slippery…
So first of all, we’re talking about the equal right to marry one spouse, not the additional right to marry additional spouses. Though I suppose any marriage arrangement outside of one man and one woman would be considered equally non-existent to some. Thus, one “zero” gay marriage would appear to them as equal to one “zero” polygamous marriage, ergo gender equals number.
A pretty basic difference, albeit not for those who have been are convinced that homosexuality is a perversion. But when it comes to those who politicize this so-called argument, with all the “research” they do to demonize gays, they’ve GOT to be aware of the following.
I found this article fascinating and most of it was new to me. It was thorough and it seems every base was covered. (BTW polygyny = polygamy)
A few highlights:
So far, libertarians and lifestyle liberals approach polygamy as an individual-choice issue, while cultural conservatives use it as a bloody shirt to wave in the gay-marriage debate. The broad public opposes polygamy but is unsure why. What hardly anyone is doing is thinking about polygamy as social policy…
…Polygyny…is a zero-sum game that skews the marriage market so that some men marry at the expense of others…when one man marries two women, some other man marries no woman. When one man marries three women, two other men don’t marry…
Crime rates tend to be higher in polygynous societies. Worse, “high-sex-ratio societies are governable only by authoritarian regimes capable of suppressing violence at home and exporting it abroad through colonization or war.”
Sound familiar? And so far America is only generally sexually repressed, imagine if we were sex-ratio imbalanced on top of it.
…societies become inherently unstable when sex ratios reach something like 120 males to 100 females… The United States as a whole would reach that ratio if, for example, 5 percent of men took two wives, 3 percent took three wives…
…boys could no longer grow up taking marriage for granted. Many would instead see marriage as a trophy in a sometimes brutal competition for wives.
Same-sex marriage stabilizes individuals, couples, communities and society by extending marriage to many who now lack it. Polygamy destabilizes individuals, couples, communities and society by withdrawing marriage from many who now have it.
To legalize polygamy WOULD be the destruction of society, because it would essentially legalize the sentencing of a segment of “legitimate” society, to a lifetime of solitary confinement.
If they gave reasons as compelling as those as to why same-sex marriage was destructive to society, even I’d be against it!
But for contrast – from the Focus on the Family web site:
When posed with the question “Why draw the line at two people?,” same-sex marriage advocate Cheryl Jacques of the Human Rights Campaign said, “Because I don’t approve of that.”
…well, that brings an important question to mind: How come your “because I don’t approve of that” objection to polygamy is more reasonable than my “I don’t approve of that” objection to same-sex “marriage”? (This line has even won strong applause from hostile audiences!)
One would think that with their million$ upon million$, AND the Family “Research” Council at their disposal, Focus on the Family would have been able to determine at least as much as has been presented here – on their own.
The effects of polygamy are inherently opposed to those of same-sex marriage. They’re two completely separate arguments, in practice AND in principle.
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