Slippery Slopes
Slippery slope arguments are typically summarily rejected. When it comes to any kind of moral slippery slope argument, the results are even worse. When it comes to the issue of gay marriage one common argument is that it undermines the traditional notion of what marriage is. The slippery slope argument would suggest that if you permit gay marriage, then why not…say..polygamy? The gay lobby claims offense whenever such a a thing is suggested and generally claims that the notion is ridiculous. Ridiculous, huh?
Well, now comes a story out of Canada that tells of the difficulties prosecutors are having going after serial polygamists due to fears that the prosecution won’t hold up because…you guessed it, the legalization of same sex marriage.
“During the debate on same-sex ‘marriage,’ when Liberal Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler adamantly testified that polygamy would not be an issue, everyone knew very well that it would be,” Canadian lawyer Gwen Landolt, national director of REAL Women of Canada, told Lifesite News Service Aug. 2.
“If you can break down the laws guarding heterosexual marriage between a man and a woman, then anything can happen,” said Landolt. “If you can have a partner of the same sex, then logically you can have two or three of the opposite sex.”
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Landolt’s perspective is shared by National Review Online Editor Stanley Kurtz. Writing in February 2006, Kurtz reported that two studies commissioned by Canada’s Justice Ministry during the debate over same-sex “marriage” had recommended the decriminalization of polygamy.
If you think willful blindness to slippery slopes is a modern progressive issue, think again. Let’s look at what the progressives did 77 years ago and who was warning then.
On August 14th, 1930 the Anglicans at the Lambeth conference voted to do away with the old teaching on contraception. Anglican couples were told by their bishops that the use of contraceptives was no longer sinful. Pope Pius XI responded with Casti Connubii in which he warned that access to contraceptives would tend to make people become promiscuous and that human nature being what it is, when contraception is available, men are more likely to treat women as objects of pleasure. And if women are treated as objects in their own home, the dignity of womanhood and motherhood eventually disappears. Hmmm, did that happen?
Further, as the most incontrovertible display of the Holy Spirit’s guidance of the the Church, Pope Paul VI issued Humanae vitae in 1968. In it, Pope Paul VI pointed out that once couples are allowed the use of contraceptives, there will be serious consequences. Specifically, he asked: what is there to stop the government from stepping in and imposing its will on the people? What is there to stop the government from imposing whatever method of contraception that the government judges most efficacious?
Yeah, slippery slope arguments hold no value, right?