Same sex marriage-Massachusetts

[Trefor Heywood]

I would take ANYTHING such is this coming from Focus on the Family under advisement. They have an agenda too and are very selective in their materials on the issue.

I heard LCM blame the collapse of the Roman Empire upon this too - he apparently is no student of Gibbon, nor of any other authority upon the subject. Empires have risen and fallen over the centuries and for all kinds of reasons and in most of them no serious historian would put homosexuality high on the list of causes.

[Mister P-Mosh]

I just realized that the Roman empire broke up in the 300's. This is about the same time the Romans stopped throwing Christians to the lions and recognized it as their primary religion. If I recall correctly, the church split it up between Rome and Constantinople, and the two groups fought for control and then fell to outside sources. So in effect, the Roman Empire was destroyed by belief in Christianity. At least, if I were to use similar logic to those that blame it on homosexuals, although I at least have circumstancial evidence.

[Trefor Heywood]

Regarding the Focus on the Family's argument of the "slippery slope to this that and the other (also made in a similar way by other posters) I found this in an email:

quote:

---

Slippery Slope

The maddening "slippery slope" argument against gay marriage.

By Dahlia Lithwick

Posted Wednesday, May 19, 2004, at 3:36 PM PT

Anyone else bored to tears with the "slippery slope" arguments

against gay marriage? Since few opponents of homosexual unions are

brave enough to admit that gay weddings just freak them out, they

hide behind the claim that it's an inexorable slide from legalizing

gay marriage to having sex with penguins outside JC Penney's. The

problem is it's virtually impossible to debate against a slippery

slope. Before you know it you fall down, break your crown, and Rick

Santorum comes tumbling after.

Still, as gay marriages started happening in Massachusetts this

week, we heard it yet again as James Dobson of Focus on the Family

insisted on Hannity & Colmes that "you could have polygamy. You

could have incest. You could have marriage between a father and a

daughter. You could have two widows, or two sisters or two

brothers." (Two widows?) Dobson further warned, "Once you cross that

Rubicon, then there's no place to stop. Because if a judge can say

two men and two women can marry, there is no reason on Earth why

some judge some place is not going to say, this is not fair. Three

women or three men, or five and two or five and five."

And here's Bill O'Reilly pointing out that "if anybody can get

married, then I want the McGuire twins and I have to have a nice

honeymoon in Provincetown." The notion that the institution of

marriage could withstand every modification and reform it's seen

over the centuries (centuries since the biblical Jacob married two

sisters) yet cannot endure this new one, is the new party line.

Sen. Rick Santorum got into hot water for spewing this argument last

spring: "If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to

consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to

bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to

incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to

anything." Anything, mind you. Justice Antonin Scalia made the same

point in his dissent in last year's gay sodomy case, Lawrence v.

Texas, when he wrote, "State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage,

adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication,

bestiality, and obscenity are likewise sustainable only in light of

Bowers' validation of laws based on moral choices. Every single one

of these laws is called into question by today's decision."

The real problem is that there are really only three arguments

against gay marriage: One is rooted in entirely God's preferences—

which have little bearing on Equal Protection or Due Process

doctrine, as far as I can tell. The second cites inconclusive

research on its negative effects on children. The backup is the

slippery slope jeremiad, which seems to pass for a legal argument,

at least on cable TV. But fear of the slippery slope alone is not a

sufficient justification for doing the wrong thing in any individual

case. In a superb dialogue on gay marriage in Slate, Andrew

Sullivan, responding to David Frum, makes this point

eloquently: "The precise challenge for morally serious people is to

make rational distinctions between what is arbitrary and what is

essential in important social institutions. ... If you want to argue

that a lifetime of loving, faithful commitment between two women is

equivalent to incest or child abuse, then please argue it. It would

make for fascinating reading. But spare us this bizarre point that

no new line can be drawn in access to marriage—or else everything is

up for grabs and, before we know where we are, men will be marrying

their dogs."

Now, slippery slopes are not to be sneezed at. Professor Eugene

Volokh of UCLA law school has done some extremely serious thinking

on the subject and, while he does not himself oppose gay marriage,

he cautions that one ignores slippery slope effects at one's peril.

But he also reminds us that slippery slopes are only metaphors. They

are not intrinsic principles of law. Each step in the slope must be

analyzed, critiqued, and evaluated on its merits. And that is

happening only at the very margins of the gay marriage debate.

Another problem with the slippery slope objections to gay marriage

is that they present a moving target. No two opponents of gay

marriage seem to agree upon where this parade of horribles begins or

ends. You can order your comparisons off the Santorum Menu ("bigamy,

polygamy, incest, adultery"), the Scalia Menu ("bigamy, adult

incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication,

bestiality, and obscenity"), or off the James Dobson Menu, in which

all of the above evils ensue, plus the demise of heterosexual

marriage altogether. Call this argument the horse-and-elephant

leavings, smoking on the ground after the parade of horribles has

passed by. No one can plausibly explain why the entire institution

of marriage is at risk from gay unions. Which raises yet another

objection to slippery slope arguments: These are projections into an

unknowable future. Asking proponents of gay marriage to prove that

these marriages won't be bad for kids or families is asking that

they prove a negative. The law cannot know the long-term future

social effects of legalizing gay marriage (Stanley Kurtz, who has

quite fixed views on gay men and their philandering ways,

notwithstanding). We can only determine whether it is fundamentally

unfair to bar one whole class of citizens from a privilege

constitutionally afforded the rest of us.

The problem with the slippery slope argument is that it depends on

inexact, and sometimes hysterical, comparisons. Most of us can

agree, for instance, that all the shriekings about gay marriage

opening the door to incest with children and pedophilia are

inapposite. These things are illegal because they cause irreversible

harms. Similarly, adultery, to the extent it's illegal anymore,

produces a tangible victim. Let's also agree that we can probably

also take the bestiality out of the mix. While Rep. Marilyn

Musgrave, the Colorado Republican who authored an amendment to the

Constitution that would bar gay marriage, thinks it's a short hop

from gay marriage to sex with cats, the rest of us can intuitively

understand that there are sound policy and health reasons to ban sex

with animals.

Sound policy and health reasons similarly suggest that there is at

least a rational basis for keeping prostitution illegal. This one is

a closer call, but there are inarguably ways in which prostitution

has negative effects on women, and families, and public health. To

the list of mostly irrelevant examples above, I'd add masturbation

and fornication (intercourse between unmarried adults) which, while

horrifying to Justice Scalia, are not only legal but also great fun

as far as most Americans are concerned.

Bracket all the hysterical and irrelevant stops along the slippery

slope (some of which are there only to trivialize homosexuality) and

we are left to try to draw principled lines between gay marriage, in

which no one is harmed, and adult incest, adultery, bigamy, or

polyamory. This is where the debate should begin. Not at child

molesting. My colleague Will Saletan has argued that there is in

fact no principled reason for legally prohibiting sex between

cousins and I am, I think, persuaded that he is correct. But one can

plausibly argue that there is a rational basis for states to ban

polygamous and polyamorous marriages in which there has been

historical evidence of an imbalance of power, coercion (particularly

of young girls), and an enormous financial burden placed on the

state. None of these arguments can be made against gay marriage. And

as my colleague Ann Hulbert has shown, the data about the effects of

gay marriage on child rearing are too ambiguous to support any legal

assertions about harm to children.

While Stanley Kurtz claims he has won the slippery slope debate

outright, his analysis, here, is reasonably limited to the dangers

of polygamy and polyamory. But beyond just the policy differences

between the two, there is also a legal bulwark between Justice

Kennedy's reasoning in Lawrence v. Texas (and the Massachusetts

decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, which borrowed

heavily from the reasoning of Lawrence) and the invasion of the

polygamists: The right to sexual privacy Kennedy finds in the line

of cases starting with Griswold v. Connecticut, the Connecticut

birth-control case from 1965, is an intimate right, between two

consenting partners. The court calls these "the most intimate and

personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to

personal dignity and autonomy." The desire of a group of seven

people to marry simply does not intuitively fit into that binary

sphere of intimacy.

Just because advocates of polygamy have tried to leverage the

Lawrence decision to support their cause doesn't mean there are no

differences between the two marginalized groups. And it's just not

an argument against gay marriage to say, "I told you those bigamists

would use this in court!" It would be stupid for the bigamists not

to try.

One of the most persistent complaints of conservative commentators

is that liberal activist judges refuse to decide the case before

them and instead use the law to reshape the entire legal landscape

for years to come. The Massachusetts Supreme Court, in finding that

the ban on gay marriage violated the state constitution, did exactly

what good judges ought to do: It confined its reasoning to the case

before it, rather than addressing the myriad hypothetical future

cases that may be affected by the decision. Opponents of gay

marriage should consider doing the same.

Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor

---

One could have used the same logic to state that if you allow heterosexual marriage then homosexual marriage is sure to follow so we should not allow heterosexual marriage! :D-->

[mommy1968]

I see the whole gay marriage deal as akin to girls wanting to join the Boy Scouts. There's no real advantage to it other than to stir up controversy.<BR>

ITA.

I do not agree with homosexuality in any way, shape or form. But if they want to get married then that's possibly 2 more that will be monogamous and not continue the spread of HIV or other diseases. I try to look at the positive in any situation. <_<

Edited June 5, 2006 by mommy1968

[J0nny Ling0]

Hmmm. Surprised to see that this thread still lives. And I think that the very first post back on page one, says it all. But of course, that was my post... :)

[dmiller]

Surprised it's still *alive* also, Jonny.

Speaking of the subject -- has anyone heard from Trefor???

He was last active here on July 20, 2005 -- one year ago.

Wasn't he dealing with cancer? Could be wrong but -----.

"Cymru Am Byth!"