The posts of others

I think this nicely summarizes my feelings these days:

A slippery slope that isn’t

If we were to pass a law stating that anyone with blue eyes is forbidden to marry his or her sibling, but everyone else can, we’d have a minority rights issue on our hands. We’d be discriminating against a particular group based on a physical characteristic. But if we pass a law stating that no one can marry his or her sibling, whatever else it might be it’s not discrimination because the law applies equally to everyone. Preventing gays from marrying discriminates against a group because of sexual orientation. It’s a minority rights issue. But the argument that allowing gays to marry is some kind of slippery slope that leads to polygamous marriages, incestuous marriages and the possibility that the weird guy on the next block will claim the right to marry his pet parrot Polly is bogus. It’s not the same thing. So just cut it out.

And from one of the comments:

I think the point that’s evading everyone is this:

Marriage is not rooted in any one religious set of beliefs. As soon as it was opened up for heathens like myself to get married (not belonging, not wanting to belong to, any organized religion), THAT was the only this ’slippery slope’ argument would be even considered valid. The fact that straight people outside of (because it’s obvious, and easy) the Christian religion can get legally married without protest from the Pope (or anyone else, really), means that the Christian faith has given up all rights to the concept of marriage (at least in Canada). So we’ve been on this ’slippery slope’ for GENERATIONS now, and we’re not all evil yet.

The commenter makes a good point – you can’t claim something as religiously sacrosanct when you allow people who have no religious persuasion to engage in this practice. The Slippery Slope is not only an argument technique, it’s also a fallacy.

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