[Vision2020] Gay Marriage, again

[Douglas]

Visionaries,

Slippery slopes do exist, and cannot be wished away. And your 
counter-example goes wildly amiss. A man with one wife and three 
girlfriends is not the same as a man with four wives. The three girlfriends 
do not enjoy "all the legal benefits of marriage."

Either legal marriage confers something of value or it does not. If it 
does, this explains why homosexuals want access to it. But this also means 
that unmarried heteros do *not* have access to those same benefits, whether 
they are in an adulterous relationship or not. And if legal marriage does 
not confer anything of real value, then why does anyone want it?

It would be far better to do what Ted did, and just swallow the reductio. 
And when everyone does this, there are some more outrageous possibilities 
waiting in the wings. Which I will be happy to mention when we get there.

Cordially,

Douglas Wilson



At 11:08 AM 8/6/2003 -0700, you wrote:
>The slippery slope argument.  I don't buy it.  But
>I'll run with this thread anyway.  Are polygamists
>facing discrimation?  It seems to me that they have
>more rights than same sex couples.  One woman can
>legally marry one man and live with n number of other
>pseudo-husbands and she can enjoy all the legal
>benefits of marriage.  In fact, she can marry and
>divorce all of them.  Yet you believe that same sex
>couples should be denied this same right to marry.
>Why?
>
>-Scott
>
>--- Douglas <dougwils@moscow.com> wrote:
> >
> > Visionaries,
> >
> > My question and concern is this. If we stop imposing
> > a particular religious
> > view through the mechanism of civil law (which is,
> > we agree, what our
> > current laws amount to), and we do this for the sake
> > of allowing homosexual
> > marriage, what logical reason do we have for
> > stopping there? We suddenly
> > cannot arbitrarily reimpose the religious view we
> > just rejected (for the
> > sake of limiting marriages to two persons). Your
> > interest may be limited to
> > the allowance of homosexual marriages, but those
> > responsible for the law
> > over the entire society have to keep in the front of
> > their minds that there
> > are other requests/demands that will be made almost
> > immediately. And the
> > polygamists will be near the head of the line of
> > those making them.
> >
> > Cordially,
> >
> > Douglas Wilson
> >
> >
>
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