May 2004 - SoApBoX

“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. All of those things are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family and that’s sort of where we are in today’s world, unfortunately. It all comes from, I would argue, the right to privacy that doesn’t exist, in my opinion, in the United States Constitution.”
– Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), Associated Press, 04-22-03

Ladies and gentleman… I present to you what we (in Logic-Land) like to call the “Slippery Slope“.

“The Slippery Slope is a fallacy in which a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any argument for the inevitability of the event in question. In most cases, there are a series of steps or gradations between one event and the one in question and no reason is given as to why the intervening steps or gradations will simply be bypassed.”

Basically, I can argue how if I give a quarter to a pan handler, then I have to give one to all the other panhandlers. Next thing you know, I’m broke, filing for bankruptcy, turning to a life of crime, becoming a supervillan and holding the world for ransom and inevitably blowing it up.

Using that logic, yes… lending you money will bring about the end of the world. So don’t ask. :0)

So far the WORST “Slippery Slope”/”Straw man” combo argument comes from here. You just KNOW when they put either “Gay” or “Marriage” in quotations, what direction it’s going from there.

“If it is, as proponents suggest, discrimination to deny same-sex couples the privilege of marriage, then it is also discrimination to deny the privilege to anyone else who wants to get married. Right?”

Ooh…. I the crunching sound of a straw man coming…

“…’Well,’ you say, ‘who else wants to get married but is denied by the state?’Many people. And as soon as this taboo is broken, watch them line up.”

Here it comes… this is gonna be good. Wait for it…

“How long do you suppose it will be, once same-sex marriage is a reality, before brothers want to marry sisters? How long do you suppose it will be before sisters want to marry sisters? How long do you suppose it will be before brothers want to marry brothers?”

WHAAAAAT!!???!!!

Nice set up. Lousy execution. You pick something as ludicrous and medically explainable as this???? Why do you think certain states require blood tests, moron???

Guys wanting to marry their sheep would have worked better.

My pre-canned response to this stuff is: “I’ll deal with that orange as soon as we’re done with this apple.”

Bear in mind kids, it’s not gay marriage that they have a problem with… it’s about homosexuality… period. End of story. Do not pass “GO”.

Look at the way NAMBLA, AIDS, bestiality and any other Santorum-esque comparisons/stereotypes comes up. Nothing direct in the way of how this will be detrimental to society. Just the possible repercussions from REAL freaks waiting in the wings.

They’d bitch just as loud if gays were offered platinum credit cards.

In response to my recent SoApBoX rant about Gay Marriage, a visitor writes:

While we’re, uh, “breaking out our Bibles,” why don’t you break out yours and read Romans 1:26-28 and ICor. 6:9?

(For those unfamiliar with those passages, when the “Slippery Slope” doesn’t work, these two scriptures are offered as “exclusive evidence” that homosexuality is condemned by God. Do note that they are both from Paul, “Mr. Tolerance” himself.)

I had invited this person to join us in the discussion. Personally, I KNOW I don’t have all of the answers in life. Therefore I like to learn by hearing different points of view. Here was my response. I’m posting it here for any added thoughts and for you guys to add to your arsenal…

Personally, I have mixed feelings about the Apostle Paul and his letters (epistles).

Usually they were about him addressing issues going on at the time to whoever he was writing to. I’ve personally never seen them as direct decrees from God as much as his personal opinion. If we followed his every utterance, he was pro-slavery and anti-women, and he obviously felt sex was merely for procreation.I should also note that he butted heads with the original 11 Apostles (particularly Peter) constantly.
They were added to the scriptures merely because they were authentic and cross-referenced with quotes from the Old Testament, which was the criteria for putting the New Testament together (thus throwing out things like The Apocrypha and Maccabees).
Translators have always contended that Paul’s writings are difficult to translate from the original Greek. Many of the Greek words are believed to have been twisted to suit the beliefs of the translators too.

Romans 1:26-27 Discussion on http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_bibc.htm brings on a wide variety of theories that he was alluding to members returning to their old Roman ways (with Paul’s opinion that homosexuality was involved in Pagan Ritual), to slave owners sexually abusing their younger male slaves.

1 CORINTHIANS:6:9 Discussion on
http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_bibc1.htm again, the Greek translation is vague. “malakoi“, which was translated as “effeminate” (KJV) and “sexual pervert” (NIV), really means “soft or pliable”, can also mean weak and easily influenced by outside sources.

Again, I still contend many of the epistles were Paul’s opinions rather than God’s will. The Bible, like any other book where you take snippets out of, can easy produce something taken out of context. While the Bible contains a wealth of knowledge and practical advice, bear in mind it was written by various men in a different time with different points of view, and they found ways to leak their opinions in no matter what God warns about adding plagues. Unless you know what they meant in the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, or you read the entire chapter to get the entire context that it was written it’s pretty easy to find something to support any claim, no matter how ignorant, immoral or politically incorrect.

Like God (or more precisely George Burns in “Oh God!”) said:
“I have given you all you need, and your on your own… just think of me every once in a while.”

Wherever the rest of this battle decides to go, it’s someone else’s fight.

A recent poll on PoliticsPA.Net has the people AGAINST a Gay Marriage Ban by almost 3 to one. I hope our elected officials are paying attention.

Read the first part: What’s wrong with gay marriage?