Gay marriage and the slippery slope.

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The problem isn't that the slope is slippery enough for things to go downhill, but that gays have to fight uphill to even be on the same level as us.

I have no problem with polygamy. Whats wrong with it, except that some religions are against it (while others are for it)?

The age of consent has actually increased rather than decreased. I remember when you could marry here at 16 without parents permission, and at 14 with their permission. Now it's 18.

The whole idea of marrying someone so the other person can have health insurance, or for tax purposes, could be handled the same way they handle marriage between a citizen and somebody who wants a green card. And so what if people marry just for tax purposes anyway? I knew a gay man and a lesbian girl who married each other for financial reasons. They bought a house together and he lived in his part of it with who he was with and she lived in her part of it with who she was with. They were besties. I didn't see people having a fit over that.

And BTW, I'm for gay marriage.

At one time, people talked about the slipper slope in regard to civil rights and allowing blacks to vote.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Is polygamy and intergenerational marriage a serious issue in the US? It certainly isn't in my country were gay marriage is allowed.

In some small American subcultures it is. Mormonism, for example, traditionally allows polygamy.

That is only in non-mainstream mormonism though, and would in any case be question of sectarian werdness, it doesn't apply to gay marriage. I have no problem with polyamory relationships, but it does pose some legal problems.

There are a few, potential public policy objections to polygamy, the largest of which is that many of the protections that are built into marriage (survivorship rights in property, testamentary presumptions, custody and guardianship of children, authority to make medical decisions, and the like) are predicated on the two spouse model. When plural marriages get involved, who gets ownership of the house if one of the spouses dies? Does custody and guardianship of children devolve to all spouses equally? How is this changed when a person has multiple spouses each located in different jurisdictions? (After all, polygamy does not necessitate living under one roof, does it?)

I have no objection to polygamy where it is practiced in an environment of legal equality of the spouses. Unfortunately, we don't have many real world examples where that is the case.

I find that usually when the term "slippery slope" is introduced into a political argument, it means the party using it has no valid argument.

In this case it means they have no valid argument against same-sex marriage, they're just homophobes.

When I was briefly a Mormon what I heard was that polygamy was no longer practiced in the LDS church because it was against the law of the land (hence a legal change would make it okay), and that the world wasn't ready for it yet. It was historically practiced within the mainstream LDS church, and those statements lead me to believe that it could easily return to acceptability in the church proper if legalized.

But I don't see same-sex marriage as a "slippery slope" leading to that. They're two very different forms of marriage and if polygamy were to be practiced within the doctrines of Mormonism it would not likely ever include same-sex marriage, without some other major change in church doctrine.

The 'ideal arrangement' as you put it, is a manmade construct. What your argument basically is 'heterosexual marriage is the ideal arrangement for families... ...so there" without backing it up with any reasoning or sense.

What danger is there to children, from having two fathers or two mothers? As long as we are talking about an arrangement that has been entered to, by 2 consenting adults with the ability to make informed choices about their lifestyle I see no reason why anyone can say they should have access to fewer rights than another couple purely because of arbitrary moralising or zealous religiousity.

This is why we need seperation of church and state, so that zealot demagogues cannot force their theology on others.

A lot of children have two or more "fathers" and two or more "mothers" today as a result of divorce and remarriage. I recall being at a gathering of extended family near the holidays years ago and hearing some of the kids talk about having Christmas at a multitude of houses because of divorced and remarried parents. They considered all of them mommies and daddies, and seemed rather stoked at the multitude of gifts they expected. If the adults are adult about it, divorce doesn't have to be a negative for the children. It results, to a degree, in the same relationships those children would have in a polygamous marriage.

I don't think people on the whole would ever allow a lowering of the age of consent. Historically it's risen. There was a time people married off their children at a really young age, and there are still countries where people sell daughters to foreign husbands. I think the law will evolve along with human rights to stop rather than increase that possibility.

Most human rights advancements (and same-sex marriage is a human rights advancement) protect children rather than endanger them.


This is what I see too, that it would be more a question of law and how to settle disputes. I remember reading about contract marriages in one of the Robert Heinlein novels and thinking the contract would be a solution to the possibility of multiple consenting adults marrying. Yes, it would be complicated. But that complexity hasn't seemed to stop the pre-nuptial agreement from becoming common among wealthier people. In fact I would think that such a thing would simply be an evolution of the pre-nup, which seems to cover a lot of things such as child custody, property rights and so forth. Living wills and health care proxies also already cover a lot of the same legal ground. So does child custody law. It would necessitate people being able to afford lawyers to write up contracts.

If ALL marriages required contracts (there could be standard ones that people file on their own, just as people can file their own divorce papers when there's no contest), and the contracts provided all the details about a breakup and who would get what, and how to dissolve the marriage - wow - that might actually save the taxpayers on court costs for divorce! A contract simplifies legal processes by spelling things out in advance. AND a minor can't legally enter a contract.

Last edited by SpiritBlooms on 28 Aug 2012, 3:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Regarding age of consent in that "slippery slope," it should be recalled how in many Bible Belt states, which are the least amiable to the notion of gay marriage, the age of consent and marriage not too long ago had been in the early teens. Just remember, Jerry Lee Louis had done in his career years ago when the picture of him with a thirteen year old girl at the marriage alter hit the public.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

The only thing I can see about it might be that a kid with two fathers or two mothers might sometimes feel embarrassed about it. Other than that, I can't really see any issues with such.

ROFLMFAO!! !

Wether it's ideal or not is subjective, its not as though its been factually proven or that everyone agrees.

I went to nursery with a boy who had two dads and a mum (I have vague memories of other kids asking who loved who, but I can't remember what the answer was, so I don't know if the mum had two "husbands" or one of the dads was bisexual or all three of them loved each other or the mum was just a surrogate). Everybody thought he was lucky to have two dads. Of course that might not be the case for every child.