Same sex marriage and the slippery slope.

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Sure, sometime a slippery slope does exist. This isn't one of them. There have been clear lines drawn when it comes to children and sexuality. Children cannot legally marry. Suggesting 31 year old Suzy being able to marry 29 year old Becky can lead to forced child marriages is a scare tactic. It simply won't happen.

Exactly, slipping and sliding occurs when there aren't enough checks and balances to prevent it, and the line's clearly been drawn. As much as I agree with Inuyasha on most issues, I find his arguments on drugs and gay marriage absolutely ridiculous.

@ Orwell

Here are some polls for you.

http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2010/01/ ... 264662086/

http://www.lifenews.com/2008/10/14/nat-4446/

http://www.gallup.com/poll/118399/more- ... -time.aspx

Now as to the idea that my view that life begins at conception is extreme, considering that a good pecentage of the population believes this, it can hardly be categorized as extreme. While not everyone supports my view, there are clear statistics that show abortion on demand has probably run out of intellectual credibility with the people. Parental consent, late term abortions and the sheer number have clearly taken their toll on public opinion.

Last edited by 91 on 23 Jan 2011, 10:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Polls and surveys mean very little to me. Depending on how the questions are worded, you can get very different results.

I've learned that often people that do the polls and surveys manipulate the people answering them in order to get the results they are paid to get.

I think the more important question involves same sex prison marriage and the slippery soap.

You good folks on the right need to free-up more money for soap-on-a-rope.

56% believe it to be "morally wrong." That does not necessarily mean they desire to outlaw it, as there are plenty of "immoral" behaviors which are completely legal, and a large number of people oppose legislating morality. This is especially an issue in the abortion debate, where a significant number of people are personally pro-life, but still believe abortion should be legal either on pragmatic grounds or because they believe it is a decision every woman must make for herself.

Also, that poll was commissioned by the Knights of Columbus, a hard-line Catholic organization, so it has to be taken with a grain of salt. It's entirely possible the methodology was sound, but without further information I am inclined to be skeptical.


Same polling agency commissioned by the same organization. This one has pretty skewed numbers; I would really want to see details of their methodology. Especially given the marked disagreement with the Gallup poll you posted, I would tend to think that Marist is the one that screwed up.


I trust Gallup; they are a reputable polling agency. Note that this poll shows only a slight edge for the pro-life position, and the commentary describes this as a significant change, since previously the pro-choice position had long held a lead. My conjecture is that this is, in part, a reaction against Obama's extreme left position on abortion among moderate conservatives who previously were pro-choice or somewhere in between.


Perhaps extreme was the wrong word. I should have said "unreasonable." That Gallup poll still finds a majority of Americans taking a more centrist position, while your stance recently reached an all-time-high level of support with a whopping 23%.


No, the Gallup poll does not show that at all. The most liberal position of permitting abortion at any time for any reason (what Obama supports) is still about even with your position (1% difference, which is statistically meaningless in this survey), and has historically enjoyed a significant lead.


Late term abortions are actually a fairly peripheral issue, since the vast majority of abortions are performed relatively early in the pregnancy. The right-wing tactic of focusing on partial-birth abortion is dishonest, as is the left-wing tactic of citing cases of rape or incest. The "sheer number" has no effect on public opinion, since people are generally too stupid to actually understand numbers.

There is a right and a wrong way to do statistics and polling. Gallup is the gold standard; probably the most well-established and credible polling agency in existence. They've been honing their craft for nearly 80 years now, and they've gotten pretty damn good at it.

Yes, I know. That doesn't change my opinion of polling and survey taking.

@ Orwell

I agree with my of what you are saying. However your placing me within the 23% who support a total ban is a bit misleading. I have already stated that I allow for double effect within my ethical position. The Church teaching allows for abortion only situations that it will save the mothers life and the child (having been given every chance to survive) dies as a result of the effort (such as during chemotherapy, ectopic pregnancies and critical injuries). It is a small distinction, but a worthwhile one.

As to your statements about the polls done by Catholic Church organizations. Considering they essentially echo the findings of the Gallop poll your statements about reliability should mirror the result. Perhaps your mistrust of their reliability is unfounded.

Last edited by 91 on 23 Jan 2011, 11:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That is far closer to the 23% than to any other group in that poll. Unless I am misunderstanding you, you are saying abortion is OK only if it happens accidentally during a medical procedure without which the mother would die.

Yes, your description of my position is correct. However I felt that your were attempting to stuff my views on life beginning at conception within that same 23%. A clear majority of people believe that life begins at conception or implantation.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.pr ... geId=19087

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/newswe ... conception

I'm pro-choice, and I believe (based on the definition) that life begins at conception.

And of course, to me this is irrelevant. A clear majority of people are ignorant or deeply misinformed, and approximately half of the population at a given time has below average intelligence. (Note: this is approximate because a population can have skew, where the median is different than the mean)

Life at conception is not coherent, people do not hold to this in any reasonably consistent manner, and any other method of assessing personhood exists on better grounds. This is a case I've stated earlier, and I can state it again. It is incoherent to say that a human's life begins at conception if a fertilized egg does not have to match up to the beginning of a specific person, as noted in chimerism and identical twins. It is hard to be reasonably consistent and hold that sexual activity is a process which inherently carries a high risk of death for an innocent person, as the death of this innocent is by any moral intuition a horrifyingly real concern. Finally, when it comes to assessing value, people really do focus on psychological characteristics. Humans in persistent vegetative states(or really any situation with massive loss of brain function) are not considered persons, while our science fiction stories make it clear to us that aliens that we can sympathize with are persons.

No, you misread the Gallup poll. Badly. I went through and explained a few points related to it, but the Gallup poll most certainly does not agree with the Marist poll.

I am not sure how I misread the Gallup poll. Or how I did so badly. You asked for evidence for the comment i made relating to how many people support restrictions on abortion. I provided it. There was no claim made that those people necessarily supported my views. The marianist poll clearly shows what sort of circumstances Americans would support abortion under. The Gallup poll simple put people into three broad categories (essentially, allways legal, sometimes legal, never legal). The marianist poll was aimed essentially at exploring the restrictions people would place on abortion and it refined it in a way that seems consistent with the results shown by Gallup. It essentially showed that being pro-choice does not necessarily mean a support of unrestricted abortion on demand.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archiv ... l/10072208

The results of the Marianist poll were backed up in this one also. These clearly indicate the trend I was attempting to illustrate.