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Home » The SSM slippery slope?

The SSM slippery slope?

The New Neo Posted on by

What slippery slope?

See this:

Above, you’ll find a short video composed of the floor speeches some top Democrats made about SSM. At the time, Republicans wanted to block gay marriage in Massachusetts by amending the constitution with an official marriage definition. Democrats argued against that, but they didn’t argue in favor of gay marriage. They argued that DOMA made such an amendment unneccessary. They assured people like Rick Santorum that the slippery slope case for gay marriage was bogus.

The new Democratic advocates for SSM fall into two camps. The first consists of people who always liked the idea of this but worried about losing national elections. In his memoir, Democratic consultant Bob Shrum remembers John Kerry fretting that the Massachusetts Supreme Court had forced Democrats to talk about gay marriage before they were ready to. “Why couldn’t they just wait a year?” he asked Shrum, mournfully. The second camp consists of people who really do oppose the idea of gay people getting married. Republicans argued that this second camp was tiny, and that liberals were hiding behind it. They were right!

Yes, Republicans were right. But that and a dime will get them almost nothing these days.

Other Republicans are saying we’ve not heard the end of this issue even if SSM becomes the law of the land:

Any Christian who refuses to recognize that man wants to upend God’s order [through same sex marriage] will have to be driven from the national conversation. They will be labeled bigots and ultimately criminals.

Already we have seen florists, bakers, and photographers suffer because they have refused to go along with the cultural shift toward gay marriage. There will be more.

Once the world decides that real marriage is something other than natural or Godly, those who would point it out must be silenced and, if not, punished. The state must be used to do this. Consequently, the libertarian pipe dream of getting government out of marriage can never ever be possible.

My understanding of the underpinnings of the religious attitude towards marriage (that it should be limited to one man and one woman—an attitude that used to include all the major religions in this country except the Church of Latter Day Saints, and they came on board quite some time ago too) was the idea that the sexual impulse was sacred when channeled towards an institution that favored procreative sex. Whether or not some marriages (the elderly, the infertile) did not yield children was considered irrelevant; it was the institution of marriage with that particular structure that was sacred, favored, and also protected by law because it encouraged reproduction and a stable environment in which to raise children.

Religion, society, and law had an interest in furthering all of that. And religion, society, and law (which were more unified back then, despite the official separation of church and state in terms of forbidding state-established religions) also had an interest in discouraging types of sex that channeled the all-powerful and easily-distracted sexual impulse into avenues that could never lead to procreation, or that potentially wreaked some sort of havoc with the stability of marriage and the raising of children. To further support those ends, society passed laws (which I’m old enough to remember) that forbid not only homosexual acts, but also laws that banned the sale of contraception even to married couples, or that forbid sodomy even to heterosexuals (see this for a relevant chart of how recently many of these laws were repealed). The forbidden practices continued, of course—under the table, as it were—but they were not sanctioned and celebrated.

So it wasn’t just an anti-gay vendetta. It was a fairly seamless religious/societal/legal consensus on what was approved and what was disapproved, and why. Remember Sodom and Gomorrah? The people of yesteryear did.

I’m not personally a follower of a religion or religious subdivision that still subscribes to such beliefs in the literal sense. But I respect religious people and think I understand the reasons for their objections to same sex marriage. I believe that Eric Erickson’s cautions that I quoted above are extremely valid, and that SSM is merely one step in a long “progressive” march towards the eradication of religion and/or its demonization (a word that has an ironic twist in this context, does it not?).

And I see the story of Sodom and Gomorrah as expressing a cultural truth about anything-goes societies, which is that unbridled sexual license is part and parcel of a spiraling multifaceted decline in that society as a whole into more general chaos and amorality, especially as regards the rearing of the next generation. Which comes first—the specifically sexual license or the more generalized decline—is unclear, although I happen to think it’s the latter, and that each feeds into and amplifies the other.

And that, if one looks at the family today in the US, it’s fairly obvious that we’ve been sliding down that slippery slope for quite some time now.

[NOTE: As for the specific question of what effect same sex marriage has on all this, my honest answer is that I don’t know and I don’t think anyone knows. That’s one of the many reasons—federalism being another—that I think it should be left to the states. There’s even an argument to be made that, once homosexual behavior and homosexual couples are accepted in a society (something that’s already occurred), the institution of gay marriage helps to stabilize their behavior and to create less promiscuity and sexual license, not more. But being pretty much of a libertarian and federalist on this issue does not stop me from recognizing the potential dangers to religious freedom, which concern me very much.]

Comments

The SSM slippery slope? — 39 Comments

  1. in·teg·ri·ty

    possession of firm principles: the quality of possessing and steadfastly adhering to high moral principles or professional standards

    completeness: the state of being complete or undivided

    wholeness: the state of being sound or undamaged

    If there is Evil, an evil which longs to effect as much death and suffering as possible, then that Evil would seek to damage that which is the best example of integrity. Evil would seek to destroy and de-integrate that which resists and reduces the death and suffering Evil lusts for.

    SSM is not a thing unto itself as it is a Machiavellian tool of Evil. G-d, the Creator, knows this and forbids not just SSM but homosexuality, which ever must seek legitimacy and lends itself to the manipulations of Evil.

  2. Any Christian who refuses to recognize that man wants to upend God’s order [through same sex marriage] will have to be driven from the national conversation. They will be labeled bigots and ultimately criminals.

    And that is the whole point of this. Period.

    SSM is nothing but yet another stalking horse for the Left, just as AGW is.

  3. Okay, okay, breaks over. Can we now get back to less mind-numbing obsessions. This whole discussion here and elsewhere is like having a foot long piece of ribbed rebar nailed down the center of your spinal column.

    At this point, the enlightened response to slopes, slippery or Asian, is :

    ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzz …..

  5. neo, I love your paragraphs about your understanding of the religious beliefs about marriage and the following one about the way religion, society, and law used to want to further that.

    This is another one of those issues, like abortion, that will never be settled to everyone’s satisfaction. Both issues are taking us down a slippery slope to be more like………..well, yes, Sodom and Gomorrah. Anything goes has historically been a bad model for successful societies.

    We have forgotten what every tribe knew. The tribe’s success depended on raising most of their children to be successful adults. If that wasn’t accomplished, the tribe could perish. So much of what we are moving towards makes it more difficult to raise children to successful adulthood.

  6. The opening paragraph of the Gay Manifesto, written by homosexual activist Michael Swift and first published in the Gay Community News in February of 1987
    “We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your sports arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, in your movie theater bathrooms, in your army bunkhouses, in your truck stops, in your all male clubs, in your houses of Congress, wherever men are with men together. Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding. They will be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore us.”

    Michelangelo Signorile, a prominent gay activist, urges people in same-sex relationships to “demand the right to marry not as a

    “way of adhering to society’s moral codes but rather to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution”. They should “fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely, because the most subversive action lesbians and gay men can undertake … is to transform the notion of ‘family’ entirely”.

    Paula Ettelbrick is former legal director of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and now executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. Ettelbrick stated,
    “Being queer is more than setting up house, sleeping with a person of the same gender, and seeking state approval for doing so. … Being queer means pushing the parameters of sex, sexuality, and family, and in the process, transforming the very fabric of society. … We must keep our eyes on the goal …of radically reordering society’s views of reality.”

    These sentiments and goals differ from the Left’s only in their bluntness.

    “Maybe there’s only been one revolution since the beginning – the good guys versus the bad guys. The question is – who are the good guys?” Bill Dolworth (Burt Lancaster) in The Professionals

    The revolution to overthrow nature’s determinacy and replace it with Gnostic pansexual urges has behind it the endless war to make over the world in an image other than God’s. There is a war against God and it’s been going on since “in the beginning”. The lust to destroy creation serves as proxy for the war on God; they have no other way of getting at Him.

  7. George Pal: you wrote “These sentiments and goals differ from the Left’s only in their bluntness.”

    In fact, these goals ARE the Left’s goals. And I would bet that the writers you quote are in fact leftists.

    Most of the gay people you or I know do not have those goals nor are they leftists, and I know plenty of gay people. But many of the leaders and activists do have those goals and are leftists. In this, the gay movement is similar to feminism, which also has many many leaders and activists who are dedicated leftists and have a much larger agenda, and who are using the mass of feminists (and gays) unaware of their larger agenda in order to further it.

    This is a big dilemma.

  8. Neo@ 2:30

    That’s an interesting point. I’ve been wondering for a while what’s the reason for all the pressure on this issue? Cynical me thought that the purpose of civil unions was really to get a discount on medical insurance. Now, I’m not so sure.

  9. Paul in Boston: oh, I think for most gay people that’s the point, that or getting tax breaks or just because they love each other and want to be married, and want society to accept that. As I said, I know plenty of gay people and that’s what most of them think, and I don’t think they’re dissembling.

    But that’s not the main goal of many of the leaders and especially the activists. They are using those other people as useful idiots to further other ends.

    The same is true of feminism.

    That’s the way the left operates.

  10. “Once the world decides that real marriage is something other than natural or Godly, those who would point it out must be silenced and, if not, punished. The state must be used to do this. Consequently, the libertarian pipe dream of getting government out of marriage can never ever be possible.”

    I think that most of us recognize that the hard core capital “L” libertarian delusion that libertarianism can ever be anything more than a modus vivendi principle, a kind of temporary social truce between irreconcilable life-ways inhabiting the same political space, has been discredited.

    And libertarian tolerance, as a concession to peaceably agree to disagree , is simply not where the left is willing to pause. Tolerance is not enough for the bonobo types you and another poster were referring to the other day. Affirmation is demanded. You are invited to join in wholeheartedly, no demurrers accepted.

    There’s no reasoning with the left, and no compromising. It isn’t part of their ontology of the real.

  11. I see by the time I posted, what I said had already been both implied and stated outright.

  12. George Pal,

    I think too few are willing, as you have done, to wade through the rhetorical garbage of these cases in order to document just how alien are the demands and goals of those whom you reference.

    Marxism was enough for me. Though I am not sure that what the people you cite as saying, is too much at variance with some of Engels’ aims.

  14. neo-neocon Says:

    March 28th, 2013 at 2:30 pm

    “George Pal: you wrote “These sentiments and goals differ from the Left’s only in their bluntness.”

    In fact, these goals ARE the Left’s goals.”

    When would you say you came to that conclusion?

  15. GP says,

    That the quest ” … to overthrow nature’s determinacy and replace it with Gnostic pansexual urges has behind it the endless war to make over the world …”

    That was well formulated.

  16. DNW: an interesting question, but one I can’t answer because I don’t recall. It’s certainly some time within the last ten years that I’ve really thought about it, although when I was a liberal I was already unsympathetic to the left. Back then I just don’t think I realized how liberals such as myself (and remember, I was a rather moderate liberal) were being used by the left for their purposes.

    I had quite a bit of exposure to people on the left when I was growing up and they alienated me politically. See this for some of that story.

  18. neo-neocon Says:
    March 28th, 2013 at 3:41 pm

    DNW: an interesting question, but one I can’t answer because I don’t recall. It’s certainly some time within the last ten years that I’ve really thought about it, although when I was a liberal I was already unsympathetic to the left. Back then I just don’t think I realized how liberals such as myself (and remember, I was a rather moderate liberal) were being used by the left for their purposes.

    I had quite a bit of exposure to people on the left when I was growing up and they alienated me politically. See this for some of that story.”

    As a former liberal, what do you think the left imagines itself achieving with these deconstructive and remolding activities? Greater organic health? If so, of what then, a socially redesigned being with fewer interpersonal “boundaries”?

    What, essentially, do you see them as thinking that they are accomplishing? They are pursuing, for example “X”, in aid of what, if any, ultimate good?

    Or it might be that you would reject the structuring of the question itself in terms of any ultimate or highest good. But I’d like to see how far logical inferences from certain premisses can take us before we get down to – or stall out at – the “just because” stage.

    You, with your background, both personal and professional, might have something very profound to say. Are they disciples, generally, of Reich? Is there an ideology, based on what is at least a coherent ontology beneath it all?

    Or is raw impulse seen as self-justifying, and personality as a burdensome illusion? If so, what would a one taking that view actually be advocating for and advancing?

  19. DNW: I don’t lump the motivations of those on the left all together. Different people have different motivations. Some are idealists who actually think they are creating a better world, and are frustrated with the imperfections of humanity and society and think they can do a better job. Others are destructive nihilists. Still others are in it for the power alone (although I believe that nearly all leftists have an interest in and attraction to power—their own, that is).

  21. neo-neocon Says:
    March 28th, 2013 at 4:55 pm

    DNW: I don’t lump the motivations of those on the left all together. Different people have different motivations …”

    Sure. But in this instance we are, pursuant to your narrower theme talking about those whom George Pal quoted as being about, ” pushing the parameters of sex, sexuality, and family, and … … radically reordering society’s views of reality.”

    No doubt an old Stalinist might stupidly think or delude himself that most of the populace would eat better if a few million Kulaks were sacrificed to the collective. But what is gained by “pushing the parameters of sex” in order to “radically reorder” the concept of reality?

  22. I believe their ideal end point is like this quote from Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Captain Picard, “A lot has changed in the past three hundred years. People are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of things. We’ve eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions. We’ve grown out of our infancy.”

    But their real end point is what the person responding to this quote says, “You’ve got it all wrong. It has never been about possessions. It’s about power.”

  23. DNW: oh, I think the people George Pal quoted are in the main power-drunk nihilists, although I suppose some may think “freedom” (i.e. chaos) is a good thing for humanity.

    I thought we were talking about leftists in general.

  24. DNW asks…
    But what is gained by “pushing the parameters of sex” in order to “radically reorder” the concept of reality?

    My two cents:

    Radical feminists, for instance, believe the traditional family is a horrid, cruel, woman-hating institution that is responsible for most of the ills in society. What they want is to basically do away with the male function, at least with regard to the family. Thus, for example, they push for women creating families alone with the aid of anonymous sperm donors, with the state picking up any the slack in areas too much for them to bear alone.

    What they gain, in their mind, is a society free from male control.

  25. Hey everyone, try going to a major state university right about now. I’ve been doing it, and I’m sick to death of hearing people talk about this issue.

    But of course, I blogged about it.
    http://praxamericana.blogspot.com/2013/03/gay-marriage-runnin-out-of-fucks.html

    Sorry for the language in there, and neo, you’re pretty well on target. But the damage in social perspective is done and we should probably be supporting the libertarian position now. At a certain point, it’s better for sanctioning to not exist than to keep fighting a battle you’re going to lose. My sympathies to the parents whose children will grow up thinking their beliefs are evil.

  26. SGT Caz:

    Pretty good post of yours (despite differences in style from my more restrained one). I do have a couple of observations, though—

    I think that inducing in us a sense of exhaustion is part and parcel of the left’s aim, and is to be resisted at all costs (although I get very weary sometimes, too).

    A historic note from an “older” person (that would be me): adoption used to be a quite common solution when I was young (see this). It was common because really effective birth control was still not very widespread and abortion was illegal. Giving up healthy babies for adoption in this country is much less common today. The 60s and 70s were the turning points, the spread of the Pill and the so-called sexual revolution, and then the increasing ease and lessening stigma of divorce and out-of-wedlock parenthood.

    Interestingly enough, the rarity of adoptive infants is one of the reasons that gay couples were allowed to adopt back when that was an innovation, too. The reasoning was that that was much better for the child than being in foster care or an orphanage. Once gay couples were considered good adoptive parents, that was one of the steps towards gay marriage being accepted.

  27. Neo-neocon:

    I think there’s more to it than merely power-drunk nihilism (the persons I’d quoted). These are expressions of a vitriolic hatred of God, religion, creation, nature, and the ordering of things. As gay lifestyles have become more accepted, as religion and God lose ground in an ever more secular world, the hatred becomes more extensive and more intense. Should SSM win the day the vitriol will intensify. Every capitulation will lead to greater attacks. The churches and religion will come under greater attack both politically and physically. Such hatred is not content to win the battles. They are in it for the war. They are in it for a Carthaginian peace.

  28. neo,

    Good points, and thanks. When I was referring to the reduction in expectations that people raise their biological children, I was referring more to the acceptance of single motherhood, step-parents, and the frequency with which I see younger women (using that term liberally) living with their parents, who help them raise the kids. I think the reduced interdependence between husband and wife makes up the critical variable. I called it more of an “emergencies only” proposition with the understanding that emergencies became much more common following the sexual revolution; according to Alan Petigny’s research, that shift in sexual activity actually started quietly in the 40’s.
    http://www.research.ufl.edu/publications/explore/v10n1/extract4.html

    The exhaustion… you know how it goes. Because of how heavily young people look at marriage as a matter of freedom, the libertarian perspective is probably the best strategy, and one that conservatives can use after gay marriage happens. I live in Kansas, and even here, I see absolutely no chance of winning this fight.

  29. The unanswered, or even unasked, question is how a person claims “gay rights”, or makes a claim of discrimination against gays.

    Are we to just take their word for it that they’re gay?

  30. the “definition” of marriage as a heterosexual relationship predates any tradition or society, or even history. why no one is making this argument in the courts baffles me. the best reasons for expanding the definition of marriage are not scientific or natural, but religious in nature. This is an odd irony, since all major faiths largely define marriage as heterosexual. But anytime a society wants to overturn the natural order, they must begin with supernatural arguments — compassion, or mercy, or justice.

    Weird.

  31. It’s hard not to slip.

    We’re pretty much past where we can slip anymore.

    Guns are taken away in Chicago and murder/crime/gang violence explodes. The citizen can’t protect himself, the city won’t enforce the guns laws against the criminals, and the city won’t prosecute and seek justice for victims. If you wanted to create a brownshirt army, this is how you would do it. Meanwhile various gov’t agencies amass ammunition. Gangs of black teens flash assualt whites as a hate crime and the Pres says one of them looks like his son if he had one. The economy supports the fraudulent, the crony, the lazy while the honest hardworking man is laughed at as a fool. The gay assault force savagely assails any who oppose their agenda and the gov’t approves.

    Systems have their own times. People say, “Aww, the crazy nut jobs have always been saying chicken little.” But the long time of the warnings must be related to the system, whether it’s predicting an earthquake or economic/political super crisis.

    The slipping time is about over. Reaping time comes.

  32. “” But what is gained by “pushing the parameters of sex” in order to “radically reorder” the concept of reality?””
    DNW

    The whole of the leftist movement can perhaps be best described as a war on oppresive self restraint.

  33. Sorry to be so late in the thread, but I’m travelling and just looked in. Neo, you did the ASCRIBE thing again! Please correct.

  34. Integrity. What does it mean when it’s gone.

    God’s commandments, summed up in the ten commandments, are a whole. Destroy one and you will eventually see all destroyed.

    The roots of our culture accepting SSM are found in accepting fornication and adultery. The latter more in a legal than cultural sense. But once sex could be obtained outside marriage and that became a norm, marriage morphed into a different thing.

    davisbr brought that point in his post on March 28th, 2013 at 5:18 pm where he characterizes the issue as a King v Church issue.

    It is a King v Church issue, because the Church retains the integrity of the Commandments and hence the role marriage provides that if you want sex, you get married.

    The King enforces the new understanding of those without the limitations of Commandments.

    You can see, with something almost like beauty, how Obama’s actions are “scripted” to provide a gov’t which has rejected Commandments.

    The Word of God is a whole. King David expressed this frequently in his poetry.

    The Founders understood that if G-d is the source of our rights then he is the source of our responsibilities. We cannot, because of integrity, compromise and accept a hybrid law.

  35. We are no longer “Slouching Towards Gomorrah” (Rob’t Bork). Is there any doubt we are there?

    Gomorrah will look like it always does: Jails, repressions, takings of property, takings of the wrong kinds of liberties, oppression, poverty, joylessness, joblessness, forced labor, forced confessions, show trials and bad faith all around.

    Relative to the America-that-once-was, it will be hell.

    The only real hope is that there are consequences for the denial of reality and the opposition to good and good people. The society which does that will eventually die out in its own way. Gomorrah was not fiction; it is myth. “Gomorrah” is always the cause of its own inevitable destruction – the cost being so high however, so it is cold comfort. It did not need to be.

  37. Yes, it’s everywhere. Gone are the days when I could say, “Could people just keep their sexuality to themselves?” or “I don’t care how people are persuaded to be, but I do care that people keep their sexuality private.” Now we lead with it.

    In a line today at the post office, a hip older man (my age) showed me cartoon from a magazine or newspaper – I forget which. Maybe the LATimes. Anyway, it showed God in long robes on some clouds with some cherubic adults lounging around with one another regardless of sex. God said, “I think I’ll see what happens if I make some of them this way.” Someone replied to God, “Remember what happened when you did that with color?”

    I didn’t find it particularly funny, but the man in line did. I kind of said so and he no longer really wanted to talk with me anymore. I then said, “Some post modernist should ‘deconstruct’ that. You know how they like to use the word ‘deconstruct’.” He looked at me quizzically. I said, “Well, the cartoon is obviously left-ish, and yet there’s God in there and the left is not supposed to believe God made people that way–or any other way. It’s all evolution, just like color was, to adapt to the sun.” And then he said, unfunnily, “Oh yes and we all came originally from Africa and were all black.” That was odd.

  38. Zombie has done some reporting from the Belly of the Beast in San Francisco: http://preview.tinyurl.com/6cu28x

    Pay attention to the landing page warning: the pages that follow are entirely NSFW.

    Think about this: do you want your kids involved in this type of thing?

  39. I asked the question for years on Ace, whenever Malor brought up SSM: do your presumed 14th amendment rights trump my 2nd amendment rights?

    The answer was always the same (because Gabe is a very smart guy): crickets.

    …I finally gave up asking the question …he wasn’t going to fall into my “trap”, lol.

    The only resolution to the question that is possible is to get the government out of the marriage business.

    …which will not happen, as per my comments in the thread sharpie so kindly mentioned above.

    I am no longer sanguine about the American Experiment. And (to repeat myself) just so, the world will burn.

    This civilization will fall, broken, like all the ones before.

    …it seems Pandora just can’t resist opening that damn box.

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