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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cosmicforce who wrote (112229)	5/29/2009 9:43:10 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 541990

Hey, in the cosmicforce universe, there will be some people that will freak out and play the incest card saying this invites sexual abuse or talk about people marrying their goat That, IMO, is a straw man concern. Its not a strawman. A strawman argument would be if they where making an intentionally weak argument for your side, pretending that you where really making that argument, so they could knock it down and present themselves as winners of the debate. Some make what is essentially a slippery slope argument. If you allow X (in this case government recognition of same sex marriage), Y (and maybe Z or more) will happen. With Y being polygamy, incest, whatever. I don't consider this particular slippery slope to be likely. Its not impossible, but it probably won't happen. There is nothing inevitable or even highly likely about one change leading to the other, so I don't make or support this argument. The closest I'd get to that is pointing out how some of the arguments for the idea that same sex marriage is required by current law or the constitution would also require some or all of these other things. If not recognizing a marriages of a couple that love each other but don't fall under the traditional, one not currently married man with one not currently married woman, is a violation of the idea of equal protection because "they should be able to have the state recognize their marriage to the person they love", than that logic wouldn't end with the addition of same sex currently unmarried couples. So either the state has to allow polygamy according the the constitution, or same sex marriage isn't really required. I'd say the later. The slippery slope argument would be an argument against same sex marriage brought on by any means. My argument is really only an argument against the courts declaring it a constitutional right, and it isn't even my main argument for that idea. My main argument is the more direct one I've already posted multiple times, that identical treatment is equal treatment.