Commonly, ant-gay rights activists will threaten that, if same-sex couples gain equal rights, soon society must give legal standing to a host of various pairings, ranging from the socially unpopular, to the disturbing, to the plainly absurd. Nevertheless, the slippery slope is a well known logical fallacy for a reason, and there are very significant differences between such unions and the currently accepted unions. These differences are not shared with same-sex unions and may easily be used to make clear legal and social distinctions.

Contents:

• Polygamy - Why same-sex marriage does not mean legal polygamy.
  • Number vs. Kind - Very different forms of discrimination.
  • Mathematically Impossible - 2 is not 3, even in politics.
  • Current Status - What polygamists already own that same-sex headed families do not.
• Incest - Why same-sex marriage does not mean legal incest.
  • Genetics - Troubling recessive genes.
  • Coercion - A power that should not be in a marriage.
  • Current Status - What kin already own, that same-sex headed families do not.
  • Public Disgust - Even where it is similar, it is quite different.
  • Choices - Removing one option verses removing all options.
  • Biology - Greater biological determination.
  • Relation vs. Kind - Very different forms of discrimination.
• Underage Marriage - Why same-sex marriage does not mean legal child brides.
• Bestiality - Why same-sex marriage does not mean marriages to pets.
• Summary
• References

1.Polygamy: The comparison between same sex marriage and polygamy is often made, claiming polygamy will follow from legal marriage for same-sex couples. Two apples, though, are not a bushel of oranges:

I. Number vs. Kind. Refusing legal polygamy is discrimination based on the number of people. Refusing legal marriage for same-sex couples is discrimination based on an individual’s sexual anatomy, an undeniably inborn trait with a long history of nondiscrimination law.

Not all discrimination, of course, is to be avoided. Nevertheless, we are guaranteed and should have equal rights as individuals, and individual gays and lesbians want the rights in their unions and for their families they would have if the state was blind to their anatomy, the rights a differently sexed citizen in their same place would have.

Similarly, a gay union is based on an attraction we already support in marriage, the attraction to men or women. Polygamy, marriages based on the attraction to multiple people, is something entirely different.

In general, we should have no problem discriminating based on the number of people in a category. We would not think twice about the state rejecting two people interviewing as a couple for a certain job in favor of one, even if the two together had better qualifications. That case is a world apart from the state discriminating in hiring based on a person’s sex. If number is a person’s reason for discriminating against polygamists, there is not really a counter argument to it. You can, in that way, be logically consistent in wanting legal marriage for couples regardless of the constituent individual’s sex, but not for more than two people.

II. Mathematically impossible. Polygamists are not asking for the same rights as current legal marriage; they are asking for a new body of law and rights. They cannot have the same rights or obligations by simple and inflexible mathematics, not law or cultural prejudice.

Without a will, for example, how do you decide Social Security, inheritance, and so on for a polygamist? Do they all get the same, even the wife there for only one month with no children, when there is a wife there for 40 years with 10 children? Do they decide medical decisions for an incapacitated husband by vote? What if there’s a tie? What about alimony? Are the remaining wives responsible for a divorced wife? What about child custody? Is a sister wife the default parent if her husband and one of his wives dies together? Or is it some other next of kin? What is the legal relationship between wives? Do they get on another wife’s health insurance? Do they have automatic rights of inheritance, and, if so, how is that math done? One could go on.

The differences between requesting new law and equal treatment under existing law is significant. Implementing polygamy would be a legal challenge, and a whole new set of law would need to be pounded out, but same-sex couples want the same rights and obligations. For same-sex couples nothing is changed in law but a couple words about a person’s apparent sex.

III. Current Status. Polygamist families may already have these rights and responsibilities, with one person (with the same legal limits placed on same-sex couples).

The state already gives polygamist families far more rights, legal stability, and economic freedom than families headed by monogamous same-sex couples. They can secure some inheritance rights, transfer income freely between two parents, and receive some benefit in taxes and health insurance, with current marriage law allowing one legal marriage in their group of what they typically deem spiritual marriages. Polygamist's access to the rights in question is yet another significant difference.

2.Incest:Confusingly, what constitutes incest has change over the years as much as what constitutes a marriage.  The early Catholic Church, for example, had deemed incest to be relations all the way out to fourth cousins, even through marriage or god-parenthood (1).  The Jewish tribes, on the other end, would allow uncle to marry niece. Our current culture draws the line somewhere near first cousins (Related isocrat.org article).   Despite the vagaries, same-sex marriage is very different in some important ways, even from first-cousin marriage.

I. Genetics. Most obviously, genetic diseases are a significant practical problem with incest (2, 3). Producing such children is a tragedy for the child and a burden on society. This problem, though, is as much an issue for gays and lesbian couples as it is for the average heterosexual couple, which is to say almost not a problem at all.  In fact, gay and lesbian couples are more likely to adopt handicapped children and children with certain diseases, making their unions very different in their ability to relieve society (4).

II. Coercion. There is the very real threat of coercion for the state to take seriously in incest, that is not present in same-sex unions.  A father can't be trusted to court his daughter. With incest, there are far too many ways for what even a participant believes to be consensual sexual behaviors to be born out of coercion and motivations that have nothing to do with building a healthy marriage. Participants often cannot treat each other as an equal in any marriage, or get beyond their other familial classifications, and a marriage of equals is a reasonable, if not thoroughly modern, moral.  This is not an issue for gay and lesbian couples anymore than it is for heterosexuals, even less so as there is less history of subjugation in same-sex couples than heterosexual.

III. Current Status. As with polygamy, many of these rights are already there for incestuous couples.  They are already kin and already have many of these rights.  This is not the case for gays and lesbian couples.

IV. Public Disgust. The place where the two cases are most similar is that many people feel revulsion at the idea of mixing sex with their close relatives.  A similar distress is felt in some with regards to homosexuality, just as it is for mixed-race couples, but, by public reaction to same-sex marriage, it is clear it is far less potent, and rightly dying down.

V. Choices. Incest is about attraction to a specific person within a group of people you could find attractive. Just like heterosexuality, homosexuality is an attraction to a sex, not a particular person.  This difference makes restricting same-sex marriage harmful to gays and lesbians in an unique way.  They should not be encouraged to marry heterosexually as that sets up a significant social risk, but they cannot marry anyone to whom they feel an attraction.  An incestuous person still feels attractions towards people who are not their relatives, even if that is where their primary attraction sits at any moment.

VI. Biology. A gay man or woman has a very common sex drive. The unique part is found in that their orientation is one which typically shows up in their opposite sex.  We do have evidence pointing to biology (see related isocrat.org article)--homosexuality is found, for example, in most any species you can think of (see related isocrat.org article).  A biological basis for a sex drive directed at one sex and/or another should be expected, as well as it being complicated enough to have mutations here and there for a minority.  Such a basis for an incestuous attraction to one specific person has no evidence for a biological basis behind it.

VII. Relation vs. Kind. As with polygamy, the type of discrimination being used to restrict marriage in both cases is very different. Gay unions are based on attraction to men or women, just as heterosexual unions are, but incest is quite different. With incest we discriminate against individuals based on their familial relationships; with same-sex marriage we discriminate based on a person's inborn sexual anatomy. Clearly, if the state was hiring for a job, they could restrict hiring of a brother by the person doing the interviewing; that is nepotism and is frequently and rightly discriminated against. For the state to hire based on a person's sex, though, that is quite a different story, one that makes restricting incest and not same-sex marriage an easy distinction.

3.Underage Marriage: This area should really be obvious to opponents of marriage rights for gay couples, and it is likely that it would be if the topic was not homosexuality. If this is truly a concern here, one must wonder how another cannot distinguish between two consensual adults in love and the very different case of marrying a child. Nevertheless, one could easily find research showing a detriment to children born into such unions (5). As in incest, there are also stark issues of sexual coercion in unions involving minors in which the state has a clear interest.

Simply, though, a minor is not free. They do not have equal rights, for good reason. They are under the control of others and, even with current law, in many jurisdictions they cannot enter into even a cell phone contract before they could legally enter a marriage. Marriage is, in many ways, a contract, a very serious contract. Children simply do not have the tools necessary to agree to the terms, and an adult hoping to enter into such an agreement with a child is looking to take advantage of another. It should be simple for anyone to distinguish here.

4.Beastiality: It really is a sad commentary on human nature that this topic even needs to be addressed; yet even US senators and judges will connect same-sex marriage with bestiality. Still, we'll not elaborate much on this topic unless it is somehow needed for a visitor. Again and simply, marriage is a contract, one that requires, not only intelligence, but adult intelligence to rightly enter. No poodle is hoping to get his partner on his company's heath insurance. No goldfish is petitioning for hospital visitation. No feline is suing its in-laws to take control of its spouse's funeral arrangements. This really is a slippery slope argument deserving a great deal of righteous incredulity from gay rights activists and everyone else for the degree to which it literally dehumanizes and trivializes human love, family, and human needs. It makes one wonder how some on the other side of this debate could take on the mantle of "pro-family" when they so openly claim to be blind to what is important in family.

5. Summary:The primary problem here is that some marriage-equality opponents insist on ignoring such differences. They are fixated on framing this debate as discrimination between union types, gay marriage vs. heterosexual marriage vs. polygamy and so on. If same-sex marriage wins equal treatment that supposedly means a blow for heterosexual unions, us vs. them, but this is not a zero-sum game and this is about an individual’s rights.

The definition of legal marriage has been changed a great deal throughout our history (Related isocrat.org article), from allowing nobles to marry commoners to allowing races to mix. Even gay unions have been sanctioned (Related isocrat.org article). Regardless, none of those changes has led to recognizing such unions as bestiality. Each change is made and should be judged on its own merits; the slippery slope being a well recognized logical fallacy for a good reason.

For spin and public relations reasons gay rights opponents connect such unions to same-sex unions, as they know those who may be for marriage equality for gay couples tend to also be, for example, against polygamy, due to its popular history of abuses and misogyny. Simply though, if polygamy ever did follow from gay marriage, it will be, in large part, the doing of the modern opponents of same-sex marriage. They are the ones who hope to convince the public all groupings are tied together; that one change means anything goes; that it is about discrimination by marriage categories, when it is truly about the rights of individuals.

Return to the argument against marriage equality for same-sex couples.

REFERENCES ::

1. Graff, E.J.. What is Marriage For?. Beacon Press, Boston. (2004).

2. Jabera, L.; Halpernc, G.J.; Shohatc,M. The Impact of Consanguinity Worldwide. Community Genetics. vol. 1, pp. 12-17, (1998).

3. Jaber, L.; Merlob, P.; Shohat, M. High incidence of central nervous system malformations associated with marked parental consanguinity in an Israeli Arab community. Biomed Pharmacother. vol. 48 (8), pp. 351-354, (1994).

4. Gates, G.J.; Lee Badgett, M.V. Adoption and Foster Care by Gay and Lesbian Parents in the United States. Williams Institute, pp. None, (2007).

5. Baldwin, W.; Virginia S. Cain, V.S. The Children of Teenage Parents. Family Planning Perspectives. vol. 12 (1), pp. 34-43, (1980).

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isocrat > politics > marriage > otherpairings
Created: 2008-06-20; Last Edited: 2008-06-20; (ID243)