Cats and dogs, living together

Excellent article in slate by legal expert Dahlia Lithwick, on the topic of gay marriage.

Another problem with the slippery slope objections to gay marriage is that they present a moving target. No two opponents of gay marriage seem to agree upon where this parade of horribles begins or ends. You can order your comparisons off the Santorum Menu ('bigamy, polygamy, incest, adultery'), the Scalia Menu ('bigamy, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity'), or off the James Dobson Menu, in which all of the above evils ensue, plus the demise of heterosexual marriage altogether. Call this argument the horse-and-elephant leavings, smoking on the ground after the parade of horribles has passed by. No one can plausibly explain why the entire institution of marriage is at risk from gay unions. Which raises yet another objection to slippery slope arguments: These are projections into an unknowable future. Asking proponents of gay marriage to prove that these marriages won't be bad for kids or families is asking that they prove a negative. The law cannot know the long-term future social effects of legalizing gay marriage (Stanley Kurtz, who has quite fixed views on gay men and their philandering ways, notwithstanding). We can only determine whether it is fundamentally unfair to bar one whole class of citizens from a privilege constitutionally afforded the rest of us.

In fact the arguments against it seem extremely weak - on the slippery slope side. For example, the granting of voting rights to women did not lead to the granting of voting rights to children, infant, embryos, or sperm and eggs. One class being given a right afforded to others does not logically mean that right must inevitably be given to all classes of people. In fact most of the examples the slipper-slopers bring up tend to be groups of sexual behaviours and practitioners of the same that they do not like. In fact the argument that gay marriage leads to all the others can be taken backwards. Straight marriage will inevitably lead to gay people wanting to get married, and people marrying cats, etc. Thus one could claim the slipperly-slopers are unwittingly saying that marriage between a man and a woman is bound to lead to marriage between a woman and a cat, a man and a toad and whatever other combinations of things are possible. Perhaps the discomfort comes from applying civil laws to a ceremony that in many cultures is very religious - or used to be - and then reconciling those religious traditions with the need for fairness in law. In any event, Lithwick's article is work a look in full.