"Slippery Slope" Defined

No matter how you cut it, adding the word gay in front of the word marriage is redefining the entire essence of what marriage has always been (a legal union between a man and a woman). Therefore, since “gay marriage” would differ so greatly from traditional marriage as we know it (as it only would apply to same-sex couples), broadening the definition would then be creating an offshoot (or, a “division” of marriage) reserved for this particular minority group. That not only minimalizes marriage’s original meaning, it opens the door to a whole host of other such expansions of this union. It’s irrelevant whether you believe in the cultural, religious or legal reasoning for only recognizing marriage in the sense that our society has always defined it as. Because the fact is, for all those reasons (and many others), that’s what the institution of marriage has always been. If there is a total approval and acceptance of gay marriage, could that one day lead to the same for “beastiality marriage” (marrying animals)? Could it someday expand into everyone being granted the right to a “polygamous marriage” (having multiple spouses)? Could it lead to an open acceptance of “intrafamilial marriages” (incest)? Of course, those may be extreme thoughts, but up until recent times, the idea of marriage between members of the same-sex was an equally unbelievable thought. By going by this conservative “slippery slope” theory, we are protecting ourselves from all of those other possible changes, which liberal groups will petition are simply just “progressive” advances in our society. For one to follow this theory it is not defining them as “anti-gay.” Whether one approves of a gay lifestyle or not is not the issue. I say, consenting adults can do what they want in the bedroom—but it should end there. People have sex with animals and their cousins too, however do we want those who practice that lifestyle to also be treated as no different than a man and woman having sex in wedlock? We all are entitled to our beliefs, but when a lifestyle or belief is in the extreme minority and a public spectacle is made for the purposes of having the government deem such as “equal” (when it is a completely altered transformation of a long-standing fundamental concept), that is unconstitutional. It’s just like the mentality of legalizing marijuana. When does that turn into the legalization of cocaine? Heroin? Why should we ever “play with fire”? Take euthanasia. If it is ok now in cases of terminally ill patients, soon enough it will be ok in patients who are not terminally ill but who are just in pain and no longer want to live. From there one would claim they have the “right to die” if they have any slight discomfort or if they have depression. Is that not suicide? Do we want to rename it something one day and make it into a socially acceptable thing? Are those that assist in the process going to be called “health advocates” and “pioneers” and not what they truly are—murderers? That is so not the principles of what the United States is all about.

As each generation invents multiple, broader definitions of centuries-old institutions, less and less values are upheld and more and more once unheard of possibilities become realities we all must be forced to accept—thus creating total anarchy. Where will any lines be drawn, and where will any standards of living be respected?