neljapäev, mai 20, 2004
Drawing the Line
Max Boot makes a hell of a lot of sense on gay marriage. And he points out something I've been trying to explain to my conservative friends for months now:
They argue, first, that we shouldn't tamper with thousands of years of tradition that holds that marriage is between a man and a woman. But 141 years ago we tampered with an equally old tradition: slavery. Their second argument is the slippery slope — first gay marriage gets legalized, then polygamy, pederasty, incest and who knows what. But this kind of reductio ad absurdum can be applied to just about anything. If liquor is legal for adults, why not for children? Society always draws the line somewhere.
Laws exist to draw lines. We can move the line without erasing it completely.
But the anti-gay marriage crowd knows that. They just need to contort themselves into a logical pretzel to avoid admitting that their real problem is that they simply don't like gay people.
It's over. You lost this round. Live in the now, people. Somewhere, somebody's buying pornography. Go try to stop them.
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Max Boot makes a hell of a lot of sense on gay marriage. And he points out something I've been trying to explain to my conservative friends for months now:
They argue, first, that we shouldn't tamper with thousands of years of tradition that holds that marriage is between a man and a woman. But 141 years ago we tampered with an equally old tradition: slavery. Their second argument is the slippery slope — first gay marriage gets legalized, then polygamy, pederasty, incest and who knows what. But this kind of reductio ad absurdum can be applied to just about anything. If liquor is legal for adults, why not for children? Society always draws the line somewhere.
Laws exist to draw lines. We can move the line without erasing it completely.
But the anti-gay marriage crowd knows that. They just need to contort themselves into a logical pretzel to avoid admitting that their real problem is that they simply don't like gay people.
It's over. You lost this round. Live in the now, people. Somewhere, somebody's buying pornography. Go try to stop them.
