Got to love it when politicians accidentally say what they really think. For example with regards to the issue of marriage equality. It is simply amazing how this topic in particular brings out the doomsday scenarios, how allowing loving couples to get married irrespective of the makeup of their genitals somehow becomes the final nail in the coffin of the human race.
Enter Cory Bernardi. Here’s what the parliamentary secretary of the Federal opposition leader Tony Abbott had to say about the consequences of legalising gay marriage in a Senate debate yesterday:
“The next step, quite frankly, is having three people or four people that love each other being able to enter into a permanent union endorsed by society – or any other type of relationship,” Senator Bernardi said.
“There are even some creepy people out there… [who] say it is okay to have consensual sexual relations between humans and animals.
“Will that be a future step? In the future will we say, ‘These two creatures love each other and maybe they should be able to be joined in a union?’
“I think that these things are the next step.”
That slope is so slippery, you could think it was primed with the grease that slushes around in Cory Bernardi’s skull instead of a brain.
Why do so many politicians not understand the simple fact that a society with more loving couples is a better and more stable society? But no, instead they hold onto their religion-instilled homophobia at all cost. It’s good that this gets revealed every now and then in all its rotten depth, like with Cory Bernardi now. He should get fired, but I’m not holding my breath that whoever replaces him would be in any way less repugnant.
So I guess you are in favour of polygamy/incest/consensual paedophilia/bestiality etc.
Sexual relationships between humans and animals come as such a shock to people, but it doesn’t to me. There can be very deep, meaningful relationships between humans and their pets… That said, I remind you that my position isn’t based on my own personal wants. I just don’t see any reason to ban it other than the same reason things like homosexuality and sodomy were banned: it’s icky. I think it’s bad practice to put social taboos into legislature when no actual logical argument can be made against it.
Alex:
Really, you can do better than this. You know the obvious response to your slippery slope argument: children and pets*, unlike humans, can’t consent. This isn’t a difficult moral distinction. It’s poor reasoning, and offensive, to equate relationships between consenting adults with acts involving a non-consenting individual. The fact that you personally regard both as immoral doesn’t mean you can ignore the difference between them.
(*Of course, in the case of pets, this raises all kinds of issues about the things our society does allow humans to do to non-human animals without their consent – slaughtering them for food or sport, conducting experiments on them, breeding them for profit, and so on. But that’s another discussion in itself.)
As for polygamous relationships between consenting adults, I see no reason to be opposed to these, in principle.
Thanks, David. A lot of the comments and articles about this affair did not seem to get the issue of consent that makes this such a false and stupid equivalency to be drawing.
Argh! I hate slippery slope arguments. They inevitably slip and slide right into the absurd completely ignoring a whole host of mitigating factors.
David Neale:
F—-ing blockquote f—up. Sorry.
First of all, a minor typing error – obviously I should have said “…children and pets, unlike adult humans, can’t consent…” Obviously I don’t think that children aren’t humans!
Yes, and that’s a good thing. Young people should have more autonomy, and their voices should be heard in the political process and in the institutions that affect them. In preparation for becoming adult citizens, they should be taught that they have rights, that their opinions are important, and that all authority should be questioned.
But that’s a wholly different thing from legitimizing sexual abuse of children by adults. The one certainly doesn’t imply the other – indeed, I’d argue that making the school environment less authoritarian reduces the scope for abuse of children. (Just look at how many abuse scandals have recently surfaced from schools and religious institutions of decades past, when adults had far more unchecked power over children than they now do.) Inequalities of power create a risk of abuse, and there is a wide inequality of power between adults and children. That’s why we rightly seek to protect children from abuse, sexual or otherwise, by the adults who have power over them.
That’s a difficult question. It could be argued that society does have an interest in discouraging incest in general, because of the increased risk of genetic illnesses in one’s offspring – but of course that doesn’t apply to all incestuous relationships, only to those capable of procreation. But there are situations in which one can envision a risk of abuse because of the inequalities of power in a family environment. I’d say it’s complicated, and I’m not willing to give a definitive answer.
David Neale:
I would never imply otherwise.
With respect, whether you personally approve of ultra-progressive schools isn’t what’s really at issue here. You’re not seeing the slippery slope. The point about these sorts of schools is that they illustrate a wider ongoing process of which they are merely a small part. You only call sex with minors “abuse” because it lies on the far side of an impassable boundary marked “Consent”. But as we have seen, the consensus of enlightened opinion has progressively pushed that boundary further back by claiming for children ever greater levels of intellectual and psychological competence (the basis of consent). If children can have a say in the running of their schools, is it so unreasonable that they should also have a say in the running of their families (“the world’s smallest democracy”), even to the extent of “divorcing” their parents? Do you agree with that? Irrelevant — it’s already happened. If children are competent enough to remove themselves from the control of their parents, maybe they are competent enough to remove themselves from the land of the living and consent to being euthanised. Do you approve of that? Irrelevant — it’s already happened. If children are allowed to request an assisted suicide, why shouldn’t they be allowed to engage in consensual sexual relations with adults or other children? After all, enlightened opinion insists they are sexual beings and we all know nothing is more psychologically damaging than sexual repression. You disapprove? It is perfectly possible that your disapproval of this “abuse” will soon become as irrelevant as my disapproval of schools run by children (which I consider a form of child abuse). The decision will have been already taken by opinion-formers and policy-makers wielding far more influence and power than you or I who will have heeded the latest expert advice on child psychology.
I am not predicting that this will happen; I don’t think it is inevitable. But it is perfectly possible and it is perfectly reasonable to be concerned, because while the barrier marked “Consent” is generally regarded as impassable, it has also been shown to be quite easily movable — and always in the direction of greater licence. (Those who dismiss the “slippery slope argument” as a logical fallacy fail to grasp that such arguments are based not on the logic of formal propositions but on the logic of human nature. The path of least resistance is always down.)
Actually only to those capable and desirous of procreation. An incestuous couple might want children but merely to express their mutual love by fucking. If the female partner is unfortunate enough to have her bodily autonomy violated by an uterine parasite, it can be chemically or surgically removed. End of problem.
Whoops, that should read “An incestuous couple might not want children but merely …”
David:
Now you get not to be opposed to them in practice.
Gah. Try again…
No, I understood the argument you were making. But you’re oversimplifying a complex issue. The development of intellectual and emotional maturity isn’t something that happens suddenly overnight – it’s a gradual process. I think it’s a good thing that young people (particularly teenagers) are increasingly able to have a voice in the decisions which affect them, including decisions about how their schools are run. This doesn’t mean giving them the same rights and responsibilities as adults, nor does it amount to having “schools run by children” – there’s a difference between giving someone a voice and giving them total control. And it certainly doesn’t imply that they should be treated as adults for all purposes.
I’d also like to see some evidence for this very odd claim, which is almost Santorum-esque:
In any case, I fail to see how this has anything to do with Martin’s original post. Supporting the right of consenting adult gay couples to marry does not involve any redefinition of our established understanding of consent.
David:
No, I understood the argument you were making. But you’re oversimplifying a complex issue. The development of intellectual and emotional maturity isn’t something that happens suddenly overnight – it’s a gradual process. I think it’s a good thing that young people (particularly teenagers) are increasingly able to have a voice in the decisions which affect them, including decisions about how their schools are run. This doesn’t mean giving them the same rights and responsibilities as adults, nor does it amount to having “schools run by children” – there’s a difference between giving someone a voice and giving them total control. And it certainly doesn’t imply that they should be treated as adults for all purposes. … In any case, I fail to see how this has anything to do with Martin’s original post. Supporting the right of consenting adult gay couples to marry does not involve any redefinition of our established understanding of consent.”
I’m still not convinced you do get my argument and the reason I suspect you don’t is your use of the terms “this doesn’t mean”, “nor does it amount to”, “there’s a difference between”, “it certainly doesn’t imply” and “does not involve”. You’re looking at all these instances as discrete ‘issues’, some of which you applaud, some of which you deplore, but none of which has any obvious connection to any other. Yes, two homosexual adults marrying is a different thing from sex between an adult and a minor. Yes there is nothing about the former considered in itself that might “lead to” the latter. But I don’t see these things in isolation: I see both as embedded in a wider process, a cultural stream fed by numerous tributaries including the privileging of individual self-expression free of restraint; redefinition of sex so as to prioritise personal pleasure and exemplify said self-expression; the resultant dissolution of sexual taboos; the impatience with taboos in general (“nothing is sacred”); the egalitarian hostility to all hierarchical distinctions such as those between men and women, adults and children, humans and beasts; and so forth.
You’re telling me that this leaf and that tin can are different objects, wholly separate and unlike. And as far as that goes, you’re right — seen in isolation, they’re unrelated. But what I see (or believe I see) is the raging torrent carrying both along. You’re so intent on the intrinsic differences between various cultural phenomena that you see no problems with drawing lines of demarcation between them. To me, that’s like trying to build a floating fence between the leaf and the tin can: even if it could be done, it wouldn’t affect the course of the river whose direction (and ultimate destination) they indicate. You might regard the leaf as beautiful and the can as ugly, but the river is still heading for some nasty rapids.
To shift analogies, my “slippery slope argument” is not that there is a steep narrow toboggan-run leading from gay marriage directly to paedophilia. No-one may actually think “Hey, we’ve legalised one, why not legalise the other?”. Someone might come up with the idea of legalising paedophilia completely independently, without even thinking about gay marriage. But he would do so for the same reason as those who promote gay marriage, because he’s reading from the same revolutionary liberationist narrative that characterises modernity. In other words, the connection between the two is not so much causal as geographical — however far apart they might be, they’re both points on the same wide, gently downward-sloping hill.
Now of course, you would no doubt reply that my view of reality is distorted. You would say that there is no sloping hill, just a wide-open flat plain dotted with different towns, with no one forced to visit another just because he’s visited one; that what I see as a fast-flowing river heading for the rocks is actually a placid lagoon dotted with different islands, with no-one forced to sail to any island he doesn’t like. Well, you might be right — certainly one of us isn’t seeing things as they really are! But you don’t prove my vision defective merely by pointing out that a charming rural village is quite different from an inner-city estate, or by insisting that a lush paradise island is not at all like a pile of rocks covered in guano.
I’d also like to see some evidence for this very odd claim, which is almost Santorum-esque
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_the_Netherlands
LAS VEGAS (CBS Las Vegas) – A top Hollywood director finds it acceptable for people to commit incest.
In an interview with The Wrap, director Nick Cassavetes believes no one should judge a brother and sister being with each other if they are in love.
“I’m not saying this is an absolute but in a way, if you’re not having kids – who gives a damn? Love who you want. Isn’t that what we say? Gay marriage – love who you want?” Cassavetes told The Wrap. “If it’s your brother or sister it’s super-weird, but if you look at it, you’re not hurting anybody except every single person who freaks out because you’re in love with one another.”
Cassavetes added that he does not have experience with incest.
Is there a point to all this word salad, Alex? I’m getting tired of your nonsense. Last time I looked, pedophilia was being committed by clergy, not gay people, and there didn’t seem to be an awful lot of folks around who felt energized and motivated to fuck kids(theirs or other people’s) as a consequence of watching a Mardi Gras parade.
Put up or shut up. Cheers.
Oi… Alex… you do realise that it was heterosexual marriage that has led to the calls for same-sex marriage, don’t you? And that sex led to heterosexual marriage? And that kissing led to sex? And that hand holding led to kissing? And that talking to people led to hand holding? And that looking at people led to talking to people?
Go sit quietly in a room by yourself. Otherwise you’ll be rooting an underage gay donkey before you know it.
Yes, but you omitted to mention the rather significant fact that this applies to children who are terminally ill and in extreme pain. According to your own link, it is a criterion that the patient’s suffering must be “unbearable with no prospect of improvement”.
By forgetting to include this information, you managed to make the Netherlands sound like some sort of Soylent Green-esque dystopia.
David:
you omitted to mention the rather significant fact that this applies to children who are terminally ill and in extreme pain. According to your own link, it is a criterion that the patient’s suffering must be “unbearable with no prospect of improvement”.
By forgetting to include this information, you managed to make the Netherlands sound like some sort of Soylent Green-esque dystopia.
There was no omission. I said that children aged 12 and over can consent to euthanasia in Holland; euthanasia is defined as ending life in order to relieve pain and suffering. You can be sure that if there had been some particularly egregious liberationist redefinition, eg extending it to include “psychological suffering” (a la domestic violence in the UK), I would have mentioned the fact!
Oh.
Martin:
Is there a point to all this word salad, Alex? I’m getting tired of your nonsense. Last time I looked, pedophilia was being committed by clergy, not gay people, and there didn’t seem to be an awful lot of folks around who felt energized and motivated to fuck kids(theirs or other people’s) as a consequence of watching a Mardi Gras parade.
Put up or shut up. Cheers.
Did you miss the bit where I said there was no reason to suppose homosexuality leads to paedophilia? I’ve never suggested homosexuals are more likely to be paedophiles than heterosexuals. What I am suggesting is that the sort of culture which permits, celebrates and normalises homosexuality is more likely to eventually permit, celebrate and normalise paedophilia. I guess that was the point of the ‘word salad’.
As for your gratuitous remarks about the clergy, I hate to break it to you but “clergy” and “gay people” are not mutually exclusive categories.
As I understand it, the vast majority of clerical sex abuse cases do not involve prepubescent children. They involve adolescents.
Therefore we’re not talking about paedophilia. We’re talking about ephebophilia.
Not all homosexuals are ephebophiles.
Not all ephebophiles are homosexuals.
However, as I understand it, the vast majority of clerical sex abuse cases involve adolescent boys.
Therefore we’re talking about homosexual ephebophilia.
Therefore it is legitimate to link the clerical sex abuse scandals with homosexuality.
I could be wrong, of course. If you can provide evidence that the vast majority of clerical sex abuse cases involve prepubescent children of both sexes, then I will retract what I’ve just said.
Put up and I’ll shut up. Cheers.
+ + +
Timaahy:
Oi… Alex… you do realise that it was heterosexual marriage that has led to the calls for same-sex marriage, don’t you?
You mean sort of like how the Mass led to the Black Mass?
Which makes you an idiot, and a homophobe. In other words, I don’t want you here. Please refrain from commenting here again, or I will ban you.
“a homophobe”
You’re right – I am a homophobe. With some people it’s cats … with others it’s enclosed spaces … with me it’s homosexuals. I suffer panic attacks every time I see one. It’s a psychological condition (probably with a genetic component), not a deliberate choice.
Goodbye Alex.