A Slippery Slope

By Jo Meleca-Voigt on 04/09/2009 @ 01:26 PM

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Often those who oppose gay marriage use the “slippery slope” argument. If we allow people of the same gender to marry, what’s next? Might the next invitation you get be “Mr. and Mrs. Jones are proud to announce the marriage of their daughter Bethany to Fido, son of Fluffy and Spot”?

The argument continues that if the “traditional” definition of marriage is changed, there will be no way to stop the expansion of marriage to all sorts of insane couplings. How in the world does our pious society stop this insanity from spinning out of control to include the nuptials of a woman to her aloe plant?

Do these people really believe that this could happen? Do they really believe that we don’t know the difference between a human being and a plant? Did we fall asleep in science class when learning about kingdom, phylum, class, order, family and genus? It’s all a false argument meant to scare people.

There is a very simple definition of marriage that stops the ball from rolling down the so called slippery slope:

Marriage is the union between two consenting adults.

This definition not only excludes cats, chairs and ferns that can’t give consent, but it excludes the unconscionable thought of adults marrying children.

We are not people who want to throw our culture into a tailspin. We want the government to stay out of the personal choice of adults marrying each other. We want to be treated equally, not specially.

Jo Meleca-Voigt is a teacher in Greece, NY. She lives with her wife Christine and their two cats, Casey and Kennedy. She enjoys traveling and is proud of her Italian heritage.