Albert Mohler makes a fantastic slippery slope assertion against same gender relationships. The next thing is…polyamory! Those who oppose same-gender love assert under the presumption that a reasonable secular argument exists to which they can make appeal. After all the arguments against same gender love are not just about the Bible and Christianity, they are about the ''sanctity of marriage" or "pro-family" which is the "bedrock of American civilization." Thus, if two people of the same gender can marry, why not marry a robot, dog, or three other people? After all, same gender love will inevitably lead to that too. By the way, there is absolutely no evidence that suggests a chain of causality in which same gender love predicts even polygamy much less…robots and dogs.
The slippery slope is nonsense. If one can use that assertion, then all the assertions from atheists that Jesus must be no better than a pink unicorn that saves a bunny from a wolf is just as valid a story of salvation as Jesus – esp. if you believe with all you heart, mind, and soul that pink unicorns are real. But that foolishness aside there is a far more practical and evidential basis against the slope towards polygamy, especially in the affluent West (or North as it is).
The best social control on population growth is wealth. Once people are affluent and do not need to maximize their share of the population through reproduction, and once a certain level of existential security is reached, pro-creation slows down. This is why polygamy is seen as a continual reasonable alternative in even Christian communities in poorer nations. That is, if marriage is primarily about pro-creation. In poorer societies with lower existential security, marriage is primarily about pro-creation for without more often than not male heirs, the property and social mobility of the entire clan, family, or tribe is as risk. However, in economies that are wealthier and focus on individual wealth and property rights, the game changes.
If we assert that marriage is not about pro-creation, which is absolutely true in nations that do achieve a certain threshold of wealth and existential security, then any elimination of same gender love becomes as suspect as the civil function of polygamy. The two are more likely negatively correlated with this functionalist view, than positively correlated in the stupid assertions of many on "the right." So much for that assertion. Lets take it one step deeper now.
As social networks become more diffuse, it is more difficult to maintain the same level of salience for each relationship. As families get bigger and where geographic mobility has pulled generations of families apart, the maximal level of nurture a parent or other close adult can give a child simply must go down. This becomes even more complex in polygamous relationships where essentially bureaucratic structures need to overlay the marriage relationships in order for the husband to manage three different relationships and the relationships that form between the wives. In short a hierarchy is established. While the presence of this many adults mathematically at least, benefits the proliferation of children, to some extent, it adds level of complexities and profound stresses to manage on the union of the parents themselves. It is simply not a maximal situation for the family because it adds levels of social control in order to achieve maximal nurture which is significantly reduced.
The most organic level of maximization of nurture in a familial situation is therefore with two parents and no more than two children. Even with one man and one woman, as the maximization argument goes from those against families with same gender parents, when more than two children are brought into the family, social diffusion increases exponentially and the situation is therefore no longer maximal. So much for that argument as well.
While I am not arguing against larger families, an argument for maximization of nurture as something intrinsically prohibitive of families with same gender parents, or even ambiguously gendered parents for that matter, must also include social diffusion by increasing the size of the family network. Polygamy and large families are therefore not maximal and the former even less so due to the structures of social control that must be added in order to raise the level of maximal nurture a family can provide. This social controls are unnecessary in monogamous paired relationships and these are in fact a more organic structure to maintain – regardless of gender with respect to love and nurture of children and ones partner.
This is why the argument that ''same gender love" leads to state legitimated polygamy is false. Robots and dogs would just be a stupid idea. Although the film Blade Runner even offers a counter to that claim since the "replicants" are in many respects more humane than the human beings that created them, speculative human relationality cannot replace actual human relationality. Of course the bible does not clearly prohibit polygamy either, unless in perhaps the case of a bishop. While the comical anti-everything-but-the-sound-of-my-own-conviction Ken Silva is absolute in his utter rejection of homosexuality and all those who affirm it, the evidence is scarce both on his site of condemnation and in the scripture istself that polygamy is to be rejected in the same way. Curious position to take when all is so crystal clear and the progressive revelation of God among God's people is seemingly complete and without contradiction. This is a case when absolute ideological presuppositions crush the living revelation of God and distort the truth into a fanciful idol reflecting only the whims of the proud and haughty.
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