In The Middle Of The Slippery Slope

…But lay all that aside for now. I introduce the case because it forces us to focus on the logical implications of abolishing the conjugal understanding of marriage in our law and replacing it with the revisionist idea of marriage as sexual-romantic companionship or domestic partnership, all by judicial fiat. Here is where Professor Dworkin’s point about the centrality of principle to law has its significance for the cause of polyamory, at least for his fellow liberals who approve of the role assumed by the judiciary in cases such as Roe and Obergefell. Where the same principle requires it, he who says A must say B. And he who says that the judiciary has the power to dictate A must say that the judiciary has the power to dictate B, even if B doesn’t yet share A’s popularity and even if the people’s representatives in the legislature say no to B. The constitutional case for the judicial imposition of same-sex marriage requires belief that the Constitution—somewhere, somehow (perhaps lurking in “penumbras formed by emanations”)—incorporates the idea of marriage as sexual-romantic companionship. But if it does, then there can be no reason of principle for withholding legal recognition from the marriage or marriages of, say, Yemeni immigrants or fundamentalist Mormons who are in polygamous partnerships, or polyamorous people like the Youngs. To observe that 75 percent of the public still opposes legal recognition of such marriages is only to highlight the need for the courts to intervene to vindicate the marriage equality rights of those in multiple-party relationships—people who cannot count on their fellow citizens to treat like cases alike when it comes to sexual partnerships that they happen disapprove of on moral or religious grounds.

—Robert P. George, “Is Polyamory Next?

    Post authored by:

  • R. Scott Clark
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    R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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6 comments

  1. Why stop with Gen. 3:4-6? What about the curse that God pronounced in Gen. 3:16, “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.?” As I understand it, the root Hebrew word for “desire” is not what most “biblicists” like to think, but according to the Strong’s Concordance means “overwhelm” as in a rushing, flooded river. “Desire” is only used once again in the OT, in Genesis 4:7 where God says to Cain, “…sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” Again, an overwhelming force that Cain cannot control.

    In other words, the battle of the sexes, whether it”s the male rule over female via repression and subjection, the female response to combat back via women’s lib and the like, “gender-neutral” types to intercede in a context of “neutrality”, it’s been the same down through the centuries – a struggle to see who’s hand is at the top of the ball bat when it’s game time. While it’s more than hideous in our age, it’s still no different than it was from the beginning. We’ll not see the end of it until all the blackness of sin has been defeated and removed at the parousia.

  2. While Prof. George is correct in his assessment that the logic behind same-sex marriage justifies a “right” to polygamous marriage, the reach of his logic falls much too short. It needs to reach all the way back to ultimate questions, especially origins.

    Ultimately, same-sex marriage and the LGBT movement are the fruit of modern evolutionary pagan monism and its two-in-one (androgyny) ideal. In turn, modern Western monism is the fruit of a great cosmological shift that occurred in the seventeenth century. What the shift yielded was both an anti-supernatural and wholly naturalistic or pagan understanding of the universe, philosophy and scientific method and a secular-pagan understanding of man and politics:

    “The two occur as part of one revolution because the shift in the meaning of nature includes human nature as well.” (“Politicizing the Bible,” Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker, p. 257)

    In the classic work “Earth’s Earliest Ages” (1876), G.H. Pember (1837-1910) provides affirmation of Wiker and Hahn’s conclusions. Pember, an English theologian, said today we see men “of this nineteenth century” returning to the evolutionary and monistic occult wisdom traditions of “long past, and modern thought sustaining its flight upon the wings of ancient lore.” Almost every characteristic,

    “…. of antiquity seems to be returning. Open intercourse with demons is being renewed on a vast scale in the very heart of Christendom….numerous circles are carrying on magical practices (and the) ancient Mysteries (are being restored together with) mesmeric healings….astrology….and other practices….And, impossible as it would have seemed a few years ago, all these ‘superstitions’ are floating back….upon the tide of ‘modern thought.” They come no longer veiled in mystery, “but in accordance with the spirit of the age, present themselves as the fruit of science…progress….and evolutionary philosophy.” (Earth’s Earliest Ages, G.H. Pember, pp. 243, 245)

    Today anti-creation evolution, anti-supernatural monism, anti-two-created-sexes androgyny, and the ancient occult pagan lore undergirding all of it is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion,

    “…a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint – and Mr [sic] Gish is but one of many to make it – the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today…. Evolution therefore came into being as a kind of secular ideology, an explicit substitute for Christianity.” Michael Ruse, Professor of Philosophy and Zoology at the Univ. of Guelph, Canada

    Modernists claim scientific neutrality as a general operating assumption. Two applications of modernist thought are deconstructionism and evolution, an anti-creation account predicated upon the idea of relentless change. Evolution is an inverted exegesis that deconstructs and reduces man in the spiritual image of the Trinity to a genderless aspect of the evolving universe of matter and energy, thus it is a species of deconstructionism (destructive criticism/critical theory) and relativism.

    Deconstructionism is also a form of relativism or nihilism (meaninglessness). For more than eighty years deconstructionism has been spilling into and contaminating our moral and culture sustaining institutions from seminaries and Biblical scholarship to academia, law, media, arts, and politics, thence our minds, individually and collectively.

    Bill Cooper, author of The Authenticity of the Book of Genesis notes that for evolutionary modernists to choose to not believe the Word of God on an individual level is one thing. But in the past few hundred years the world has been witnessing a strange yet consistent phenomenon: institutionalized Biblical deconstructionism issuing in a concerted drive,

    “…on an institutional level to rubbish the Scriptures altogether. It is nothing new of course. It’s just the scale of the enterprise which takes the breath away. And it’s not just international. It’s global.” (The Authenticity of the Book of Genesis, Bill Cooper, p. 7)

    The origin of the neutrality principle is the Garden of Eden. Its’ father is the Evil One who tempted Eve to approach the question of eating from the forbidden tree in a neutral, unbiased fashion. He slyly suggested that she adopt a neutral position in order to decide who was right, God or the snake. Like modernists of our own age Eve doubted and therefore rejected God’s Word as authoritative and conclusive. As a true neutralist she determined for herself which choice to take. (Gen. 3:4-6)

    Tragically, todays’ Christian Church and Western culture have for so long been saturated with evolutionary modernist claims of scientific neutrality paired with intellectual and moral autonomy that the ungodly neutrality principle which deconstructs the Revealed Word and forbids the existence of the supernatural dimension, the fall, two sexes, immutable Truth and moral absolutes has been thoroughly ingrained in us. It is so constant and we are so accustomed to it that even within the church we fail to discern it.

  3. Rather the homosexuals took cuts in line ahead of incest and polygamy. Think C in front of A and B. Supposedly, according to one of the most recent big lies, since heterosexuals can marry whomever they want, homosexuals ought to be able to also. Otherwise it’s (omnious and big drumroll here) “Discrimination”.

    Well, the heteros really can’t, but never fear, it won’t be for long.

    As that prescient old racist Robt. L Dabney said:

    . . . an erroneous theory is never harmless. Man is essentially a logical
    creature; while capable of much shortsightedness as to the ulterior outcome
    of his own opinions, and even capable of much intentional inconsistency if
    refusing to apply them squarely, he ever tends to work out the corollaries of
    his own theories. The erroneous theory may have stopped just now at
    inoffensive measures; it will not tarry there. If it is not refuted, it will be sure
    to advance to other measures, despotic and mischievous (The Practical
    Philosophy, 1897, p. 343).

    The jive Orwellian version of “equal protection” and “due process” being what it is – an egalitarian excuse for substituting “equal outcome/results” for ‘equality before the law’ – means that the Three Stooges can not be denied their constitutional rights to marry Abbot and Costello.

    It must necessarily follow and will in the brave new arbitrary judicial idiocy that Obergefell has unleashed.

    Of course, the Puffington Host and all the usual suspects will demur and pretend shock and amazement when Curly, Moe and Larry show up in court, but count on it. It will happen in a world where you can go to jail for refusing to bake a wedding cake for homosexuals, but Planned Parenthood with impunity, can operate a biological blackmarket version of Napa Auto Parts when it comes to aborted babies.

  4. Prof. George is, of course, correct in his assessment that the logic behind same-sex marriage justifies a “right” to polygamous marriage. Nevertheless, I think that Christians across the spectrum have made a significant mistake in making this slippery slope argument. The problem is that we have frequently come across as though our real concern is the horror of polygamy to which same-sex marriage might lead rather than addressing head on the evil of same-sex marriage.

    • Agreed. We’ve continued using the “polygamous marriage” and “animal marriage” arguments as if it still had some kind of rhetorical impact.

      We’ve got to stop arguing this way. It has no effect on your typical millennial who, in my experience, simply shrugs and says, “Yeah, why not? If it makes them happy.”

  5. I think it’s worse that what Dr. George sets forth. The next one will be the sober academic studies that prove how children are very sensual, and in their own way rational, and hence should be allowed to choose to be sexually used by the adults they like (actually, those who seduce and corrupt them).

    Polygamous old-fashioned Mormons and Yemeni Muslims just aren’t popular enough with the Leftist media.

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