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Is the slippery slope really a fallacy?
A story from Canada today that, by its very nature, maximizes heat. I will try to keep my own emotions about this story in check. Sitting at the intersection of gay rights, abortion rights, surrogacy rights, and ultimately the violence upon which all government force is founded, I bring you: Couple sues surrogate who refused to abort their baby over a minor birth defect
https://nypost.com/2026/07/14/world-news/couple-sues-surrogate-who-refused-to-abort-their-baby-over-a-minor-birth-defect/
Long story short, the baby had a minor heart defect
(the article doesn't specify what)and a cleft palate, and the adoptive men wish their now two year old child had been murdered and are suing the birth mother for failing to do so (there are also claims that she failed to keep them informed in a timely manner about these issues). Last I'll say of my own emotions on this is that this strikes me as outright demonic behavior and if I say anything more about my feelings I'm going to drift into fedposting so I'll stop here.The main point I can take away from this is that all of the Christian right that warned about various slippery slopes have been validated over, and over, and over again. The slippery slope is technically a fallacy, yes. But Christians repeatedly pointed out "There is no limiting principle here, and the arguments you nake to support degenerate behavior X are just as applicable to degenerate behaviors Y and Z and there is nothing except public sentiment (and not even that if a judge somewhere says otherwise) preventing the awful things we're talking about from becoming reality."
For those who lived through the culture wars over abortion, gay rights, and similar issues, have your feelings on the matter changed in anyway whatsoever over the last decade or two, and in which direction? And why, if you're able to articulate. For me at least, to quote the meme an old friend shared in our edgy groupchat the other day, "Upon further consideration I have decided to become more extreme in my religious beliefs".
Short answer: yes, of course. The slippery slope argument says that violating one principle will cause further violations of that principle. In this case, you have two separate principles which can be violated independently.
Arguing that violating one will make more opportunities to violate the second is a utilitarian approach, not a slippery slope.
Longer answer: I think the NYPost is a trash outlet and I don’t want to slog through their coverage, so I’m going to assume it’s perfectly fair and accurate. Please forgive me if I get the details wrong.
No, they don’t. They wish she didn’t exist, which sometimes but not always implies murder. In your model, fulfilling that wish would have required murdering the fetus. In their model, it did not. I can’t stress this distinction enough.
Thank you for not fedposting, by the way.
Could you elaborate? From where I’m standing, this incident wasn’t caused by leniency higher up the slope. If Canada executed all its gays instead of letting them adopt surrogates, it wouldn’t have mattered. Straight couples are perfectly capable of violating a second, separate principle about the moral value of the fetus. The same judge would (probably) make the same decision. Conversely, you could win that battle regardless of your principle on homosexuality. The two are not on the same slope.
I guess so? I gained political awareness in the pre-Obergefell era, and viewed the situation with a typical teenage self-assurance. The outgroup were obviously picking on gays because they felt threatened, maybe closeted, right? But they were already losing out, and it was firmly not my problem.
Now I’ve seen the culture wars metastasize, polarize, accelerate the discovery of new and exciting ingroups and outgroups. I think that attacking homosexuality has gotten more politically useful even as Americans have, as individuals, gotten more tolerant. So I suppose I’ve become more inclined to argue (and vote) for gay rights.
ಠ_ಠ
I strongly disagree with your stress, this is a distinction without a difference. And those worthless wastes of constituent parts are almost certainly unable to elucidate why that distinction matters.
I am sure the victims of the Aztecs were overjoyed to know that per the beliefs of the priests, it was a moral necessity to cut out their hearts.
If I'm ever attacked, I'll be sure to ask the person if they believe murder is wrong, and if they don't then I'll just have to lay down and take it.
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