Huckabee: Next After Legalizing Gay Marriage, Marrying Your Children or Your Dog (2004)

[TwilightGardener]

Thanks to Freepville for providing this little Santorum-like gem:

"...Huckabee said he signed the petition because other states have allowed gay marriages, which he said threatens a 5,000-year-old tradition of heterosexual marriage.

"For example, if it could be between two men or two women, could we move to the point where adults could marry children or where people could say I have a very intimate relationship - and I don't mean intimate sexually, but close relationship - with my pet, so I want to name my pet as my spouse," Huckabee said.

"There are going to be people say, 'ah, there you go, that's ridiculous,'" he said. "Fifteen years ago, 10 years ago, it would have been equally ridiculous to suggest that we would be discussing whether we were going to redefine marriage as being between two men. So it's not ridiculous."

--snip--

http://www.arkansasnews.com/archive/2004/07/07/News/252305.html

Note, however, that Huckster took great pains to define the man-on-dog marriage as NOT NECESSARILY SEXUAL, but just "intimate".

[zulchzulu]

1. I might show up outside a Huckabee rally in Iowa

Set up a marriage stand where people can marry their animals...

:rofl:

[yellowcanine]

3. Question is, is it permissible to bribe the dog with snacks to get them to say "I do"?

And if not, is it grounds for an annulment?

[TwilightGardener]

7. "Ri Roooo!"

[zulchzulu]

10. Snacks...dates under candle light... PBS animal shows... whatever...

If you love your doggie enough, it doesn't matter.

:rofl:

[TwilightGardener]

4. But then they'll qualify for legal rights and benefits! Your dog will be

able to get power-of-attorney and make medical decisions for you if you're in a coma! I know my dog, and he would probably get confused and pull the plug. With his teeth.

[zulchzulu]

12. LOL

If your dog is like mine, he wouldn't pull the plug. He would just chew it off. Maybe put your will in a pendant on the collar. Wow! New business idea!

[pingzing58]

16. Slippery Slope Fallacy (Camel's Nose)

Slippery Slope Fallacy (Camel's Nose)
there is an old saying about how if you allow a camel to poke his nose into the tent, soon the whole camel will follow.

The fallacy here is the assumption that something is wrong because it is right next to something that is wrong. Or, it is wrong because it could slide towards something that is wrong.

For example, "Allowing abortion in the first week of pregnancy would lead to allowing it in the ninth month." Or, "If we legalize marijuana, then more people will try heroin." Or, "If I make an exception for you then I'll have to make an exception for everyone."

[yellowcanine]

2. "Slippery slope" arguments are logical fallacies. Someone tell the Huckster.

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/slipslop.html

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

13. Not true. Read your own link.

"This type of argument is by no means invariably fallacious," http://www.fallacyfiles.org/slipslop.html

I'm not defending Huckabee here, I am defending the Slippery Slope as a class of argument.

Slippery slope arguments are the only reasons we have any rights at all. They are employed by the good guys in the majority of first amendment cases.

The logical fallacy in Huckabee's argument is that he promotes the category of marriage above the category of human being.

"Human being" is a far more fundamental category than "marriage," so there is not reason to expect expansions of marriage to move beyond human beings. That's a guardrail on the slippery slope.

Huckabee's argument is like saying, "If we let black people vote, what's next? Dead people voting?"

Living human and dead human are far more fundemental categories than race.

[yellowcanine]

20. I did, thanks. It says "This type of argument is (not) invariably fallacious."

Ok I guess I should have said "usually" fallacious.

"This type of argument is by no means invariably fallacious, but the strength of the argument is inversely proportional to the number of steps between A and Z, and directly proportional to the causal strength of the connections between adjacent steps. If there are many intervening steps, and the causal connections between them are weak, or even unknown, then the resulting argument will be very weak, if not downright fallacious." (my emphasis)

In other words, the more steps there are and the weaker the causality between the steps, the more likely it is that the argument is indeed fallacious.
Huckabee's argument is likely fallacious because there are a lot of steps between same sex marriage and human animal marriage and the weakness of the causality.


The reason slippery slope arguments are often fallacious is that the premise is that human beings cannot draw lines - when in fact of course we can.

Your example of "black people voting" --- "dead people voting" is actually a good example of a slippery slope argument.

You are correct that incremental change can happen of course. Rights can be taken away from one group of people at a time for example. And taking rights away from one group of people makes it easier to take rights away from another group of people. But that is true because a fundamental constitutional principle has been scrapped (equal protection under the law). Once it has been scrapped for one group, it no longer exists for anybody, because you can't have equal protection unless it applies to everyone. This is not a slippery slope, it is more like a cliff. Once we jump off of it, we are going to arrive at the bottom in short order. So in my example, once the rights have been taken from the first group, they don't actually exist for any other group either.

[Dr.Phool]

5. Looking back at some of the women I've dated,

The dog doesn't really sound like such a bad idea.

:rofl: :rofl: :popcorn: :rofl: :rofl:


Just intimately. Not sexually, I mean.

[yellowcanine]

23. I would not talk about it if I were you. And after all, if you dated them.....

Hmmm. Maybe I will let you finish that thought.

Blame it on the beer soaked haze.

[youthere]

33. My dachshund has been giving me the big eyes lately...

I thought it was because she wanted half my granola bar...

[Cameron27]

6. This guy's dangerous because he hides his bigotry

behind an 'aw shucks' style. Ma, apple pie and good old RW hate.

[TwilightGardener]

8. He's essentially saying that two men or two women marrying is only

one step away on the deviance scale from marrying your own child or an animal. He reveals himself here--he should have left it at "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman", but he likes to hear himself talk.

[Adelante]

9. Agree

I can see him being their candidate, too.

[Cameron27]

11. Same here,

he's seems closest to the knock off Reagan that the GOP's been searching for.

[Adelante]

15. Yep

Doesn't alienate the moderates, despite some RW bends in his spine, appeals to Reagan Dems, the white working class males, is religious (although not nutly), and is a "common man" type. I think it's kind of like Harry Truman, in a way, only for them, a return to what they want as normalcy. This is the guy they will want to run against Hillary, if she has the nom, too, because he presents a challenge in Arkansas for her.

[yellowcanine]

24. Dare we hope for so much. If it happens there MUST be a God.

And she is on our side.

[TwilightGardener]

26. Unfortunately, no. All he can do is damage Mittens in Iowa by making

it a close race there, and then Mittens is crippled in the other early states, thus giving the advantage to Rudy or Fred--and then they'll go into the big states (where national polls are probably more reflective of those electorates) and sew up the nom. So, while he can knock Mittens out of the running, we won't get to face him--and he's a bit of a dim bulb, whose mouth works faster than his brain. And Hillary would eviscerate him. Worst case scenario is still Rudy as nominee, I think.

[yellowcanine]

28. But could the James "I beat up wiener dogs" Dobson crowd get Huckabee to run as an independent if

the Ghoulmeister gets the nomination?

[TwilightGardener]

31. He beat up wiener dogs??? Can an entity that evil exist on this earth?

Anyhoo, they're really not that crazy about Hucky in Fundie-Leader-Land, or they would have backed him long ago. They might ask him, but since he's really vying for VP, he'd say no--much better to remain a Repub for future political gain than to blow the election for the GOPers by being a turncoat.

[yellowcanine]

32. He beat up his wiener dog Siggie and brags about it in a book. Link.

http://www.geocities.com/cddugan/DobsonsDog.html

He was trying to break the will of the dog - a technique he also recommends for raising children.

[TwilightGardener]

37. Jesus--beating a dog with a belt, and then wondering why the little

dog was defending itself (I guess it didn't want to die!). What a fucking nutjob. The commentary of the article was spot-on. Authority and discipline for its own sake, not because it necessarily makes sense in any particular context--pretty much sums up his child-rearing advice.

[Deep13]

14. 15 years ago I was suggesting same-sex marriage.

Specifically, I argued that there was no real reason to oppose it. Naturally, that meant I must be gay myself.

[pingzing58]

18. I advocate this for family members who have life long companions and live away from home.

I would like to suggest that since we still live in a Victorian style fundi society who don't talk about sex that "same SEX couples" be called same gender relationships or couples. I know it's not popular but just wanting to move the conversation away from people's dirty imagination about sex to the human relationship, friendship or life long companionship. Just saying.

[LeftishBrit]

17. I'd rather marry my dog than someone like Huckabee!

[trusty elf]

19. That reminds me of an article from "News Hounds" ! ! !

http://www.newshounds.us/2005/05/06/bizarre_sex_habits_of_the_extreme_rightwing.php

[yellowcanine]

21. Neal Horsley: "... When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule."

I love it the way these wingnuts try to pass off their perversions as the human experience.
I would venture to say that most Georgia farm boys would be startled at the notion.

I grew up in Pennsylvania and we gossiped about the guy at our high school who screwed a heifer but that didn't mean that we all did the same. Anyway we were more curious at the mechanics of the act than anything. Speculating on that generated a great deal of hilarity as I recall.

At least we know where some of these wingnuts are coming from.

[trusty elf]

25. I couldn't help thinking that your last sentence had a typo.

You should have left out the "from" ! ! !

[yellowcanine]

27. You are a naughty person.

[riona]

22. Honestly! Liberals will marry anything that moves.

:rofl:

[tomreedtoon]

29. The difference between Democratic and Republican pet owners.

Democrats want to marry their pets. They really do. Read some of the soppy comments about The Cutest Cat In The World in most of the posts here.

Republicans, on the other hand, enslave their pets. They teach their dogs to attack people of color, and they throw their clawed feral cats into the faces of poor people and sick children.

Neither one of these is appealing to me. I'm allergic to and frightened of all domesticated animals. But I know which group I dislike more.

[incapsulated]

30. lol!

:D

[yellowcanine]

34. Yep. I give you James Dobson, wiener dog abuser.

http://www.geocities.com/cddugan/DobsonsDog.html

[youthere]

35. oh yes, lord knows theirs just millions of people screaming for the right to marry their schnauzers.

because they want their dogs to have the right to make medical decisions for them.jeebus! where the hell do these right wing idiots come from?

[TwilightGardener]

39. There must be a pent-up societal demand for "humanimal" marriages

that I was not aware of--Huckster is obviously afraid of the inevitable high divorce rate that will ensue when Rover cheats and humps everything in sight, or becomes a promiscuous butt-sniffer.

[codjh9]

36. God how f-ing stupid

[Didereaux]

38. It;s Arkansas folks, Huckabees Grandmother was a Suffolk n/t

[boobooday]

40. The Shaggy/Scooby--Doo reception

would be real groovy!

[TwilightGardener]

41. Hold on there--slippery slope. Huckabee is NOT ready for HOMOSEXUAL man-dog marriages.

That's another 10 or 15 years after HETERO man-dog marriage, at least. Don't get ahead of yourself.