When homosexual "marriage" became legally recognised there were tears of joy. At last true love would be acknowledged and respected. Christians and others were not amused. They prophesied that before long the state would be recognising all sorts of relationships as marriage--thereby making the institution eventually empty of significance, meaning, and power.
Nah. Don't be stupid, crowed the foolish and naive. Slippery slope arguments lack logical force.
But there are a couple of little devils in this particular slippery slope that give it both logical force and societal potency. In the case of homosexual "marriage" there have been been two suppressed premises driving the argument. The first is that "true love" cannot be denied. In the end, marriage in this view is the willful union of people. Therefore, whatever may be the object of love, by virtue of its being loved, it justifies--nay demands--that society recognise the existence of a marriage, and provide legal sanction and recognition of it. If it does not, it fails to recognise the human rights of the "true lover".
The second assumption is that marriage, like all existence, is evolving, developing and changing. Therefore, we must expect, look for, and co-operate with the constant flux of existence in the way we recognise marriage (and all things for that matter.)
Yup. The Christians were right. Within just a few weeks of homosexual "marriage" being recognised by the Supreme Court of the United States, we read the following in Slate:
The Supreme Court’s recent 5–4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges legalizing same-sex marriage across the United States has already spawned speculation
about “what will be next” in expanding marital rights. As the Supreme
Court noted, “[t]he history of marriage is one of both continuity and
change. That institution … has evolved over time.” Interracial marriage,
equality between husband and wife, and same-sex marriage were all
excluded for long periods of time under our Constitution but now have
been sanctioned and protected by the courts. While these changes have
come slowly, and courts are unlikely to take the next step in expanding
marital rights for some time, the courts are probably not finished
expanding the legal definition of marital rights.
The author, Gary Marchant doffs his hat to the evolutionist presuppositions underlying the argument. As long as evolutionism remains in place as a fundamental gestalt of the Western world, marriage will become a wax nose in the hands of society and the authorities. It will be bent and twisted into whatever shape and form the lusts of the day demand.
As with homosexual "marriage", societial practice is already way down the road. The demands for legal recognition will fast follow.
A New York Timesop-ed
published shortly after the Supreme Court’s same-sex decision said that
the court’s logic could eventually lead to recognition of polygamy or
plural marriages, an argument also made by Chief Justice John Roberts in
his dissenting opinion. This slippery-slope argument has also been used to contend that the court’s decision will open the door to legal recognition of bestiality or incest.
Robot-human marriages might be next on the list. Probably not soon, admittedly, but it nevertheless will be an inevitable part of our future.Indeed, some critics of same-sex marriage, including some conservative Christian opponents
of gay marriage, have argued that the court’s recognition of same-sex
marriage would inevitably lead to robotic-human marriages. There has
recently been a burst of cogent accounts of human-robot sex and love in
popular culture: Her and Ex Machina, the AMC drama series Humans, and the novel Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
These fictional accounts of human-robot romantic relationships follow
David Levy’s compelling, even if reluctant, argument for the
inevitability of human-robot love and sex in his 2007 work Love and Sex With Robots.
If you don’t think human-robot sex and love will be a growing reality
of the future, read Levy’s book, and you will be convinced. Or just look at the marketplace. Sex “dolls”
have become more and more realistic in appearance and touch, and one
company recently announced that it was developing a sexbot with
artificial intelligence that can talk back and express emotions.
As Levy points out, the first to explore and benefit from robot-human
sexual relationships may be individuals with physical or psychological
impairments that limit their ability to have sex with other people.
Marchant then grounds his argument upon the second suppressed premise, making it explicit.
If humans want it, if a human chooses to love a robot or his tractor or her cat and demands that society recognise the relationship as "marriage" it is their right to do so, and society is bound to recognise their choice. Otherwise, their happiness will be incomplete. They will be discriminated against, made second class citizens, etc.
Marchant goes on to link the two driving assumptions undergirding Western culture and argues that it is inevitable that marriage to a robot will be eventually recognised.
From a strictly legal perspective, therefore, the court’s decision in Obergefell
contains arguments and dicta that could be used to make the case for or
against robot-human marriage. Of course, as a practical matter, the
legal legitimacy of robot-human marriage is not going to be recognized
anytime soon. Most people (including judges) presumably think
robot-human relationships are absurd and twisted. But that was once also
the case for interracial marriage and same-sex marriage. Of course
those advances involved sanctioning the love and relationship of two
human beings, regardless of their race or sexual preferences, which is
arguably quite distinct from recognizing human-machine marriage. But as
robots become more and more humanlike in their appearance and behavior,
this distinction may eventually erode away. [Emphasis, ours.]
The Supreme Court itself recounted the long, difficult road
to get to the point where the law (and most of society) could now
recognize same-sex marriage. First, advocates had to overcome the
classification of same-sex relations as an illness. Then they had to
declassify it as a crime. And then finally—after countless referenda,
legislative debates, grass-roots campaigns, studies, popular and
scholarly writings, and lawsuits—the right to marry people of the same
sex was finally legally recognized.
The path to recognition of robot-human marriage is likely to
be equally, if not more, lengthy, torturous, and contested. But as the
court emphasized at the close of its opinion in Obergefell, the
issue comes down to the “fundamental right” of a person in a free
society to choose the nature of the relationships and lifestyle they
choose to pursue, providing they do not unreasonably harm others in
exercising their choices. Robot-human marriage is not about robot
rights; it is about the right of a human to choose to marry a
robot. [Emphasis, ours.]
While few people would understand or support robot-human intimacy
today, as robots get more sophisticated and humanlike, more and more
people will find love, happiness, and intimacy in the arms of a machine.
Robot sex and love is coming, and robot-human marriage will likely not
be far behind.
This article is part of Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, visit the Future Tense blog and the Future Tense home page. You can also follow us on Twitter.
We reiterate the point we have not infrequently made in these pages. If society grounds marriage on the foundation of constant evolutionary flux, on the one hand, and a human's right to love whom they will, on the other, then the inevitable outcome is that marriage as an institution will become meaningless and without any significance. When a currency is inflated, it loses its value. Marriage will be the same.
But this will provide great tactical opportunities for the Church and Christian soldiers. The world has an Achilles heel. In order to get where it has on the issue of marriage it has had to suppress the truth; it has had to deny the God-ordained natural order. Marriage is a God-ordained and commanded and defined institution. Those society's such as ours which rebel against God's law will crumble. God's order cannot be denied successfully. It will not roll over and die. Human beings end up having to make war against themselves and society is eviscerating itself from the inside out. Against the backdrop of that black night, the light of the Gospel of Christ will shine more brightly than it has for centuries in the West.
In the ancient classical world one of the reasons the Jewish synagogues were filled with Gentile "seekers" and what the Scriptures call "devout Greeks" was that the pagan classical world had become so gross and depraved and without hope, that people sought for truth and hope within the synagogues. These were the people who responded eagerly to the Gospel when it was first proclaimed to them. We are confident the same pattern will be repeated in the West. Evil always integrates into the void.
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