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Thursday, July 03, 2014

Is Hobby Lobby a "slippery slope"?


One of the dumber objections to the Hobby Lobby ruling, an objection that's mindlessly repeated by various opponents, is that it creates a "slippery slope" precedent. It doesn't even occur to liberals who raise this objection that slippery slope objections don't select for liberal ideology. Both sides use slippery slope arguments. 

Take a stock objection to homosexual social policy: if you decriminalize sodomy, the next step is a right to homosexual marriage, then polygamous or incestuous marriages, then pederasty. That's a conservative slippery slope argument. And, as a matter of fact, that prediction is coming to pass.

By the same token, it doesn't occur to critics of the Hobby Lobby ruling that there's also a slippery slope argument regarding invasive gov't. That had SCOTUS ruled the other way, that accelerates the momentum towards a totalitarian state. 

1 comment:

  1. "By the same token, it doesn't occur to critics of the Hobby Lobby ruling that there's also a slippery slope argument regarding invasive gov't. That had SCOTUS ruled the other way, that accelerates the momentum towards a totalitarian state."
    Good point.

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