One show I will not be watching on TV is “Big Love.” Not that I watch must TV anyway, but, just as I shun R-rated movies, I don’t like giving money to shows that are contributing to the further degradation of traditional values in our society.
The “slippery slope” argument is not very popular in the Bloggernacle. But yet it keeps on being proven true. The argument is this: legal SSM will not stop there — it will lead to arguments for legalizing polygamy, polyamory and eventually things that are even more harmful. And this is exactly the intention of “Big Love’s” creators: to destroy traditional marriage.
UPDATE: check out this Newsweek article, which makes a direct connection between SSM, “Big Love” and the polygamy rights movement.
The following excerpt from the attached Stanley Kurtz article sums up my sentiments pretty well:
This means the real challenge we face is not from a huge, nationally based movement of so-called “Mormon fundamentalists.” (These renegade polygamists are emphatically not members of the mainstream, Mormon Church.) Instead, as in Canada, the challenge will come from a complex coalition: gay radicals who favor same-sex marriage but who also want to transform and transcend marriage itself, feminists (like Canada’s Martha Bailey) who feel the same way, Hollywood liberals like Tom Hanks (an executive producer of Big Love) who want to use the media to transform the culture, civil-rights advocates like the ACLU and ex-Humphrey aide Ed Frimage, libertarian conservatives like John Tierney and an ever-larger number of young people, fundamentalist “Mormon” polygamists, and the ever-growing movement for polyamory (which features both heterosexuals and large numbers of bisexuals), and perhaps someday (as in Canada) Muslim and other non-Western immigrants.
This complex coalition ranging from old-fashioned Humphrey-style liberals to anti-marriage feminist radicals, to libertarian conservatives, is what will power future efforts to radically deconstruct marriage. And we’re only at the very beginning of these efforts. For the most part, cultural radicals are holding back, knowing that anything they say may jeopardize the movement for same-sex marriage by validating slippery-slope fears. The remarkable thing is that, at this early stage, the radicals have forced themselves so openly into the cultural argument. That is a sure sign that if same-sex marriage were to be safely legalized nationally, the way would finally be open to a truly concerted campaign to transform marriage by opening it up to polygamy and polyamory, or by replacing it with an infinitely flexible partnership system. Whatever we’re seeing now is only the barest hint of what will happen once the coast is clear.
The excerpt ends above. For some reason I cannot format correctly the below, but it is my personal conclusion:
Facing coalitions like this, people speaking out for traditional marriage are an increasingly lonely voice. I am proud to say that my Church is one of those voices. See here and here for the official Church positions on these issues.