My apologies to readers whose childhood was deprived by an absence of Sooty and have no idea what I am talking about, but I thought this was a good illustration of the fact that there really is a slippery slope. Today Sooty would be gay, have a boyfriend and there would be no scandal. Or he would be a transgender bear.
From the BBC:
The idea to introduce a female puppet to Sooty’s children’s TV show in the 1960s was so controversial that the BBC director general had to intervene, a new documentary has revealed.
The suggestion by Sooty creator Harry Corbett caused a furore in the press, which claimed it would “introduce sex into a children’s programme”.
Your contention is that they shouldn’t have introduced a female character in the show?
A lot hinges on the intention and the semantic distinction between “girl friend”, with a space, meaning friend who is female (I use “lady friend” or “woman friend” to avoid a potential ambiguity) and “girlfriend” with its typical connotations. Italian has “amica” and “fidanza”, the latter’s original meaning of engaged now weakened to the Anglosphere’s “girlfriend”.
There appears to be some conflation of the two meanings, perhaps for polemical purposes and to allow the leavening of the mixture to allow sex – in a sense, typically journalistic, other than what a driving license authority or a biologist would mean – to be a component of the puffed-up product.
I meant “fidanzata”; “fidanza” is the adjective. Scusa, io sono un principiante 🙂
Cries of “Slippery Slope Fallacies” have become common among people agitating for the expansion of the definition of marriage, but I have found this is usually a tactic to dismiss reasonable arguments.
I have pointed it out in debate before that an actual slippery slope is not itself fallacious. In fact, it is quite reasonable to assume that taking another downward step on a dangerously unstable surface will result in plunging to one’s doom.
Mary Whitehouse saw all of this in the early 1960’s. She was laughed out of town, but her dire predictions have been realised on a scope and scale that could hardly have been imagined when television was in its infancy in the 60’s.
There is an excellent BBC dramatisation of her campaign against lapsing television standards titled “Filth”. She represents, however, a dying breed of Briton; one who believed in the community, and the English heartbeat, and working with the local vicar’s wife and MP to combat a social malaise.
These days, any would-be Mary Whitehouse would find it astonishingly difficult to enlist the support of many vicar’s wives, much less the vicars themselves in combating “filth”.
Indeed. Expressing my alarm to fellow ACoC parishioners prior to the July General Synod, I was assured not to worry, that it was “not going to happen”, that the resolution would fail because there were clear indications that it would not get the required level of support from the bishops. In attempting discourse with supporters of same-sex marriage within that same congregation, I employed a slippery-slope argument, namely that should the one-man-and-one-woman requirement be abolished then what would be the barrier to a further removal of the newer and weaker restriction to two people ? The response to that concern from those that thought that the application of the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony to two men or to two women was the next appropriate “progressive” step (in some vague way akin to the full inclusion of women, and, prior to that, the full inclusion of people of other origins, one cleric insisting that discrimination against homosexuals “was”, not similar to, but actually “was” “racism”; and vague in a Justin Trudeau “because it is 2016” feel-right way) was exactly the same words: not to worry, should same-sex marriage pass it would still be just two people, and a future extension to three or more was “not going to happen”.
It should be noted that the General Synod resolution (A051) replaced the words “a man and a woman” by “the parties to the marriage” and “husband and wife” by “the partners”, i.e. no mention of the number two. Additionally, the rubric speaks only of the application “to all persons who are duly qualified by civil law to enter into marriage”. Thus, should the polyamorists get their way, as have the homosexualists, in the secular state, the revised Marriage Canon would be no barrier to such a change being echoed in the ACoC.
Regarding the reference to Mary Whitehouse, being from there, and there at the time, I recall the derisive dismissal of her concerns. The same rhetoric of: oh, loosen up, it’s harmless, common decency will prevent things going too far, etc. But she was a prophet.
The Judaic concept of a “fence around the Torah” has some applicability here.
Good comment, and many blessings and encouragements to you as you fight the good fight.
What you describe, however, is not a slippery slope fallacy. Your critics, like most such people, who claim, “That’s a slippery slope argument” do not typically know what they are.
A slippery slope argument is only fallacious when it goes from point A to point Z without any intervening linkages being described and explained.
For instance, to say, “Taxes have increased this year. In the end they’ll take everything!” is a slippery slope argument.
Or, “Today they’re mining uranium ore. Tomorrow a nuclear holocaust will destroy the world” is a slippery slope argument form.
The argument you made is therefore a perfectly valid, logical argument because you have explained the intervening steps and how event A would lead to event B and then to C and eventually to Z. It is not, therefore, a slippery slope fallacy.
It is a great shame that those who heard your comments should glibly and foolishly dismiss your rational argument for utterly irrational ones.
In the area of marriage, the state is basically telling the church, “Follow me!”. Perhaps, some day Bishops will be appointed by the state alone.