The Slippery Slope

Apr 03, 2023

Yesterday The American Thinker published an article by an author who was prompted by the transgender terror attack on the Christian school in Nashville. The author, Sha'i ben-Tekoa, was prompted by the attack—but not for the first time—to examine the slippery ideological slope that has America on an ever downward trajectory. As regular readers will be aware, I’m a firm believe in the principle of the slippery slope—the principle that the logic of ideas, once accepted, will be worked out to their most extreme consequences. Unless rejected in principle. This, I have argued, is the fatal flaw of classical liberalism and libertarianism, which deprives its adherents of the philosophical principles that would defend against the consequences of these harmful ideas.

The first article appeared in 2020, itself an indication of how fast events are moving and of the powerful force of of destructive ideologies to disarm the opposition of seemingly normal people:

America’s Two Plagues

About Plague No.1, … COVID-19, this writer has nothing to add ... But there is a second plague not talked about, albeit a non-biological, psychological one that is no less a threat to society, evidence of which appeared on Friday when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she agreed with President-elect Biden’s plan to force public schools and colleges to let “transgender” males play on girls’ sports teams, use their locker rooms and, really, all-female restrooms in Federal buildings.
...
This is a sexual craziness with roots in the roaring 1920s of F. Scott Fitzgerald, but which really took off in the 1960s with the invention of the birth prevention pill that changed the relationship between men and women as never before since the Garden of Eden. It led to a cascade of social disasters.
The Pill led to mass fornication (a word never heard anymore) as never before. It led to increased adultery, to no-fault divorce, and to a country-wide landscape littered with broken families.
The Pill and related contraceptive technologies severed the biological connection between procreation and the pleasure of procreation. This was the sin of the men of Sodom and Gomorrah: ...
The Pill led to Women’s Liberation, which in practice meant liberation from being a woman, a human with a womb/a womb-man, the female’s unique capability to give birth and become a mother. ...
The Pill separated the pleasure from procreation, which the homosexuals jumped on and used to make the case that as “straights” now also engaged in sex for pleasure, why not them? The old Biblical taboo on sodomy was discarded as passé.

Three years later, yesterday, the author expanded on this thesis:

It All Began With the Pill

The author sketches out the downward trajectory of the slippery slope in even greater detail (far more than I excerpt):

If you want to know the origin of today’s sexual madness—”What’s your pronoun?” “Men can get pregnant.” Little boys get castrated; pubescent girls undergo double mastectomies, and drag queens entertain American kindergarten kids.—it all began with the Pill ...
The Pill’s advent ignited a tsunami of fornication, a.k.a. premarital sex and adultery, that led to a further tsunami of millions of couples divorcing, the invention of no-fault divorce, millions of tears, and millions of broken families.
“Women’s Lib” was followed in 1969 by “Gay Lib,” ... The sodomites said, “You are just like us now, so you have nothing to criticize us for.”
This led, by 1972, to the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removing homosexuality from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The thinking was that, if the sodomite is happy with his deviance, and supports himself with a steady job, who is to say this is a mental disorder?
In a chain of events going directly back to the Pill, we now have the appearance on elementary school library bookshelves of “gay” pornography, tampon dispensers in the boys’ room, and a female Supreme Court justice who does not know [what] a woman is ...
The Pill led to sexual abandon reminiscent of a leak in a nuclear reactor. Nuclear energy is the best, cleanest, and most productive of all energy sources, but it needs a containment facility that, when breached, can lead to massive destruction and death.
There is also a connection between the loss of a sense of right and wrong in matters of sex, and right and wrong in other activities, ...

I highly recommend a perusal of the comments to the these articles. It’s edifying to see people waking up to what has happened.

In fairness, it should be pointed out that the encyclical letter Humanae Vitae foresaw the dangers in the pill, while perhaps not realizing the extremes to which it would lead:

But the most remarkable development of all is to be seen in man's stupendous progress in the domination and rational organization of the forces of nature to the point that he is endeavoring to extend this control over every aspect of his own life—over his body, over his mind and emotions, over his social life, and even over the laws that regulate the transmission of life.
...
The question of human procreation, like every other question which touches human life, involves more than the limited aspects specific to such disciplines as biology, psychology, demography or sociology. It is the whole man and the whole mission to which he is called that must be considered: both its natural, earthly aspects and its supernatural, eternal aspects. And since in the attempt to justify artificial methods of birth control many appeal to the demands of married love or of responsible parenthood, these two important realities of married life must be accurately defined and analyzed. This is what We mean to do ...
Marriage, then, is far from being the effect of chance or the result of the blind evolution of natural forces. It is in reality the wise and provident institution of God the Creator, whose purpose was to effect in man His loving design. As a consequence, husband and wife, through that mutual gift of themselves, which is specific and exclusive to them alone, develop that union of two persons in which they perfect one another, cooperating with God in the generation and rearing of new lives.
...
In the light of these facts the characteristic features and exigencies of married love are clearly indicated, and it is of the highest importance to evaluate them exactly.
This love is above all fully human, a compound of sense and spirit. It is not, then, merely a question of natural instinct or emotional drive. It is also, and above all, an act of the free will, whose trust is such that it is meant not only to survive the joys and sorrows of daily life, but also to grow, so that husband and wife become in a way one heart and one soul, and together attain their human fulfillment.

Yes, so much has been lost. And seemingly normal people have been left largely defenseless to the onslaught. They have been corrupted intellectually by the temptation of liberalism’s promise—Ye shall be as gods. A law unto yourselves. You shall decide good and evil for yourselves. And who can deny that moral standards have plummeted in every aspect of public and private life?

While conducting a variety of searches on this topic, I came across a Catholic site that focused especially on the effects of all this on women, and brings us up to date:

At the End of the Slippery Slope

It began with the Pill.
Sex became separated from reproduction. …
Abortion logically followed. The argument went that, when contraceptives failed, women had the right to kill their unborn babies. …
… Studies have shown that nearly 70% of all women obtain abortions because their partners expressly or implicitly pressured them to do so, and nearly 90% would not have obtained an abortion if their partner would have supported them and their baby. …
With the legalization of civil marriage for same-sex couples came the acceptance of two women or two men as parents of a child.
…
Now we have the transgender movement: the end result of the slippery slope.
With reproduction no longer tied to biological sex, why does biological sex matter?
…
Like a snowball getting larger as it rolls down the hill, men’s gains from the Pill onward only increased until, finally, they have won all through the transgender game. Men who wish to become “trans women” only need to suppress their testosterone (over 70% of men have no surgery at all), yet still, have much more than women will ever have. Thus “trans women” are larger, louder, bolder, bigger, and dominant, sometimes dangerously so, but always unfairly.
…
The defeat seems to be complete. Women went from being asked to give up their dignity and their bodies to give up their entire existence as females.
Worst of all, we women are expected to be celebrating this. …