The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

Given the far-right's rhetoric I've heard over the past few years, it's extremely difficult for me to come away surprised by a fallacy used by such individuals to discredit the LGBT community as deserving of equal rights, especially with regard to marriage. The most common fallacy used by the anti-LGBT community is that of the slippery slope: "Well, if we legalize gay marriage, then what's next? Multiple spouses? Marrying animals? Marrying a pet rock named Softy?" In saying all of that, however, I'm still shaking my head by what Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Josiah Coleman recently said about the Supreme Court's same-sex marriage ruling. "[The Supreme Court's marriage equality decision is like] a United States Supreme Court decision that held the Constitution of the United States required every household in America to own a giraffe." No, actually, it's not. In what has to be one of the most bizarre, most ridiculous quotes I...

Following the seemingly countless mass shootings and President Obama's call to strengthen the nation's gun laws, the Republican Party, led by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, has come out with an answer to gun violence. Earlier today, Huckabee led the effort by providing the following video clip on his campaign website: "As you all know, I'm a very devoted Christian man. I firmly believe the Bible is the ultimate source of truth. I'm also a firm believer in the Constitution, especially the 2nd Amendment. When I'm having a great day, I'm usually holding a rifle in one hand and a Bible in the other. Even though I'm a lover of guns and Jesus probably wasn't much of a sportsman, the thing Jesus loved yet despised even more than guns was gay people. In Leviticus, Jesus even said, 'Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,' and this brings me to the real answer, the real reason why we're seeing so many of these mass shootings. It's becaus...

While some conservatives have openly admitted that, "It's inevitable; we're going to lose the gay marriage rights battle," others continue to be in denial. One such group is the Family Research Council (FRC), which wrote the following in their daily email blast: "[There is] growing opposition [among middle-aged adults]. The gap is widening between Millennials and their Generation X counterparts. ...the children of Madonna and Ferris Bueller are noticeably more reluctant to redefine marriage than they used to be." This claim was made due to the results found in two Pew Research Center polls released in 2005 and 2015. In 2005, the gap between Millennials and Generation Xers on marriage equality was 5%, whereas that gap in 2015 is 14%. Technically speaking, the Family Research Council is accurate in their reported numbers (gaps), but they're quite inaccurate when it comes to their assertion that Generation Xers' support for same-sex marriage has d...

According to Chris Moody of Yahoo   News , Faith and Freedom Coalition founder Ralph Reed recently made the following comments during the group's "Road to Majority" conference in Washington, D.C.: "The battle looked like it was lost, but it really wasn't (the battle against slavery). And that's kind of like where we are right now. Anybody heard lately that we're losing the marriage issue? Anybody heard that argument? You notice some similarities? I'm not comparing slavery to same-sex marriage, OK? I'm just pointing out that when you have these fights, what's interesting is that if you look at same-sex marriage, it's now legal in 17 states. Only six out of those 17, six out of 50 states, had done it by referendum or by state legislature. In every other case, it was imposed by courts. Just like the courts had to impose Dred Scott. Because they couldn't do it on the country because the country didn't agree with it. The country, by t...

While the Republican Party, on the whole, disapproves of same-sex marriage, if things continue as they've been trending, it will only be a matter of time before same-sex marriage is legal across the country. This is because support for gay marriage is increasing on both sides of the political spectrum as age decreases. According to a recent Pew Research poll, while just 39% of Republicans approve of same-sex marriage, 61% of 18- to 29-year-old Republicans approve of it. That number decreases to 43% among 30- to 49-year-olds, 30% for those between the ages of 50 and 64, and just 22% of Republicans over the age of 65 approve of gay marriage. There's a similar trend with Democrats, although, the numbers are much higher among the older groups. Among 18- to 29-year-olds, 77% approve of same-sex marriage rights. This number decreases slightly to 71% support among 30- to 49-year-olds, 66% for those between the ages of 50 and 64, and 62% of Democrats over the age of 65 approve of g...

As any critical thinking professor (all seven of them) would state, the slippery slope is a fallacy, where "a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any argument for the inevitability of the event in question. In most cases, there are a series of steps or gradations between one event and the one in question and no reason is given as to why the intervening steps or gradations will simply be bypassed." In other words, if one wants to attempt making an argument without worrying about logic in any sense of the word, and sounding like an idiot in the process, the slippery slope is definitely one potential route he or she could travel. One such individual who regularly attempts to make arguments by utilizing the slippery slope is Republican Texas Representative Louie Gohmert. He's gone about arguments in such a manner so frequently during his time in politics, pretty soon those seven critical thinking professors will suddenly re-term the be...