How long does it take to get to the bottom of a slippery slope?  While the answer to that question depends on the issue and your definition of the “bottom”, the Netherlands is conducting tests to help answer that question where it concerns the sanctity of life and marriage.

Within the past month we’ve seen news out of Europe’s most progressive state demonstrating their acceptance of polygamous homosexual civil-unions and the euthanasia of new-born children with disabilities.  How did they get to this point?

The Dutch journey towards the destruction of marriage began when they legalized homosexual civil unions in 1998.  This was then followed in a mere three years time by the legalization of homosexual marriage and adoption of children.  Now, just four years later, they passed another threshold when they certified the civil union of one man and two women.  Currently, their marriage laws, (such as they are), don’t allow polygamy, but the civil union laws do – and now they have their first gay polygamous union to show for it.

The “husband” in this arrangement explained that a fourth person would not be allowed into the relationship, as they wanted to take their union “seriously”.

Now that polygamous civil unions have been accepted can anyone doubt that polygamous marriage will be far behind?  They have gone from the top of the slope with traditional marriage to their current position in just seven years.   And given what they’ve allowed thus far, and the logic they have used to rationalize it, how could they justify slowing the wheels of “progress”?

And in such cases, who do the children belong to?  The goal (or direction) would seem to be to eliminate marriage altogether, along with any notions of parentage or parental rights.  Why not just pass a law saying that everyone is married to everyone and be done with it?  Then everyone would be free from condemnation and we cold have the purely amoral socialist utopia these folks have been dreaming of.  And only the fit will be allowed to be born and to live in this perfect world – so long as everyone wants them to.

So where are we on the slope?  ____ states have already legalized civil unions, and last year Massachusetts’ state Supreme Court forced gay marriage on that state without so much as a vote of the people.  And now many of those couples are returning home to sue other states to recognize their arrangements.  The US Supreme Court will take the case up soon no doubt.

Currently even one of our own US Supreme Court members has suggested such arrangements should be legal.  Her former employer, the ACLU, has even suggested that polygamy is a “fundamental right” and has defended pedophelia (?).

According to Justice Scalia, the 2004 Lawrence vs. Texas decision, which struck down that state’s anti-sodomy law, opened the door for gay marriage and polygamy.

On the issue of the sanctity of life, the Dutch has done no better.  In 2001 they began with purely voluntary euthanasia for people that were terminally ill, but moved rapidly to expanding the franchise to those who were disabled.  By 2004 they had moved to the euthanasia of disabled and terminally ill newborn babies and granted twelve-year olds the right to assisted suicide without parental consent.  In addition, they began allowing the euthanasia of the terminally ill who were mentally incapable of deciding for themselves whether they wanted to live or die.

Hospitals have also petitioned the government to allow the killing of terminal infants and  young children, as well as the severely mentally retarded.  They have also pushed ahead with establishing guidelines to euthanize newborns that are determined to be in paid associated with incurable diseases or severe physical deformities.  So now you could say we’ve reached the point of “fourth trimester” abortions, or even “post-birth” abortion.

Given the rapid progress science is making in the field of genetics, how long until perfectly healthy children are subject to abortion or “mercy killing” due to detected genetic proclivity towards some specific illness?

Once you accept the arbitrary justification that it’s OK to kill a child when it’s on one side of the birth canal, it becomes merely a matter of time before progressive logic rationalizes doing so on the other side.

Life has become so cheap under this new regime that millions of Dutch citizens have taken to wearing bracelets indicating their desire NOT to be euthanized.  Kind of like a perverted version of the Medic-Alert bracelet.

The infection of disrespect for life has spread to other countries.  Lawmakers in Belgium have even considered a measure to expand euthanasia to allow for the killing of children against the wishes of the parents.  Just this year in Great Britain, we have the case of a court ordered “mercy killing” were the parents of a brain damaged child lost an appeal to have their daughter resuscitated if she were to stop breathing.

This from countries that claim the death penalty for murderers is inhumane.

Within our own country, we first had Roe in 1973 which supposedly on legalized abortion up to the second trimester, but it routinely takes place beyond that point.  And now, in recent years, we’ve been faced with the partial-birth abortion procedure; a procedure which the Congress and President moved to eradicate, but the courts have again intervened.

Even today, prospective parents of children with disabilities here in America are getting subtle (and sometimes more direct) pressure from doctors to have an abortion.  In a recent study, mothers-to-be of children with Downs Syndrome reported that their physicians were overwhelmingly negative during their pregnancy, often advising abortion.

Giving the rising cost associated with health care, soon the arguments will no longer even pretend to revolve around the “choice” of the patients, or the parents in the case of children, but rather will be about who is fit or even worthy to live.  Hard to imagine?  Twenty years ago, I’m sure it would have been hard to imagine, much less convince someone we would be were we are today; sliding faster and farther down the slippery slope.

Once society starts down such slopes, how does it stop?  And where?  And what rationale do we use to defend stopping at any certain point against those who demand we go farther?

Like the cheap ‘70’s sci-fi flick “Logan’s Run”, we’ll all be genetically engineered (or selected) to be healthy and pretty, live in a marriagless, parentless, society with guiltless pleasure; but when we turn thirty, it will be our duty to society to allow ourselves to be snuffed out to avoid being a burden.  Ah, brave new world.

For years liberals have been fostering the perception that “values voters” (alternately known as “cultural conservatives” and/or the “religious right”) are somehow new to our American political system.  As if their presence among us is the result of an “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” type scenario.  The simple truth is that these voters have been here all along.

But the liberal vitriol is there.  Especially among the press which, as numerous studies have demonstrated, is more liberal and Democratic in their sympathies.  Gary Wills likened such voters to Al Qaeda in a NY Times article.  Carl Bernstein claimed that minority religious groups were trying to impose (emphasis mine) values on a secular country.  And ABC’s Carole Simpson said that the election results reflected a triumph of the stupid.  How un-biased of her.

“Values voters” exist simply because they see their values as being threatened.  The more they see the threat, the greater their intensity of opinion for their values.  The greater their intensity, the greater their level of support for conservative political candidates and, more often than not, the Republican Party.

This heightened level of support for Republicans has coincided with 1) the rise of the liberal counter-culture and its attacks on traditional mores, 2) the Democrat Party’s embrace of (and/or cooption by) that counter-culture and 3) the rise of the Republican Party to majority status – especially in the South. 

At what point, mathematically speaking, does this trend become complete and there are no more “values voters” to bring into the GOP?  What are the largest possible majorities in American politics, as far as issues and values are concerned?  What is the largest possible coalition of such groupings that can be assembled and co-exist within one party and maintain a relatively common agenda? 

Those are all good questions but one thing is certain, recent electoral victories and exit polls indicate that we are nowhere near maxing out the possibilities.   

What we are seeing is the political alignment (albeit in slow motion) of all the various strains of conservatism under one political roof.  Loosely this includes “economic”, “social” and now “cultural or values” conservatives.  Some fit neatly into one category or another, perhaps holding more liberal views on other issues.  A great number of them however, perhaps a majority, could be said to fit into all three camps.   

The movement of “values” conservatives solidly into the Republican camp (and their abandonment of the Democrats, especially across the once “solid south”) is the finishing touch to that alignment.  And they are, by all indications, the most “intense” of conservatives in terms of their willingness to either embrace or reject a candidate purely on the basis of “their” issues, (such as abortion, gay marriage, etc.). 

If there is a potential cloud on this horizon it is likely to be the issue of immigration, which seems to be the only issue that could generate enough intensity to cut across some of the pre-existing political fault lines – dividing even within strains of conservatism itself. 

Groupings in politics are created by political fault lines.  In the twentieth century, these were mostly of an economic nature.  The percentage of the electorate on either side of such a fault line changes with the “location” of the fault, (equitable to the relative positions of the political parties on the issues).   

Entirely new fault lines can arise with the prominence of a new set of issues.  Civil rights and the liberal counter-culture of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s produced the fault line of “social issues”.  The rise of secular liberalism and the attacks on deeply held religious beliefs by our court system, (such as abortion, school prayer and marriage), gave rise to “values issues”.  These two new fault lines cut across the pre-existing ones.   

The more prominent the fault lines of social and values issues become, the larger a percentage of Americans begin to move towards one side and away from the other.  

The new Pew Center study bares that out.  It notes that wealth is no longer the political predictor it used to be.  Indeed, in many ways, the “elites” of the Democrats are equally as affluent as Republicans.  Meaning people are casting ballots based less on money and more on social and cultural issues.   

Some still claim a Democrat party identification, yet split their tickets between parties.  Some vote for Republican candidates more often than not, especially on the national level.  And slowly, but surely, many continue to switch parties entirely. 

The University of Akron’s National Survey on Religion in Politics demonstrates that, since 1992, as various religious groupings of Americans have become more conservative they have also become more Republican. 

The current incarnation of the GOP and its platform represent a complete blue-print for a long-term majority party, but it is an incomplete structure.  There are more conservatives of all stripes who have yet to move to the GOP side of the line.  This trend has much more room to grow.  And it’s the cultural issues that will get it done.