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demands for lesbian and gay equality, if not as overtly hostile as their counterparts
in the US. This distinction between branches of North American conservatism can be
seen as reflecting the economic focus of Canadian conservatives, in contrast to the
more explicitly moral conservatism that prevails in the United States (Adams, 2004).
However, so-called ‘slippery slope’ arguments have been heard in the UK, Canada
and the US alike, with legal recognition as a focus for highly stigmatising assertions
that seek to maintain the exclusion of same-sex couples. ‘Slippery slope’ arguments
are commonly deployed by conservative opponents to same-sex marriage to claim
that this will open the door to polygamous, incestuous and bestial marriages
(Johnson, J. L. B., 1997). John Witte Jr. (2003) is typical of this school of thought,
though if such a thesis is to be believed, the slippery slope surely began with
heterosexual marriage. Either way, the purported equivalence between
homosexuality, polygamy, incest and bestiality delivers an explicitly stigmatising
political message. Consultations on marriage equality in Scotland in 2011 and
England and Wales in 2012 appear to have sparked off a minor re-enactment of the
culture wars. Slippery slope arguments have lent an alarmist tone to parliamentary
debates on same-sex marriage, with Dr. Matthew Offord, MP for Hendon, asking in
December 2012 if the government was planning to introduce other forms of
marriage, such as polygamy, alongside same-sex marriage (Wintour, 2012).
With regard to policy choices, courts in Canada and California have explicitly rejected
as insufficient the UK’s approach in setting up a parallel status to marriage. The
positions of the courts in Canada and California appear to concur with Mello’s (2004)
assessment of marriage-like statuses as compounding the secondary status of samesex
relationships and maintaining heterosexist power relations. At the same time,
Lewin’s assessment of same-sex marriage as, ‘a moving target’ (2008, p. 777),
appears entirely appropriate, certainly in California and the UK, with challenges to
Proposition 8 and DOMA to be heard by the US Supreme Court during 2013 and
governments in the UK actively proposing marriage equality.
Conclusion
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