Slippery slopes

I’ve been hearing a lot about a slippery slope lately, mostly from people who recently were told no and predictably pitched a fit. I understand. No on likes to be told no. But I do find it rather ironic that now they are the ones concerned about slippery slopes. They’ve pretty much ignored our warnings for decades, convinced we were trying to force our beliefs on them. Now they’re trying to force their beliefs on us and, when told no, are unjustifiably annoyed.

Decades ago the “enlightened ones” decided the rest of us were far too stodgy about sex outside of marriage. “Come on, lighten up!” they told us. “It’s fun! It’s natural! Stop trying to make us feel guilty for indulging our natural selves.”

“That’s a slippery slope,” we warned. “Babies are a natural consequence of indulging your natural selves, in case you’ve forgotten. This will result in a lot more of them, unwanted, and not born into a supporting family.”

“Peace out, dudes! Make love, not war! Besides, dads are obsolete,” they told us…and went and did what they wanted.

But it wasn’t long before they were back. “Hey, we’re getting a lot of unwanted babies born to unwed mothers, who now have to wreck their plans to take care of them. This is so not cool.”

“Yes,” we told them. “We warned you about that. Are you ready to go back to discouraging unwed sex?”

“Huh? No way, you squares! We want to be able to abort those babies, don’t you know? Stop trying to kill our fun.”

“But if we make it easy to get rid of unwanted babies,” we warned them, “that will just encourage you to become even more irresponsible with the process of creating babies.”

“Enough with these kill-joy ‘slippery slope’ arguments,” they replied. “You just can’t handle that anyone else is having fun.” And off they went to do what they wanted.

But soon they were back. “Dudes, contraception and abortions are expensive. Enough of that nonsense. You pay for it. We don’t want to.”

“It’s your body, your choice, your expense,” we replied. “We warned that you would become increasingly irresponsible. Now you expect us to pay for your irresponsibility so you can continue being irresponsible?”

“Man, you’re really bumming us out, here. It’s almost as if you think we don’t deserve to have you cover our bills,” they complained. “Just fork over. We know you’ve got it.”

“That’s not the point,” we said. “It’s our money. We want to do something else with it besides paying for the mistakes we warned you not to make.”

“You’re just trying to keep us down, you sexist religious tyrants,” they griped, then went out and got their friends in government to make laws forcing everyone to pay for their contraception and abortion pills.

“Enough,” some of us said. “You know we don’t agree with abortion. The contraception we could accept, but abortion pills is going too far.” And they took it to the Supreme Court who, surprisingly, actually agreed that it was okay for some people to not pay for abortion pills.”

“Slippery slope!” they all cried. “You’re just trying to use religion to force us all back into the stone age when we weren’t allowed to have sex.”

“Riiiiiight,” we said. “None of this would have been necessary if you had just listened to us, or would at least take responsibility for your own choices. And now you complain that you’re not getting your way? That’s all you’ve gotten for fifty years, and when we try to put some limits on how much of your ‘no rules, no responsibilities’ lifestyle you can force us to pay for you scream like stuck pigs. Irresponsible leeches.”

“Enough with the put-downs, man! You’re seriously eroding our self-esteem, and thats so totally not cool. Oh, and by the way, we’re kind of annoyed with the way everyone seems to want to treat women like sex objects.”

“Huh,” we replied. “That’s a real head-scratcher. You’ve been insisting for decades that THE most important issue for women is to be able to have as much sex as they want, as often as they want, with no consequences whatsoever, but somehow people got the idea that women only exist for sex. We’re as stumped as you are.”

“We know, right? And while we’re at it, what’s with men not wanting to act like grown-ups, be responsible, and get married? Don’t they know that eventually women may get tired of sleeping with just anyone and might just want one guy to share expenses with, blame for all their problems, and keep giving them money forever if they decide to divorce the guy?”

“Uh…we…uh. Yes. Well. You’ve really stumped us there. Completely inexplicable why guys wouldn’t want that. Now please go away, and forget where we live.”