LINGLE: For those people who want to makes this into a civil rights issue, and of course those in favor of the bill, they see it as a civil rights issue. And I understand them drawing that conclusion. But people on the other side would point out, well, we don’t allow other people to marry even — it’s not a civil right for them. First cousins couldn’t marry, or a brother and a sister and that sort of thing. So there are restrictions, not to put it in the exact same category. But the bottom line is, it really can’t be a civil right if we are restricting it in other cases, and it’s been found to be legal in those other cases, that the restrictions.

Later in the segment, “Joe from Silver Spring, Maryland” called in and pointed out that in Hawaii, first cousins actually can get married. Lingle said that she had no idea whether or not that was true in the state she governs

Audio and more here. Also:

Lingle’s argument is popular with conservatives. Recently, former Arkansas governor and current Fox News personality Mike Huckabee said that legalizing marriage equality would “be like saying, well, there are a lot of people who like to use drugs, so let’s go ahead and accommodate those who want who use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, so we should accommodate them.”

However, these statements are just a “dodge” to “distract people from the injustice of denying same-sex couples the same opportunity to marry that different-sex couples want to preserve for themselves,” as Jon Davidson of Lambda Legal has written:

The problem with “slippery slope” arguments…is that they assume that society and the law can’t make distinctions between situations that are different from one another. But we can tell apples from oranges. For example, that women got the right to vote does not mean that infants are next.

I think Davidson nails it. The people who employ these sorts of arguments by and large do so cynically, knowing full well what they’re doing. Then they get picked up by ordinary citizens who hear it from Beck, or Rush, or Fox, (or presidential candidates). Such is the life cycle of an evil meme.

Davidson and others would do well to look at the history of women’s suffrage and expand that analogy. Those sorts of arguments were made all the time.

We correctly see such arguments now as on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of reality. How long is it going to take before we can also see that about homophobic arguments now?