LDS Church Supports Gay Marriage Act

[Wayward Son]

I remember 2008, when Mormons were standing on the street corners opposing Proposition 8, which would have prevented marriage licenses for gay couples.

But now, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints released a statement supporting the Respect for Marriage Act, the Congressional bill which would legislatively legalize same-sex marriage.

How times have changed (perhaps for the better). 

[cherrypoptart]

Good for y'all!

However, one thought has been itching at me for a while but there wasn't a good place here to put it out there. Until now.

And that is that we were told that passing gay marriage wouldn't be a slippery slope.

But oh was it slippery all right. Do I need to go into the details? I think it's pretty obvious. Teenage girls seeing male pipe organs in their school sauna and being told the system is working as intended. Women born women fighting and swimming and competing athletically against women with huge advantages because they were born as men. J.K. Rowling getting death threats. If anything, the ramifications of getting gay marriage were more outrageous than any of its detractors had talked about or even imagined.

The good that came from gay marriage itself can be debated or not, but I wouldn't think there is any room for debate about the fact that it ushered in massive changes to society going way beyond just gay marriage.

[Tom]

I think in order to be able to claim that legalizing same-sex marriage led to a "slippery slope" of teens identifying as transgender, you'd have to actually make some sort of connection. Is the argument that slightly reducing the civil penalties and resulting stigma associated with one sort of queerness makes other forms of queerness more acceptable when they should not be? That by no longer stoning gay people, we're much more likely to allow women into the military?

By that logic, simply asking people to not be dicks to each other is a "slippery slope."

[NobleHunter]

It's notable there's been some acrimony in the queer community over respectable gays abandoning trans people in order to make gay marriage more palatable to the straights.

[Tom]

"Once you let one thing change, what's to stop EVERYTHING from changing?!"

[Fenring]

"Once you let one thing change, what's to stop EVERYTHING from changing?!"

That in itself is not actually an irrational position to take. If you de-anchor behavior from so-called objective standards, then I think you will find it's increasingly difficult to censure anything people begin doing. That can be good and bad. But I think it's fairly self-evident that if you remove strong category boundaries in the social sphere you will necessarily get movement outside of those boundaries, in all sorts of directions.

[Tom]

Which of course means that EVERY slippery slope argument is valid.
"We let women learn to read, and NOW look at gas prices!"

[Grant]

I think in order to be able to claim that legalizing same-sex marriage led to a "slippery slope" of teens identifying as transgender, you'd have to actually make some sort of connection.

I don't think it is too much of a stretch to propose that growing societal acceptance of homosexuality and the rights of homosexuals would lead to questioning the limitations on and the rights of transsexuals.  I mean, that is kinda how it happened, historically. 

That said, it's probably too general and non-specific.  There are several cohorts that need to be designated.  There are those who were against homosexual marriage and those who were for it.  Then you split again between those who were for transsexuals' rights and those were were not.  Then how those groups have changed since, when?  From 2004 to 2015?  Then to today?  But there are obviously plenty of people around today that were against homosexual marriage in 2004 that are okay with it now, but are still against transsexual rights.  So the slippery slope doesn't seem to carry much weight.  I suppose there are some people in 2004 who were FOR homosexual marriage in 2004 and against transsexual rights back then, but have also changed their minds.  Maybe one did lead to the other.  But the logical or illogical chain of reasoning for so many people are probably varied. 

By that logic, simply asking people to not be dicks to each other is a "slippery slope."

But if this is the basis of the underlying argument, it is indeed slippery, because there are no definitions on what being a dick is, and what the limits are.  What is the difference between being a dick and being fair?  Is it never okay to be a dick? 

Whatever.  This is some dead *censored* right here.  You need some powerful spells to necro this crap.  Necronomicon stuff.

[Fenring]

If you walk among the left-activists as often as I do you'd realize quite quickly that they are almost entirely uninterested in a la carte causes as such. Meaning: it isn't that a problem is identified, we need to object to it, and when society comes around we can hang up a mission accomplished sign and say we've done a good day's work, now let's all go play softball. The mission is never accomplished, because it consists of far more than advocating for specific causes. So the gay acceptance mission, which was quite in force back in the 90's and early 2000's while it was still making headway even in regular society, came part and parcel with a general push against judging sexual choices and behaviors generally. And as we got into the 2010's, the push to normalize alternative sexual lifestyles increasingly included things like polyamory and then the issue itself of sexual orientation in the various alphabet categories. It seems weird to me that you'd supposed anything other than pushing boundaries to the side ends up pushing them aside wholesale. And it's not by accident: the program is to take apart an entire conceptual hegemony. I personally take various positions among the actual a la carte issues, but I have no problem observing that the slippery slope isn't really 'slippery', but rather an intentional part of normalizing what used to be 'fringe' or even taboo attitudes and behaviors.

[TheDrake]

The slippery slope argument is always advanced in order to justify the status quo. The status quo is preferred by people who are more or less content with the current state of affairs.

Most resistance to change is generated by fear. Fear that things might get worse. As opposed to optimism that they will get better and embracing changes. Naturally, the people who prefer to draw from the deck are ones holding a hand that needs to be improved, and the ones that think they already have a winning hand will stand pat. The resistance to change crowd is essentially saying, "I got what I need, and I'm not willing to risk it just because your hand sucks."

I'm not just talking politics. I'm talking team mascot names - well okay that somehow has become political. Uniform redesigns. Corporate rebranding - I'm talking Mr. Peanut here not Mrs. Butterworth. People who are mad because a restaurant took something off the menu that they liked. Cars that drive themselves. New math. GMOs.

They don't understand any of it, they don't want to learn new ways, they are afraid they won't be able to function, they are terrified that something could go wrong. If it was up to those people we'd never have got answering machines, plenty of people were upset to talk to a recording. They didn't know how to handle it, they felt dumb not realizing it at first, they didn't know what to say, and they sure as heck didn't want to learn how to set one up for themselves.