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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5198 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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For what it's worth, I was describing a position, not advocating one myself.

Personally I agree entirely with the conclusion that marriage was destroyed or degraded long before this particular issue emerged. I am not therefore sympathetic to same-sex marriage, though I note in that linked post that it's probably 'good policy', but I do think that the argument about SSM specifically is missing the deeper point.

From the comments of "The Argument from Cultural Evolution":

People objected to no-fault divorce, and were dismissed as religious fundamentalists who wanted to chain people in loveless marriages. People objected to contraception, and were dismissed as sex-hating Puritans and papists who wanted to suppress healthy, loving sexuality. Slippery slopes were invoked in both cases, but no one paid attention.

It doesn’t matter which hill you choose to die on, you still get called a bigot, and you still die.

And from "Beware Systemic Change":

The strongest conservative case against gay marriage is that it reinforces a centuries-long redefinition of marriage from a strategic partnership focused on child-rearing to a ceremonial acknowledgment of romantic infatuation, potentially leading to a deep shift in the way people think about issues like who to marry, when to have kids, when to get divorced, and how to treat their family. That argument hasn’t been rigorously evaluated by statisticians and found wanting. It’s been found annoying and left untouched.

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