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I, like the rest of the country, feel like nothing good will come of the election. However, I feel this way for a slightly different reason than your average person, and probably closer to the average Mottezian.
I actually don't really care too much who is president. Either one of them would IMO do a good enough job. I mostly care whether the president impacts my everyday life or causes nuclear war. However, though it isn't his fault directly, having Trump in charge would impact my everyday life negatively, mostly because it would fuel another 4 years of incessant leftist whining all around me, from all my friends and family, along with people starting to (erroneously, IMO) see and declare that racism and sexism is everywhere again. It'll start causing fights between me and my wife again. My workplace and all local institutions will start making statements about how they're standing up to Trump and racism. Under Biden, I have truly enjoyed some nice peace and respite from politics.
However, I find this state of affairs to be very irritating. It feels like the left, or at least the leftists in my life, are taking an infantile tactic: we better win or we'll whine and complain for 4 years. I don't respect sore losers, and moreover, I don't like the fact that there is no path forward for the right.
Scott said this back in 2016:
Scott was absolutely correct here in how it played out. But what option does this leave the non leftists with? If the Democrat wins, then the currents move left. We get leftism enshrined into law over the next 4 years, because to the victor go the spoils. If the Republican wins, then the undercurrents move left, and more and more people get radicalized towards the left.
Is there a way for the currents to move right without the undercurrents moving left? Or is Trump just uniquely bad at making that happen? I'm tempted to say that this is just the fact that Trump is a polarizing figure, but at the same time, all the leftists I know scream bloody murder whenever a Republican is in command. They were infantile under George W Bush. And though I wasn't around then, I know many people who are still salty over Reagan and act like he was the worst.
If you live most of your life surrounded by leftists and consuming leftist media, then of course leftist whining is the type of whining that is most annoying to you.
As someone with Republican relatives and in-laws, I assure you that rightist whining over the last four years has been both intolerable and often scary. I can't imagine what it's like to live in right-leaning communities at a time when most believe the election was stolen and they're living under the equivalent on an anti-pope.
4 years of Biden has not particularly enshrined leftist values into law, as far as I'm aware? Some of the massive infrastructure spending was earmarked towards renewable energy, I guess, but that's not exactly super-radicalized social justice leftism. As far as I can tell, the law has moved to the right significantly during Biden's term, because of Republicans owning the Supreme Court and most state legislatures.
Honestly, I think that the way to make things move right without backlash is to give in on the tiny culture war sticking points while persuading people on the underlying conservative norms.
Legalizing gay marriage was seen as a radical leftist movement, but the actual result was that all the gay people - and most importantly, gay artists and icons and culture warriors - stopped living as radical counter-culture outsiders challenging every pillar of the nuclear family, and switched to being respectability-politics-first normies living quiet lives in the suburbs with 2.5 adopted kids. Conservatives had to give up on oppressing gay people, but managed to bring them largely into the tent of traditional marriage and neoliberal economics and so forth.
So do it again. Say fine, trans women are women, and they should be modest and wear makeup and stay at home to raise the adopted kids. Say sure, diversity is a strength, so lets hire some black CEOs who align with our mission to crush unions, roll back regulations, and lobby for tax cuts for the rich.
Basically, assimilation. It's actually true that the basic conservative values are appealing to a lot of people, and a comfortable default for a lot more. A lot of people will happily fall back into those values without thinking about it, if you just stop doing things that look explicitly bigoted or unjust or cruel in ways that get them mad and turn them against you.
Much like Walterodim, I supported gay marriage back in the day, and have come to deeply regret that support in light of the transgender movement that followed. I too consider all the "crazy" religious slippery slope doomcasters to have been vindicated.
I mean, my memory is that the slippery slope people were not talking about transgenderism back then, they were talking about bestiality and pedophilia becoming accepted and mainstream. Same as they are now, same as they always are.
There's a difference between an advance prediction of 'X is a slippery slope that will lead specifically to Y', and a retroactive claim that 'X was the start of a slippery slope that has led us to current thing Z'.
You can make up a retroactive narrative about anything leading to anything, once you've observed them both.
But the religious people of the time didn't actually predict the things that have actually happened since then - or if they did, those predictions were tossed out alongside a barrage of thousands of other predictions that failed - and therefore, they are not 'vindicated' and don't get any credibility from it.
Certainly, I was and remain sceptical about "legalising gay marriage will not lead to polygamy". Why wouldn't it? Now that you've decided that marriage is not between a man and a woman, but between two persons of any gender orientation, what is so sacred and immutable about the number of indeterminate gender persons in the legal contract?
I expect that over time societies that are making progress will repeal laws against victimless things, with gay marriage and polyamorous marriage both being examples, alongside marijuana, blasphemy, etc.
I don't especially see an argument that one thing along that track leads to another thing long that track, just because they happen in order.
What's a victimless crime? See, I see people using this about things like shoplifting and property damage (remember when the antifa and black bloc first got mainstream attention, back in the protests about Trump winning the election? all the social media posts about "you care more about a few broken windows"?), but I don't think those are victimless.
Marijuana is victimless! And other drugs? Because right now, the people supplying User with their fun party substances are not nice people, they kill and terrorise. You can argue that this is the fault of the squares making laws making the fun party substances illegal, but the reality is that there's blood and misery associated with "my little weekend treat".
There's an incentive on the part of those pushing for changes to say "this hurts nobody, it's victimless, in fact it's a good thing". But it's only down the line we get to see if that's true or not. And I don't think "gay marriage is harmless" can be neatly disassociated from "one thing leads to another", because it was overturning an established and pretty much universal cultural practice (marriage is men and women, not men and men and women and women) for the sake of political ends (making gayness normalised and accepted by mainstream society).
It won. Do you really think the other groups who want massive social change, normalisation, and acceptance, didn't look at that, take notes about it was achieved, and are not following the same playbook? And using "but gay marriage!" as a point of leverage against opposition and criticism?
You can't saw through the branch just a little bit and no more; even sawing a little bit weakens the branch, and the next bunch who come along to saw through just a little bit are doing more of that.
Even you admit that polygamous/polyamorous marriage will possibly be the next liberalisation of the custom. That couldn't have happened without same-sex marriage softening up the opposition first. After all, if two people who weally, weally wuv each other dis much!!! deserve the right to get legally married, then three or four or five people who weally weally wuv each other dis much!!! should deserve the same, right? We overcame the irrational bigoted prejudice about the sex/gender of the spouses, why are we now hung up on the number?
All the people contorting Scripture on behalf of gay marriage ("David and Jonathan were lovers! Naomi and Ruth were lovers!") have a much better case when it comes to "more than one spouse", the Patriarchs were permitted to have several wives, and Solomon the Wise who had multiple wives is celebrated and honoured.
Whatever the "reality", drug warriors do not get to claim damage they caused as being caused by their opponents. This is the same concept as when death penalty opponents object to the death penalty based on the high cost of imposing it -- well, yes, it has a high cost, but that's entirely the fault of the death penalty opponents' obstructionism, and so they don't get to use it as an argument for their position.
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The gays weren’t the first to start sawing off that limb; the no-fault divorce crowd were. They were the ones who redefined marriage as being purely about love and redefined love as being purely about emotions. No-fault divorce and its effects (single parent households, destruction of wealth, and the like) have caused far more damage to society than gay marriage ever will, and that’s ignoring the fact that the push for gay marriage probably would never have succeeded had no-fault divorce not fundamentally redefined marriage in the first place.
I'm petty sure the interracial marriage crowd was first, actually.
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I've argued this same point with fellow right-wingers IRL (and it's interesting which ones tended to agree), to the point of arguing that overturning no-fault divorce should be a higher priority than trying to get Obergefell overturned. First, because AIUA the former is primarily statutory, and passing legislation is generally easier than overturning Supreme Court precedent; and second, because without no-fault divorce, I'd expect gay marriage rates drop significantly even if still legal.
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I disagree that poly is not victimless. I briefly dated a poly girl, and I hated being put in the double-bind of either not pursuing other women or having to have "the poly/ENM conversation" with them, and the latter made me feel like I was leaking bad memes into the groundwater. Missed out on a possible relationship with a lovely mainstream girl that way because my ethics wouldn't allow me to hook up under those circumstances. I've said this before, but a world where poly is more normalized is a world where it's more acceptable to proposition other people's partners because "they might be poly, you never know these days, she can just say no". And then you have a world where the baseline temptation to cheat is raised, making monogamous life harder for those that want it.
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By that logic marriage being between a man and a woman is a step on the slippery slope. I remain skeptical about "Legalising marriage will not lead to gay marriage" Why wouldn't it? Now we've decided that marriage is between a man and a woman, whats is so sacred and immutable about it at allm? Your logic implies we shouldn't even have taken the first step!
But I think the fact many places had polygmous marriages before gay marriage means this isn't a slippery slope. One does not lead to the other.
This is a case where there are multiple overlapping groups who have different ideas of marriage and just because one is convincing does not mean the others will be in any given culture.
Clearly in Islam the polygamists generally won in a way which didn't lead to gay marriage. There is no reason why it can't be the opposite way round somewhere else.
Societies that had polygamous marriage still made it "one man and several women". And Western societies stamped out polygamy (ask the early Mormons). Redefining marriage as "it's about how you feel and your own personal fulfilment, and not about kids or families or being part of society, and now it's not even about men and women but whoever you like can be your spouse" does not put up a solid bar about "but no more than two spouses of whatever gender turns you on for as long as you both get the Obama thrill down your leg! we stand rock-ribbed traditional on that!"
But the government having to deal with multiple spouses with all that entails (tax benefits, insurance benefits, custody cases etc etc) is a strong indication that even a left wing government is going to think very seriously about expanding it further. Noticeably in most places with polygamy laws the mechanics around divorce, property, custody are all pretty much skewed towards the man, this simplifies the whole process.
So unless you are think that the whole totality of Western law is going to be rewritten this seems highly doubtful here. And if that happens then most likely polygamy is not going to be the biggest worry.
The fact is the secular administrative state did not have many reasons to prevent marriage between two men or two women, it means very little there. Add in more people and it will require significantly more changes, resources and fights, that I predict pretty much no Western politician is going to want to get involved with.
Given that we have functional polygamy, with people having relationships and kids by multiple partners, I can see someone arguing for "the conservative case for poly marriage" ('conservative' here the way Andrew Sullivan argued the 'conservative' case for gay marriage).
Instead of Jackson knocking up a string of baby mamas/Janelle having a string of baby daddies, they can now have a recognised legal relationship that gives them rights and duties. It will be more stable for the kids to have both (sets of) parents in the home. Janelle can now have her new guy move in, become part of the family unit, be there for his kids. Jackson can do the same with his new girl. There's no need for jealousy or competition or that Janelle can't cohabit with the father of her (third) child because that means she would lose her social welfare payments. It makes economic sense, it is better for the children, and it means men can't skip out on their responsibilities to the women and children in their lives, and women can't dump the father of their children with ease.
Sure, we're going to have to rejig the entire set of laws about divorce, property, custody, social benefits and the rest of it, but hey, isn't that what the courts are for, when the first cases about this happen?
We're going to the polls in March in my country to fuck around with the wording in the Constitution about the family because it's sexist and outdated. "Based on marriage"? Nah, "durable relationships" are the new thing! Nobody has given a definition of what constitutes a "durable relationship", but hey, isn't that what the courts are for, when the first cases about this happen?
You say that:
Hillary didn't want to touch same-sex marriage in 2008, but her views 'evolved', as did those of other politicians. When there's enough of a push and the straws are blowing in the wind, then it's worth it for the politicians to get involved.
See? Going from "declaring that she was unwilling to support legalized marriage" to "running as a forceful advocate for the LGBT community and a full-fledged supporter of same-sex marriage."
If the polling says the people want poly marriage, the politicians will 'mature their views' on it:
So give the books and book reviews and think pieces in the media and appearances on chat shows time to soften them up, same as with gay marriage. Mona and Rupert just had a glowing puff-piece in the NYT about their twenty-year long 'unmarriage' where both of them manage to have upper middle-class careers, two children, and seventeen different lovers in varying degrees of partnership and relationship levels, this is the future of marriage, society just needs to recognise the changing mores and enable them to have legal rights for their boyfriend, boyfriend's girlfriend, and girlfriend's pan enbyfriend as part of their 'unfamily'. Those are the people with the money, time and networks to get involved in pushing the politicians. It's not the single mothers with three kids living in social housing in council estates that are pushing for the Constitutional change on "women in the home" in my country, and it won't be them pushing for poly marriage in other countries.
But they'll be used as "it'll make things so much better for Jackson and Janelle" rationales by the people who wouldn't go within ten feet of where Jackson and Janelle live.
Honestly, I have to laugh here. And just exactly what did you think had to happen, to permit same-sex marriage? "No, for a thousand years anybody could rock up to the local druid, priest, or minister and say 'me and the boyfriend wanna get hitched' and that was cool, it just wasn't formally written in to the legal code!"
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