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Can we actually draw that thread though? Are the advocates for gay marriage, exactly the same advocates as for trans rights? (which is pretty nebulous itself). Is the slope slippery or are there multiple overlapping staircases, such that gay marriage could be rolled back tomorrow and that we would have trans advocates focusing on their issues and gay marriage advocates focusing on their issues?
The Progressive alliance is basically a mish-mash of groups that were (or perceived themselves to be) marginalized and mistreated under older more conservative social conventions. The average black person is not all that on board with homosexuality (compared to white progressives) so it certainly isn't homogenous.
Is what you are seeing with trans issues the result of a somewhat successful gay campaign OR a symptom of the amount of power that the conservative stack lost, such that even the smaller groups in the progressive stack can punch above their weight, such that rolling back gay marriage in and of itself would have no impact on that debate (other than as a symptom of the regrowth of conservative power).
See my reply here. I don't know.
Absolutely a reasonable position. Personally I think its a "rising tide lifts all boats situation" when one side is doing better all the various causes and clusters of causes have a better chance, but if you remove one boat, its not likely that the situation changes much.
The thing for me is that, by that analogy, the thing that conservatives of yesteryear were fighting against was that rising tide that was lifting the one boat called "gay marriage" and claiming that by raising the tide to lift that one boat, we'll also inevitably lift other boats that we don't want lifted. Accompanied with the argument was that you can't just install hover jets onto that one boat and lifting that boat inevitably requires raising the tide (i.e. the argument that eliding any boundary between gay and straight marriage necessarily pushes social norms away from people taking responsibility to do their duty to keep human society running and existing and more towards self-discovery and liberation).
There are arguments to be made on whether or not the current trans movement is a good thing or a bad thing. But in my view, all the conservatives whose slippery slope arguments I poo-poo-ed back in the day have every right to say "I told you so" to my face now, as their slippery slope did come true. We could try to draw a thread from gay marriage to the current trans movement, and I'd bet we could even do it pretty well, but my view is that that's largely irrelevant. Because the point was never about gay marriage specifically, it was about the principles underlying - and necessarily implied by - the push for gay marriage.
And that is reasonable! But it isn't a slippery slope. If coalition A wins it will do coalition A things is a separate problem, than if Issue 1 from coalition A wins then Issue 2 from coalition A will casually follow.
For example Coalition B could carry out issue 1, which says nothing about whether issue 2 will happen.
Because the boats can move to different sides of the harbor. Just as happened with white rural working class voters over the last decade or more.
Practically does it make a difference? If you are a politician yes, because you may be able to beat your opponent to the jump, and get a pragmativ "win". I would agree that practically to the average person who doesn't like gay marriage or trans "rights" then it is mostly a moot point. But it is a distinction we should look at from an analysis pov if we are trying to be accurate.
The way I see it, the point that the conservatives can rub in my face, i.e. the slippery slope in this situation, is that these coalitions aren't arbitrary. It's that Issue 1 necessarily implies something similar to Coalition A, because of the principles encoded into Issue 1. This doesn't necessarily imply that Issue 2 will causally follow, but it does imply that some Coalition similar to Coalition A that wants Issue 2 (more accurately, Issue X, since we can't determine beforehand that it will be Issue 2 specifically) will gain greater credibility and more ability to get that Issue 2 implemented.
That is, the conservatives who were telling me, "Sure, those boats could move to different sides of the harbor. But they won't. And here's why," can rub it into my face. It's probably not much of a consolation, but I suppose they can at least enjoy having company in their misery.
My point though is there is evidence that they can. Arguably the whole Republican movement has been moved towards a more populist, more protectionist, more working class focused coalition, with all that entails. Some of the very people who might be rubbing your nose in it, may well have themselves moored their boats elsewhere in the last decade. In the UK, the Trans faction does appear to have been set somewhat adrift from the major parties with Labour distancing themselves. Pretty much the Scottish national party is the biggest supporter, and by all indications they may be about to take a drubbing from Labour.
If Coalition A wants something you don't like then it is of course reasonable to oppose them, and it is then likely that whatever positions they choose next you probably also won't be too happy with. Coalitions aren't random generally. But that still isn't a slippery slope argument, it's just why you don't like that coalition in the first place.
If you are a hardcore leftist then you are unlikely to like both deregulation of industry and restriction of abortion rights and union busting activities. And all of those are likely to be clustered around the party you do not like. But it doesn't make sense to say that is a slippery slope. Otherwise every policy you dislike is the beginning of a slippery slope to some other policy you don't like.
Rhetorically it's fine. I am sure if I were employed as a political consultant with the Republicans I would absolutely be telling them to hammer their base with slippery slope arguments about gay marriage (well maybe not this year, the abortion issue is looking like a hot potato, so I am not sure they want to put gay marriage into the mix in an election year). But that doesn't mean it is is a very rigorous argument.
I don't disagree with this; they could, and they could have. It's just that they really didn't, in contrast to my own predictions at the time and in concordance with the predictions of my ideological enemies. This, in itself, vindicates the slippery slope argument. Just because a slope is slippery doesn't mean someone has to slip on it; it's just that, in this case, people did slip on it in very much the same way that the people who called the slope slippery had predicted.
I think i'd disagree. A slippery slope argument implies B must be caused by A. If it weren't its just a slope, not a slippery slope.
And i would say the evidence suggests any given trans issue is not directly caused by gay marriage.
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