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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.
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.
Not really. Anti-miscegenation laws were never universal.
But you could easily and trivially accuse people for the expansion of black rights to only be in it for the miscegenation.
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