re: Was Gay Marriage a Slippery Slope?

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That's because for the longest time society has seen secular laws as "do what you want so long as 1.) no one is being harmed and 2.) all parties are consenting."

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So? That's still incredibly subjective and people will have different views of "harm" and "consenting" based on their personal morality. Is a child harmed by watching 2 consenting adults screw in the park? Or by you walking around naked? We apparently think so because that's illegal and I don't see anybody protesting about religion being crammed down their throat. Can a 13 year old consent to sex with a 20 year old? People disagree on those things; you still must have moral norms (majority norms) to have a societal structure. Not because it will always produce the best society, but simply because there's no other pragmatic way to do it.

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So? That's still incredibly subjective and people will have different views of "harm" and "consenting" based on their personal morality.

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Subjective? Sure. But as you've argued, so long as the majority pushes it what can you do?

If it was understood by the majority what "harm" and "consent" was (and it didn't even have to be in *all* cases, just most cases as I was attempting to explain the trend that gave rise to "religious values" = "pushy" and "secular values" = "live and let live") I don't see what you're arguing against.

The majority is against two people having sex in public just like the majority is ok with two dudes going at in their own bedroom.

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False

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True. It says that homosexual lifestyle and a redefinition of marriage is morally acceptable in our nation where it was perceived as immoral and/or unacceptable prior to the ruling of a few unelected people in black robes.

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Also false

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Also true. It's already happened.

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Not everyone sees homosexuality as deviancy

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Not everyone has to. It's immoral whether or not everyone agrees with it.

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Not really a case to make it illegal plus we have too many asssholes here now

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Sure it is. If the government is interested in stable population growth it should be promoting relationships that are good for procreation and raising of children in situations that are best for children.

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Also false I have friends who were raised in either one parent households or ones who had gay parents and they were fine.

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Good for them. It's atypical. Also studies have shown that the ideal situation for raising children is a two parent household with a (female) mother and a (male) father.

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Again your entire case stems from your own religous views

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It doesn't, but even if it did, why would that be wrong? We all have a worldview that shapes our values, preferences, and yes, even our moral convictions. What is the basis of your worldview that allows you to judge mine as wrong?

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which are not enforceable in a democratic society

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Sure they are.

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especially when those views no longer reflect what the majority want

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A pure democracy is chaos and subjugation of the minority by the majority. Is that what you want? Also, truth isn't established by majority opinion.

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You don't think that a philosophy that leads to the deconstruction of objectivity itself in terms of language, truth, and ethics wouldn't create problems like we're seeing here?

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Firstly, no, because I don't agree that we are seeing problems. Things are fundamentally better in pretty much every metric. Your perception of events are your own, so I can't speak for you.

Secondly, no, because that deconstruction of object-subject relations was done to show that we weren't approaching objectivity with the way we were talking about things. For the phenomenologist, we are reacting to phenomena as the second seer, acted upon, rather than acting, which puts the object before the subject. As in, the thing itself exists without direct interaction with it, it is its own thing, with its own subjectivity. The interest in language was crucial, as the subject-object relationship was taken to be a priori, and the structure by which language operated was assumed, not examined. Modern linguistics, and Anglo-American philosophy has much more daring things to say about subject-object relations, but those two disciplines seem blameless with regard to societal ills, which always strikes me as curious.

Thirdly, blaming a wide set of philosophies which are named postmodern by virtue of when they arose rather than what they actually say is at the minimum, intellectually dishonest. For this reason, people ascribe a wide variety of viewpoints to this group for the specific purpose of writing them off, with no critical analysis done.

Finally, I'm deeply skeptical of the actual reach of postmodern philosophy, as people speak of it interchangeably with every other ill in society they see without establishing that it is the cause, and that it is as influential as they say. Generally, the main people who read continental philosophy are literary critics, and absolutely no one reads literary critics. Anglo-American philosophy took a different course, though the focus was similarly on language, yet do not get the same amount of interest, even though Wittgenstein was far more influential. Not only that, the Anglo-American school produced Noam Chomsky, who is far more influential in numerous disciplines. Yet somehow, I'm supposed to believe Ferdinand Saussure's linguistic work in France in the 1950's, along with Levi-Strauss's work on the structure of myth, is somehow a contributing factor to the downfall of man? It's complete nonsense if you know anything about the subject.

Even though Heidegger isn't technically a postmodern philosopher, his influence outweighs any postmodern philosopher, as he influenced writers from Hannah Arendt to Habermas to Hans-Herman Hoppe, which represents a wide intellectual tree. Heidegger was also a literal member of the Nazi Party, and doesn't get near enough criticism for it that philosophers working in the postmodern era get for anything they did.

Regardless, I'm deeply skeptical of the notion that postmodern philosophy is even partly responsible for any of the issues that might trouble a conservative. It's reach is overrated, but because of the density of the material, and how opaque the language itself is, you can place onto these group of philosophers any image you like, and people will accept it for some reason, without any critical analysis or even investigation about whether it is true.

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I don't think we're in much if any disagreement.

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I agree. I just wanted to point out, at least from my perspective, why society seems to view religious morals as pushy and secular values as live and let live. Which I do think, historically had some backing, but now it seems the Christians are largely the "live and let live" and the secularists are "we're going to shut down your churches, private schools, and bakeries".

Scary how fast things can change in a decade. Despite being an atheist, I have a lot more in common with Christians today than I do progressives.

Trump 2020

No

fricking progs when think everyone is special are the problem. Not gay marriage.

Progs just hate anything and everything that resembles tradition.

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Dawgfan's arguments are illogical 

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Arguing against denying people a right based solely on some form of morality isn't illogical. Enforcing laws against things like murder and rape is not the same as banning gay marriage since both have negative repercussions and also have a victim. The concept of banning gay marriage rests entirely on the fact that some people don't find it right. There is no victim and gay marriage does not in anyway hurt the ones who want it banned.

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People don't need a God to tell them what's right and wrong. This idea that they should be easily debunked since every atheist isn't out there murdering people

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Hitler followed his heart. Is that what should guide humanity? If so, how do you condemn anyone who does what you might consider "evil" if they are just doing what they believe is right or acceptable in their own eyes? If your moral standard is "everyone knows what is right", then that doesn't really address the issue of morality for those who don't seem to know. How do you condemn them?

Also, the reason why every atheist isn't out there murdering others is because they are made in the image of God with the moral law written on their hearts. It's by God's grace alone that everyone doesn't try to murder each other. They aren't necessarily living consistently with their espoused worldview which removes all moral obligation and individual value from the equation. I'm glad atheists don't live consistently with their worldview, btw.

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The one where I don't let my personal beliefs dictate how other live

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Why not? You seem to be condemning my beliefs and worldview. Why are you bothering to respond if you don't want your personal beliefs to dictate how others live?

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Kind of sounds like you want some version of it.

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OK.

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Again that is your opinion not an objective fact

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Actually, it's a fact. You want to start with your own worldview to show how you have no coherent basis for things such as objective morality?

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Maybe so, but the majority didn't support it until they were forced to by the minority (SCOTUS).

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Incorrect.

Gallup: May 19th, 2015 60% of Americans support gay marriage.

SCOTUS ruled on gay marriage in June 2015.

I will agree with you that I think this was legislating from the bench and should have been done through the legislative branch and not the judicial branch.

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Even so, I'll add a caveat to this particular point: the majority (now) has no fundamental basis for their moral opinions so while I may think their opinions are dangerous to society based on my objective ethical standard, they have no basis to judge mine as dangerous except for their own subjective opinions

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And your own statement about how its harmful for the minority to push their morality on the majority.

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The fact of the matter is that recognizing homosexual marriage as a right automatically put them at odds with the 1st amendment and we are seeing example after example of where the religious liberties are losing out. Yes, they are mutually exclusive in a government like ours, which is what I'm arguing against in particular since we live in this society.

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Incorrect, there's no hierarchy of rights diagram that we can look at to rank rights when they conflict. You could just as easily place the right to practice your religion over someone else's right not to be discriminated against by the federal government as you could the reverse.

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Within marriage, it's fine. The point is that sex within the context of marriage provides a stable basis for procreation and child rearing. The government encouraging heterosexual marriage for the sake of future generations is good because the norm would be couples that could procreate, even if there are exceptions. Homosexuality produces a paradigm that makes natural procreation the exception rather than the rule.

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So you think if gay marriage wasn't allowed, those gay people would just marry the opposite sex and have children? Gay marriage didn't invent gay people. They still existed and still shunned heterosexual relationships (didn't have children).

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Not at all. There's no moral equivalency between singleness and homosexual relationships.

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Why not? One of your points of contention with gay couples was that they didn't procreate. There are other non-homosexual members of our society that do not procreate either... How are they not harming society as well? And if they are, should we be enacting laws to prevent this harm?

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You're right, but again, that's (hopefully) the exception, not the rule, unlike homosexual relationships... It could be, but again that's an exception, not the rule. And it's common for widows/widowers to get remarried, which is appropriate.

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Point taken.