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> If you want to make a case that gay rights advocates make the world unambiguously worse, be my guest. At a societal scale, you will fail, because there is a c

> If you want to make a case that gay rights advocates make the world unambiguously worse, be my guest. At a societal scale, you will fail, because there is a clear and categorical difference between that example and mine. My point was that 20 years ago, there are a hell of a lot of people that would have made that argument. There's probably still a double-digit percentage of Americans who believe that today. It's like evaluating a stock trading strategy on historical data - success there does not guarantee success in the real world, but failure highly implies it. Your proposed policy - which as far as I can tell simplifies to "ban advocating for things that a supermajority of the population finds distasteful" - would have prevented (or at least harmed) quite a few movements over the past century or three, and so I say that if implemented today it would do the same in the future.

sagichmal 7y ago
> My point was that 20 years ago, there are a hell of a lot of people that would have made that argument. I understand that's your point. And policy reflected that majority opinion back then. But, it was wrong, and we fixed it. That's fine. That's how things should work. > Your proposed policy - which as far as I can tell simplifies to "ban advocating for things that a supermajority of the population finds distasteful" I'm making no policy proposals. I'm saying society is justified in making moral decisions via policy, and in many cases is ethically obligated to do so. I'm saying that a blanket position of moral agnosticism by government (which is, as far as I can tell, what you're suggesting) is naïve in the best case, and actually actively unethical in the worst case, when that position prevents a society from protecting itself from disease. We still have courts even though there is the possibility of convicting the innocent, a society without a justice system is unworkable. In the same way, we still have the right and responsibility to make policy on moral and ethical grounds even though we might choose incorrectly, a society without that ability is unworkable.

sagichmal 7y ago

> My point was that 20 years ago, there are a hell of a lot of people that would have made that argument. I understand that's your point. And policy reflected that majority opinion back then. But, it was wrong, and we fixed it. That's fine. That's how things should work. > Your proposed policy - which as far as I can tell simplifies to "ban advocating for things that a supermajority of the population finds distasteful" I'm making no policy proposals. I'm saying society is justified in making moral decisions via policy, and in many cases is ethically obligated to do so. I'm saying that a blanket position of moral agnosticism by government (which is, as far as I can tell, what you're suggesting) is naïve in the best case, and actually actively unethical in the worst case, when that position prevents a society from protecting itself from disease. We still have courts even though there is the possibility of convicting the innocent, a society without a justice system is unworkable. In the same way, we still have the right and responsibility to make policy on moral and ethical grounds even though we might choose incorrectly, a society without that ability is unworkable.