The dating app paradox

> Sure, homosexuals have been around forever, but societal acceptance of homosexual relationships is relatively new

> Homosexuality was very accepted (even encouraged) in ancient Greece, for example

"Homosexuality" in ancient Greece was different in so many ways from the modern concept, one has to question whether it is appropriate to apply that modern label to it. Doing so tends to promote misunderstanding, by erasing rather than highlighting how very different ancient Greek attitudes were from all contemporary Western ones, whether progressive or conservative.

> It was progressive for sure, and classically liberal in the sense that we were trying to further protect individual rights and freedom to choose. Once it passed, though, does it become conservative?

Radical gay liberationists argued (and still argue) that same-sex marriage was always conservative rather than truly progressive, since it is trying to co-opt and tame gay radicalism into sustaining traditional social institutions such as marriage, rather than what they argue would be the truly progressive approach, which would be to dismantle those institutions entirely.

Words like "conservative" and "progressive" have no inherent meaning, absent a background political ideology to read them against. Once you pick your political ideology, that ideology then gives those words meaning for you – but to someone else, who has chosen a different ideology, they can have radically different meanings. If we can't agree on what is the objectively correct ideology, then there we won't be able to agree on any meaning of those terms as objectively correct.

There’s a pretty strong correlation between gender and political affiliation, if we match between similar politics, some people might be hard to match.

> Radical gay liberationists argued (and still argue) that same-sex marriage was always conservative rather than truly progressive, since it is trying to co-opt and tame gay radicalism into sustaining traditional social institutions such as marriage, rather than what they argue would be the truly progressive approach, which would be to dismantle those institutions entirely.

And I would argue that is an unnecessarily extreme stance. The concept of marriage can't be dismantled, at best we could remove any state concept of it and get rid of any legal protections, tax benefits, etc. I don't personally see the value in that over making sure everyone has access regardless of who they wish to marry, though regardless marriage as a concept would never be abolished as it exists both in state and religious contexts.

> Words like "conservative" and "progressive" have no inherent meaning, absent a background political ideology to read them against. Once you pick your political ideology, that ideology then gives those words meaning for you – but to someone else, who has chosen a different ideology, they can have radically different meanings. If we can't agree on what is the objectively correct ideology, then there we won't be able to agree on any meaning of those terms as objectively correct.

This is a really strange view on language in my opinion. We absolutely could define what the terms conservative and progressive mean, and the definitions could be absolute rather than relative. In my experience people do seem to have different understandings of the terms today, but that can easily be a failure to agree of definitions rather than a given side effect of the terms themselves being relative to one's starting point.

> The concept of marriage can't be dismantled, at best we could remove any state concept of it and get rid of any legal protections, tax benefits, etc

In Australia, unmarried couples (what we call de facto relationships) have essentially the same legal rights and benefits as legally married couples. In fact, Australia extended de facto status to same-sex couples before it legalised same-sex marriage, rendering the latter move an essentially symbolic measure, at least as far as Australian domestic law goes. There's no reason why other countries (including the US) couldn't do the same thing, except maybe "conservatism"?

And once unmarried relationships are made legally equivalent to married ones, you don't need to retain government recognition of marriage. One could just repeal marriage laws, and abolish marriage as a secular legal concept. If individuals want to get married as a cultural or religious tradition, that's a private matter in which the government doesn't need to get involved. If a couple are separating and can't agree on issues such as property and children, and hence need the courts to decide those issues, the courts don't need to know or care whether the couple are "married" or not.

I think most gay liberationists would be happy with an outcome in which marriage disappears from the law, and starts to fade from mainstream culture. Yes, there will probably always be minorities of religious conservatives/etc who retain it, but there's a saying "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good"

> This is a really strange view on language in my opinion. We absolutely could define what the terms conservative and progressive mean, and the definitions could be absolute rather than relative

You can define words to mean whatever you want. The problem is, different people define words differently, and if definitions disagree, what makes one person's definitions objectively superior to another's?

No doubt one can come up with completely unreasonable definitions – if someone was to define either "conservative" or "progressive" as "the belief that the moon is made of green cheese", that's obviously not a definition worthy of anyone's time. But, if radical progressives start arguing "'mainstream' progressivism is really conservatism", that doesn't seem to me to be an inherently unreasonable position, in the way that the 'green cheese' definition is. It is a reasonable definition if their views are right; and its value if their views are wrong may depend on how exactly one thinks their views are wrong.