I never had much sympathy for the alarm-raisers of the 80s and 90s, who claimed that the advertised evolution in attitudes around sexual behaviors represented an attempt to deliberately educate children into sexual deviancy (as it was then construed), and that various efforts to normatize a wide variety of sexual behaviors would result in a movement toward the deliberate deconstruction of traditional family structures and sexual norms, perhaps even resulting in the deconstruction of the idea of gender identity in general, where what a man is and what a woman is will be fundamentally called into question.

That’s what was being said at the time, and the alarmists were roundly mocked and derided by all the smart, sophisticated people. It seemed like so much hyperbole and conspiratorial thinking. They were making a mountain out a molehill, predicting a ridiculous future of absurd changes, and trying to keep us all in the dark ages. But whatever your position is or was on those sorts of people and their opinions, they do seem to have possibly been actually, technically correct in a historical sense.

They were often accused of exaggeration and of proclaiming false “slippery slope” arguments. I think what we can learn from the social changes of the last 30 years is that, in general, although we may be wrong about a slope being slippery, we don’t really know for sure that it isn’t. We often assume we know where the level ground lies.

We assume that significant changes in social incentives won’t have long-term consequences, and that the way the world is is just some sort of default and nothing could ever actually change it. Or that anyone isn’t actively trying to change it, or that certain processes, once they start rolling, won’t continue to progress into fields of outcome far beyond our original purview.

It’s very easy to start things, and much harder to stop them once the machine has been built and set running. Government programs are like that. Once they’re in place, it’s extremely hard to stop doing them. They become part of the general conditions of the environment. And so they keep working and working and having their effect, while at the same time they’re becoming part of the environment and therefore the default conditions. Which probably means that soon, further interventions will needed to advance the initial interest. You need to do a bit more, go a bit further, to revivify the effect. And you’ve already got justified intervening before. So it’s a little easier to go a little further the next time.

Theres a pretty big divide between between what people say or think and what they actually do, and between what we initially intend and what eventually results. There are plenty of ideas we’ve introduced that sounded pretty good at the time, but what people actually did with them (dynamite, TV, the internet, social media, fast food) turned out to be pretty different from what we expected or advertised. The behavior of actual humans in response to new conditions, technologies, opportunities, and incentives is always much more surprising and unpredictable than the intentions of the people who create them.

People have often generated surprisingly positive characteristics and outcomes out of very bad conditions and actions, and people have generated surprisingly bad results out of well-intentioned actions and devices. The argument that a certain effort is well-intentioned, and therefore unquestionable and undeniable, is one of the most silly and shallow and unrealistic arguments a human could make, and yet it is a perennial favorite across the ages. It’s just as shallow as the argument that anything that is disagreeable and potentially harmful is bad.

Lots of disagreeable things are actually very useful and beneficial. When it comes to people and their actions, there isn’t any use in taking a shallow approach to complex issues. But we often do. “If it has good intentions, it’s good; if it causes harm, it’s bad” could be considered a popular truism. The only problem is that it’s not at all clear that it’s true.

Besides that, it is a universal human failing that we often talk out of both sides of our mouths, avoiding the internal conflict in that truism (that well-intentioned things often result in harm) by decrying any system that produces harms we dislike as unquestionably bad, while excusing all the negative consequences of our own devices as unquestionably good thanks to our good intentions.

So what do we make of the fact that the warnings of the prophets of doom, that people are coming for your kids, to seperate them from you and radicalize them and reeducate them and destabilize your family structure actually seem, on reflection to have not been entirely wrong? You can’t read an article like “Queer Futurity” and not admit that, at least in a technical sense, they weren’t just woofing. They were just wrong about it being a bad thing. The people coming for your kids are doing it to save them from you, and from your repressive cultural norms that are causing terrible harm. It’s a good thing, it’s education and the making of a better, kinder, more just and equal world.

I suppose the lesson to be learned from all this is, you actually can’t be sure that people aren’t after your kids. And you can’t be sure that they are. The culprits in question might not even be clear on that subject, or may not be aware of the underlying content or consequences of their own localized attitudes and intentions.

That’s life. That’s people. We can’t even trust our own arguments half the time. That’s why we need good dialogues. Because we may not even realize where we’re taking ourselves. I know that right now people are envisioning a future moral utopia. But the truth is that we don’t really know where all this is going or what it’s leading to. We don’t really know what our own deepest motivations really are, or what fruit they will bear. And we avoid scrutiny by pointing to our positive moral intentions, because who can argue with kindness and the dawning of a universal utopia?

What reasonable person is going to argue for causing harm and advocate against heaven on earth? Are you going to stand in its way? That would make you demonic. Something to be exorcize. Something to speak holy words of rebuke against.

We feel a wonderful feeling of confidence I ourselves and how good our intentions are and how their future results are guaranteed to be. Why have any doubts or caution? The fact that none of the things that alarmists warned about thirty years ago have actually happened makes us feel assured that we can keep heading along our path with confidence. In fact we should do more, go further, accelerate the process to reap even greater rewards. Kids are healthier, happier, more mature, more stable, and more productive than ever. We’re definitely on the right track and history is unfolding just as we expected.