Scott Alexander has just posted that anyone who objects to homosexuality must be a repressed homosexual, which is typical of what passes for rationality among the “Less Wrong” crowd.

By the same reasoning, anyone who objects to coprophagy must be a repressed coprophage, because, of course, everyone at “Less Wrong” knows perfectly well that there can be no rational, innate, or instinctive reasons to dislike eating $#!%.

When we were all forced to call homosexuals gay, “gay” instantly became a startlingly potent curse word, and so the second verse of “deck the halls with boughs of holly” instantly disappeared from the Christmas Carol rotation, as did the Flintstones theme song. Clearly, it was not the intention of the social engineers who forced us to use the word “gay” that the second verse of “Deck the Halls” would vanish, yet somehow it did.

Forcing people to call gays married will predictably have a similar effect on the word “marriage” – people will titter when they hear the word. “Marriage” too will become a curse word and an insult, just as “Gay” instantly did.

We have thousands of years of experience with euphemisms. Applying a nice word to something disgusting does not make the disgusting thing nice, it makes the nice word disgusting.