What about recreational marijuana and for that matter tobacco smoking and vaping? What is the right side of those issues?
I’d say that the ‘right’ side is to allow adults to make their own decisions, but that the whole ‘your right to swing your fist stops at my face’ thingy comes into play. So, you restrict where you can indulge in those things so as not to harm or even annoy other citizens.
What I WOULD like to see is some bars or places like that where smoking (or using legal marijuana) is permitted, maybe with clearly posted signs. I don’t see any reason why people can’t choose to go to a place that specifically allows them to smoke, or vape or whatever, as long as they keep it legal and upfront.
I agree, the analogy to Virginia v Loving is just too close.
The anti-gun side wants a repeal or reinterpretation of the second amendment. This is not likely in the near future.
This one doesn’t seem anywhere close to being clear. I don’t see how you can call it already.
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[li]Transgender athletes competing in women’s sports *without *surgery or hormone treatment;[/li][/quote]
You don’t have to be a woman genetically, but you should be a woman physically. I don’t see how you can have people who still have male bodies say “I identify as a woman so I would like to play in women’s tennis” and call it fair.
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[li]Racial preferences in dating/relationships (racist to refuse to date someone because of race, or not?);[/li][/quote]
If you won’t go out with someone of another race that you find interesting and attractive because of their race, I don’t see how that’s not simply racism. I’m pretty sure that racism is going to end up on the wrong side of history.
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[li]Legalized polygamy (will it follow in the footsteps of SSM or not?);[/li][/quote]
Once we have attained some level of parity in women’s rights, I don’t see why polyamory would be bad. The biggest problem a lot of people have with polygamy is that it is often a raw deal for women.
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[li]Islam’s influence in the West;[/li][/quote]
I’m pretty sure that terrorism will end up on the wrong side of history. Islam will be here for a while.
I’m not sure how you can be so sure about abortion but not sure about racism in dating.
See, the gun rights issue seems to mirror the SSM issue, to me. In the 60s and 70s, there was serious discussion about banning handguns, and many places like Chicago and DC effectively did just that, and pretty much nobody saw it as controversial. Fifty years later, after several monumental Supreme Court cases, a huge social awareness/lobbying push, and now people seriously talk about legalizing machine guns in the near future. We’re solidly in the process of affirming the right to own tasers and switchblades. I think fifty years from now the idea that people shouldn’t have the tools to defend themselves, and that millions of people supported that and wanted citizens to be even more defenseless, is going to be like watching all those old people with firehoses and dogs fighting against peaceful black people who just wanted to vote and inhabit public spaces.
I mean, worse, like totally, like a Vernor Vingean world with flying mites tracking your every scowl and fart. China and UK seem to be leading the way - a monarchy and a republic FTW! The US is playing catch-up. You’ve hardly begun to be interrogated, citizen!
It’s possible that a few decades from now, people will look back and think it bizarre that societies would have made laws proscribing what adults could put into their own bodies. Sort of like how today we can barely understand how there could have once been laws against consenting adults dating or marrying someone of a different race.
The metric for a society’s ethics is not just whether people’s intentions are good. It’s about the reality of how that society treats people. It’s postmodern social theory 1.01 that someone’s actions or words can be (for example) racist without them intending to be racist, that privilege and prejudice can be culturally ingrained and unconscious.
But what I find bizarre is the cognitive dissonance in social theorists who espouse the kind of extreme cultural relativism that you appear to buy into, since it almost always goes hand-in-hand with assertive and uncompromising opinions about how we should change modern society. If you really believe in such extreme moral relativism, that no society can really be organized in an objectively better way than another, on what basis can you adopt a strong position on (say) abortion rights? You are simultaneously calling for extreme humility in others in their value judgments, while confidently asserting that you are certain what is right.
Yes, that’s what I meant.
And thank you (non-ironically) for the rest of your post because it’s exactly what I’m talking about : you think there’s this bright line when the egg is fertilized and thus are in the “put them ALL in the techwombs” camp. I’m not. Really, really not. I don’t think there’s anything special whatsoever about chromosomes mingled in a one night stand. It’s still merely a *potential *person and I see no compelling reason (ethical or practical) to forcibly realize that potential.
So we agree to disagree.
But we have to agree that the existence of techwombs hasn’t solved our differences 
Not quite. I think, based on what I can perceive and understand and feel based on a million external pressures & life experiences coupled with my own capacity for reason that “this is right” or “that is some bullshit”. And as such I have strong opinions, and I think I’m generally right about Stuff.
At the same time I realize that everybody in the history of the world has been that way, albeit with different things in their “this is right” and “that is some bullshit” boxes based on different external pressures & life experiences. And that, had the consciousness that’s sloshing about behind my eyes been subjected to *those *external pressures, it’d have probably ticked their boxes rather than the ones I do.
Dude, they’re pissed about women having access to the pill :). And they want to ; and often succeed in restricting its availability. What makes you think they won’t fight tooth and nail against nanovary-machines ?
Yes, but these are the shit arguments on the pro-life side, motivated by superstition. Of course they must be fought tooth and nail in our current era, but from a long term historical perspective I believe they will ultimately be dismissed as irrational superstition. When we’re thinking about how history will view this, I think it’s only the good arguments that matter, the ones that are likely to survive long term scrutiny - i.e. the genuine question about how we should assess the rights of a fetus.
Fine, but all those people are dead, and nobody is seeking to hold them personally responsible for the way they ran their society. So what do good or bad intentions matter if we’re asking whether the ethical principles by which modern society is organized are objectively better than (say) medieval society?
I think you can’t really define one society or way people live as “objectively better” than another. Ethics are well and good, but ultimately the test of a society is “are people happy ?”.
Any society, even a feudal one, is ultimately predicated on consent. Feudalism wasn’t imposed by the few upon hordes of the unwilling - rather the people at the bottom accepted that they had to be on the bottom because Reasons (which are many and complex, I’m not going to expound there because I could write reams). It’s very telling for example that, while peasant revolts were fairly common, they were never revolutions nor did the people who participated in them would have wanted them to be ; instead their purpose in revolting and nailing a few lords and ladies and tax farmers to a few barn doors was always stated as “having our plight heard by lords higher up the foodchain who would then solve the issue on account of their being A Good Lord who just doesn’t know what our Bad Lord gets up to”.
The point is, they were happy enough ; and their way of life involved stuff that one could absolutely dub “better” than ours - they worked a lot less than we do for example (harder, but less often), had better community values and helping-each-other systems in some cases. Economically the system of guilds and apprentices and so on is a lot more protectionist, controled and restrictive than our free market ; but they never had to worry about being out of a job. So which system is “better” ?
Was the average Roman citizen better off than the average medieval peasant ? Possibly, certainly he had more of a say in the way things were run (that is to say, he really had fuck all of a say BUT he got paid or fed for his kangaroo vote so that’s cool :)) and he got a lot of free grub and the wealthy elites were very much into redistribution, but then again *that *system was contingent on massive slavery and eternal warfare which is less than ideal. Was the life and times of a Victorian coal miner better, then ? In some ways yes, in many others no - it is then difficult to say that Victorian society was objectively better (or better run) than Ye Olde Feudal England.
And as for our societies… well, we implicitly think they’re the best organized ever obviously (else, again, we’d tautologically change things) but we also do seem to be killing ourselves a lot more than the populations living in worse conditions in more “shithole”-y countries, so you tell me 
Social preferences such as interracial dating do not really lend themselves to a definitive answer, that always depends on the time and place and attitudes change. Possibly the question of race will become irrelevant again, as it most likely was in the past, but will it now recur perpetually because it aroused so much heated argument?
Nitpicking: the polygamy you are thinking of is of the polyandrysort.
Apart from that, you are absolutely right. The subjects suggested by the OP are bad examples, either non controversial or I don’t understand the issue, k9bfriender at the end of his post has given much better examples to discuss than he has.
I love that you like my signature 
This is the part that would be impossible, if I understand the idea correctly. The idea is that contraception will be made perfect, and opt out instead of opt in. So you can’t get pregnant unless you specifically are trying to do so.
As for the OP: I’ll answer the main question: I don’t think there are many that don’t have a clear direction, because we’re in a period of reactionary response to progress. We’re not discovering new ethical dilemmas so much right now.
As for those specifically mentioned: I’m pretty sure that the right to an abortion will settle out as being a right, just going by how the idea is spreading. Even if the US reneges, the rest of the World is pushing towards making it a right. Third trimester stuff may be less clear, but it sure seems like there’s not much reason to take that right away, even if you think it is wrong.
Gun ownership has the same worldly view: it’s not considered an inherent right except in one country, and I do see the US waning in importance as history goes on, meaning US-only ideas will lose relevance. Some level of gun control will eventually be accepted in the US out of necessity.
The trans athletes concept, while actually a new consideration, seems to fit along the lines of degendering sports in general, which is the direction I see us going. There are other ways of creating criteria for sports. And, yes, I do think advances in genetics and technology will make this less of an issue as time goes on–as the effects of that will dwarf the differences that are brought on by testosterone. The issue may not be as clear cut, but I do see it leaning in that direction. Not in the “trans athletes are excluded” direction.
Racial preferences in dating? Pretty clear cut already. It’s racist if race itself is the reason you ignore someone as a partner. The issue is if you say “I won’t date black women.” When it comes to preferences, it will just be more of the introspection of ironing out internal racism, and will likely be less of a problem as diversity increases. As racism declines in general, any influence it has on dating will also decline–which is a clear direction.
The polygamy issue is actually two different issues. The freedom to marry will likely be extended. That seems quite clear. However, there is the issue of polygamy used as a means of misogyny, and that direction will decline. The main question is when the latter will decline enough that the former can become the greatest concern, and if there will be ways to set up polygamy that discourage the misogynist aspects. But, still, I see the direction moving eventually towards accepting more sexual orientations, and that polyamory is a sexual orientation (or similar). (Though I do note that a decline in the importance of marriage might also make the idea moot.)
Islam’s influence on the West: others have already covered that. The aspects of modern Islam as practiced in some countries that are bad are things that are already declining. It seems pretty obvious that the direction of Islam is to be more inclusive, as seen in how non-inclusive Islam interacts when it is put in countries that value inclusiveness. While the direction isn’t easy to define, it does seem to be fairly strong.
The West’s perception of China: I see no reason it won’t continue to be the same–that totalitarian regimes are bad. The only issue is whether or not there will be some pushback against China exporting its censorship via companies that value the Chinese market. But I do think that, in that, we’re moving towards a critical mass. Plus I think that China maintaining its totalitarianism is, on longer scales, unlikely.
Now, granted, a big world upheaval could change the directions here. But, even with Trump, we’ve only seen what appears to be a temporary setback, rather than a reversal of direction. I still notice that even the alt-right accepts ideas that were clearly progressive back in the day. Even Trump supporters are now dealing with progressive issues–the problem is that they choose the wrong solution for them.
I mean, the reason I’m a progressive at all is that there is so little on which they are clearly going the “wrong direction.”
Not necessarily. Short-medium term you are right that the winners write the history books, but as societies change and the politics of the moment can shift over time to a more objective view of history. The US decisively won the Indian wars, and just as Britain won the Opium wars, but now both are viewed as immoral, even in their home countries.
I’ll add an issue that others have danced around, but I don’t think have specifically posited, and that I think is not genuinely clear: Should heroin, et al be legalized?
Sure, marijuana is relatively harmless (especially compared to alcohol, and that only got re-legalized because people really, really like to drink it), and can and should be legalized. But what about the harder stuff? Should we live and let live? Or save people from themselves?