[nec4b]

No you couldn't say that about slavery! Because only a small privileged group was able to have slaves. On the other hand a majority of people gets married or live in a relationship. What a weird comparison you made comparing marriage to slavery.

[tptacek]

I'm obviously not comparing marriage to slavery. I'm observing that at various times, ideas that we today absolutely foreclose on were live debates, or even prevailing norms. In the early 18th century, if you'd gone around saying that all slaves must immediately be freed, and the matter wasn't up for discussion, you'd had been right. But Rayiner's logic could be turned against what you were saying, too.

Just because 51% of people believe something, that doesn't mean we're bound to respect it. If that was true, Wikipedia would be infallible.

[nec4b]

Basically you don't want to have a discussion about something because 50%+ people were wrong about something at some point in history. And you give an example of slavery when rayiner was making a concrete point about marriage. Would ever post on a climate change thread about how once the majority of scientist believed earth was the center of the Universe and were wrong and therefore because majority of scientist was wrong once they are also wrong about the climate change today?

[landemva]

> only a small privileged group was able to have slaves.

That may be a USA-centric view. It differed in other areas.

https://www.historyireland.com/from-baltimore-to-barbary-the...