Decriminalizing homosexuality did not have a Gricean effect though legalizing gay marriage would. Many LGBT people have experienced housing and job discrimination which is why legislation against it is often proposed.
That is because human beings AS human beings should be treated AS human beings.
Ergo, gay individuals should have equal opportunities to work, housing, etc., BECAUSE they are human beings, NOT because they are gay. The injustice occurred when these rights were taken away from human beings when, AS human beings, they were owed a right to employment and housing. These individuals were NOT owed a right to employment and housing BECAUSE they were gay, however.
To right the injustice meant that gay individuals ought to have had those basic human rights returned to them. Full stop. That is as far as things ought to have gone.
Righting the injustice does not mean they are owed additional rights over and above everyone else. They do not deserve to be accorded special treatment because they are gay, nor a right to impose their beliefs or behaviour by force of law on anyone else.
The Gricean effect comes into play when gay individuals claim to have special rights - to being a “protected” class - not because they are human, but because they are gay. This begs and attempts to circumvent the question of whether the fact they are “gay” ought to give these individuals special rights beyond those accorded to all other human beings.
What makes this a questionable imposition of rights and an instance of special pleading is that accessing these additional rights and protections depends almost entirely on a self-appellation based upon a largely not well-understood - nor objectively determinable - predeliction towards a certain kind of behaviour.
Merely “claiming” these additional rights by declaring oneself “gay” now affords the claimant the right to overturn certain social, business and legal rights of others, to redefine millenniums-old legal precedents, to redefine biological reality, to remove the rights of children to having a mother and a father, and to dictate to others the content of their moral beliefs.
The question never seems to be broached as to whether a mere subjective predilection ought to allow such a dubious claim to such an extensive set of “special” rights far beyond those afforded anyone else. Only in a liberal progressive moral climate - one where individual rights to self-determination supercedes the good of society - would this kind of “hijack” of society by a small minority be permitted. It is the fact that as individuals, too many in progressive liberal societies do not properly understand nor support the good of society - but, in fact, have lost sight of that good, by prioritizing individual rights over the common good - that such commandeering of society as a whole could have taken place.
A proper concern for the continuity and well-being of a healthy human culture would not so easily give the future over to this kind of social manipulation. Social manipulation it certainly is, as can be seen by the effective silencing and ostracism of anyone who even dares to question the soundness of undertaking such massive social changes without allowing the opportunity for sober second thought.
