I believe you misframe the liberal position.
Liberalism can be meaningfully defined as the erosion of the presumption of a privileged ontology. Rational debate is possible, to the extent that it serves to undermine privileged ontologies.*
When somebody raises a proposal, the argument that might follow typically involves participants inferring and teasing out the relevant premises, and then arguing them.
In contrast, Liberalism tries to identify the ontologies underpinning the premises, and then encourages you to recognize that ontology as arbitrary, have the self-awareness to treat that ontology as a rationalization for your motivations, and decide whether you’re willing to be a bully and acknowledge yourself as such. (I suppose OCPD creates its own motivations, allowing elegant and/or simpler models to dominate for some people.)
In the end, the policies adopted by liberals can’t be argued for. They just can’t be argued against effectively, except in a creative gut context informed by predictive models and evidence.
*(or creatively flesh out and validate/invalidate predictive models)
I would end the comment here, but I can’t resist quibbling on one point. I believe you are confusing liberalism’s erasure of the old regime with a rejection of regulation. Sex is more policed now than ever, in a state enforcement context, a social coregulation context, and a support system context – all this with dramatic consequences.
“Sacredness” is a word we use to create moral models around feelings. If liberals choose to “make way” for those feelings, does that mean they’ve bought into a sacralizing mentality? No.
If you want to promote the republishing of LW articles, I think you’d be more inclined to drop the Singularity/Futurism bits from the tagline. They’re alienating and off-message, I think.
Also, when I try to share an article on G+, G+ pulls the following text for summary: “Less Wrong Discussion Future of Humanity InstituteSingularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Main. Posts; Comments. Discussion. Posts; Comments. Less Wrong is a community blog devoted to refin...”. No good.