As a human being, I communicate by finding comparisons. I think it is something hardwired into our brains. Notice how many parables were used in Christ's teachings. But the problem with any parable is that the comparison only goes so far. For every similarity, there are also differences. It's like when my junior high teachers asked me to write a compare-and-contrast paper. We learn just as much from the differences as we do from the similarities.
The extrapolation fallacy is where some relationship or analogy is drawn, and then that relationship is used beyond the scope of its relevance to draw some conclusion. For example, we know that a ten-year-old child is about 25% taller than a five-year-old, on average, and a fifteen-year-old child is about 25% taller than a ten-year-old, on average. If we extrapolate this to older individuals, we might think a 30-year-old was 25% taller than a 25-year-old. But that conclusion would be an example of the extrapolation fallacy in action.
Whenever someone says that "being gay is like -----", there is probably some relevant connection, some similarity that helps the speaker communicate their meaning. But when the relationship is extended to imply more about homosexuality than the primary similarity, that is when the extrapolation fallacy is being invoked. There are so many examples of this from so many different parties, that rather than list them here, I'll split them up among several future posts.
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