The question is similar but its in a Rails context. The solutions would answer my question, but I'm almost certain that he could probably leverage Arel to solve his problem. The question I posted was designed purely as a Ruby question so that it was easier to search for. You might want to suggest an edit of the title of his question because it didn't show up when I searched for a solution to my problem.

Yes, unfortunately the other question has a misleading and completely irrelevant Rails context and might be harder to find for some people. IMHO, it's still a perfect content duplicate, although not a topic one. Answers are also equal. Anyways, still a good question of yours.

I'd like to think this issue isn't quite a duplicate

I have checked the following close stackoverflow sources : Relation passed to #or must be structurally compatible. Incompatible values: [:references]