SSCReader
3mo ago
I'm an atheist so as far as I am concerned, both a Muslim and the pope believe very similar fairy tales, so it would make very little difference to me. Having said that, given I am not Catholic it's not up to me. If Catholics want a Muslim pope then yes they should be allowed to do it. It's a private organization that can choose whoever it wants to be its leader. If they don't want a Muslim Pope (and I imagine they do not) then that is also entirely within their rights.
Or to put it more clearly what do you mean by "allowed"? Allowed by whom?
SSCReader
5mo ago
You can tell that's the strategy being used because the response to "why is this teacher showing my kids porn and telling him he'd look sexy in a dress" is "woah, how is that any different than promoting patriotism, tu quoque!"
Yes, and that is why using groomer as an attack is effective and I have no issue with it. If I still worked in politics and worked for the Republican party I would certainly be encouraging its use. It is rhetorically impactful.
However here, we are supposed to try and pull back the curtain on the culture war and discuss it, rather than wage it. I am certain some people are defending actions that are wrong, just due to ingroup bias and tribal thinking. But that doesn't mean the vast majority of teachers who are trying to (as they see it) protect vulnerable kids from abusive parents are groomers.
SSCReader
5mo ago
Yes exactly. If a bunch of people move into the neighborhood and then all collectively decide that they want to bulldoze the houses they own and build condos, that’s what they get to do.
And when they vote to bulldoze YOUR house and build condos invoking eminent domain, because they have more votes than you?
SSCReader
2mo ago
The company you keep is an entirely different claim than a causal one though. And i'm not sure from the point of political coalition how useful it even is. It is when you look at things personally of course.
I understand that the average neo-liberal Republican is probably not too worried about abortion, but because of the way their coalition is built the evangelical Christian wing is.
But if i oppose banning abortion, pragmatically my best option might be to peel that coalition apart. Not force it closer together. Horse trading is the life blood of politics. Maybe you aren't exactly in favor of gay marriage, but if it guts the support of a coalition opposing you, then if you think its going to happen anyway you might as well get the credit.
The next Labour government with a reasonable majority was going to legalize gay marriage. Just a matter of time. This way, the Conservatives get to claim that forever. Now if you really hate the idea of gay marriage maybe that isn't worth it. But pragmatically taking credit for something that was going to happen anyway can be one way to defang your enemies.
Politically in the US, if Republicans could pass a gay marriage bill in exchange for robbing momentum (through a whole bunch of activists no longer worrying about it), for further change and in exchange for getting say 8 years of dominance it doesn't matter about the company those activists kept until then. Exploit the weakness in the coalition.
Of course if you don't think that will work, or it will lose you more than you gain then don't do it, but don't let thinking about coalitions like individuals cloud your judgement. Political coalitions aren't friends, they are alliances of convenience and those can be changed. Japan once sided with Nazi Germany, now it is a close US ally. White rust belt Americans used to skew Democrat. By your lights should their change not be accepted because of the company they used to keep?
SSCReader
3mo ago
I'm confused by your choices of examples then. No-one is born Catholic. It has to be chosen. Baptism, Confirmation and receiving the Eucharist are I think the steps one must officially take. Presumably then you feel there should be no Pope at all, Muslim or otherwise?
SSCReader
5mo ago
But what if teachers did want to have sex with kids and did try to influence them to have sex with them?
Then that would be bad and then be grooming yes. Adults should not have sex with children, so I would oppose it on those grounds.
SSCReader
6mo ago
If justices are capable of reading "shall not be infringed" as "can be infringed to an arbitrary degree",
Almost everyone believes that though, they just vary on what degree, as far as I can tell. I haven't found a 2A advocate in person who thinks prisoners in prison should be allowed to bring rifles in with them, for example (though there probably are some), and quite a lot think felons even after release should not be allowed them. So as per the old saw, all we're really doing is haggling over how much infringement there should be, most people seem to agree that infringement is indeed required in some degree.
If almost immediately after being written, in order to function your society has to add the unspoken caveat, well except people in jail obviously, and the clearly mad, and, and and. Then you're just admitting from the get go, that it doesn't actually mean exactly what it says. You're just haggling over the price from then on and logically once you have admitted that it is flawed, then that makes it much easier to ignore. The right was neutered from the beginning because it was written for theory not for practice.
SSCReader
1mo ago
The whole Catholic priest issue is a great example of this, actually, in how the whole structure of the way Catholic churches and communities were run gave greater opportunities for pervert men to do that while escaping justice. As such, people did and do argue that Catholic churches must be restructured to better prevent this.
Sure, but Catholic churches don't really appear to have changed that much. My sister in laws kids still end up in one on one meetings with their priest and so on. And I would agree that there should be some kind of check on what prisoners go where, that is sensible.
As you say there are identity issues, and rape issues on each side. A trans woman going into a men's prison may be at risk and a trans woman going into a women's prison may put others at risk. Perfectly happy to stipulate that is entirely reasonable to take some kind of precautions there.
I'm just pointing out the argument I was told this would NEVER happen is just not a very good one. Pretty sure the Catholic church wasn't saying, and yes there is a chance your kids will be abused by one of our priests (which is the absolute truth) so please take that into account before you go to church. The rhetoric used is separate from what is actually reasonable. Holding either trans-people or the Catholic Church to a zero incidence framework is simply unreasonable.
SSCReader
2mo ago
I think i'd disagree. A slippery slope argument implies B must be caused by A. If it weren't its just a slope, not a slippery slope.
And i would say the evidence suggests any given trans issue is not directly caused by gay marriage.
SSCReader
2mo ago
"Sure, those boats could move to different sides of the harbor. But they won't. And here's why," can rub it into my face.
My point though is there is evidence that they can. Arguably the whole Republican movement has been moved towards a more populist, more protectionist, more working class focused coalition, with all that entails. Some of the very people who might be rubbing your nose in it, may well have themselves moored their boats elsewhere in the last decade. In the UK, the Trans faction does appear to have been set somewhat adrift from the major parties with Labour distancing themselves. Pretty much the Scottish national party is the biggest supporter, and by all indications they may be about to take a drubbing from Labour.
If Coalition A wants something you don't like then it is of course reasonable to oppose them, and it is then likely that whatever positions they choose next you probably also won't be too happy with. Coalitions aren't random generally. But that still isn't a slippery slope argument, it's just why you don't like that coalition in the first place.
If you are a hardcore leftist then you are unlikely to like both deregulation of industry and restriction of abortion rights and union busting activities. And all of those are likely to be clustered around the party you do not like. But it doesn't make sense to say that is a slippery slope. Otherwise every policy you dislike is the beginning of a slippery slope to some other policy you don't like.
Rhetorically it's fine. I am sure if I were employed as a political consultant with the Republicans I would absolutely be telling them to hammer their base with slippery slope arguments about gay marriage (well maybe not this year, the abortion issue is looking like a hot potato, so I am not sure they want to put gay marriage into the mix in an election year). But that doesn't mean it is is a very rigorous argument.
SSCReader
2mo ago
And that is reasonable! But it isn't a slippery slope. If coalition A wins it will do coalition A things is a separate problem, than if Issue 1 from coalition A wins then Issue 2 from coalition A will casually follow.
For example Coalition B could carry out issue 1, which says nothing about whether issue 2 will happen.
Because the boats can move to different sides of the harbor. Just as happened with white rural working class voters over the last decade or more.
Practically does it make a difference? If you are a politician yes, because you may be able to beat your opponent to the jump, and get a pragmativ "win". I would agree that practically to the average person who doesn't like gay marriage or trans "rights" then it is mostly a moot point. But it is a distinction we should look at from an analysis pov if we are trying to be accurate.
SSCReader
2mo ago
the onus is on election officials to convince the losing party that they lost fair and square.
I don't think that is the job of election officials. Especially having been one such election official. That is way too high level a thing for random local government workers to be worrying about. Their job is to organize the election in line with whatever budget, rules and laws apply in their location. They don't have the time or expertise to be trying to decide what will look legitimate or not. That is done by the politicians setting what rules and laws they need to follow.
If Michigan wants 134 observers of each party and passes a law, then when the election officials deny more people getting in and that looks like they are hiding something, that is not on the election officials. When people are filming through the windows and the city attorney tells them to cover the windows in case some of the ballot information is visible, that isn't on the poor schlubs getting paper cuts inside.
Legitimacy is built way before that point. The fact several hundred people were trying to get in prior to that situation shows that the legitimacy was in question BEFORE the election actually happened. Election officials can't do anything about that.
SSCReader
3mo ago
Well then sure, if Catholics want a Muslim pope then they should be allowed to have one. It's their church.
As for the non-American thing, the people we are talking about are American citizens, they just also have another citizenship. So they should meet your criteria.
SSCReader
5mo ago
And I disagree, and say that the other side is confusing definitions into uselessness by using it as an attack against teachers with perfectly defensible behaviours.
Now what?
SSCReader
5mo ago
A Christian teacher of an atheist child whose parents refuse to let them learn about religion, and who honestly believes both that the child would be better off being taught and that it would save their immortal soul has a good argument they should instruct the child secretly.
And even I as an atheist can accept that if they are doing so out of honest belief and faith, they aren't grooming the child. If they did so, instead so they could convert the child to some Opus Dei (?) style flagellation cult so they could derive pleasure from beating the child themselves, this would be another matter. But I wouldn't consider them a groomer, if they did the former but also got fuzzy warm feelings about helping save their immortal soul. And even if their conversion caused them to go to Church and be put in contact with an abusive priest, that is so far from what was intended that it can't logically be held against them.
I do also want to point out just because something isn't grooming doesn't mean it can't be harmful. If the Christian instructing the child is right, they have saved their soul (potentially), if they are wrong they will potentially have the child making choices that are not in its best interest and may have harmed the child's future prospects and damaged their relationship with their parents for nothing, but whether it is grooming is seperate from whether it is a good idea or not. I'm not saying what you are opposed to is necessarily directionally good, I am just saying it isn't grooming without specific direct nefarious intention of the teacher in question.
A teacher who honestly believes a particular child is trans and that their parents would be abusive if they found out, and so hides this and supports the child secretly, can in fact cause great harm if they turn out to be wrong, but I wouldn't call it grooming. Whether they are correct to do so or not entirely depends on the facts of the case. If the kid was trans, and their parents WOULD have beaten them and the kid would have commited suicide, then the teacher was quite correct to put the needs of the child over the parents right to knowledge. It's not always right and it's not always wrong.
Your point also leaves open that someone teaching your child within the scope of the school and not creating a relationship outside of the school one, if it is endorsed by the school, and is part of their official duties to keep it secret from parents, then it does not meet much of your criteria. If a school makes it a policy to lie to parents (as by your own example), then it is by definition part of the teachers official duties to do so. They are NOT operating outside their defined role in a personal context, they are operating within the accountability matrix of their school. You can certainly argue there should be some oversight process to this, where it is documented and perhaps the principal has to sign off on it, but they aren't operating personally. Now, can that be taken advantage of by the nefarious? Absolutely and that should be accounted for, but the idea that all of them are groomers is just a rhetorical weapon (albeit a good one!).
To put it bluntly, our kids are not only our own. Societal indoctrination and engineering is part of the purpose of schooling, whether that is into civic nationalism, Christian nationalism, Progressive ethics or whatever else. And that means teachers have a relationship with kids where they may be teaching them things we do not agree with, and must consider the impact of what that information being disclosed to parents will mean. Whether they are correct in any given case, depends on the facts in those cases, not some blanket rule. Sometimes the right thing to do will be to disclose, sometimes the right thing to do will not. If a group of hardcore Muslim parents are complaining that their kids are being taught that it's ok to be gay in a secular school, then I consider it completely appropriate for them to be told to keep their noses out, and if necessary outright misled, if that is the civic secular position. That's how you work on their kids assimilating towards the taught culture for the next generation.
Public servants are not servants of any particular member of the public, but to society as a whole, that means they can (and arguably should) lie to and mislead some members of the public in furtherance of the needs of overall society. Police can lie to members of the public, politicians can lie, spies can lie, all in furtherance to the public good. Teachers are no exception. Whether they SHOULD lie or not is dependant on the situation. But the fact there will be some situations where they should is I think definite.
To be clear, I am not saying they should always lie either, I think hiding things from parents should be thought through carefully, and there should be specific mechanisms for that decision to be checked at the very least at a school level and it may well be true that the dangers in this scenario are overblown. But I also think the criticisms of it are also overblown. Supporting a child that you think is trans or gay, and hiding it from the parents if you think it will be harmful, particularly as part of your official school policy is not grooming. Which doesn't, to repeat myself, mean that it is good. If the teacher is wrong, their decision may well be harmful itself.
SSCReader
6mo ago
We probably learned very different lessons from GamerGate by the sound of it. Mine was: Many of my gamer friends held deep seated anti-female feelings and would rather focus on that than actual issues with the deeply corrupt gaming journalism field.
SSCReader
6mo ago
January 6th broke the symbol, but they certainly didn't break what it was supposed to symbolize.
Oh sure, they had already lost faith in the symbology, for sure, they had already looked down so to speak. And on a personal scale you are correct attacking a symbol is much less severe than a person.
On a civilizational scale though, people are replaceable, shared symbols are not (though their physical representations can be). Very few people are as individually important as a shared belief system to the stability of a polity.
SSCReader
9d ago
Why wouldn't we short-circuit that to just "has that desire"?
You probably could, simply say someone who has that addictive desire yeah. I was just editing your example definition, to point out, that there was a potential exit, in that I could be wrong so that someone who once was an addict and no longer has that desire I would consider no longer an addict. For addiction you can't generally know if you will be an addict until you have experienced it, whereas a pedophile can (and usually will) have those desires before they ever abuse a child. A pedophile who never abuses a child is still a pedophile, but there is no such thing as a cocaine addict who has never tried cocaine because the experience of what it does to you and how it makes you feel is part of developing the addiction.
My point is the zeitgeist already was that addicts can't become not addicted to drugs, I am in my 50's and that is certainly what we were taught about addiction when I was a kid. "Not even once!" Whereas current doctors (like self_made_human) seem to think addicts CAN become not addicted to drugs. So is there some kind of "new science" and does it run the direction you think it does?
My experience would say the opposite, that we USED to believe addicts can't be cured and now we are beginning to believe they can. Which could mean that there never was a really settled zeitgeist in the first place, for things to move on from. And therefore politicians and activists can simply use the version that best supports whatever position they are trying to argue in the moment (or more charitably that whatever belief they have is WHY they are taking the position they are taking).
SSCReader
1mo ago
Why would you expect trans activists to do better than an organization dedicated to serving the highest moral agent?
Like you say, its the normal tribal reaction to your own side doing something wrong.
Which means it doesn't really tell you anything about the merits of the group using it. Presumably you think the Catholic church is more right than the trans movement, but if they both fell into the same trap (and I agree it is a bad look!) then using it as a weapon just looks like you are holding the side you don't like to standards your own side could not live up to.
So the State may be being terribly inefficient (believe me as an ex-civil servant this would not surprise me!), but if they aren't being inefficient BECAUSE of the Constitution. Then linking the two together just seems a reach. Are the bureaucrats in the DoE who were making projections and predicting places needed having anything to do with rewriting the Constitution? Is the amount of money the State has going to change appreciably?
In other words I can believe that the DoE is inefficient AND that changing the Constitution is a bad idea. What i still can't see is a real connecting link between those. The DoE seems unlikely to have spent much time on the Constitutional changes and even if the Cabinet Minister did, well in my direct experience the time he spent on that probably meant he was not spending his time hindering his department.
The administrative state (DoE) and the executive are largely spending their time on different things for different reasons. As in Bob in the DoE whose job it is to plan school places may be bad at his job, but it doesn't sem likely that is any way related to the Constitution aa it stands, nor is it likely he was writing Constitutional drafts.
SSCReader
1mo ago
That doesn't have anything to do with the question in hand though. Would we be better off if churches or ideologies were attempting to change minds secretly or were being open? The fact the US has a specific separation of Church and State for historical reasons doesn't really impinge on this question. The same question would hold in the UK, which does not have such a separation.
SSCReader
1mo ago
I think the difference between quietly hoping that people's minds will change and openly communicating the will to compel the change is significant; the latter shifts the window towards other forms of mental compulsion (of which we have since seen many) so obviously that only someone either reckless or more accepting of them than I can tolerate in my own camp would do it.
But if they are less open won't they just face accusations of attempting to change minds secretly and nefariously? If you assume that in order to get marriage equality secured (because it is at risk if not as we discussed) people's minds must be changed then your options are to be open or secret to varying degrees.
Openly seems the best option. We all are products of mental compulsion, our upbringing, the social values of our peers and the pressures they put on us to conform. There is no society without mental compulsion in this format. The thing we are fighting over is just which mental compulsions reign. And I would rather know about all of those competing.
Churches openly proselytize their beliefs. Would we better off if they were doing so secretly?
SSCReader
2mo ago
The scale change to require a man to marry a man using the same mechanism already codified is very different than having to rewrite for multiple people. All the existing legal structures work exactly the same way.
I also think you've pointed out how changes can happen but not be a slippery slope.
If the peoples opinions shift to redefine family is that because of gay marriage, or was gay marriage a symptom of the same thinking? If gay marriage isn't causative then it wasn't the first step on the slippery slope people were saying it was.
If the draft is abolished and you say, this is a slippery slope, it will mean we won't have the soldiers we need to fight a war, and then there is a war and you don't have enough soldiers, because Congress slashed military funding because the people decided they disliked war hawk politicians. Then your slippery slope diagnosis was wrong. You were seeing the symptoms of a populace whose opinions on war were changing. Abolishing the draft didn't CAUSE you to have too few soldiers, having a populace that was against war caused both. But funding being slashed could have preceded the draft being revoked, therefore the draft did not cause it.
Just to be clear you might still be right to oppose the policies, but you were wrong about being on a slippery slope. It wasn't that A would lead to B, it was that you were in the middle of a sea change, where A, B, C and D were all getting more popular.
SSCReader
2mo ago
By that logic marriage being between a man and a woman is a step on the slippery slope. I remain skeptical about "Legalising marriage will not lead to gay marriage" Why wouldn't it? Now we've decided that marriage is between a man and a woman, whats is so sacred and immutable about it at allm? Your logic implies we shouldn't even have taken the first step!
But I think the fact many places had polygmous marriages before gay marriage means this isn't a slippery slope. One does not lead to the other.
This is a case where there are multiple overlapping groups who have different ideas of marriage and just because one is convincing does not mean the others will be in any given culture.
Clearly in Islam the polygamists generally won in a way which didn't lead to gay marriage. There is no reason why it can't be the opposite way round somewhere else.
Well thats the nature of a coalition. It still doesn't mean that gay marriage led to trans rights. Like if evangelical Christians and neo-liberal free marketeers are in the same Republican coalition it doesn't mean that financial deregulation leads to an abortion ban.
You have to actually be able to draw the line directly. I think thete are fractures bmbetween the LGB and the T that are being somewhat hidden by the fact of perceived right wing antipathy towards both.
I'll point out in the UK, a Conservative government explicitly legalized gay marriage and there is some significant anti trans (from their pov) headwinds. Some of that could be attributed to loss of support as parts of the coalition get what they want explicitly codified in law by a right wing government, rather than getting it through the Supreme Court (and therefore being more tenuous).
If thats the case legalizing gay marriage might be the opposite of a slippery slope. Depending on how and by whom it is done.
More options
Context Copy link