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Notes -
Haven't seen a thread yet on the gay bar shooting last weekend so I figured I would start it.
Sticking to facts in this post, opinion will go in reply.
The shooter killed 5 and injured 25
The shooter is a 22 year old, Anderson Lee Aldrich
The shooter previously was charged after he threatened his mother with homemade explosives and kidnapped her, but the charges were dropped
The shooter is the grandson of a prominent local Republican
The shooter was stopped by a drag queen combat veteran, who used his high heels to stomp him
Now for the opinion:
I believe that speech is powerful. Words are a means we use to convince other minds of beliefs about the world. Minds act upon those beliefs.
At present, there is a powerful right wing-meme that many people, some LGBT and some not, mostly democrats, are attempting to sexually confuse children for nefarious purposes. This is often described as "grooming" in order to equivocate with sexual abuse children.
Insofar as the reasonable man's reaction to a co-ordinated effort to sexually abuse children is not "I should vote about this and if I get outvoted, I should allow my children to be sexually abused", the actions of the shooter are completely predictable.
You should take care to think about the consequences of the speech you use. If someone were to be persuaded by your argument, what would that cause them to do?
You aren't reponsible for every nutcase or moron on your team. But you are responsible for the logical consequence of your ideas. I know of no society that believes they should be having free and open debates and votes about whether teachers should be permitted to sexually abuse children. If you really believe this, you should act the same as if they proposed legalizing Cannabalism. There is no debate with barbarians, only the sword.
Especially nowadays, words are in massive superabundance. Unless you are someone with a public following - and even then - the idea that any one statement, out of millions, is dispositive of an individual's actions, strains credulity.
It is also described as "grooming" because it is seen, in its own terms, as a dangerous hijacking and corruption of children's development towards au courant notions and sexed identities. There is evidence for this claim.
No, you have not drawn a nexus between this particular bar and efforts aimed at children; or between the shooter and the "groomer" meme.
All you have on that point is that the shooter is the grandson of a Republican politician. This, in itself, tells us very little, because it is not uncommon for the descendants of major GOP figures to vocally repudiate, or distance themselves from their politically-active kin. In fact, it's a meme that every brooklyn hipster has to deal with "conservative family" on Thanksgiving.
Nor does there appear any evidence (at this time) that the shooter himself was politically radicalized (though that could change). What information we do have suggests the shooter was, in fact, generally violent (e.g. the threats against parents with home-made bombs and guns, with sufficient severity that the parents had the dude arrested). Of course this could change, and if and when new information comes out I will update my assessment accordingly. But right now, there is no link other than supposition and weak inference-drawing.
This proves too much. No speech could survive a standard requiring that not even a mentally-deranged individual threatening their own parents with bombings could interpret any particular statement so as to encourage violence.
Even if this standard were workable, which it is not, I would reject it because it is only ever applied unidirectionally. Only traditionalist or conservative speech is ever to be muzzled; the entire industries built on the left about pathologizing and demonizing conservatives, whites, and men are to be left alone. For example: no-one suppresses the speech of Ibram X. Kendi, Ta-Nahesi Coates, or thinks about reining in the legion of diversocrats who make a profession out of demonizing "whiteness," when radicalized black racialists kill white people, or torture white people, or assault random white people because they are white.
I would gladly stand with you if you said "we should all condemn these unprovoked murders." I would even be on your side if you had referenced the Idaho pastor cited in OP's link who apparently called for drag queens to be put to death. I would still be with you if you were proselytizing this sub's decorum rules, which would foreclose most use of the 3-edgy-5-me "day of the rope," "free helicopter ride," and other memes which do play around with and cheapen actual lethal political violence. But that's not where you're standing, which seems a bit telling to me.
The French did, and within living memory. And it may not be specifically teachers doing it, but, well, uh, the sexual use of children does happen in some cultures today. The question of when "childhood" ends, and what special privileges are to be accorded children is not inviolate throughout time and space, and has been answered many different ways, changing over time in response to material circumstances and cultural shifts. It evokes especially high emotions for many contemporary Americans, but that's not a cross-cultural universal.
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