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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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Normies are a lot less bothered about LGB than you imply by lumping it in together with T.

The case against homosexuality (both in its Abrahamic and secular versions) is based on the same logic as the case against post-sexual revolution liberated straight sex, and normies find that logic unpersuasive. Empirically, when the LGBs were offered normalisation on the same basis as the sluts, rakes, unrepentant adulterers, frivorcers etc. they took it, and aren't doing anyone any more harm than the straights did when they took up ubiquitous non-procreative sex. Despite gay marriage, straight marriage is in a better state than it has been in since the introduction of no-fault divorce. This is happening within the plain sight of normies and their families, so they know.

You can make a secular socially conservative case against sexual liberation for gays and straights (empirically, it crashed the birthrate and launched a bastard epidemic). You can (and should, if you take the Bible seriously) make a conservative Christian case against it. But making either of those cases makes you like like a wierdo - it is the epitome of normie-unfriendly conservatism. Given what we can see in front of our noses, arguing for sexual restraint for gays only just makes you look like a self-hating closet case seeking moral support. (It is also intellectually incoherent, but normies don't care about that.)

LGB (but not T) is the one early-C21 woke issue where normie public opinion has swung behind the woke position.

T is different, because the difference between men and women matters in the way that maintaining a ban on one particular subset of non-procreative sex doesn't.

I think you're way overestimating the popularity of gay men. Opinions seem to run the gamut from 'they're all closeted pedophiles' to 'it's weird and gross but what adults do amongst themselves is none of my business', with the mode somewhere around 'fetishistic plague rats'.

Your understanding of the distribution of opinions is wildly incorrect. You are taking the long tail of the actual distribution and declaring it the median.

Perhaps this is filter bubble reasons, but most secular-ish normie parents I know do not want their sons to have gay football coaches, do not like the ‘gayBC’ agenda in entertainment, would think a gay son is a parenting failure, believe that trends originating in the gay community is enough reason to boycott them in ipso, don’t make a massive distinction between gays and trans. These are people that if they do go to church don’t pray at home, expect their kids to cohabit(even as they think the time of doing this should be shorter) before marriage, wear bikinis etc.

I think this is rural catholic filter bubble (whereas AFAIK @MadMonzer is London cosmopolitan filter bubble). My secular-ish normie parents grew up in 1960/1970s Britain, where almost all the best-dressed, most witty, popular, aristocratic men were gay. Being gay is essentially aspirational: they're secretly quite keen on the idea of the idea of having a gay child and are applying slight, unthinking pressure to my bi-questioning sibling in ways that make me uncomfortable. I don't know how they'd feel about gay teachers and they're certainly not into pride or anything; they're conservative in most other ways.

(However, as with many things in Britain, it can be very difficult to distinguish between 'runs a permanent crimestop filter' and 'is actually enthusiastic' even for close family).

Rural I will grant you, but I was specifically pointing at non-tradcath friends to avoid that aspect.

But you live in a traditionally catholic area, right? I assumed that your secular friends were Catholic-tinged, so to speak, even though not actually catholic. Whereas for example my parents are secular but they're Church of England secular. Or in California they would be Silicon Valley secular.

I have family ties to rural southern Louisiana(ultra Catholic) but I don’t live there. I doubt the region has majority support for gay marriage but it wasn’t what I was addressing. Most of my extended family lives in Dallas far burbs or traditionally conservative Protestant Tyler. Yes, random fishing buddies in Tyler or Forney or Weatherford or whatever are not a representative sample of American views on ‘the gays’, but it’s not due to Catholicism.

I see, thanks for the clarification.