site banner
PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   30656 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

In lieu of the normal SCOTUS Mottezins... wake up, honey, the Culture War went to court again. Arguments for Mahmoud v. Taylor just dropped (PDF). A less oppressive SCOTUSblog write up here.

Obligatory disclaimer that I do not know anything. The gist of the case:

  • In 2022 Montgomery County, a suburb of DC, approved a number of LGBTQ books for the curriculum. They include these books and other materials from ages as early as 3-4 and up.
  • A bunch of parents cite religious reasons to opt-out of this part of the curriculum. This is in line with Montgomery's historical policy and the policy of neighboring counties. Opt-outs for religious reasons are normal for things like sex education and health classes that include it around the country.
  • Depending who you believe, so many parents chose to opt-out that the district had no choice but to change policy, or the district was so ideologically wedded to the material that they changed the policy. Either way, the county says no more opt-outs. Lawsuit commences. It goes up the chain and here we are.

I know we have some skeptics of "woke" curriculum, so for a probably not unbiased overview of the material, BECKET, the religious freedom legal advocacy non-profit backing the plaintiffs, provides examples in an X thread. They also provide a dropbox link to some of the material in question. In one tweet they claim:

For example, one book tasks three- and four-year-olds to search for images from a word list that includes “intersex flag,” “drag queen,” “underwear,” “leather,” and the name of a celebrated LGBTQ activist and sex worker.

Another book advocates a child-knows-best approach to gender transitioning, telling students that a decision to transition doesn’t have to “make sense.”

Teachers are instructed to say doctors only “guess” when identifying a newborn’s sex anyway

The Justices had read the books in question. Kavanaugh acknowledged Schoenfeld, representing Montgomery County, had "a tough case to argue".

The county asserted that mandatory exposure to material, like a teacher reading a book out loud, is not coercion (or a burden?) that violates a free exercise of religion. Sotomayor seemed to support this position. Schoenfeld, arguing for Montgomery County, said these books that are part of a curriculum that preach uncontroversial values like civility and inclusivity. Alito, skeptical, said Uncle Bobby's Wedding had a clear moral message beyond civility or inclusivity.

The liberal justices were interested in clarification on what Baxter, arguing for the parents, thought the limits were to. What limits are placed on parents with regards to religious opt-outs? Kagan was worried about the opening of the floodgates. Sotomayor drew a line to parental objection to 'biographical material about women who have been recognized for achievements outside of their home' and asked if the opt-out should extend to material on stuff like inter-faith marriage. Baxter didn't give well-defined lines, but said nah, we figured this out.

Sincerity of belief is one requirement for compelled opt-outs. The belief can't be "philosophical" or "political" it has to a sincere religious belief. Age was discussed as another consideration. Material that may offend religious belief to (the parents of?) a 16 year old does not apply the same sort of burden as it does to a 5 year old, because a 16 year old is more capable of being "merely exposed" rather than "indoctrinated". A word Eric Baxter, arguing for the parents, used several times and Justice Barrett used twice.

Eric Baxter also stabbed at the district's position that there was ever an administrative issue at all. Chief Justice Roberts agreed and seemed to question whether the school's actions were pretext. Baxter had one exchange (pg. 40-42 pdf) with Kavanaugh who, "mystified as a life-long resident of the county [as to] how it came to this", asked for background.

Baxter: That's right. Hundreds of parents complained. These were mostly according to news articles mostly families from Muslim faith and Ethiopian Orthodox who were objecting.

B: When they-- when they spoke to the Board, the Board accused them of using their religious beliefs as another reason to hate, accused a young Muslim girl of parroting her parents' dogma, and then accused the parents of aligning with racist xenophobes and white supremacists.

B: And so, again, there's no question in this case that there is a burden, that it was imposed with animosity, and that it's discriminating against our clients because of their religious beliefs.

Baxter also pointed at ongoing opt-out polices in neighboring counties and different ones in Montgomery itself. He clarified the relevance of Wisconsin v. Yoder where it was found strict scrutiny should be applied to protect religious freedom. One example of an ongoing opt-out policy in Montgomery allowed parents to opt their children out of material that showed the prophet Mohammed.

ACB: .....What is your take on that and how we think about this, whether this really is just about exposure and civility and learning to function in a multi-cultural and diverse society and how much of it is about influence or as Petitioners would say indoctrination?

Schoenfeld: .....The school the express directive from the school is you don't need to understand your peers, you don't need to agree with them, you don't need to affirm with them, but you do need to treat them with respect.

Thots and Q's:

  • Is it necessary to introduce concepts that include queer and gender ideology to children in public school? Why, why not? At what age would the introduction be appropriate or inappropriate?

The eternal fight over what the state uses to fill children's minds in a land of compulsory attendance is main conflict, even if this legal question is one of what a compromise should look given religious freedoms.

  • A competent school district should account for the addition of new, potentially controversial or sensitive material.

It can do so in a few different ways and avoid a trip to SCOTUS. I support preaching civility and inclusivity to children. There are thousands children's books that preach these things without drag queens or bondage. In an ideal world, knowledge of and tolerance for queer people can also be taught without, what I would call, the excess. Schools can also program curriculum to account for opt-outs when it comes to touchy subjects.

Sex education can be crammed into 1 hour classes for a week of the year. This allows parents to opt-out without placing an unmanageable burden on the administration. A curriculum that requires teachers to read a number of controversial book at least 5 times each a year is a curriculum designed to, intentionally or not, make opt-outs onerous. In this case it was so onerous and so controversial that Montgomery was compelled to change the policy. Which is an administrative failure even if one doesn't believe it to be ideologically motivated.

  • It may be worth pointing out that coverage from outlets like NPR didn't include the name of the case or a description of the plaintiffs that brought it.

I've seen it argued both ways. That outlets notoriously don't link cases or share case names, but in this case the plaintiffs -- a mixture of Muslim, Christian, Jewish parents -- the absence is notable. Were this an evangelical push we could expect some evangelical bashing.

Is it necessary to introduce concepts that include queer and gender ideology to children in public school?

Necessary to accomplish what?

There are thousands children's books that preach these things without drag queens or bondage.

There was this whole discussion about systems, and what they do, and what their purpose is. I think this is as clear of an example of The Purpose Of A System Is To Do What It Does. No, these books are not necessary to teach tolerance. Yes, these books are necessary to provide examples of sexual behavior that the school board want emulated, accepted, and normalized. Therein lies the disagreement and desire to opt out.

The defense by the school is classic motte and bailey. The well-defended motte is teaching tolerance. The productive bailey is exposing kindergarteners to drag queens and leather bondage fetishes. When challenged on the bailey, they retreat to the motte.

A curriculum that requires teachers to read a number of controversial book at least 5 times each a year is a curriculum designed to, intentionally or not, make opt-outs onerous.

Another win for TPOASITDWID. This looks like it is intentional for the purpose of denying the ability to opt out.

Ideally the Supreme Court should affirm the right to opt out that was already longstanding policy, and the fact that so many people opt out as to be a burden means the school is teaching the wrong things in the first place, not that people shouldn't be able to opt out at all.

Necessary to cultivate a society with pro-social norms that promote things like being polite enough to weirdos by discouraging things like bashing fags for fun. A reasonable idea for policymakers might be to check the trends. Allegedly even the per capita rate of "queer hate crimes" has increased despite a massive increase in queer identifying people. Lots of problems with hate crimes and expanding definitions. Nor does the rate of hate crimes account for positive increase in feel goods for queer people or advocates.

One thing about the leather-bondage drag queen exposure is, as far as I know, it's still uncontroversial to refer to these things as fetishes. Fetishes are differentiated from sexual orientation for reasons which include twin studies support that differentiation. I guess that's another pernicious thing smuggled placed on top of the load bearing pillar of "identity" and acceptance of all identified identities.

This looks like it is intentional for the purpose of denying the ability to opt out.

From how the school board meetings were relayed to Kavanaugh above, yeah, seems pretty bad. Charitably, these people were just bad at their job when designing curriculum. They didn't anticipate the resistance. Although when they encountered the resistance, rather than reverse course, they fought it all the way to SCOTUS.

I think like anti-racist trainings done by HR for adults, these things might well be counterproductive. It firstly associates this group of people with essentially “struggle sessions” often humiliating, but definitely something that they are forced to do and don’t want. Secondly it creates these divisions where a class of people are essentially otherized in an attempt at inclusion. You might not have thought about gay people as different from other people, but then the teacher hangs up flags and spends hours talking about how gays are different from other people, and to the shock of absolutely no one, the kids now see the gay or trans kid as a weird alien species of human not like them. Or in the case of HR programs, you don’t start our thinking of minority coworkers as weird, you don’t say “there’s a black person in accounting” or something. Then you are forced to Notice, Affirm, and Celebrate the diversity of your workplace and told how different these black people are, and then you can’t help but see them differently.

I haven't looked deeply into it, but my impression of research is that the anti-racist HR trainings are neutral to slightly counterproductive if you're judging by race relations. The real need for HR training comes from discrimination lawsuits. In that way they are productive so long they cover an employer's ass.

Or in the case of HR programs, you don’t start our thinking of minority coworkers as weird, you don’t say “there’s a black person in accounting” or something.

I think you may be typical minding here and it's driving you towards Democrats are the real racist.

You don't think of minority coworkers as weird, but you do notice minority coworkers. HR is correct that people are hard wired to notice the minority black lady in HR. That noticing leaves space for meaning and association. Mundane HR training attempts to provide a mild positive association via 'diversity'. Anti-racist programming goes further in the celebration of diversity, then adds a less benign negative association for white people, objectivity, being on time, etc.

A liberal I will learn her name, meet her, then judge how annoying of an HR lady she is is a common mode of operation. It's how most middle-class Americans I interact with engage. I prefer it, I want to keep it, but it's not natural.

As we've I've seen, the programming works. You really can cram coding into minds and get NYT editorials printed. You can really make Ford, Goldman Sachs, and POTUS bend the knee to deploy the new program. Force demands resistance so, yeah, there's resistance and counter-culture among the contrarians, vagabonds, individualists, and independent minded. Caveat is that the kids seem to be rejecting it now, because the kids think Dad is lame. Round and round.

Caveat is that the kids seem to be rejecting it now, because the kids think Dad is lame.

In an unusual win for equality, it's more that the kids think Mom is lame.

I don’t know for sure how typically im skewing this, but it used to be the norm that you’d be taught to get to know tge person as an individual without regard to race. That was the color blind 1990s and 2000s. And I’d say that seems to have featured much better race relations in most cases. Certainly there were still problems, but you didn’t have any real animus between groups en mass. Now you don’t have to go very deep to find open racism, sexism, or homophobia that would not have been said aloud in the 1970s. You wouldn’t have talked openly about Jews manipulating American government, or immigrants eating pets, or black men being criminals in the Frank manner people do today. If you got in a delorean and went back to 1975 and casually mentioned that during the VP debate, JD Vance talked about immigrants eating cats, it would seem weird.

You wouldn’t have talked openly about Jews manipulating American government,

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/12/nyregion/500-rally-to-support-controversial-cuny-professor.html

The past is a different place that even people who used to live there forget about.
And of course there's a loooooot about the gays. Half the rap we listened to as kids was about curbstomping faggots, in retrospect presumably by guys who were still a little sore from Diddy's parties

the kids now see the gay or trans kid as a weird alien species of human not like them.

Seems logical but not how it played out IRL. LGBT identification has risen in younger generations.

LGBT identification has risen among younger people, but so has social conservatism. This is seen in stats for young voters but there’s also no shortage of anecdotes floating around the internet of teachers complaining about their students seeming more openly right-wing in recent years (in fairness this also coincides neatly with the sharp rise in ideological progressivism among teachers).

I think the aggressive LGBT promotion toward children has a radicalizing effect, in both directions. Without such programs most kids, especially below a certain age, would simply not think about gay people (much less trans people) at all, unless they had personal experience, i.e. a gay relative or family friend. With the programs, they are forced to think about the issue, and some are attracted while others are repelled.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats