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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30419 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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People being outraged that teams were prevented from wearing the OneLove armbands (to show solidarity with LBGTQ rights amid the backdrop of Qatari views on homosexuality) are ignorant, arrogant, and dogmatic. This is part of what other regions of the world mean when they say the west forces our values onto other people. You don't get to go into another region of the world for a sport as global as soccer and then shit on them for not sharing the same views as you. Not everything needs to be about activism. I don't have the stats, but I have to imagine most people are not in favor of gay marriage in the middle east and, as much as i am in favor of gay marriage, you have to respect that. I mean it wasn't even codified legally in the US until fairly recently. If you want to interact with other countries, you have to accept that they see things differently than you and have different values. This strikes me as being a strong instance of 'i am so open minded that i am close minded'.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-21/european-teams-won-t-wear-pro-lgbt-armbands-at-world-cup?cmpid=BBD112122_MKT

I disagree. If you invite the whole world to your country by voluntarily hosting the World Cup, you should expect the world to show up. If you do not want people in your country who do not conform to the rigid social taboos of your culture, you shouldn't host the World Cup.

Wearing an armband is not shitting on anyone's culture or forcing anything on anyone. Being annoyed when your invited guests wear innocuous armbands that are perfectly fine in their culture is rude.

You could write exactly the same comment about the reverse case, where USA is hosting and the Qatari team wears armbands that say "marriage is between a man and a woman". Would you stand by it?

Yes, that would be totally fine with me. I mean, this is TheMotte, would anyone here want to ban something like that? I'm pro armband freedom for everyone everywhere.

Your comment reminds me of the classic https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/08/the-slate-star-codex-political-spectrum-quiz/

I'm more in the "no goddamn armbands for anyone, anywhere, except maybe one of your players or famous former player or associated with the club has died so black armband as mark of respect" camp.

Just checking. I think both cases would be bad. The bands are for the sole purpose of pissing the other guy off.

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