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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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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.

To clarify, you are saying that if the right-wing accusation of LGBT+ grooming children is truthful, then you personally support the shooter?

What does this mean specifically?

It means the LGBT+ community is trying to influence children to join their sexual culture. Do you think this is happening?

just set them on course to join in the future as adults?

So this is not "grooming" in your mind???? Conservatives would consider cultural influence "setting them on the course" to join that community as grooming their children. If you've set a child on the course of sexual development, the grooming is done.

That's not pedophilia or child sexual abuse though.

It is abusive to set children on the course of heavily self-destructive and dysgenic behavior.

It sounds like you're trying to do an end run around "gay bad, trans bad" by assuming it as given, then arguing "it's abuse because it leads to gay/trans". But this entirely trades on the negative connotations of "abusive", not of "gay/trans".

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