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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025

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I think we are nearly agreeing? The push against smoking included much more than anti-smoking education in schools: bans in many public and private spaces that are enforced, taxes, fees, inconvenience for selling and marketing tobacco, varied media campaigns not limited to the equivalent of odd sex ed class. School health education about harms of smoking hopefully contributes to anti-smoking, but wasn't decisive on its own.

So reiteration of my point: if the intention is a society of no premarital sex, then abstinence-only sex ed in schools will be much easier time having an effect if there are other policies in place that make the abstinence-until-marriage lifestyle sound more enticing, realistic and attainable than other lifestyles.

Sure. I think we are mostly agreeing. The only thing I'd add is that the only person who has posited that the only strategy available, the only strategy that we can consider when determining a chance of success, is just trying to have mostly left-leaning schoolteachers officially say that abstinence is a thing that exists... is you.

Honestly, I'm getting shades of the perennial weight loss discussion, where certain factions strawman the science of caloric balance as, "The only way this can be tried is to just suggest to people that they consume fewer calories." Naw dawg. You're strawmanning hard.