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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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How would you attribute increasing 'acceptance' of homosexuality and trans people in society to "a higher power imposing our will on our opponents"? One could argue media, or social media, are playing a significant role, but that's not exactly "executing your will", more persuasion.

Here's a very obvious way:

  1. The government passes a "anti-LGBT discrimination law" that allows workplaces to be sued if anything conceivably homophobic or transphobic (by its standards) happens and is not addressed.

  2. Companies don't want to be sued and face punitive damages so they start putting up courses against disliking homosexuality or trans and encouraging acceptance. They institute a pronoun policy to push trans acceptance. They make it clear punishment is the cost of non-participation or flouting the rules. They hire a HR department to watch over all of this.

  3. People care about their livelihoods so they have no choice but to go along. Some falsify their beliefs by acting like they agree, some have the good fortune to be able to believe the things they're forced to conform to. Many go along to get along with yet another tedious corporate mandate like putting pronouns in their bio or introducing themselves with them even when they don't believe in the concept.

This has been the playbook since the Civil Rights movement and explains the rapid acceptance of the trans activist line without anything like the debate over gay marriage; the system is much more refined and entrenched now and so it can pivot very fast - especially by leveraging past successes to create an aura of inevitability that discourages resistance and encourages elite adoption (elites themselves educated in institutions that accept a lot of these things)