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naraburns  nihil supernum  1mo ago (text post)   Edited 1mo ago   4034 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for February 2026

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).

As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.

These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.

Quality Contributions to the Main Motte

@helmut_hofmeister:

@naraburns:

@George_E_Hale:

@Rov_Scam:

Contributions for the week of February 2, 2026

@pbmonster:

@100ProofTollBooth:

@RandomRanger:

@FtttG:

@Dean:

Contributions for the week of February 9, 2026

@100ProofTollBooth:

@P-Necromancer:

@clo:

@JeSuisCharlie:

@gattsuru:

@urquan:

@oats_son:

Natalism & Co.

@LazyLongposter:

@gog:

@self_made_human:

@RenOS:

@OracleOutlook:

Contributions for the week of February 16, 2026

@RandomRanger:

@quiet_NaN:

@Closedshop:

@urquan:

@OliveTapenade:

Contributions for the week of February 23, 2026

@TitaniumButterfly:

@MonkeyWithAMachinegun:

@birb_cromble:

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Nothing you wrote is untrue, but. Proceeds to gesture towards a thing in concept-space that is hard to articulate

Civil marriage hasn't even approximated the Christian view of marriage in a long time, to the extent I think it's a different institution. SSM just stands out to me as the final nail in a coffin, not a grand transgression of how sanctified marriage is in a world where the Republican president is on his third model wife after divorce.

When legalization of SSM was the topic du jour, this was more or less my position. State has invented a legal concept, let the state to do with it as it pleases and let grown-up gays to engage with that legal concept, not my business to comment on that. Everyone is free to have a different opinion about gay sex in privacy of his or her own mind, it's not like they want to gay marry Christian heterosexuals against their will. However, these days I think it was and is a line of real significance. After SSM became acknowledged as a legal right, in few years any moral teaching that disapproves of SSM was no longer a conservative position but reactionary one, one opposed to a right enshrined in law. Most people in Western societies are not principled in a way that they view legislation as a minimal viable consensus contract in a repeated negotiation game; for them, the law is a convenient Schelling point for morals, and who it is against morals? Immoral people. It is suspicious if someone has an opinion against or dares to preach publicly against a perfectly normal legal right. Many are willing to go full Judge Dredd on the people who are on the wrong side of the law.

All of it makes me uneasy. I still don't really care about SSM that much one way or another, but I notice that speaking against it first slowly, then suddenly turned into a social and professional suicide. Same applies to basic definition of words, too, like "mother" and "father". You are engaging in wrong-think if you don't enthusiastically agree that a kid can have two moms. I am worried that same thing may happen to other rights I care about.

After SSM became acknowledged as a legal right, in few years any moral teaching that disapproves of SSM was no longer a conservative position but reactionary one, one opposed to a right enshrined in law.

That's been my experience. When this was a live debate, prior to 2015, there were at least fig leaf attempts to say things like, "We understand the sincerely-held convictions of people on both sides", or "You are free to believe whatever you like about marriage", or some minor concession to the idea that the issue is complicated and that people of good faith might hold to a traditional view. It wasn't always the case, and a great deal of public debate was the inevitable dumpster fire of people screaming at each other, but you did find it to an extent.

Today, the position has become that if you have reservations, you are are unforgivably bigoted, and there is no possibility of a sympathetic motive on your part.

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