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naraburns  nihil supernum  8d ago (text post)   Edited 8d ago   3299 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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You don’t need to be. Catholics are the hot religion now in right wing circles. And the evangelicals would probably follow along if the Catholics created a new term for marriage that officially excluded same sex people.

Ah, I have just had people mistake me for Catholic before - my guess is because they're the biggest player in the 'conservative Christian intellectual' space. Mainline Protestants can be intellectual but not conservative. Evangelical Protestants can be conservative but not intellectual. So people tend to assume I'm Catholic, or automatically take Catholicism as the framework for this kind of reflection.

I actually think the rise of Catholicism in this context is overstated and mostly illusionary. In practice American Catholicism is much more like mainline Protestantism, demographically and intellectually.

At any rate, the Catholics would not create a new term - or in a sense, they already have, in the way they talk about sacramental marriage. But theologically, as it were, the Catholic position is that marriage is marriage is marriage, full stop, and there is no reason for the church to change its language just because secular law has gotten things wrong.

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This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

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