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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026

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Sorry, I misread "accident", since it's a common euphemism for all crashes. Trying again:

you engaged in a risk-filled situation, the risk occurred.

Same with the passenger. Sucks to be him because I'm fine. Were you expecting me to go back on "I also [voluntarily take on risks] as a passenger of a car with a responsible driver." from upthread when I'm placed in the driver's seat instead?

unprotected/protected Sex is not unlawful, criminally negligent, or reckless.

Every lawyer in the United States would say that, and every judge would agree. They also say nonsense like growing grain on your own farm to feed your own animals is "interstate commerce". At best, it's an instance of people acting like babies appear from nothing, not an argument for the idea.

Same with the passenger. Sucks to be him because I'm fine.

I mean in this case the passenger is analogous to the baby.

I feel this topic will endlessly fail to converge because of the underlying teleological differences. If one side believes in a unitary telos of sex -> reproduction and the other believes in a multi-variate telos of sex, then I think convergence is unlikely. The risk-based argument fundamentally belongs to the multi-variate telos. The unitary telos smuggles in Christian values, which is not very convincing to non-Christians. There are other arguments, but ones that are anchored on the topic of life/humanness are always semantic debates where each side trots out their specific very biased tailored definition and attacks the opposing definition.

Unfortunately many of both sides are also invertebrate hypocrites around the principles of this discussion, and want to cut a fine boundary carveout for their pet side while dodging the "child-support payments" of the downstream costs. The best that can we can really hope for is that each side sticks to holding their own views in their own community and doesn't try to enforce it on the other side's community. But due to the universalist and totalizing natures of the underlying grand narratives involved that sort of equilibrium is probably not emergent.