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Moral Majority. I'd go so far as to say a lot of the anti-conservative/anti-religious reaction today by the progressives is due to generational trauma inflicted by overzealous authoritarianism by the moral majority. Notice how most of it is not economic leftism but cultural leftism, the moral majority was authoritarian cultural rightism.
I guess I agree with the policies they want. But do you actually think they are the same as what we saw 2014-2024? Sure they did politics. And I could see how someone would find them annoying. But SPLC would basically ban you from the internet, maybe take away your job. Annoying family value rallies just doesn’t seem like the same thing.
The Right passed actual laws in the 70s and 80s that banned gay people from teaching in public schools, or even someone advocating gay rights in public outside of school contexts. And there were the FCC crackdowns on indecent content, e.g. Howard Stern, the Helms Amendment.
There was also quite the panic around video games, movies, music, and board games, though that was admittedly bipartisan. I remember one teacher I had freaking out because I was reading one of those choose your own adventure books, which she associated with Dungeons and Dragons for some reason.
Did you ever feel like your fellow Americans hated you? Maybe I’m being histrionic but I guess 2016-2024 I just need knew fellow Americans were capable of doing things they did to me then. Like evil. The America I grew up with was united. Muslims hit us and we would all go kill them together. But 2016-2024 we were enemies with each other. It’s like losing my innocent. A civil war I never saw coming. And it honestly feels like we almost lost and America was over.
I'm not american, but welcome to how atheists (and gays, and so on) felt under the moral-majority-style religious right. It was the same kind of split were the moderate religious right was publicly saying not believing was fine, but they were actively politically allying (and thus empowering) a more rabid wing that would regularly go after people who do something that goes against their beliefs. Like, it's fine to be an atheist, as long as you don't do anything that might offend random christian activists.
To be fair, the woke actually still feels worse to me since it has more internal institutional backing inside academia, but there definitely is some symmetry here.
Your argument would be stronger if you focused on gays instead of atheists. I have no recollection of atheists facing any discrimination. I can 100% understand they thought the moral majority people were annoying but there are not any big everyday life frictions.
Gay potentially. But they did successfully lobby to keep gay bath houses open, during the AIDS pandemic. So they were not lacking political power.
I am also moral majority. Don’t be gay. It’s bad for you. Just find a nice wife.
You don't need to save me or anyone else, we don't want you to. Just live your own life. Other people being gay does not affect you.
I can imagine to an actual gay person hearing comments like that feels a lot like your fellow Americans hating you.
To be fair to my argument. They actually did believe creating a moral society was good for the gays. I still believe that 1980’s culture was better for the gays than 2020.
In one area it seems most certain to me is with respect to children. Would Sam Altman be happier in the closet sneaking off for gay sex twice a month but with a loving wife raising his children or with the motherless child from a surrogate. To me it’s fairly obvious the former is better for him.
And obviously the children are effected.
Other people's children. Those people don't need you to come in and save their children. Just like you don't need the progressives to come in and save your children. This entire problem is because both sides want to "save" other people's kids. Stay in your own community and stop sticking your nose or your opinions in places that don't affect you.
Yes I'm sure Gays were so absolutely grateful that they definitely didn't protest soooo hard to stop it, and definitely aren't existing in a multi-generational state of trauma, forcing the rest of us to deal with that gratitude... I'd say the observed outcome of people's actions is that the 1980s culture was not better for the gays. Of course right-wingers are very biased in their opinion about this, because they need to see themselves as the hero, not the villain. Have some epistemological humility, the arrogance is staggering.
You mean a bitter wife who knows he's cheating on her with men but can't say anything about it, can't divorce him, being forced to hide who he is because otherwise his community will shame and ostracize him?
What I really don't get about you right-wingers is the amount of complaining you do about having to hide who you are around progressives because otherwise you will be socially shamed and ostracized. And then you turn around and say that other people should suffer that fate and call it the better outcome. Here you are getting a taste of your own medicine and it is bitter, but rather than learning, having empathy, understanding the other side's feelings, you cling to the delusions that when you do it, it is ok, it is moral.
We truly are fucked.
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