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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026

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Is the slippery slope really a fallacy?

A story from Canada today that, by its very nature, maximizes heat. I will try to keep my own emotions about this story in check. Sitting at the intersection of gay rights, abortion rights, surrogacy rights, and ultimately the violence upon which all government force is founded, I bring you: Couple sues surrogate who refused to abort their baby over a minor birth defect

https://nypost.com/2026/07/14/world-news/couple-sues-surrogate-who-refused-to-abort-their-baby-over-a-minor-birth-defect/

Long story short, the baby had a minor heart defect (the article doesn't specify what) and a cleft palate, and the adoptive men wish their now two year old child had been murdered and are suing the birth mother for failing to do so (there are also claims that she failed to keep them informed in a timely manner about these issues). Last I'll say of my own emotions on this is that this strikes me as outright demonic behavior and if I say anything more about my feelings I'm going to drift into fedposting so I'll stop here.

The main point I can take away from this is that all of the Christian right that warned about various slippery slopes have been validated over, and over, and over again. The slippery slope is technically a fallacy, yes. But Christians repeatedly pointed out "There is no limiting principle here, and the arguments you nake to support degenerate behavior X are just as applicable to degenerate behaviors Y and Z and there is nothing except public sentiment (and not even that if a judge somewhere says otherwise) preventing the awful things we're talking about from becoming reality."

For those who lived through the culture wars over abortion, gay rights, and similar issues, have your feelings on the matter changed in anyway whatsoever over the last decade or two, and in which direction? And why, if you're able to articulate. For me at least, to quote the meme an old friend shared in our edgy groupchat the other day, "Upon further consideration I have decided to become more extreme in my religious beliefs".

The briefest glimpse of surrogacy will show it's an utter house of horrors, and seeing all the nicey-nicey finger-wagging progressives and liberals defend it, was when the last bits of rationalism and liberalism left my body. It was oddly liberating, too. To think I spent all this time worrying about the moral judgement of people who don't bat an eye at a child being sold, and literal Handmaiden's Tale stans who somehow see no issue with it.

For those who lived through the culture wars over abortion, gay rights, and similar issues, have your feelings on the matter changed in anyway whatsoever over the last decade or two, and in which direction?

I lost quite a bit of patience with "gay rights" when "love is love" and "they're just like us" crashed into the reinforced concrete wall of meeting actual gay people. I especially don't want to hear another word about the "AIDS """crisis"""", but all things considered I can still get behind the idea of tolerance.

Abortion is an interesting one. I was never a fan of it, but being libertarian for a good chunk of my life, I figured it's best to "keep the government out of it". Cases like this are interesting, because they show the Garden of Earthly Delights-esque path from "anything goes between consenting adults" and "my body, my choice" to "women are just incubators" - the very thing feminists thought pro-life thought implies.

literal Handmaiden's Tale stans who somehow see no issue with it.

Handmaid's Tale isn't horror, it's porn. Wishcasting. Subverting itself. A dystopian low-fertility future in which any random chick who can pop out a kid is a precious resource to be hoarded by the nearest warlord? Why that's just like the Old Days.

Handmaid's Tale isn't horror, it's porn. Wishcasting.

As a side note, I tend to agree with this. I just don't think it's a coincidence that the lead character (1) is highly valued by society; (2) is forced into copulation (and concubinage) with a high status man; (3) these types of things are very common fantasies among women.