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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   24526 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026

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I think part of the problem is that when these norms were challenged, the people defending them didn't have anything legible to use. For example, homosexuality. They might say that it's a sin, and I don't think they're lying or coming up with an excuse, I think that's what they legitimately believed and they just didn't know the real reason was that gay promiscuity would lead to an extremely deadly STD being spread. In other words, they were right for the wrong reasons. So if you argued with them, it was very easy to win the argument and convince people there was no good reason for homosexuality to be taboo. But then you get the AIDS epidemic and millions of otherwise healthy young men dying in droves.

They might say that it's a sin, and I don't think they're lying or coming up with an excuse, I think that's what they legitimately believed and they just didn't know the real reason was that gay promiscuity would lead to an extremely deadly STD being spread.

One must acknowledge it's kinda debatable was the deadly STDs the driving reason for the proscription (was ancient Greece or Rome suffering from higher STD rate than a societies with stronger taboos? Until the Columbian exchange, none of the STDs in circulation were particularly deadly.)

Another equally believable hypothesis is that proscription against is culturally beneficial because if culturally accepted, homosexual relationships result in, ah, peculiar networking patterns among the elite that tend to be decoupled from talent and ... more coupled with sexual availability and desirable features. But such hypotheses have a smell of just-so story. James VI had a court intrigue due to Duke of Buckingham despite the widespread taboo, in a culture where Christianity was viewed more authoritative source of sexual ethic. Today we have more of ... gestures at the rainbow flags yet rate of gay court intrigue among modern politicians do not appear much higher.

P.S. point being, the effects of such hypotheses appear too diffuse to be detected.

HIV was well known when homosexuality was actually normalized though, right? It was still pretty deeply taboo in the 70s and 80s and by the 90s everyone knew about AIDS.

I think part of the problem is that when these norms were challenged, the people defending them didn't have anything legible to use.

Their arguments were legible and worked for thousands of years. They don't work within the particular frame of secular liberal individualism, which refuses to accept certain arguments.

I'm not sure we've established that secular liberal individualism is so right that failing to meet its standards means you don't have an actual point. There are places where it seems obviously wrong, imo.

For example, homosexuality. They might say that it's a sin, and I don't think they're lying or coming up with an excuse, I think that's what they legitimately believed and they just didn't know the real reason was that gay promiscuity would lead to an extremely deadly STD being spread.

A more charitable view is that they don't like homosexuality because it's seen as degenerate and one of the reasons they think it's degenerate is STD spread. God enjoins the good and forbids the wrong, after all.

It's just not the ultimate reason. The problem you face without that normative anchor of "God said so" is that moderns rightly believe the world is more malleable to our powers. For a vast number of people now any problems with the gay lifestyle are technical ones: either we need better medical technology to render the downsides irrelevant, or we need more social engineering to solve the attendant psychological problems that come with that lifestyle.

Without some sacral peg, even clear downsides do not necessarily justify banning the behavior.

Their arguments were legible and worked for thousands of years. (…) I'm not sure we've established that secular liberal individualism is so right that failing to meet its standards means you don't have an actual point.

I mean, we can get into the whole "God does not, as a matter of fact, exist" argument, but I don't know that this is a good use of anybody's time. Inevitably an argument that relies on the existence of the Christian God is going to be null and void when levied against people who are pretty sure that there's no such varmint, never mind the circularity of "X is wrong because God says so".

There are arguments that don't require god that nonetheless get rejected or closed down because they violate the prevailing ideology of the day. For thousands of years people have argued for human sex differences and thus gender roles in a variety of ways. We tend to be much less sympathetic to this to the point of not just rejecting the normative conclusion but denial of the empirical claim itself because it sits uncomfortably with this ideology.

I'm guessing the genuine sentiment of most of them was 'I don't want these disgusting, diseased degenerate fucks trying to recruit young men into their subculture and throwing pride parades on main street with the government's backing'. But saying this openly is seen as heartless and petty, plus it gets you cancelled. So instead you see them resorting to the usual religious arguments about sin etc. which in turn compels liberal atheists and 'moderate Christians' to fight against this strawman.

I think most just actually see it as a sin. It’s mentioned as such in both the old and new testaments, and it was condemned by nearly every church body and sect until the 1960s. I don’t think you need to reach for hidden motives here.

No, I live in one of the few bastions of actual homophobia in America- they’re seen as degenerate, disease ridden groomers who have government backing for their perversions and nudity on Main Street.

Yes, they believe the lifestyle is degenerate, but that doesn’t detract from their view that it’s a sin (indeed, it reinforces it). Botond173 was responding to this comment, which I think had the right of it:

They might say that it's a sin, and I don't think they're lying or coming up with an excuse, I think that's what they legitimately believed

Yeah, this is a huge problem with most conservatives in general. Honestly, I think part of the reasons societies become more liberal overtime is at least, in part, because conservatism is defense (which is arguably harder) vs liberalism which offensive. And as you point out, often times, even the the people defending the status quo dont understand the status quo.

Social conservatives are Cassandra. But just like in Troy 1150 BC, nobody listens.

Seriously, go read bygone social conservatives. It’s hard to argue that thé women’s league against suffrage were wrong about their predictions.

Even if they made some correct predictions, this argument might still just be cherry picking. Surely social conservatives have also made many wrong predictions. And the time when people who were social conservatives by modern standards controlled nearly all human societies was not a utopia, or even close to one. Personally, I see little reason to think that that time was actually better than our current time, even if you control for technological progress. Of course that partly is a matter of preference.

Any specific links / names / titles? I keep hearing this and find it mildly fascinating, but I never bothered looking for actual materials on it.

Here's a decent article about it I read recently: https://kirkcenter.org/essays/a-cause-lost-and-forgotten/

"It is likely that you have come up with rebuttals to these anti-suffrage arguments as you have been reading along. That’s fine—I have a dozen myself. The important thing to know is that, whatever enlightened counterarguments you have in mind, they were almost certainly espoused by none of the suffragettes at the time. For women who were not terribly political themselves, that was the decisive argument against suffrage: half the women arguing in favor of it seemed to be utterly daft."

that was the decisive argument against suffrage: half the women arguing in favor of it seemed to be utterly daft.

Agreed and let's also strip men of the vote for the same reason.

I think most voters are operating on vibes and social approval rather than policy. Policy based arguments are so orthogonal to their views that they can't be influenced by them.

Thanks!

Well, we can add though that liberalism isn't that impressive and convincing either when on the defense, as we have seen in the past decade or so.

The past decade? Many hypothetical, pre-civilization states of nature thinkers like Rousseau came up with don't really seem congruent with our evolved history.

I interpreted Nerd's comment to mean that not only does (political) conservatism represent defense, which is an inherently passive activity unlikely to generate much enthusiasm about its prospects, but that it also comes across as pathetic and uninspiring when it tries to defend itself. I'd argue that Western liberalism has also been on the defensive since 2016 or so, for a decade, or at least that is surely how its believers see themselves, and I don't think the defense they're putting up appears that impressive or convincing either. I see a lot of bitterness, pessimism, despair and a lack of vision for the future on their side.

I'd argue that Western liberalism has also been on the defensive since 2016 or so, for a decade, or at least that is surely how its believers see themselves, and I don't think the defense they're putting up appears that impressive or convincing either.

It really isn't. But liberals/progressives have an additional asymmetry in their advantage: even though people may not like their own proposed solutions they don't actually have to deal with a return to some older regime because it's been practically foreclosed. Multiculturalism may not win, but you're not getting back to the old white majority, secularism may have failed but adherence to faith and the power of the church has collapsed regardless, liberalization to divorce law was only supposed to impact a few cases but now you can't roll it back, etc.

So, once conservatives have failed, the solution will be some form of "progress". Even the reactionaries often can't fathom a real RETVRN.

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