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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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This has nothing to do with the law.

It's not a direct result of that law - it's not like the law required this firing, or anything like that. But do you really doubt that's a significant part of what set the context for this incident?

it has nothing at all to do with the law

the law was a response to the context of school teachers using public institutions and their authority over other people's children to groom children and normalize behavior and gender ideologies they know full-well their parents find at the least objectionable for children and engaging in various acts to hide that from parents

the law didn't cause school teachers to do that, it was a response to them doing it

the context is the reason this happened, too, and it has nothing at all to do with the law

School parents upset with their kids seeing nudity? No, I don't think the law was part of it. It might have set the context for the coverage, at most, but that's a separate issue.

They even showed it in years past with a permission slip and just forgot to send out the slip this year. It's a paperwork mishap elevated to a firing offense because of the ongoing culture war over parental rights.

failing to get permission to show potentially sexual content to other people's children isn't merely a "paperwork mishap" and trying to downplay it to that characterization looks like agenda

potentially sexual content

What precisely do you mean by this term?

something which can be viewed as sexual content by a reasonable person

not interested in playing these games where you pretend you don't understand what that phrase means when the reality is you simply disagree a reasonable person would view showing penises on the statue of David to children is potentially sexual content

Why put it in terms of perception or the display to children? A penis is a sexual organ. Is there a context where you wouldn't regard a representation of a penis as sexual content?

A penis is a sexual organ. Is there a context where you wouldn't regard a representation of a penis as sexual content?

Equivocation fallacies are a dirty trick.

  • "Sexual content" = "Pornographic content"

  • "Sexual organ" = "Reproductive organ"

One can't make a fallacy without making an inference. I am trying to clarify a vague position - arguing for or against it is for later in the dialectic.

Why would a reasonable person think that Michaelaneglo's David is pornographic?

Let us remember, the Greeks thought big, erect penises were the subject of humor, and small/un-erect dicks were more fitting of conquerors and victors.

it doesn't bother you; trying to claim it's not doing anything "untoward" is therefore built on top of the fact you see nothing to be concerned about in the first place

no matter how many times you retype that claim, it doesn't make it true

why would a teacher choose to show penises to other people's children? there are any number of other art works including cropped pictures of David which do not show penises to other people's children

If the penis is incidental, you could show some other Official Work of High Art or could manipulate the image of David to not show the penis and avoid the issue altogether. Instead, the teacher insisted the "incidental penis" was shown for a purpose making the incidental penis not incidental at all.

Why are you making it weird?

why does a teacher have a need to show other people's children penises and why do you need to defend such behavior?

I do not believe showing children Michelangelo is something to be "defended" as if it's a bad thing. Why do you feel the need to censor what has long been accepted as high art, as if children would be struck blind by a marble penis? Take some folk wisdom from Sarge Colon - if it has a vase, it's decent to look at.

I am making it weird because I think someone needs to answer all sorts of hard questions when it comes to The Tough Question of how to deal with children and believe parents are by-and-large the best choice to make that determination. This means wide leeway about topics in which there is disagreement. I don't care about nudity generally, but I can see why some parents would especially in the current context of rampant ideological grooming (at best) in schools and various tactics used to hide that from parents and undermine their authority vis-a-vis their children.

Puritans

shakes head

Avoid low effort comments like this.

I'm just trying to say it's incompetence not malice, their policy was to send out a notice to parents, they had sent that out in the past when they showed the same images. They just didn't this year and the principal blames miscommunication. This wasn't a malicious conspiracy to sneak nudity into schools without parents permission, they had been showing this stuff and getting permission for a while they just messed up this year and didn't send out the notice.

You can say that's a really severe a form of incompetence and we can disagree about that, but it's not malice.

causing an accident and killing someone may not be malice, but the person is dead all the same

if this "paperwork mishap" was failing to send homework home, no one would care

you don't think there is even a reasonable argument for there to be harm (or even justifiable suspicion) in this scenario which sets the context for the strategy of downplaying anything you cannot look past through benefit of the doubt

Yes there are forms of incompetence that have severe consequences and which people need to be fired for. I don't think this is such a case, you may think it is, but it's still not a conspiracy to corrupt the youth.

What is the harm done to a 12 year old when they see Michelangelo's David? Are the 49/50 parents who said they're totally fine with their kids seeing this sculpture abusive parents authorizing the school to harm their child?

looking backwards, it appears the purpose was to get a foot in the door with "creationism" and sex ed and then expand the beachhead

lots of people made predictions and slippery slope claims during that time; which groups turned out to be more accurate?

It shouldn't surprise anyone in a society which bans God from public institutions that the winning ideology would be a Godless religion. The ideologues got their victory and immediately started a new war.

Making sex education part of normal curriculum has correlated with a strong downward trend in teen pregnancy

a trend which preceded the fight