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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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(Replying here, but @anti_dan's sibling reply makes some similar points, so tagging them, too.)

I pretty often see low-effort comments on /r/politics and similar spaces accusing the Republican Party of being the party of pedophiles, providing evidence like their support for child marriage (which, in current law, is actually pretty mixed between red and blue states, more common in blue states, if anything), inspecting children's genitals to maintain sex segregation in sports (that link is Politifact calling BS on that claim), and politicians convicted of child molestation (obviously, that was an older case, actual comments often include more recent cases that haven't actually made their way through the legal system, so it's less clear they're even actually true).

In case I haven't made it clear in my tone, I think claiming the Republicans are pro-pedophile is absurd. As far as I can tell, everyone is anti-pedophile (and, similarly, anti-rape) right up until someone in their in-group (for some scope of in-group) is accused and then they don't want to do anything about it. I doubt there's a meaningful difference there between the left and right on that, and trying to cherry-pick examples is just culture warring.

I think there are obviously the bad guys like NAMBLA and the like. My point is actually that there is no Schelling point when you subscribe to consent sexuality + underage people can make permanent sexual life decisions.