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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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Asking when the LGBs are going to jettison the TQs is kind of like asking when the Republicans are going to jettison fundamentalists.

There's a difference: fundamentalists vote in large numbers so they provide continuing value to the general conservative movement.

Meanwhile:

  • the Ts are a small number, even within the movement.

  • Many of the gains of the Ls, Gs & Bs are locked in by judicial ruling so aren't going anywhere. Their allies certainly wouldn't dare roll them back if they sat this one out. Even the GOP has large numbers or even a bare majority in favor of gay marriage.

But I also don't think there'll be a jettisoning for that reason.

Because the "normie" gays like Andrew Sullivan either went on with their lives after winning the important battles or were turned off or defenestrated by the TQs and radicals who still need the movement - either for their unpopular goals or whatever psychological need for belonging or the perception of radical politics they have.

fundamentalists vote in large numbers so they provide continuing value to the general conservative movement.

It’s not just voting- you would be unable to run a conservative movement without using fundamentalists to do, well, almost everything. From staffing institutions that help no one’s career path on a resume to activism and volunteering to coming up with ideological veneer to accommodate different groups’ self interest to just providing a safe, cozy community conservative figures can wind up in if they want some time out of the limelight, the right is just critically dependent on fundamentalists constantly and in a wide variety of ways.