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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023

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https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/shows/meetthepress/blog/rcna90023

Apparently there’s been a big drop in conservative support for gay marriage, all in the space of a year.

I think this says a lot, mainly because it’s a point I see brought up by a lot of the blackpillers in this community “look, look - even conservatives support gay marriage now, there’s no stopping progressivism”.

Well, what now? Apparently the left has pushed too hard and too fast and it’s turning the GOP away. Being LGBT isn’t seen as some harmless thing anymore, especially when it seems being “tolerant” means accepting gay drag nuns on crucifixes. The parodies are no longer a parody, and grooming children to accept gender ideology seems rife in schools even in deep red states.

Recently I read about a Muslim city in america voting to ban the pride flag. This is just one example of the incoming shift and realignment being forced by progressive extremism becoming more forcibly mainstream

I don’t buy it.

Other topics in the poll:

  • 92% -> 88% for birth control

  • 81% -> 78% for divorce

  • 76% -> 72% for premarital sex

Et cetera. There are 19 questions in total, many of which shifted towards the right, but the only “statistically significant” changes are same-sex relations and…increased support for the death penalty. Are those two really the front lines of the culture war?

I think the poll numbers are consistent with a general lean right, but that any specific issues are going to be green jelly beans. Sway general opinion enough, such as by a bad economy under a Democrat, and a couple of the issues are going to come up as significant.

In fact, look at the breakdown by party. Independent support for same-sex relations actually went up. That’s not what I’d expect from a progressive fringe alienating the center.

Otoh, a shift on LGBT and crime issues is about what I’d expect from a backlash to woke.

Has the death penalty really been a CW front lately?

I’d find it more plausible if it were asking about police militarization or right to protest or prison reform. Those were probably priced in by last year, too.

Support for the death penalty is just how red tribe normies phrase support for tough on crime IME, so it seems like that question in practice just means ‘should we prioritize punishing crimes’ to a large percentage of respondents.

I think people are using support for the death penalty as a proxy for various "tough on crime" measures.

It’s possible, and there weren’t any other crime options on the survey, so we can’t really check.

But also—what happened in ‘22 to make crime the Current Thing? Are gender politics really going to drive up support for law-and-order conservatism? The biggest BLM talking points should definitely have shown up in the 2021 data.

These results do support a general, minor, rightwards slide. Crediting that to “woke excesses” is what I find a little sketchy.

But also—what happened in ‘22 to make crime the Current Thing? Are gender politics really going to drive up support for law-and-order conservatism? The biggest BLM talking points should definitely have shown up in the 2021 data.

My understanding (as someone who doesn’t live in the States, but has friends who do and other friends who keep track of local city news there) is that crime has continued to get significantly worse even after the pandemic. As such, I am not surprised in the slightest that there’s movement towards a more law-and-order position in America.

I wanted to check the numbers, but almost everything stops at 2020 or 2021. Even the ones that say 2023, presumably for SEO reasons...it's infuriating.

There's a slew of articles going around about how the murder rate has supposedly tanked this year. But they were all released around the same time, so I bet they're quoting the same report. Not very reassuring.