This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
From @DuplexFields, in a thread about erasure of right-coded identities:
Huh. I remember hearing that conversation years ago. It probably just said "gay" instead of LGBT, but other than that it was basically identical.
At the time, Chick-fil-A's charitable arm had been in the news for anti-gay activism. The specific complaints I recall were funding conversion therapy and supporting Uganda's rising restriction of gay rights. Some quick Googling suggests these would have been Exodus International and the Family Research Council. There's a pretty unambiguous motte in which
Chick-fil-A donates money to WinShape Foundation
Winshape donates lots of that money to Exodus/FRC
Exodus endorses conversion therapy, including prominent support for Uganda
FRC lobbies (for weaker language, not against?) the US resolution condemning Uganda's bill
Uganda continues to debate assigning the death penalty to homosexuality
Naturally, by the time any of this was hitting the broader news, it was a messy conflation. The bailey, intentional or otherwise, was more akin to
Chick-fil-A donates money to evangelists and conversion therapists
Evangelists run missions in Uganda
Therefore Chick-fil-A evangelists must be running conversion therapy in Uganda
Uganda considered the death penalty for homosexuality
Therefore Chick-fil-A endorses literal genocide
And that was the state of Chick-fil-A criticism in Texas circa 2012.
By 2014, the bill had been amended to life-in-prison, passed, and overturned on procedural grounds. Exodus International had walked back their stance on conversion therapy and then also imploded. The FRC had been targeted by an incompetent gunman who intended to "to kill as many people as I could ... then smear a Chicken-fil-A [sic] sandwich on their face" in protest of Chick-fil-A's donations. This didn't seem to affect their continued domestic lobbying, including hiring rising star Josh Duggar.
It's hard to imagine this drama as anything other than dead and buried. Chick-fil-A hasn't funded these groups for a decade now, sticking to safer investments in summer camps and youth leadership. Unless I've missed some fresh drama, that conversation is a prime example of tribal signaling rather than an object-level stance, a good reason to be frustrated with the state of identity politics.
It's the end result of a cultural game of telephone, fossilized by sheer memetic fitness and alignment with the Current Thing.
I had thought that the drama was dead and zombified rather than buried, but perhaps it really is buried by now, from seeing this news about Chick-fil-A opening in Boston last year, 9 years after Boston's mayor had publicly announced that Chick-fil-A would be kept out of Boston specifically for their perceived anti-gay politics.
Wait, is that legal? Can the mayor of a city just target a specific business on ideological grounds like that?
IANAL, but what laws would you expect to be in the books that that would violate?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link