The response was politically ineffective in the VA Governor's race, but that does not, imply that it was false.
I'm not saying that there's no reason to discuss the political angle here; I am saying that it's very important to be clear about which you're talking about, lest we go around in a spiral of confusion for the umpteenth time.
it’s a liberal doing exactly the thing a conservative criticized them for doing, and thinking that doing the thing on purpose is somehow refuting the criticism
It's not a liberal thing, it's an OT comment section thing that comes from the fact that we're responding via comments and not multi-thousand-word structured essays.
and then here you come emphasizing only part of a sentence and thinking that’s a king-hell 100%-unblockable destructo-attack
It is, in fact, a direct refutation to the accusation that we're lying about what the bill does, because the bill says it does exactly the same thing we do.
There’s a premise floating around out there that parents are somehow the enemies of their own children, or that kids need to be rescued from the people that both care most about them and are most responsible for them.
For instance, the governor and AG of Texas decided that parents who consent to blockers and hormone treatments are guilty of abuse, and they should be thrown in jail and their kids should be put in foster care.
Other Red States are not going quite so far, but they are criminalizing gender affirming care full stop.
If the OP weren't all about various forms of line-drawing and dot-connecting, I might take a different tack here.[1] But what people who don't share these concerns see, a lot more than parents they can trust expressing relatable concerns and anxieties, is a group of activists, media figures, and elected politicians who are very clearly using parental rights as a pretext for persecuting LGBT folks.
A lot of the time this is chalked up to backlash against administrators and teachers, but I really don't see why we should credit anxieties about those administrators and teachers, whose actions are often not terribly well documented, while having our own anxieties about policy makers acting in bigoted and lawless ways waved off again and again and again.
Opponents may be calling this controversial Florida law the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, but it is because those opponents are trying to mislead and obfuscate and LIE about what is really happening.
This would be a more persuasive argument if it weren't an accurate description of one of the things the bill does, which is prohibiting classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity. Why do people think it does that?
Well, there are many reasons, but one underappreciated one is that's what the bill's authors say it does, in the bill itself:
An act relating to parental rights in education; amending s. 1001.42, F.S.; requiring district school boards to adopt procedures that comport with certain provisions of law for notifying a student's parent of specified information; [...] providing construction; prohibiting classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in certain grade levels or in a specified manner;
Emphasis mine.
You talk a lot about connecting the dots in your piece, but it's hard not to connect dots like this one, where we get accused of being liars, and, yes, "groomers", for simply believing that the bill will do exactly what the people who wrote it says it will do.
A Democratic Party that ran a Kennedy/Thurmond ticket is likely a Democratic Party that would not have stopped being the Racist Party.
Which is essentially what I'm arguing in microcosm: if Team Red and Team Blue somehow swapped places on trans issues, a lot of other stuff would happen too, in such a way as to make the question very hard to answer in the abstract.
I think DEI is mostly harmless. I also think that, as long as they're assembled without weird RIghtward ulterior motives, efforts to keep DEI out of school out are also mostly harmless.
Also there are better counter-arguments here, because the neither the "medical" aspect nor the "parental consent" aspect are the beginning or end of the GOP's campaign against trans youth and parents who support them
I dunno I think stopping people from sexually preying on minors is Good, Actually, and maybe appropriating a term that is useful for explaining important dynamics that allow people to sexually prey on minors over an unrelated Culture War issue is not terribly amusing.
Maybe j r's right and this sort of thing is inevitable but we all have choices.
I know I know I know, but one of the problems here is that a lot of the, "Oh no teachers bad parents are right to not trust them!" are being reported to us by outlets that have a well-deserved reputation for being garbage
If that’s what you mean, then we’re back to me asking whether you would switch teams if they switched sides on this issue?
I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.
It's something that could happen in the sense that it wouldn't violate the conservation of angular momentum, but the way the parties are built up out of sub-constituencies, I have a hard time believing the swap could happen.
If it did? I suspect a lot of other changes to the parties would happen too, ones which might well make me trade in my Blue jersey for a Red one.
I really don't think it's meant metaphorically, but I also think a lot of it is being driven specifically by activists who, ah, don't have a strong record of acting in good faith, like Christopher Rufo, or Christina Pushaw (DeSantis' press secretary). And all the defenses I've seen argue that it's about the "sexualization of young children". It also functions well as a Q dogwhistle when taken literally, which could theoretically be a coincidence but I don't believe it for a second.
What I've seen in it out in the wild, coming from the major activists and officials defending the Don't Say Gay Bill, doesn't seem to leave a lot of room for metaphor in the mix.
FWIW, while I doubt that Rufo or Trump Jr. or whoever give a fish whether it's true, I suspect for a lot of rank-and-file SoCon supporters it probably makes sense as a generalization of the original concept, but it's a bad generalization that allows for far too many really bad ideas to be smuggled into the discussion.
OK I have to say this is the third time I've seen this interaction happen in one of these threads in as many days, and at the risk of going all hall-monitor on everybody, it's a dumb waste of time.
InMD has been quite clear what he thinks of the FL Don't Say Gay law, and what he thinks is that it's terrible:
The enforcement mechanism is dumb. It’s a bad law. I fully anticipate a bunch of idiotic lawsuits.
He then stated some other concerns. But he thinks the law is bad. I don't think he could have been more clear about this.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Here Comes the Groom(ing)”
Your analogy is too stupid to engage with usefully.
"
The response was politically ineffective in the VA Governor's race, but that does not, imply that it was false.
I'm not saying that there's no reason to discuss the political angle here; I am saying that it's very important to be clear about which you're talking about, lest we go around in a spiral of confusion for the umpteenth time.
"
Speaking of outliers, would you describe the Governor and AG of Texas as "outliers"?
"
So your concern is the deranged homophobic conceit that when a gay person mentions they're gay, they're talking about fucking?
Yeah, that's pretty much what I thought.
"
It's not a liberal thing, it's an OT comment section thing that comes from the fact that we're responding via comments and not multi-thousand-word structured essays.
It is, in fact, a direct refutation to the accusation that we're lying about what the bill does, because the bill says it does exactly the same thing we do.
"
For instance, the governor and AG of Texas decided that parents who consent to blockers and hormone treatments are guilty of abuse, and they should be thrown in jail and their kids should be put in foster care.
Other Red States are not going quite so far, but they are criminalizing gender affirming care full stop.
If the OP weren't all about various forms of line-drawing and dot-connecting, I might take a different tack here.[1] But what people who don't share these concerns see, a lot more than parents they can trust expressing relatable concerns and anxieties, is a group of activists, media figures, and elected politicians who are very clearly using parental rights as a pretext for persecuting LGBT folks.
A lot of the time this is chalked up to backlash against administrators and teachers, but I really don't see why we should credit anxieties about those administrators and teachers, whose actions are often not terribly well documented, while having our own anxieties about policy makers acting in bigoted and lawless ways waved off again and again and again.
[1] Then again, I might not.
"
This would be a more persuasive argument if it weren't an accurate description of one of the things the bill does, which is prohibiting classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity. Why do people think it does that?
Well, there are many reasons, but one underappreciated one is that's what the bill's authors say it does, in the bill itself:
Emphasis mine.
You talk a lot about connecting the dots in your piece, but it's hard not to connect dots like this one, where we get accused of being liars, and, yes, "groomers", for simply believing that the bill will do exactly what the people who wrote it says it will do.
On “JD Vance, Josh Mandel Put The Race Into Ohio Senate Race”
Always gonna be a few chickens lining up to join the Colonel Sanders Fan Club.
And it is so very unsurprising Vance is one of them.
On “Words Have Meanings, Part Ten Thousand”
A Democratic Party that ran a Kennedy/Thurmond ticket is likely a Democratic Party that would not have stopped being the Racist Party.
Which is essentially what I'm arguing in microcosm: if Team Red and Team Blue somehow swapped places on trans issues, a lot of other stuff would happen too, in such a way as to make the question very hard to answer in the abstract.
"
people gotta learn when to Rightside norm and when to Correctness norm smdh
"
And my point is around communication, FWIW.
I think DEI is mostly harmless. I also think that, as long as they're assembled without weird RIghtward ulterior motives, efforts to keep DEI out of school out are also mostly harmless.
"
Right but if you knew this was going to be the response, why not just choose a better source?
Like here's the thing: DEI nonsense of some sort finding its way into schools?
Pretty plausible.
Being presented with an example of something pretty plausible coming from a barrel-scraping outfit like the Mail?
Pretty weird.
"
Don't worry I have counter-habits that I expect to keep me safely ensconced here
"
This oversimplifies history to the last straw, ignoring that huge mound of hay on the camel's back
In both cases, you had years of intra-party struggle and inter-party realignment making the change possible.
LBJ signed the CRA in 1964, but Strom Thurmond ran as a Dixiecrat to protest the Democratic Party adopting a pro-civil rights party.
In both cases, you also had a period where the two parties were converging.
Could the Dems start moving in a more transphobic direction?
Sure, and that would be bad.
Could they get to the point where they are the transphobic party?
Maybe, but a lot of other shit would have to happen first, and a lot of it would affect my answer about partisan alignment
"
Yeah. That was one of the the better counterargument I was referring to.
"
Because I value my cause enough that I want to see demonstrations of devotion to it done properly.
Thanks for asking!
"
Also there are better counter-arguments here, because the neither the "medical" aspect nor the "parental consent" aspect are the beginning or end of the GOP's campaign against trans youth and parents who support them
"
I dunno I think stopping people from sexually preying on minors is Good, Actually, and maybe appropriating a term that is useful for explaining important dynamics that allow people to sexually prey on minors over an unrelated Culture War issue is not terribly amusing.
Maybe j r's right and this sort of thing is inevitable but we all have choices.
"
oh god why can't people read more carefully why do I have to do this
Those things are rarely, if ever, done without parental consent.
I don't think Russell is right.
I think your counterargument is very bad.
"
From the Daily Mail?
I know I know I know, but one of the problems here is that a lot of the, "Oh no teachers bad parents are right to not trust them!" are being reported to us by outlets that have a well-deserved reputation for being garbage
"
Very probably!
But the scenario, which is high salience for a lot of LGBT folks, shouldn't preclude that kid getting any other sort of support, right?
"
I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.
It's something that could happen in the sense that it wouldn't violate the conservation of angular momentum, but the way the parties are built up out of sub-constituencies, I have a hard time believing the swap could happen.
If it did? I suspect a lot of other changes to the parties would happen too, ones which might well make me trade in my Blue jersey for a Red one.
"
What does any of that have to do with your contention about trans issues, whatever it is you're actually contending?
And yes, I definitely depict "my side" and our position here that way because I believe it's an accurate description of what's happening.
"
I really don't think it's meant metaphorically, but I also think a lot of it is being driven specifically by activists who, ah, don't have a strong record of acting in good faith, like Christopher Rufo, or Christina Pushaw (DeSantis' press secretary). And all the defenses I've seen argue that it's about the "sexualization of young children". It also functions well as a Q dogwhistle when taken literally, which could theoretically be a coincidence but I don't believe it for a second.
What I've seen in it out in the wild, coming from the major activists and officials defending the Don't Say Gay Bill, doesn't seem to leave a lot of room for metaphor in the mix.
FWIW, while I doubt that Rufo or Trump Jr. or whoever give a fish whether it's true, I suspect for a lot of rank-and-file SoCon supporters it probably makes sense as a generalization of the original concept, but it's a bad generalization that allows for far too many really bad ideas to be smuggled into the discussion.
"
OK I have to say this is the third time I've seen this interaction happen in one of these threads in as many days, and at the risk of going all hall-monitor on everybody, it's a dumb waste of time.
InMD has been quite clear what he thinks of the FL Don't Say Gay law, and what he thinks is that it's terrible:
He then stated some other concerns. But he thinks the law is bad. I don't think he could have been more clear about this.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.