Culture & Identity

Lambda Legal’s Travails

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From Huffington Post, which skews progressive left. That said, hard to see who is/isn’t most at fault. Downplaying support for marginalized LGBTQ communities such as the incarcerated in favor of marquee cases that gin up fundraising and name recognition seems bad. But making the agenda intersectional to embrace all marginalized communities and progressive causes seems bad for the mission, too.

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When Progressive Politics Becomes Your Religion

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Letting politics become your religion is a bad idea. The state is not God, and political power is not redemption.

And relatedly:

Sen. Ben Sasse writes:

Americans have always had political disagreements with their neighbors, but in the past, political differences could disappear when Friday night ballgames rolled around and the whole town turned out wearing the same colors and cheering for the same team. Today our towns are hollower, and we’re not on the same team anymore. …

If too many Americans feel like we’re not “in this together” right now, it’s because we’re not. We are screaming at each other, and the country no longer has enough real social texture to absorb and wick away the hatred. The only way out is to rebuild our communities and launch new ones—one person-to-person relationship and one local institution at a time.

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Privileged Progressives Champion ‘Politically Correct’ Culture

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Youth isn’t a good proxy for support of political correctness, and race isn’t either, writes Yascha Mounk in The Atlantic. But wealth and privilege are.

Mounk also writes:

And while 12 percent of the overall sample in the study is African American, only 3 percent of progressive activists are. With the exception of the small tribe of devoted conservatives, progressive activists are the most racially homogeneous group in the country.

Delving into the meaning of political correctness, Mounk writes:

In the extended interviews and focus groups, participants made clear that they were concerned about their day-to-day ability to express themselves: They worry that a lack of familiarity with a topic, or an unthinking word choice, could lead to serious social sanctions for them.

And this:

It turns out that while progressive activists tend to think that only hate speech is a problem, and devoted conservatives tend to think that only political correctness is a problem, a clear majority of all Americans holds a more nuanced point of view: They abhor racism. But they don’t think that the way we now practice political correctness represents a promising way to overcome racial injustice.

And while on the topic of political correctness:


Related: Thou shall not joke about the sacred Facebook holiday. Katie Herzog writes:

Under my status, an old friend’s ex-partner, someone I’d met once, commented that my “privilege was showing.” A surprising (to me) number of my actual friends agreed that my privilege was, indeed, hanging out. … What happened to us? Queer people used to be funny.

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The New Inquisition

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Walter Olson posted:

Brown University assistant professor Lisa Littman’s research, subjected to peer review, accepted and published in the journal PLOS One, “explored the reportedly growing phenomenon by which clusters of socially connected teenage girls, some beset by autism spectrum disorder and other mental health challenges, suddenly express feelings of gender dysphoria apparently without having experienced these earlier in life, as is more commonly the case.”

At Quillette.com, Jeffrey S Flier writes:

“Dr. Littman’s preliminary research suggested that this often occurs after heavy exposure to social-media content extolling the benefits of gender transition….[Following criticism by activists on social media and after hearing directly from unnamed individuals] Brown University deleted its initial promotional reference to Dr. Littman’s work from the university’s website—then replaced it with a note explaining how Dr. Littman’s work might harm members of the transgender community….
“Increasingly, research on politically charged topics is subject to indiscriminate attack on social media, which in turn can pressure school administrators to subvert established norms regarding the protection of free academic inquiry. What’s needed is a campaign to mobilize the academic community to protect our ability to conduct and communicate such research, whether or not the methods and conclusions provoke controversy or even outrage.”

More. David E. Bernstein writes:

Establishment voices that are usually raised very quickly at any hint of the politicization of science from right-wing political sources were notably silent. But can you imagine the reaction if the study had been one favorable to, say, same-sex marriage, and the same thing had happened after conservative evangelical Christian activists complained?

Gail Heriot writes, “This reminded me of when I drew the ire of transgender activists two years ago.”

Unintended consequences.

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All About Compulsion

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As Williamson notes:

What [Phillips] declines to do is to make cakes for certain events, participation in which, even as a vendor, would violate his conscience. As he put it: “I serve everybody. It’s just that I don’t create cakes for every occasion.”

Phillips has been prosecuted under a civil-rights law, but this is not really a case about civil rights: It is a case about compulsion. …

The point is not to see to it that gay and transgender people can live their lives as they wish to — the point is to coerce Jack Phillips into conformity.

More.


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