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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 4, 2024

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Wake up, babe, new toxoplasma just dropped.

12 Salisbury University students charged with hate crimes after they allegedly beat a man they lured to apartment

I will never understand the propensity of young people--young men, in particular--for wanton violence. This is some "bum fights" level depravity. The "hate crime" bit I'm not a fan of--whether they did this to target a particular group is not, to my mind, relevant. Which group, you ask? Well, that's an interesting question.

Police say a man was invited “under false pretenses” to an apartment in Salisbury, where a group of men immediately surrounded him upon entry, forced him into a chair in the living room and then proceeded to kick, punch and spit on him while calling him derogatory names, police said.

One of the men met the victim on the LGBTQ dating app Grindr...

So, this is classic "gay bashing," yes?"

...pretended to be 16 years old and set a date to meet up "for the purposes of having sexual intercourse..."

Oh. Well, that's an... interesting... detail. Were they fishing for homosexuals, or fishing for hebophiles? CNN is quick to aver:

The legal age of consent in Maryland is 16 years old.

The statute link provided by CNN in that sentence is broken, at this writing. (EDIT: it appears that Maryland's age of consent is indeed 16, with no limitations, including pornographic material). The article does not mention the victim's age.

I condemn the assault, and the vigilantism/entrapment more generally. But the CNN article is clearly slanted toward turning this into a high-profile "gay bash via Grindr" story while working to elide the "young adults sloppily and mis-informedly imitating Chris Hansen" angle. Is this CNN's opening move in a "relentlessly show how Trump's America is a cesspit of bigotry and violence" campaign? Looking for the next George Floyd seems like the sort of thing that would be near the top of the Cathedral's playbook as it seeks ways to blunt the impact of Trump's apparent mandate.

NBC reports:

NBC News has reached out to attorneys for Aird and Leinemann. The others had no attorney information listed. All of the students were released this week on recognizance bonds, except Pietuszka who has his bond hearing Friday.

The Baltimore Banner:

Attorney James L. Britt said the alleged victim is a man in his 40s who propositioned what he thought was a 16-year-old. “Once all of the facts see the light of day, this case will be shown to be an ill-advised attempt to expose someone willing to travel to have sexual relations with a 16-year-old child,” he wrote in an email.

I don't particularly trust any news media or defense attorneys (and their clients), and even if they were being honest there's a lot of ways for people to have tried to portray their character as 16 and failed, but if true, it's not sounding like a Romeo and Romeo sorta situation. And given SAE's reputation, I expect their students would not be especially unfamiliar with the local laws regarding age of consent.

Is this CNN's opening move in a "relentlessly show how Trump's America is a cesspit of bigotry and violence" campaign?

Heaven forfend that Trump's America not give CNN the ammunition they need to make this argument. This seems like an actual news story so it's fair game.

I wonder if their genius idea was to stage a "predator catch," but they went full vigilante with it (because young dumb males).

If you're not aware, there are a ton of "pred-catcher" YouTube and Rumble channels. Basically doing the Chris Hansen thing (who has his own channel now as well): a decoy pretending to be a minor will hang out on dating apps or social media sites until some guy (a guy 99.9% of the time) takes the bait, and then they set him up to come meet the minor. They confront him, try to get him to confess, and then call the police - filming the entire thing.

The YouTubers, however, are familiar with the law and are generally very careful not to do anything that could get them arrested (especially not putting hands on the pred). They also make very sure their targets have thoroughly and unambiguously incriminated themselves. Their decoys usually pretend to be 12 or 13 - well below any possible age of consent - and they wait until they have hours and hours of sexually explicit messages, with the perp clearly stating he's aware of the decoy's (supposed) age.

Usually these are straight men going after young girls, but sometimes they get a gay guy trying to hook up with a boy.

Anyway, that's what this looks like to me: they got the idea from watching a pred-catcher video, but decided to beat the shit out of the perp instead. Very stupid, but probably not a hate crime, although since they found the perp on Grindr, I can imagine a DA who wants to make it a hate crime arguing that they were specifically targeting gay men.

I wonder what the chances are that all 12 defendants are themselves gay.

I'd be pretty surprised. There are gay frats, and not just in the explicitly LGBTQWTFBBQ sense, but SAE neither advertises itself nor has a reputation along those lines, at least from what I can see as someone not hugely familiar with frat life. And Salisbury is a pretty tiny school to start with; the statistics would only give around 50-100ish gay (or bisexual) men across campus in total.

SAE is generally considered very Southern, idk about Salisbury but at a lot of schools it's the ultra-Southern chapter.

The race of the parties is also conspicuously absent from the article. Statistically, Google tells me that they should be mostly white, as Salisbury's student body is approximately 70% white (much whiter than the surrounding community). If the victim was non-white, I assume that would also have been mentioned.

Yup, perps are mostly white.

They are also apparently 'members or associates of a fraternity', not sure if that's worth reading into.

My guess, the victim was an old guy trolling Grindr for teen boys. The attackers are wannabe vigilantes.

2 black, 2 white Hispanic.