site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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.

7
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Gillick said that the NHS could provide contraceptives to girls under the age of consent even if the parents didn't want them to. The Law Lords (at the time the UK's de facto Supreme Court) ruled on the basis that this was a case about medical decision-making where the controlling legislation was the laws setting up the NHS. The Court of Appeal ruling that the Law Lords overturned said that this was a case about the scope and limits of parental authority and that the the relevant legislation was the 1969 Family Law Reform Act (which lowered the age of majority from 21 to 18, and allowed certain rights at 16 including medical decision-making). Two of the three Court of Appeal judges said obiter that if the case needed a "best interests of the child" analysis (they thought it didn't and children under 16 couldn't consent to any medical treatment as a matter of black-letter law) then the existence of the criminal law prohibiting underage sex meant that it couldn't be in the best interests of a child.

So the legal framework which the Law Lords overturned in Gillick was one where age of consent laws were an additional reason (beyond general principles of family law) to uphold parents' rights to control their underage daughters' sexual behaviour. And the framework Gillick created was one where age of consent laws are irrelevant to the relationship between government service providers and underage girls.