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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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For those interesting in discussing the actual law in question, it seems to be a reintroduction of VA HB580, which was first introduced in 2020 but went nowhere. It amends VA's existing legal definition of "abused or neglected child" to include someone "whose parent or other person responsible for his care creates or inflicts, threatens to create or inflict, or allows to be created or inflicted upon such child a physical or mental injury on the basis of the child's gender identity or sexual orientation".

mental injury

In this case send out the paddywagons to the homes of every gay or trans child. Also round up most (all?) of the parents of straight children. Everyone is a criminal if the law is that broad.

That sounds like CPS could take action if a father forbids his minor child from having sex. If the child was asexual, which is apparently an orientation, a rule against sex wouldn't be distressing.

Yes, progressives seem to believe that parents do not have the right to forbid their minor children from engaging in sexual activities.

There certainly are people who believe in not forbidding their minor children from engaging in sexual activities (which is very different from believing no parents have the right to do so), but it certainly doesn't seem to be a particularly popular opinion even among progressives. I was trying to find survey data on this question as it seems like something likely to exist, but my Google-fu is failing me.

Maybe you're confusing this with the progressive view on abstinence-only sex education that sex education should cover harm-reduction measures other than just abstinence?

So whole of puberty is a abuse and child neglection by that definition...

How do you reckon? I'm not following you here.

It's shitty and traumatic time for almost any participant. By default. And that is the easy mode.

Ah, gotcha.

I'm not seeing how you could possibly stretch that language to defining puberty as abuse. Maybe you're going for puberty falling under "allows to be created or inflicted upon such child a [...] mental injury on the basis of the child's gender identity" since children are generally unhappy about puberty and puberty sorta involves development of a person's gender identity? That doesn't really make sense, so I feel like I'm failing to steelman your claim.

Yes, it is quite useful to have everyone in violation of the law as it allows prosecutoral discretion to determine who gets jail

Happens in licensing work all the time. California reserves the right to suspend or revoke an alcohol license (which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases) if the state determines that "continuation of a license would be contrary to public welfare or morals" (Cal. Bus. Prof. Code sec. 24200(a).) We even wrote a similar provision into our constitution, because we're like that. (Cal. Const. Art. XX, Sec. 22)