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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022

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Jiro, it's the old old argument I've seen too damn many times by now. The people who put it forward don't give a damn about underlying moral principles or coherent philosophies. Any stick will do to beat the dog, and their main problem is religion, especially Christianity. Maybe they're atheists, maybe they were never any particular faith tradition to begin with, maybe they're from fundamentalist families and are now very very ex-Christian. What they do have in common is, Christianity Bad.

So Christianity Bad, Christians Bad, Christians say love but commit atrocities and wars, yadda yadda yadda. Abortion is just one of the fields they like to play on. If it wasn't "pro-lifers Christians, Christians bad, pro-lifers bad" it'd be something else.

That's why I say this is a trap. "If Christians believe abortion bad, why not stop abortion by force?/Christians use force/Aha we told you Christians murderous hypocrites!"

Speaking as someone who does hold a weaker form of the opinion expressed in the OP ("If you really, truly believe abortion is mass-murdering babies, why don't you respond the way most people would to the mass-murder of babies?"), no, it's not an unprincipled stick to beat Christians with. (Christians aren't the only pro-lifers, you know.) It's gauging how serious someone is about their stated beliefs.

When a pro-lifer does actually blow up an abortion clinic, I don't say "Hah, I knew Christians were murderous hypocrites!" I say, "That guy actually believed his own rhetoric."

FWIW, I do not think Christianity is particularly "bad," and I strongly suspect the OP of being a troll.

Yeah, well, you hang around here, you're an exception.

Take Trump (yes, unhappily, I have to go there). A lot of comment was about "if the Republicans truuuuuuly believed what they say about abortion (fill in the rest yourself)". Many times it was "then they'd make abortion a crime and prosecute doctors who perform them".

Trump comes along and does an interview where he goes "yeah, criminalise it". Cue all the shocked, shocked! faces. Here's a brief story from the BBC:

Donald Trump on abortion - from pro-choice to pro-prison

Some other Republican politician or other, I can't remember the guy's name and I can't be bothered Googling, went much stronger. Again, shocked pikachu from the "if they really believed what they say..." crowd.

Nobody went "They believe their own rhetoric", they went "We told you they were cruel misogynists who hate women and want to control them".

So I'm burned out on the "if pro-lifers/Christians really believe abortion is so wrong, why don't they..." type of questions.

OP may be a troll, but he/she/they/it/xe may be the type of troll that usually poses this kind of question everywhere online. "I ask this so if you say 'no' I can call you a hypocrite who only wants to control women's sexuality, and if you say 'yes' I can call you a monster who only wants to control women's sexuality".

"but he/she/they/it/xe" - I rarely feel insulted by an internet comment but this kind of hurts my feelings.

" Donald Trump on abortion - from pro-choice to pro-prison": This was one of Trump's finest moments. Notice how the willingness to say the obvious seems anti-correlated with personal Christianity. It's not Fundies leading the fight against woke depravity, but de-facto pagans who'd have been libertarians (or communists) in a different world.

If you don't want to get lumped in with the stereotype you shouldn't trying so hard to live up to it.

This was unnecessarily antagonistic, user received 1 day ban.