4 ms·

You do realize that massive swaths of the population in virtually every single country in the world are not accepting of homosexuality (1)? Are all of these pe

by Helmet 9y ago

You do realize that massive swaths of the population in virtually every single country in the world are not accepting of homosexuality (1)? Are all of these people "bad"? Of course not. There is simply a cultural disconnect, and some ideas die hard. (1) http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/06/04/the-global-divide-on-homosexuality/ http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/06/04/the-global-divide-on-hom...

dragonwriter 9y ago
> Are all of these people "bad"? In that one respect, yes. > There is simply a cultural disconnect Yes, much like there was once a “cultural disconnect” over whether human beings could legitimately be treated as property rather than persons.
- Helmet 9y ago
  Yeah man. You’re not the first person I’ve seen equate the plight and horror of slaves and slavery to the contemporary condition of the LGTB community in a modern, first world, secular society, but I can’t help but wonder at exactly how it is that you arrived at that conviction.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    (1) that's not what “equivocate” means (as in there is no definition of “equivocate” which fits that sentence structure.) (2) If you mean something like “paints an equivalence between”, I didn't. I provided an illustration of the concept that the existence of a cultural difference does not imply equal validity of both sides of the difference. (3) The attitudes rejecting homosexuality are almost entirely not found in secular society, though they may be found in national whose government is, nominally at least, secular.
    - Helmet 9y ago
      1 - i changed it to equate for you. 2. you did, and your illustration provided no such thing; it’s a strawman with no bearing in reality, and your very self-same argument can be used to undermine your own position... 3. what?
      - lurr 9y ago
        There was no equivalence drawn between slavery and the (modern) treatment of homosexuals. There was a parallel drawn between the cultural divide on both issues, and the implication was that, like slavery, oppression of homosexuals is wrong. 3. The hatred of homosexuals (at least hatred of gay marriage) tends to draw from religion. A more secular society has no reason to care.
logfromblammo 9y ago
I am acquainted with one very churchy person that admitted to cutting off all contact with a friend of theirs after that person came out. Yes, that does make them a bad person, and that makes it impossible for them to be more than just an acquaintance to me. And it also makes their religion--or at least their personal interpretation of it-- a bad religion. My imaginary friends don't get jealous of my real friends, and if yours ever do, you might want to consider pretending to break with them instead of turning on your real friends. It's up to you to determine if your imaginary friends have ever actually prevented you from making a real friend. Ethical development has come a long way over the last 5000 years, but even the semitic monotheist religions have all had "That which is hateful to you, do not do to others," for the last 2000. And yet the faithful still put their own hateful words in the mouths of their gods or their prophets for the credulous to hear and repeat. They do it for money and for status, and care little for the consequences. It is wrong. We can explain its wrongness with ethical treatise, and demonstrate the wrongness with game theory and Monte Carlo methods. Private behaviors of any sort are fundamentally unsuitable as discriminators in public life. To the extent that they leak, only that portion that is visible to the public should ever matter.
- Helmet 9y ago
  I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.
- ThrowawayR2 9y ago
  > My imaginary friends don't get jealous of my real friends... > And yet the faithful still put their own hateful words in the mouths of their gods or their prophets for the credulous to hear and repeat. They do it for money and for status, and care little for the consequences. To be honest, that attitude doesn't sound any more enlightened or tolerant than the attitude of the person that was being described.
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    Yeah, I'm not a very likeable person. People don't like me, and that suits me fine, because I'm not too fond of them either. Things might have been different if I hadn't so often been on the receiving end of so many spiteful kicks, but there it is; experience taught me not to trust strangers, and to not rely on others for anything important, including just doing the job they get paid to do. At least I know that about myself. I don't have to pretend to be a "good person", and can just be a "barely good enough person". I won't judge you if you don't judge me. If you're my friend--and I do actually have some, shockingly enough--I won't turn my back on you because I don't think you measure up to my standards. It's more likely I'm just avoiding you because I don't think I can measure up to yours, and I'm ashamed and embarrassed of things I have said and done in the past. I can't even imagine how someone could cut someone else out of their life just for being homosexual and still know what friendship means. That person would definitely do exactly the same to me if they ever realized I was atheist, so we can't be friends, ever, even if they thought they wanted to be. I just can't bring myself to tolerate the intolerable.
lurr 9y ago
You become bad when you take action on it. If you believe homosexuality is a sin and that gay marriage shouldn't be allowed I don't know if that makes you a bad person. If you vote for a person who says they will ban it, then yeah that's actually taking action to deprive another person of their rights. I don't support that and consider it bad.
- spease 9y ago
  I disagree. Expressing an opinion via voting (in the US) means nothing unless more than half the people who vote agree with the person. It's not directly depriving anyone of anything, and if they're in the minority, their vote doesn't have a direct impact on anybody. Thus if voting leads to somebody losing rights that they ought to have, there exists a problem with the larger community more than one bad actor. There was a lot of uproar a few years back because Brendan Eich donated a relatively small amount of money to a anti-gay-marriage group, but what got me was that nobody he worked with had any idea. It sounded like he treated everyone fairly regardless of orientation. To me it speaks volumes (positively) about someone's character if they participate in the democratic process, but if their opinion doesn't win out, they're willing to accept it and live with it.
Buldak 9y ago
I'm having a hard time understanding why you would think this. Is the suggestion here that people who are morally sincere can't be bad (whatever their moral views may be)? Or is it that you just don't view homophobia as a genuine moral failing?
- Helmet 9y ago
  > I'm having a hard time understanding why you would think this. Why I would think what? >Is the suggestion here that people who are morally sincere can't be bad (whatever their moral views may be)? No, the suggestion is that morality and ethics are complex cognitive, spiritual, religious, and cultural structures that don't boil down to some silly binary regarding ones stance on one issue. The point is, saying someone is "bad" on the basis of their view on any one single topic is ridiculous, especially when there is a wide range of opinion on the matter. It's essentialism at its absolute worst. The link I provided shows that 98% of Nigerians have negative views towards homosexuality - do you really think that 98% of Nigerians are bad people? Of course not - there are nuances to these issues. My greater point is that what I'll call "liberal religiosity" - this idea that if you break in any way from the standard liberal dogma, you are cast as a heretic and judged a "bad" person, like all these supposedly "bad" people in the Midwest who probably go to church every Sunday, help their neighbors out, act decently towards one-another, etc. >Or is it that you just don't view homophobia as a genuine moral failing? I'm a live and let live kind of guy.

by Helmet 9y ago

dragonwriter 9y ago

> Are all of these people "bad"? In that one respect, yes. > There is simply a cultural disconnect Yes, much like there was once a “cultural disconnect” over whether human beings could legitimately be treated as property rather than persons.

Helmet 9y ago
Yeah man. You’re not the first person I’ve seen equate the plight and horror of slaves and slavery to the contemporary condition of the LGTB community in a modern, first world, secular society, but I can’t help but wonder at exactly how it is that you arrived at that conviction.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  (1) that's not what “equivocate” means (as in there is no definition of “equivocate” which fits that sentence structure.) (2) If you mean something like “paints an equivalence between”, I didn't. I provided an illustration of the concept that the existence of a cultural difference does not imply equal validity of both sides of the difference. (3) The attitudes rejecting homosexuality are almost entirely not found in secular society, though they may be found in national whose government is, nominally at least, secular.
  - Helmet 9y ago
    1 - i changed it to equate for you. 2. you did, and your illustration provided no such thing; it’s a strawman with no bearing in reality, and your very self-same argument can be used to undermine your own position... 3. what?
    - lurr 9y ago
      There was no equivalence drawn between slavery and the (modern) treatment of homosexuals. There was a parallel drawn between the cultural divide on both issues, and the implication was that, like slavery, oppression of homosexuals is wrong. 3. The hatred of homosexuals (at least hatred of gay marriage) tends to draw from religion. A more secular society has no reason to care.

logfromblammo 9y ago

I am acquainted with one very churchy person that admitted to cutting off all contact with a friend of theirs after that person came out. Yes, that does make them a bad person, and that makes it impossible for them to be more than just an acquaintance to me. And it also makes their religion--or at least their personal interpretation of it-- a bad religion. My imaginary friends don't get jealous of my real friends, and if yours ever do, you might want to consider pretending to break with them instead of turning on your real friends. It's up to you to determine if your imaginary friends have ever actually prevented you from making a real friend. Ethical development has come a long way over the last 5000 years, but even the semitic monotheist religions have all had "That which is hateful to you, do not do to others," for the last 2000. And yet the faithful still put their own hateful words in the mouths of their gods or their prophets for the credulous to hear and repeat. They do it for money and for status, and care little for the consequences. It is wrong. We can explain its wrongness with ethical treatise, and demonstrate the wrongness with game theory and Monte Carlo methods. Private behaviors of any sort are fundamentally unsuitable as discriminators in public life. To the extent that they leak, only that portion that is visible to the public should ever matter.

Helmet 9y ago
I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.
ThrowawayR2 9y ago
> My imaginary friends don't get jealous of my real friends... > And yet the faithful still put their own hateful words in the mouths of their gods or their prophets for the credulous to hear and repeat. They do it for money and for status, and care little for the consequences. To be honest, that attitude doesn't sound any more enlightened or tolerant than the attitude of the person that was being described.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  Yeah, I'm not a very likeable person. People don't like me, and that suits me fine, because I'm not too fond of them either. Things might have been different if I hadn't so often been on the receiving end of so many spiteful kicks, but there it is; experience taught me not to trust strangers, and to not rely on others for anything important, including just doing the job they get paid to do. At least I know that about myself. I don't have to pretend to be a "good person", and can just be a "barely good enough person". I won't judge you if you don't judge me. If you're my friend--and I do actually have some, shockingly enough--I won't turn my back on you because I don't think you measure up to my standards. It's more likely I'm just avoiding you because I don't think I can measure up to yours, and I'm ashamed and embarrassed of things I have said and done in the past. I can't even imagine how someone could cut someone else out of their life just for being homosexual and still know what friendship means. That person would definitely do exactly the same to me if they ever realized I was atheist, so we can't be friends, ever, even if they thought they wanted to be. I just can't bring myself to tolerate the intolerable.

lurr 9y ago

You become bad when you take action on it. If you believe homosexuality is a sin and that gay marriage shouldn't be allowed I don't know if that makes you a bad person. If you vote for a person who says they will ban it, then yeah that's actually taking action to deprive another person of their rights. I don't support that and consider it bad.

spease 9y ago
I disagree. Expressing an opinion via voting (in the US) means nothing unless more than half the people who vote agree with the person. It's not directly depriving anyone of anything, and if they're in the minority, their vote doesn't have a direct impact on anybody. Thus if voting leads to somebody losing rights that they ought to have, there exists a problem with the larger community more than one bad actor. There was a lot of uproar a few years back because Brendan Eich donated a relatively small amount of money to a anti-gay-marriage group, but what got me was that nobody he worked with had any idea. It sounded like he treated everyone fairly regardless of orientation. To me it speaks volumes (positively) about someone's character if they participate in the democratic process, but if their opinion doesn't win out, they're willing to accept it and live with it.

Buldak 9y ago

I'm having a hard time understanding why you would think this. Is the suggestion here that people who are morally sincere can't be bad (whatever their moral views may be)? Or is it that you just don't view homophobia as a genuine moral failing?

Helmet 9y ago
> I'm having a hard time understanding why you would think this. Why I would think what? >Is the suggestion here that people who are morally sincere can't be bad (whatever their moral views may be)? No, the suggestion is that morality and ethics are complex cognitive, spiritual, religious, and cultural structures that don't boil down to some silly binary regarding ones stance on one issue. The point is, saying someone is "bad" on the basis of their view on any one single topic is ridiculous, especially when there is a wide range of opinion on the matter. It's essentialism at its absolute worst. The link I provided shows that 98% of Nigerians have negative views towards homosexuality - do you really think that 98% of Nigerians are bad people? Of course not - there are nuances to these issues. My greater point is that what I'll call "liberal religiosity" - this idea that if you break in any way from the standard liberal dogma, you are cast as a heretic and judged a "bad" person, like all these supposedly "bad" people in the Midwest who probably go to church every Sunday, help their neighbors out, act decently towards one-another, etc. >Or is it that you just don't view homophobia as a genuine moral failing? I'm a live and let live kind of guy.