4 ms·

But this is the case on everything though, literally almost everyone used to be anti or neutral about LGBT 20 years ago and now is supportive, mostly, because o

But this is the case on everything though, literally almost everyone used to be anti or neutral about LGBT 20 years ago and now is supportive, mostly, because over the years they've had experiences with LGBT people in their life and changed their minds. Shaming people who have "strong moral/ideological positions" is basically just denying human nature... if anything, it is comendable to at the very least be able to change your position if enough (real) evidence is provided. Obviously, someone who is "Open to all viewpoints" is ideal, but in many cases those people (Myself included in many cases) also do not feel too strongly about any topic to act on it (it is mostly just our nature), if everyone was like that we wouldn't have activists for example.

amerkhalid 3y ago
Exactly this. While GP has a point but, in general, there is a lot bigger penalty for changing mind than for being stubborn. We would be better off as a society if we balance penalties for changing your position vs being stubborn. And I rather have leaders who are hypocritical/opportunistic/etc but at least using new data to change their views than those who reject the new data and stick to their original viewpoint.
_gabe_ 3y ago
> because over the years they've had experiences with LGBT people in their life and changed their minds. Two things can be true at once. People who identify as LGBT can be very pleasant people. Additionally, I can still believe that identifying as LGBT is wrong according to my religious views. In fact, according to my religious views, everybody is a sinner and doing stuff that's wrong, but that doesn't mean they're horrible people. But it also doesn't justify the wrong behavior. And of course, my religious views don't mean I can go and harass people who disagree with me or anything. But it also doesn't mean I have to go praising them for doing something I don't agree with.
- nyanpasu64 3y ago
  I think it's harmful to society and people's lived well-being (as opposed to adherence to values espoused by millenia-old orthodoxies) to judge people as being sinful for being attracted to and caring for loved ones of the same gender, as opposed to being attracted to and caring for loved ones of a different gender.
  - dcow 3y ago
    This is a harmful (to discourse) reduction of the situation. Modern religious authorities/communities, despite some of their uneducated followers all too often not understanding the nuance either and generally being homophobic turds, are against extramarital sexual intercourse not because “God hates the gays” but actually because they believe [religious] marriage is covenant of procreation. Marriage is not needed to have sex, and having sex outside of a situation where you’re willing and able to accept children is not the society these people want to build. There’s nothing inherently homophobic about that at all. Nobody (the bible included) says you can’t love someone of the same sex or even have two people of the same sex cohabitate and raise children. It’s actually quite the opposite if you look at history and the broader context. They’re just not “married” in the eyes of their church because they’re not popping out babies. Believe it or not, in the Catholic Church, even a heterosexual couple married but on birth control is looked down upon and considered to be in a state of sin. Now you can still have a problem with a group of people considering extramarital sex sinful, I have no apropos argument there, but it’s not born of some grand scheme to discriminate against the gays or whatever. And it’s really uncharitable and harmful to thoughtful religious people to reduce their moral doctrine to charged falsehoods.
    - simiones 3y ago
      The definition of marriage in the Church has little to do with the legal definition of marriage - except for the fact that the Church is trying to impose its views on the law where it suits them. Also, different christian denominations have different beliefs about the purpose of marriage. Sex outside of marriage is definitely sinful in all of the mainstream christian churches, though they differ on how sinful sex is in the context of a marriage. I'd also note that, while wedding ceremonies commonly talk of kids, there is no obligation to have kids as part of a marriage. For example, the church is perfectly happy to marry an old woman with a man, even though it is absolutely certain she can't have kids anymore. Overall, the orthodox/fundamentalist christian position seems to be: sex should only be done for the purpose of making children, only married couples should have sex, and anyone capable of having children should strive to have more children. LGBTQ+ people are not exempted - at least if they are physically capable of having children, they shouldn't let their personal preferences get in the way of their duty to God - so they should also seek to enter a heterosexual marriage to have children. The only exception to all of this is choosing to become a monk or priest (depending on denomination) - in which case you owe a duty of faith to God and thus shouldn't love other men or women anyway.
- dahart 3y ago
  > it also doesn’t mean I have to go praising them for doing something I don’t agree with. Nobody’s asking for “praise”, the LGBT movement is about attaining the same civil rights that you enjoy.
  - Georgelemental 3y ago
    Statements of the form "nobody is doing X" are almost universally incorrect. There are 8 billion people on this planet, you can almost certainly find an entire organization dedicated to whatever X you please.
    - dahart 3y ago
      Statements of the form “nobody is doing X” are almost always talking about a very small percentage, and not intended to be a claim about exactly zero people. My statement wasn’t a claim about whether someone exists who wants praise, it was a summary of the purpose of the LGBT issue to counter the parent’s straw-man that summarized LGBT as being a binary harassment vs praise issue. Sure my statement above can technically be interpreted as incorrect if you take the words of my broad generalization extremely literally, but if you want to be that pedantic, why didn’t you call out the parent comment for being much much more wrong? Do you think relative magnitude doesn’t matter? > you can almost certainly find an entire organization dedicated to whatever X you please. This is fairly meaningless when you strip it of all magnitude and comparison. Sure you can find some weirdos in numbers that are statistically insignificant. You can’t even make your point without also acknowledging that an organization of ten people is 0.000000125% of the population, which is, statistically speaking, for all intents and purposes, nobody.
      - _gabe_ 3y ago
        > it was a summary of the purpose of the LGBT issue to counter the parent’s straw-man that summarized LGBT as being a binary harassment vs praise issue. ? You may want to reread what I wrote because the last thing I was trying to do was argue a "strawman that summarized LGBT as being harassment vs praise". In fact, I was arguing exactly the same thing you seem to be arguing here: that this is a false dichotomy being preached by the loud minority, and that taking a balanced middle ground is a fine idea. However, I do find it funny that you're offended about someone being pedantic with your argument when it seems like that's the exact same thing you did with my original comment.
- riwsky 3y ago
  You can still believe the Earth is flat, too—don’t let those ships disappearing over the horizon bully you into thinking otherwise
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    Not the OP, but the concept "sin" is nowhere nearly as physical as the shape of the Earth. I would even argue that for non-religious people, the concept is entirely irrelevant, with some exceptions, and religious people shouldn't try to legislate anti-sin policies into law. [Exceptions:] If you live in a heavily Jewish neighbourhood and sell sandwiches, it is a good idea to have kosher ones as well, even though you personally don't care about mixing of cheese and ham.
ke88y 3y ago
> literally almost everyone used to be anti or neutral about LGBT 20 years ago I can't remember any mocking for changes on LGBT issues from "anti" to "support". In fact, that movement was particularly careful throughout the naughts and 10s to be welcoming to changed minds. I don't remember any mocking for changes in the other direction either, but tbh that direction of change was probably pretty rare until fairly recently. So maybe it did happen and I never saw it because the precondition was rare. Nit: Massachusetts legalized gay marriage in 2004, which was 20 years ago. Several other states quickly followed. Major changes to civil institutions don't happen when "almost everyone" is quixotic. I think you could say "a majority" were anti or neutral, but certainly not "literally almost everyone". Perhaps "literally almost everyone running for President", but now we're talking about dozens or perhaps hundreds of people most of whom genuinely deserve to be mocked for having no real convictions outside of personal ambition. Or at the very least mocked a bit for the obvious dearth of courage to defend or even admit to any convictions they do hold which happen to be inconvenient to electoral college math...
- darklycan51 3y ago
  That's why I said both anti and neutral, yes it is true that most were "neutral" but there were also a lot of lowkey insults aimed at the LGBT community, such as casual use of the f word, let's not pretend that wasn't the case
- actuallyalys 3y ago
  Off-hand the only situation where I remember people being mocked for switching positions toward favoring gay marriage is politicians, such as in a Matthew Bors comic [0]. But politicians are widely perceived to change their public stances for insincere reasons, so this example suggests that it’s insincerity, not changing positions, that people tend to mock. [0]: https://thenib.com/the-gay-marriage-rush/ https://thenib.com/the-gay-marriage-rush/
- jfengel 3y ago
  I can think of one example where somebody was publicly mocked for their change of heart: Rob Portman, who changed his mind about gay marriage after his son came out. The vast majority of the coverage was positive, for exactly the reason you said. But I heard a number of voices who saw it as part of a pattern: they were uninterested in any issue that did not affect them personally. It's not a lack of conviction, but rather a lack of empathy. Every issue is pursued with equal self-interest, holding back rights from everybody else until it serves them.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> But this is the case on everything though, literally almost everyone used to be anti or neutral about LGBT 20 years ago, and now is supportive If by “literally almost everyone” you mean “a majority, but not a particularly overwhelmingly large majority”, sure. Both opposed 20 years ago and supportive now: 2001-2019 support for gay marriage in Pew polling went from 57-35 against to 61-31 in favor. Did everyone change their mind? No, about 1 in 4 did.
- dllthomas 3y ago
  > No, about 1 in 4 did. Possibly far fewer, since it's not the same population, and those aging into polling were much more accepting (on average) than those, um, "aging out."

amerkhalid 3y ago

Exactly this. While GP has a point but, in general, there is a lot bigger penalty for changing mind than for being stubborn. We would be better off as a society if we balance penalties for changing your position vs being stubborn. And I rather have leaders who are hypocritical/opportunistic/etc but at least using new data to change their views than those who reject the new data and stick to their original viewpoint.

_gabe_ 3y ago

> because over the years they've had experiences with LGBT people in their life and changed their minds. Two things can be true at once. People who identify as LGBT can be very pleasant people. Additionally, I can still believe that identifying as LGBT is wrong according to my religious views. In fact, according to my religious views, everybody is a sinner and doing stuff that's wrong, but that doesn't mean they're horrible people. But it also doesn't justify the wrong behavior. And of course, my religious views don't mean I can go and harass people who disagree with me or anything. But it also doesn't mean I have to go praising them for doing something I don't agree with.

nyanpasu64 3y ago
I think it's harmful to society and people's lived well-being (as opposed to adherence to values espoused by millenia-old orthodoxies) to judge people as being sinful for being attracted to and caring for loved ones of the same gender, as opposed to being attracted to and caring for loved ones of a different gender.
- dcow 3y ago
  This is a harmful (to discourse) reduction of the situation. Modern religious authorities/communities, despite some of their uneducated followers all too often not understanding the nuance either and generally being homophobic turds, are against extramarital sexual intercourse not because “God hates the gays” but actually because they believe [religious] marriage is covenant of procreation. Marriage is not needed to have sex, and having sex outside of a situation where you’re willing and able to accept children is not the society these people want to build. There’s nothing inherently homophobic about that at all. Nobody (the bible included) says you can’t love someone of the same sex or even have two people of the same sex cohabitate and raise children. It’s actually quite the opposite if you look at history and the broader context. They’re just not “married” in the eyes of their church because they’re not popping out babies. Believe it or not, in the Catholic Church, even a heterosexual couple married but on birth control is looked down upon and considered to be in a state of sin. Now you can still have a problem with a group of people considering extramarital sex sinful, I have no apropos argument there, but it’s not born of some grand scheme to discriminate against the gays or whatever. And it’s really uncharitable and harmful to thoughtful religious people to reduce their moral doctrine to charged falsehoods.
  - simiones 3y ago
    The definition of marriage in the Church has little to do with the legal definition of marriage - except for the fact that the Church is trying to impose its views on the law where it suits them. Also, different christian denominations have different beliefs about the purpose of marriage. Sex outside of marriage is definitely sinful in all of the mainstream christian churches, though they differ on how sinful sex is in the context of a marriage. I'd also note that, while wedding ceremonies commonly talk of kids, there is no obligation to have kids as part of a marriage. For example, the church is perfectly happy to marry an old woman with a man, even though it is absolutely certain she can't have kids anymore. Overall, the orthodox/fundamentalist christian position seems to be: sex should only be done for the purpose of making children, only married couples should have sex, and anyone capable of having children should strive to have more children. LGBTQ+ people are not exempted - at least if they are physically capable of having children, they shouldn't let their personal preferences get in the way of their duty to God - so they should also seek to enter a heterosexual marriage to have children. The only exception to all of this is choosing to become a monk or priest (depending on denomination) - in which case you owe a duty of faith to God and thus shouldn't love other men or women anyway.
dahart 3y ago
> it also doesn’t mean I have to go praising them for doing something I don’t agree with. Nobody’s asking for “praise”, the LGBT movement is about attaining the same civil rights that you enjoy.
- Georgelemental 3y ago
  Statements of the form "nobody is doing X" are almost universally incorrect. There are 8 billion people on this planet, you can almost certainly find an entire organization dedicated to whatever X you please.
  - dahart 3y ago
    Statements of the form “nobody is doing X” are almost always talking about a very small percentage, and not intended to be a claim about exactly zero people. My statement wasn’t a claim about whether someone exists who wants praise, it was a summary of the purpose of the LGBT issue to counter the parent’s straw-man that summarized LGBT as being a binary harassment vs praise issue. Sure my statement above can technically be interpreted as incorrect if you take the words of my broad generalization extremely literally, but if you want to be that pedantic, why didn’t you call out the parent comment for being much much more wrong? Do you think relative magnitude doesn’t matter? > you can almost certainly find an entire organization dedicated to whatever X you please. This is fairly meaningless when you strip it of all magnitude and comparison. Sure you can find some weirdos in numbers that are statistically insignificant. You can’t even make your point without also acknowledging that an organization of ten people is 0.000000125% of the population, which is, statistically speaking, for all intents and purposes, nobody.
    - _gabe_ 3y ago
      > it was a summary of the purpose of the LGBT issue to counter the parent’s straw-man that summarized LGBT as being a binary harassment vs praise issue. ? You may want to reread what I wrote because the last thing I was trying to do was argue a "strawman that summarized LGBT as being harassment vs praise". In fact, I was arguing exactly the same thing you seem to be arguing here: that this is a false dichotomy being preached by the loud minority, and that taking a balanced middle ground is a fine idea. However, I do find it funny that you're offended about someone being pedantic with your argument when it seems like that's the exact same thing you did with my original comment.
riwsky 3y ago
You can still believe the Earth is flat, too—don’t let those ships disappearing over the horizon bully you into thinking otherwise
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  Not the OP, but the concept "sin" is nowhere nearly as physical as the shape of the Earth. I would even argue that for non-religious people, the concept is entirely irrelevant, with some exceptions, and religious people shouldn't try to legislate anti-sin policies into law. [Exceptions:] If you live in a heavily Jewish neighbourhood and sell sandwiches, it is a good idea to have kosher ones as well, even though you personally don't care about mixing of cheese and ham.

ke88y 3y ago

> literally almost everyone used to be anti or neutral about LGBT 20 years ago I can't remember any mocking for changes on LGBT issues from "anti" to "support". In fact, that movement was particularly careful throughout the naughts and 10s to be welcoming to changed minds. I don't remember any mocking for changes in the other direction either, but tbh that direction of change was probably pretty rare until fairly recently. So maybe it did happen and I never saw it because the precondition was rare. Nit: Massachusetts legalized gay marriage in 2004, which was 20 years ago. Several other states quickly followed. Major changes to civil institutions don't happen when "almost everyone" is quixotic. I think you could say "a majority" were anti or neutral, but certainly not "literally almost everyone". Perhaps "literally almost everyone running for President", but now we're talking about dozens or perhaps hundreds of people most of whom genuinely deserve to be mocked for having no real convictions outside of personal ambition. Or at the very least mocked a bit for the obvious dearth of courage to defend or even admit to any convictions they do hold which happen to be inconvenient to electoral college math...

darklycan51 3y ago
That's why I said both anti and neutral, yes it is true that most were "neutral" but there were also a lot of lowkey insults aimed at the LGBT community, such as casual use of the f word, let's not pretend that wasn't the case
actuallyalys 3y ago
Off-hand the only situation where I remember people being mocked for switching positions toward favoring gay marriage is politicians, such as in a Matthew Bors comic [0]. But politicians are widely perceived to change their public stances for insincere reasons, so this example suggests that it’s insincerity, not changing positions, that people tend to mock. [0]: https://thenib.com/the-gay-marriage-rush/ https://thenib.com/the-gay-marriage-rush/
jfengel 3y ago
I can think of one example where somebody was publicly mocked for their change of heart: Rob Portman, who changed his mind about gay marriage after his son came out. The vast majority of the coverage was positive, for exactly the reason you said. But I heard a number of voices who saw it as part of a pattern: they were uninterested in any issue that did not affect them personally. It's not a lack of conviction, but rather a lack of empathy. Every issue is pursued with equal self-interest, holding back rights from everybody else until it serves them.

dragonwriter 3y ago

> But this is the case on everything though, literally almost everyone used to be anti or neutral about LGBT 20 years ago, and now is supportive If by “literally almost everyone” you mean “a majority, but not a particularly overwhelmingly large majority”, sure. Both opposed 20 years ago and supportive now: 2001-2019 support for gay marriage in Pew polling went from 57-35 against to 61-31 in favor. Did everyone change their mind? No, about 1 in 4 did.

dllthomas 3y ago
> No, about 1 in 4 did. Possibly far fewer, since it's not the same population, and those aging into polling were much more accepting (on average) than those, um, "aging out."