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> Anger and hate are two different things. You're attempting to conflate them to garner sympathy I am not. The word "and" isn't the same as "equals." > As for
by blagie 3y ago
> Anger and hate are two different things. You're attempting to conflate them to garner sympathy
I am not. The word "and" isn't the same as "equals."
> As for hate being effective, these people got a "kill the gays" bill passed in Uganda, so it seems that was pretty damn effective.
It is really? Uganda is being ostracised as a result. Did this law convince anyone, or merely galvanize the opposition?
> These are in no way equivalent and the juxtaposition seems to be implying that if we're OK with one we need to be OK with the other.
If be "we," you mean "society" or "governments" (as opposed to individuals), I am, indeed, implying this, and that's almost my entire point.
The basic problem is -- at least on at a societal level -- that we have deep-held moral values, but we have no way of knowing when we're right and when we're wrong. There is no algorithm, policy, or law which can distinguish between views of homosexuality circa 1980 from those of 2020.
The basic value here is “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” or the more recent (in the historical scheme of things) and more eloquent “I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.”
The way we make progress is by tolerating outliers. The majority of those will be wrong in small or horrifying ways (flat earth, kill the [insert minority group], anti-vaxxers, etc.). The next major group will have different values (e.g. a Muslim living in a Christian country or vice-versa). A tine minority will be challenging the status quo and be pushing us forward.
Unless you have a clear rule for distinguishing between those, eliminating the bad means eliminating the good, as there is no oracle to distinguish between the two.
Keeping that tiny minority which pushes us forward (as well as tolerating different values, at least in a pluralistic society like America) is far more important than crushing the bad actors. Otherwise, as in this example, we'd still be stuck with 1980 views of homosexuality.
- tdeck 3y ago> It is really? Uganda is being ostracised as a result. Did this law convince anyone, or merely galvanize the opposition? It convinced the legislature to pass a law intended to kill gay people and convinced the president to sign it. What kind of person do you have to be to not see this as a setback for human rights?
- blagie 3y agoI don't think the results they were trying to achieve were "a setback for human rights." They're a non-profit investing their time and money to try to make the world a better place. There is disagreement on what makes for a better place, but no one believes setting back human rights makes the world better. In their words, the results they want to achieve are to protect the family by: - preserving and promoting traditional marriage; - safeguarding parental rights; - defending human life; - upholding religious liberty; and - protecting the health and innocence of children I would guess their intended goal here aligned most with "preserving and promoting traditional marriage." Do you think they 1. made progress in this direction, winning hearts and minds? or 2. made progress in making people who hold these views look like fascist, extremist wackos everyone normal wants to distance themselves from? Before things like this, a person could hold views like "sex is for having babies" or "the family unit is for the purpose of raising kids" and be seen as reasonable. There is an ideal of having healthy, happy families which consist of two parents, married for life, with a group of kids. It wasn't viewed as a crazy ideal until things like this began. Once things like this started happening, by expressing anything even closely aligned, one risks being viewed as a hateful bigot. This video is a nice guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc As a footnote, advancing the opposition's agenda this way happens just as much on the liberal side. I live in a far left-wing city which constantly passes stupid laws designed to send left-leaning messages which do an incredible amount to discredit the left and push the nation right.