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[botias]

While I'm at it, I quite liked this: why gay marriage DOES affect het marriage, and why society should put on their 'big girl' pants and accept it anyway

I've often found the notion that gay marriage is a non-issue and anyone who feels otherwise is deeply confused, to be kinda not the case. I know how it is to get out in the big world and find that my One True Path complete with safety rails actually wasn't. It's scary for a bit to have that taken away--feels a little wobbly. I got over it and was the better for it, and I believe that others will too.

For more on wearing the 'big girl' pants, it was nice to hear someone, especially someone who no doubt has a much wider audience than I, express my feelings about Prop 8's defeat (from deborahw37):

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27650743/

Comments

[botias.livejournal.com]

" ...if people are hurt, I don't care much and it's their own problem."

This sounds so much to me like something one of those sad f**kers might say that I just can't work up any enthusiasm for it.

I tend very liberal on social issues, but I find liberals are often shockingly intolerant. :D Perhaps because conservatives have had their way for so long.

[bendy1.livejournal.com]

You're looking at everything in black and white. If something is wrong for one set of people, it ought to be wrong for every other set of people. Because logically, you're saying the 'thing' is wrong, so nobody should do it.

[botias.livejournal.com]

You mean no one should get a free pass on the bigotry issue? No, they shouldn't. Which is why I support gay rights even though it will cause sizeable groups of people pain and distress.

But, my understanding of the issue is that many of these people have a culture and world view is profoundly different from mine. They are people that believe in the supernatural, in a deity that knows all and has a preferred path in mind for every individual's life through which they will receive both maximum earthly benefits as well as supernatural ones. Given these 'facts', which I cannot prove to be false as it happens, I'm sure their 'position' makes as much sense to them as mine does to me, and may very well seem compassionate to them.

I just can't seem to believe that my not believing as they do is because of some natural superiority on my part and not some quirk of fate, culture and biology that created an atheist rather than a born-again Christian.

[bendy1.livejournal.com]

That's incredibly patronising. 'these poor people can't do anything but believe that, so we mustn't blame them'.

Only we can. The LDS and the fundamentalists have their own universities for goodness sake. These aren't dreadfully undereducated savages, they're people who have looked at the facts and decided to *campaign* for a lack of civil rights.

I don't care about 'ordinary everyday' people who vote for whatever these people tell them. Once they make it past, say, local pastor, I BLAME THEM. It *is* their fault. Absolutely.

[botias.livejournal.com]

So, should I rail on everyone who eats meat and cuts bits off their babies genitals and drives cars and buys produce and consumer goods and lawn chemicals and cleaning agents that are all poisoning some people somewhere. Who among us is without sin?

[bendy1.livejournal.com]

Some people do. That life of rage is best left to young people though- you tend to run out of anger eventually, or focus on the one thing you care deeply about.

Can't you see the difference between one issue and another?

See. Here's the thing. Some things *are* worth getting angry about. And anger leads to negatives and people getting hurt. But it also leads to change. Maybe not in the way you seem to be advocating (gentle persuasion to individuals that they could be wrong) but it leads to swift, legislative change.

Michael Moore is a liar and a trickster, I don't like him. But I *get* him. I understand that he's necessary to counterbalance the right wing radio hosts that are just like him.

[botias.livejournal.com]

I can't really see the difference. It's all doing harm through ignorance, sometimes willful ignorance as you say they must be, living in the world as they do, and sometimes not.

I read about Darfur in the news, I see the many evils my nation has wrought in protecting my oil supply, and I still purchase gasoline. Sometimes knowing the facts is not enough to combat the powerful duo of habit and self-interest.

[bendy1.livejournal.com]

Well I've tried to argue about oil with USians before and it seems to come down to that you absolutely can't live without travelling because the distances are different.

I personally don't drive and try to walk wherever I can, but that's because the option is open to me.

Which is another aspect of this whole thing - you do what you *can* do.

[botias.livejournal.com]

Don't let those USians fool you. :P If the LDS people have a choice, so do we all about driving. Just because the choice is HARD, and might require considerable sacrifice, doesn't mean it is not there for the taking.

Who knows, maybe Obama will lead us to the promised land of energy independence. :D Goodness knows there have been a number of false prophets. I saw a documentary that showed footage of every president for the last 50 years promising to wean us from foreign oil in 10-12-15 years.

[bendy1.livejournal.com]

Well at a certain point you all have to draw a line. Even if you don't care about oil or the environment, there's a limit as to how much you can afford.

And there's a limit to how much I'll sacrifice. I live in a small house with minimal consumption of pretty much everything, but it isn't a mud hut in a field.

And some of my friend disapprove mightily of my lack of cooking from scratch because it's wasteful. So find a level you're comfortable with and prepare to live with people being annoyed at you.

[botias.livejournal.com]

I just realized that I really ought to include proponents of alternative medicine among the people I must rail against! They are willfully ignorant and do significant harm.*begins to feel lazy* *plus people get VERY offended when you are skeptical of their pet quackery*

[bendy1.livejournal.com]

I wonder how many people quackery kills as opposed to faith vs. medicine anyway...

[bendy1.livejournal.com]

Also did you read they (gay rights campaigners) LJ that argues that protests against prop 8 are damaging their cause, because they scare people and don't persuade people?

She's right, of course. No homophobe is going to walk past a protest of jeering, angry people and change their mind.

But can't she see that the protests are *in tandem* with other social movements? You don't protest and be angry OR normalise gay sex.

You do BOTH.

[botias.livejournal.com]

I'm happy to protest angrily so long as I don't have to feel myself superior. :D *asks nicely for permission*

[bendy1.livejournal.com]

Look, I'm not even being supercilious. Morally, you're on the higher ground. Some issues put you on the moral higher ground. You can be humble about it or a t**t, but you'd be in the right.

[botias.livejournal.com]

And yes, I agree there has to be both for the fastest effective social change.

[bendy1.livejournal.com]

So then, what's the problem?

[botias.livejournal.com]

I just feel a distinct chill in the air if I acknowledge the existence of the pain of the other side, if I make any effort at all to understand their world view, if I don't feel myself superior for being 'right'. That's what I don't like and can't get behind.

I'm deeply disappointed and outraged that Prop 8 passed and while I agree that vigorous protests will not bring warmth to the opposition's hearts, I do believe that humans are social animals that want to conform to their society, and large angry protests will have an effect on people. Their opinion might not change, but they may get a sense that their opinion is no long socially acceptable, or is at least very controversial, and will be more likely to keep it to themselves, and that is the first step to reducing the incidence of the opinion.

[bendy1.livejournal.com]

So that's exactly why you feel a chill in the air.

Look, we KNOW you're right. We KNOW people will be hurt. But some opinions *are* intolerable, no matter how much it hurts the person involved. Precisely because of your second paragraph.

You cannot afford to give people a platform from which they can cry victim. 1)it's probably their own fault and 2)inches can't be given, for certain values of inch.

[botias.livejournal.com]

And no, I'm not saying they are uneducated savages, but their set of edumacational facts seems profoundly different from mine, as mine gives no credence at all to the supernatural or for related dogmas. For some people that is a pillar of their humanity and the source of all their joy and comfort. How strange a creature I must seem to them. That's also assuming that homophobia is the main thrust of the churches that espouse it. I don't believe that's true.

[bendy1.livejournal.com]

No. That's a level of po-mo I can't deal with.

In education and science, there are *facts*. You can only state that there are certain facts in so far as whatever our knowledge constrains us currently.

But anyone educated enough to give them a degree, they should *at least* know which of their facts are facts, and which are based on belief.

And once you accept that you only believe a thing, you look at why and what effect that's having.

Take, for example, my old religion. They don't believe in further or higher education, so I'm safe in saying they really *are* mostly undereducated.

But they also taught us to question the bible, because they're fundamentalists and the bible TELLS US TO QUESTION IT.

All you have to do is read a damn bible. I've read it, and there is nothing in it that says a church ought to dictate personal matters of conscience. Nothing. Anything over and above the bible is an individual church's dogma.