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The Problem with Gay Christian Representation


Dr. C
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3 hours ago, Dr. C said:

Then why do people insist on asking the obvious?

STOP.

As in, if you can't figure out a non-hostile reason as to why someone would ask that, then it's up to you to ask THEM why they need to know.  Too much assumption is harmful.  So is convincing yourself that you're so very right that no one else can talk you out of it.

If you really are better than the people you're supposedly arguing against, then do what they didn't and learn from history.  Or you're bound to repeat the same mistakes I did not too long ago.

14 minutes ago, Dragoncat said:

I'll just add a thing here, kinda going where @Shoblongoo went with "Some Christians say the bible is 100% the law and some don't"

The Bible was written eons ago. Back in those days, it was perfectly acceptable for a man to marry his female slave without her consent and rape her. It was acceptable for a man to do this to multiple female slaves. If a woman wanted a divorce, they beat her and threw rocks at her. This was also perfectly acceptable.

Therefore, when the Bible says "marriage should only be between a man and a woman and anything else is sinning", I take it as a sign of the time it was written in. We do not throw rocks at divorce procedures today nor do we keep slaves and rape them. With the changing times, views on what is acceptable and not acceptable must also change. 

I just skimmed the topic, but I don't think this point was made yet.

Unless you're well and truly interested in dissecting the Bible based on scholarly references, I'd keep away from arguments like this.  The short answer is that It's Complicated.

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3 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Unless you're well and truly interested in dissecting the Bible based on scholarly references, I'd keep away from arguments like this.  The short answer is that It's Complicated.

I'm not interested, no. Thank you for the insight.

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Relevant, and this is what I was talking about earlier with LGBT animus against The Church at times being well-earned.  

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/465939-federal-judge-overturns-obamacare-transgender-protections

"A federal judge on Tuesday overturned ObamaCare protections for transgender patients, ruling that a 2016 policy violates the religious freedom of Christian providers."

"The ObamaCare rule was initially challenged in court in 2016 by a group of Christian providers called the Franciscan Alliance "


"O’Connor agreed and issued a nationwide injunction against enforcing the rule."

"Advocates argue removing those protections will allow health care providers, hospitals and insurers to discriminate against transgender patients." 
_____

Remember folks...its not bigotry if you call it 'religion'... 

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1 hour ago, Shoblongoo said:

Relevant, and this is what I was talking about earlier with LGBT animus against The Church at times being well-earned.  

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/465939-federal-judge-overturns-obamacare-transgender-protections

"A federal judge on Tuesday overturned ObamaCare protections for transgender patients, ruling that a 2016 policy violates the religious freedom of Christian providers."

"The ObamaCare rule was initially challenged in court in 2016 by a group of Christian providers called the Franciscan Alliance "


"O’Connor agreed and issued a nationwide injunction against enforcing the rule."

"Advocates argue removing those protections will allow health care providers, hospitals and insurers to discriminate against transgender patients." 
_____

Remember folks...its not bigotry if you call it 'religion'... 

I never said that religious people didn’t do discriminatory things. But having distrust and fighting dirty are two entirely different things.

But beliefs against trans people are not beliefs in a higher power. 

You can contest the former without showing contempt for he latter. 

I mean the fact I call homophobia blaspheme in my opening post would be contradictory if my stance was don’t upset religious people. 

That being said, I don’t like discussing trans rights because I had a manipulative psychotic pathological liar of an ex who was my introductions to trans rights.

The intellectual side of my brain tells me that such a person is a terrible example of the community but once you’ve been driven to the point of literally wanting to jump out the window over pronouns and accusations of transphobia over repeatedly screwing up pronouns and gaslighting, the amount of times the emotional side of my brain causes me put my foot in my mouth regarding such issues is just not worth it.I 

I hate the words homophobe and transphobe for this very reason. I have a phobia(irrational fear or anxiety)  from a traumatic event but not necessarily a hatred. 

I will say that while I can admit my personal experiences do not override a need for civil rights, I will say that they don’t exactly put me in the direction of believing such court rulings can be used to justify sociopathic behavior to achieve them.

I am not going to insinuate that that is what you are saying  or twist your intentions here.  I am speaking generally when I say that. 

What I find unsettling is that the behaviors that resulted in a friend having to literally talk me off the edge are now acceptable tools in the arsenal of a civil rights battle. 

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36 minutes ago, Dr. C said:

beliefs against trans people are not beliefs in a higher power. 

Agreed. Now tell that to The Judge.

Because even among America's highest legal minds, there seems to be something deeply confusing about this concept. 

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1 hour ago, Shoblongoo said:

Agreed. Now tell that to The Judge.

Because even among America's highest legal minds, there seems to be something deeply confusing about this concept. 

Judges, conservative or no, are always considering the rights of one group versus another. Civil equality does not mean catering to every whim of a demographic. Feminine hygiene and athletic performance are constantly clashing with trans rights so to speak. 

Here religious bias is pretty cut and dry but when the claim that gender dysphoria is a mental disorder is transphobic is a talking point, among others make medical professionals and academic experts on the psychology of gender are actually afraid of publishing empirical research...  

Then you have the infamous Brazilian Wax incident and topless swim party predator Yaniv...

A particularly contentious case because trans people got accused of transphobia for trying to call out a predator. Trans rights activists shouldn’t double down on people that damage the credibility of their cause. 

So I have to say if a conservative judge has a religious bias and is also reading a story about a psychology professor being fired for making a statement of fact in the paper (which has happened), then is their religious or reactionary bias to blame? Without knowing for sure,  while I cannot  and do not want to discount religious bias,  I have to consider other factors at play. 

I’m not trans but even if I was, I have my own biases at play because I had to write an academic paper where the data forced me into an awkwardness position of having to word the phrase, “In conclusion, Obama was elected in 2008,  because he was black” in the most politically correct way possible because the professor told me that given the bizarre incidents of greater than 99.99% statistical significance of race using the voting behavior data of a National US census from that era, the data warranted that conclusion.

Keep in mind that my hypothesis and personal position are in fact the opposite but I am a student being graded on my ability to write up a statistical analysis paper and my grade depends on me making a racially charged claim to get a good grade. 

So personally, with that kind of background if I’m a judge in that person’s position, yeah I’m a Christian but every ruling is going to be with the reasoning of how much room am I giving for these same activists to professionally off me?  The truth is, no matter how much I want to oppose that kind of discrimination I would have to consider the enablement of predatory tactics that arise from my ruling not just for religious leaning  people but for academics as well. 

That doesn’t mean I don’t value trans rights but I’m going to value free speech over trans rights because the tree withers and dies once the roots are poisoned so I’m going to bank on an appeals court or societal attitudes drifting away from harmful behaviors overtime and re opening the issue at a later date rather than making hasty rulings detrimental to the here and now. I may be blowing these statistics out of proportion but my own personal experience and skeletons are going to lower my threshold considerably.

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34 minutes ago, Dr. C said:

Judges, conservative or no, are always considering the rights of one group versus another. Civil equality does not mean catering to every whim of a demographic. Feminine hygiene and athletic performance are constantly clashing with trans rights so to speak. 

Here religious bias is pretty cut and dry but when the claim that gender dysphoria is a mental disorder is transphobic is a talking point, among others make medical professionals and academic experts on the psychology of gender are actually afraid of publishing empirical research...  

Then you have the infamous Brazilian Wax incident and topless swim party predator Yaniv...

A particularly contentious case because trans people got accused of transphobia for trying to call out a predator. Trans rights activists shouldn’t double down on people that damage the credibility of their cause. 

So I have to say if a conservative judge has a religious bias and is also reading a story about a psychology professor being fired for making a statement of fact in the paper (which has happened), then is their religious or reactionary bias to blame? Without knowing for sure,  while I cannot  and do not want to discount religious bias,  I have to consider other factors at play. 

I’m not trans but even if I was, I have my own biases at play because I had to write an academic paper where the data forced me into an awkwardness position of having to word the phrase, “In conclusion, Obama was elected in 2008,  because he was black” in the most politically correct way possible because the professor told me that given the bizarre incidents of greater than 99.99% statistical significance of race using the voting behavior data of a National US census from that era, the data warranted that conclusion.

Keep in mind that my hypothesis and personal position are in fact the opposite but I am a student being graded on my ability to write up a statistical analysis paper and my grade depends on me making a racially charged claim to get a good grade. 

So personally, with that kind of background if I’m a judge in that person’s position, yeah I’m a Christian but every ruling is going to be with the reasoning of how much room and i giving for these same activists to professionally off me?  The truth is, no matter how much I want to oppose that kind of discrimination I would have to consider the enablement of predatory tactics that arise from my ruling not just for religious leaning  people but for academics as well. 

 

I mean to me this is really simple, and there really aren't that many ancillary considerations to it.

If one uses religion as a pretext for discrimination, than one's religion is discriminatory. And one is exposing one's religion to rightful condemnation and contempt from those who find discrimination to be an abhorrent social cancer.

If, more generally, a judge is making a legal conclusion that a law against discrimination is an impermissible attack on religious faith. 

Than said judge has just tethered the abhorrent social cancer of discrimination to the concept of faith itself. By taking faith's recognized role in society + accepted scope of authority and influence, and placing it in direct conflict with the need to have laws and public policies against discrimination.

 

 

 

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50 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

I mean to me this is really simple, and there really aren't that many ancillary considerations to it.

If one uses religion as a pretext for discrimination, than one's religion is discriminatory. And one is exposing one's religion to rightful condemnation and contempt from those who find discrimination to be an abhorrent social cancer.

If, more generally, a judge is making a legal conclusion that a law against discrimination is an impermissible attack on religious faith. 

Than said judge has just tethered the abhorrent social cancer of discrimination to the concept of faith itself. By taking faith's recognized role in society + accepted scope of authority and influence, and placing it in direct conflict with the need to have laws and public policies against discrimination.

 

 

 

Well it’s not as simple as everyone clapping their hands and proclaiming I don’t believe in fairies either now is it?

I am a firm believer that if you intend on committing an evil act that you’re not going to let an inconvenient thing as lacking a religious reason stop you. 

There is still a natural bias from ancient times that homosexuality was a threat to sustaining population. The fact that homophobia served as a survival mechanism is clear evidence that gay hating is a byproduct  of our lower brain functional and gay acceptance a byproduct of appealing to our higher brain functions. When you look at differing attitudes towards homosexuality by sex it’s fairly evidence women are generally more accepting of homosexuality than men. Testosterone functionally gives men easier access to their lower brain function roles  because men obviously in ancient times probably subjected themselves to greater dangers in hunting and gathering.. Preserving the human species is a long foregone issue but survival preservation instincts remain. 

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55 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:


If one uses religion as a pretext for discrimination, than one's religion is discriminatory. And one is exposing one's religion to rightful condemnation and contempt from those who find discrimination to be an abhorrent social cancer.
 

Yes and no.

The sentiment is appreciated.  However, discrimination encompasses a lot of things, including those with criminal records.  And such treatment is baked into the law.  Which means that society itself is discriminatory.

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1 hour ago, eclipse said:

Yes and no.

The sentiment is appreciated.  However, discrimination encompasses a lot of things, including those with criminal records.  And such treatment is baked into the law.  Which means that society itself is discriminatory.

Of course.  And I should probably specify that I'm talking specifically about discrimination on the basis of race, sex, national origin, sexual identity, and the like.
 

1 hour ago, Dr. C said:

There is still a natural bias from ancient times that homosexuality was a threat to sustaining population. The fact that homophobia served as a survival mechanism is clear evidence that gay hating is a byproduct  of our lower brain functional and gay acceptance a byproduct of appealing to our higher brain functions. When you look at differing attitudes towards homosexuality by sex it’s fairly evidence women are generally more accepting of homosexuality than men. Testosterone functionally gives men easier access to their lower brain function roles  because men obviously in ancient times probably subjected themselves to greater dangers in hunting and gathering.. Preserving the human species is a long foregone issue but survival preservation instincts remain. 


...now this is interesting...

Because if you look at biblical law and moral judgments, there's quite a bit in there that can be clearly attributed to the survival values and primitive needs of early civilizations, in the severe and particularly unforgiving desert climates where these early civilizations originated. (and this goes back to the point that authorship of the bible's laws and moral judgments can be better explained by their point of origination in these early civilizations than by tales of the supernatural and the divine)

The Old Hebrew Laws of keeping Kosher, for example.

The Bible describes this as divine commandments on how to make even the mundane acts of preparing and eating food an act of piety, so as to show our love of God by being pious even in the most mundane of acts.   

In truth these were almost certainly practices that originated as practical steps for the ancient Hebrews to minimize sanitation problems and the risk of food-born illnesses. And which later had religious significance ascribed to them.

Likewise; the ritual of circumcision. 

Removal of the foreskin likely originated as a purely hygienic practice, for persons living in desert heat at a time and place where regularly being able to bathe and "anoint" themselves (i.e. wash their bodies with some form of soap or lather) would have been a luxury available only to royalty and high priests.   

...and we can understand why at a developmental stage when simple infections would have been a major killer of entire populations, this would have been an important thing for civilizations operating on survival values to do... 
______

With the biblical laws on sexual morality, its a bit grainier.

Yes--on its face--Bible Law on homosexuality comports with survival values and the need to populate.

...But then you have things like the Biblical Laws on premarital sex and adultery... 

And those are laws that don't appear to have any real grounding in primitive survival values--if you're just trying to populate optimally and maximize pregnancies and child births, those are rules that should not exist.  

And then you have the biblical answers to questions like: What do you do with a woman who lies with a man who is not her husband? What happens to a widow when her husband dies? What should a man do if he's at war, and he see's among the populace of the enemy nation a girl who he wishes to claim as his wife?

And it becomes very, very clear here that the biblical judgments on sex and marriage are less about primitive survival needs.

And more about protecting the norms and power structures of a patriarchal society where men are men, women are women, and men make all the rules + women are property. 

So yes--even back then--it was about discrimination

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1 minute ago, Shoblongoo said:

Of course.  And I should probably specify that I'm talking specifically about discrimination on the basis of race, sex, national origin, sexual identity, and the like.

So in other words, "stuff you're born with" as opposed to "stuff you do" (but then there's the issue of religious discrimination, which I think is equally unacceptable).  The only thing I'll discriminate against is harmful behavior.  I try to be tolerant, but I also want to be safe.

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46 minutes ago, eclipse said:

So in other words, "stuff you're born with" as opposed to "stuff you do" (but then there's the issue of religious discrimination, which I think is equally unacceptable).  The only thing I'll discriminate against is harmful behavior.  I try to be tolerant, but I also want to be safe.

Pretty much.

The oddity about 'religious' discrimination is that you can take almost any discriminatory belief or practice and call it a "religion," if you're loose enough about how you use the term.

You can take the biblical argumentation used in Loving v. Virginia and say desegregation is 'discrimination' against people with sincerely held religious beliefs that God wants white people to be physically separated from colored people. 
  
You can take something like the cult Warren Jeffs was running out of his Texas compound, and say statutory rape laws are 'discrimination' against people with sincerely held religious beliefs that God wants them to have sex with children.

Religious discrimination is abhorrent to the extent you're putting reasonable limitations on what is and is not protected 'religion.' 

And the reasonable limits have to be set in such a way that you can't use religious discrimination claims as an end-run around otherwise observed prohibitions on abhorrent conduct. (because people will invariably misuse that, as we're seeing now with the use of 'religious freedom' claims to do an end-run around legal protections for LGBTs)
________

And just as a fun little aside here on how wonky you can get with some of these 'religious discrimination' arguments:

There have been cases where particularly snarky drug dealers and business establishments where drug deals are known to take place have have declared themselves to be affiliated with the Rastafarian faith. 

Obtained certifications that their business establishments are actually Rastafarian Temples. 

Then attempted to argue in open court that they cannot be prosecuted for any violations of criminal law arising from their drug activity, because drug use is a Rastafarian sacrament and prosecuting them for performing sacraments in their own Temples is religious discrimination against Rastafarians.

...that never works...but they try it... 

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8 hours ago, Shoblongoo said:

Pretty much.

The oddity about 'religious' discrimination is that you can take almost any discriminatory belief or practice and call it a "religion," if you're loose enough about how you use the term.

You can take the biblical argumentation used in Loving v. Virginia and say desegregation is 'discrimination' against people with sincerely held religious beliefs that God wants white people to be physically separated from colored people. 
  
You can take something like the cult Warren Jeffs was running out of his Texas compound, and say statutory rape laws are 'discrimination' against people with sincerely held religious beliefs that God wants them to have sex with children.

Religious discrimination is abhorrent to the extent you're putting reasonable limitations on what is and is not protected 'religion.' 

And the reasonable limits have to be set in such a way that you can't use religious discrimination claims as an end-run around otherwise observed prohibitions on abhorrent conduct. (because people will invariably misuse that, as we're seeing now with the use of 'religious freedom' claims to do an end-run around legal protections for LGBTs)

. . .that wasn't quite what I had in mind.  Think back to the segregation days, where "colored" people weren't allowed in certain places.  Now replaced "colored" with "Muslim".  Stuff like that is what I'm not cool with.

People being stupid in the name of religion is also not okay, but not what I had in mind.

1 hour ago, Rezzy said:

I wish every time transgender people were in the news, it wasn't for bad reasons.  It seems to be a near daily thing now.

It reminds me of police in the news - if they're the subject, it's because someone screwed up.  The normal, day-to-day interactions aren't going to generate revenue, or push the specific narrative.  I wish it would change.

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23 hours ago, eclipse said:

So in other words, "stuff you're born with" as opposed to "stuff you do" (but then there's the issue of religious discrimination, which I think is equally unacceptable).  The only thing I'll discriminate against is harmful behavior.  I try to be tolerant, but I also want to be safe.

By necessity, it's ok to not tolerate intolerant behavior, even if that sounds like a contradiction.

Figure that a homophobe can admit they're wrong and change their ways, and people will generally let them go about their life. Conversely, for gay people, nothing short of not existing will appease homophobes. Homophobic behavior is intrinsically harmful behavior because the natural conclusion to their line of thinking means the eradication of gay people, one way or another. Consequently, tolerating homophobia means tolerating the erasure of gay people, and thus being intolerant of homophobia is necessary to protect gay people.

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15 hours ago, Rezzy said:

I wish every time transgender people were in the news, it wasn't for bad reasons.  It seems to be a near daily thing now.

Honestly I feel that’s just a product of the harsh reality we live in unfortunately. The news only reports on things exceedingly heartwarming or dramatic. Another unfortunate truth is that it’s mostly the latter. Oftentimes a loud minority will screech and is not at all representative of the majority but because it created a big enough stir it will get reported on and warp the perception of the general public to make it seem these extreme cases are far more prominent than they actually are. Generalization and stereotyping is a very powerful and dangerous thing.

Honestly the scariest thing about discrimination is that it will never go away regardless of what we do because it’s an ideology. You can never stamp out an ideology because so long as one person believes in that ideology even only slightly it will continue to live. Sure, social perceptions and such can and will change overtime to allow those ideals to seem less and less appealing but overall things like racism, sexism, transphobia, etc. will always exist simply because of the way humans tend to operate on a social level.

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On 10/16/2019 at 1:34 PM, Shoblongoo said:


...now this is interesting...

Because if you look at biblical law and moral judgments, there's quite a bit in there that can be clearly attributed to the survival values and primitive needs of early civilizations, in the severe and particularly unforgiving desert climates where these early civilizations originated. (and this goes back to the point that authorship of the bible's laws and moral judgments can be better explained by their point of origination in these early civilizations than by tales of the supernatural and the divine)

The Old Hebrew Laws of keeping Kosher, for example.

The Bible describes this as divine commandments on how to make even the mundane acts of preparing and eating food an act of piety, so as to show our love of God by being pious even in the most mundane of acts.   

In truth these were almost certainly practices that originated as practical steps for the ancient Hebrews to minimize sanitation problems and the risk of food-born illnesses. And which later had religious significance ascribed to them.

Likewise; the ritual of circumcision. 

Removal of the foreskin likely originated as a purely hygienic practice, for persons living in desert heat at a time and place where regularly being able to bathe and "anoint" themselves (i.e. wash their bodies with some form of soap or lather) would have been a luxury available only to royalty and high priests.   

...and we can understand why at a developmental stage when simple infections would have been a major killer of entire populations, this would have been an important thing for civilizations operating on survival values to do... 
______

With the biblical laws on sexual morality, its a bit grainier.

Yes--on its face--Bible Law on homosexuality comports with survival values and the need to populate.

...But then you have things like the Biblical Laws on premarital sex and adultery... 

And those are laws that don't appear to have any real grounding in primitive survival values--if you're just trying to populate optimally and maximize pregnancies and child births, those are rules that should not exist.  

And then you have the biblical answers to questions like: What do you do with a woman who lies with a man who is not her husband? What happens to a widow when her husband dies? What should a man do if he's at war, and he see's among the populace of the enemy nation a girl who he wishes to claim as his wife?

And it becomes very, very clear here that the biblical judgments on sex and marriage are less about primitive survival needs.

And more about protecting the norms and power structures of a patriarchal society where men are men, women are women, and men make all the rules + women are property. 

So yes--even back then--it was about discrimination

Okay enough spin doctoring! There is an irony in being told I lack compassion in generalizing the arguments of atheist by claiming I’m a 1000 steps ahead and yet here I am, stalemate again and debating the merits of religion... 

Look, we can go tit for tat here but I’ve endured enough people bragging about their superior critical thinking skills because of their LACK OF FAITH to know that you don’t need Jesus to be a pompous bigoted asshole.  (I feel the need to stress that I am not insinuating anything about present company. I am speaking about past experiences here in context)

I’m just going to say very curtly and bluntly that if I really wanted to, I could compile a case of why atheism is bad for society with a plethora of talking points but it would be a pointless and off topic exercise in spite. 

So let’s talk about  the alarming survey findings of LGBTQ acceptance on the DECLINE among young people in 2019. The general consensus is the reaction is not “Ew your sexual orientation is gross”, it’s “Does this mean I have to believe feminism is gospel now or you’ll disown me?”

I would happily trade away all my civil rights pertaining to my sexual orientation if it meant throwing these cyber terrorists behind bars locked away for 20 years where they belong. 

What the church did in the past was shitty but pointing at what was down in the past does jack for addressing the issues at present.

The issue at present is my sexual orientation is being used as a WEAPON by secularist leftists and my own personal hot take is I would rather someone beat me up for being gay than someone else beat others up on my behalf.

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34 minutes ago, Dr. C said:

let’s talk about  the alarming survey findings of LGBTQ acceptance on the DECLINE among young people in 2019. The general consensus is the reaction is not “Ew your sexual orientation is gross”, it’s “Does this mean I have to believe feminism is gospel now or you’ll disown me?”

I mean we're in an age of reactionary rightwing nationalism that sees diversity as a weakness rather than a strength, where all forms of discrimination that looked like they were going into regression back in 1990s and early 2000s are on the rise again.

But sure...blame feminism...    

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Can you, once and for all, accept that for every movement, secular or otherwise, there will always be gradations from the perceived norm? Is actual representation of your advocacy THAT important to you, or are you simply giving knee-jerk reactions to all comers for shits and giggles?

39 minutes ago, Dr. C said:

I could compile a case of why atheism is bad for society with a plethora of talking points but it would be a pointless and off topic exercise in spite. 

Hell, you're already going there, thanks.

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1 hour ago, Karimlan said:

Can you, once and for all, accept that for every movement, secular or otherwise, there will always be gradations from the perceived norm? Is actual representation of your advocacy THAT important to you, or are you simply giving knee-jerk reactions to all comers for shits and giggles?

YES! YES! And a thousand times YES!

I don’t have any negative sentiments towards atheism itself but I do have qualms with people playing games of “what? I’m not dogmatic! I have no religion!” using my sexuality as justification for religious intolerance.

I don’t take any pleasure in citing incident after incident but I’m not going to just take people saying “What about THiS bad thing and THIS thing the church did” lying down.  My ACTUAL position is I’ve met atheists that are cool and I’ve met Christians that are cool. It has no bearing on my thoughts and attitudes towards you but my attitude on the matter of religion being bad for society is aggressive neutrality.

I’ve got a laundry list of things I would say to smack down any Christian who tries to misrepresent atheists as bad for society but such a position hasn’t been argued in this thread.

My issue with LGBTQ advocacy is very simply I’m not interested in evangelical atheism figuratively speaking and I am definitely not interested in cancel culture cyberterrorism. 

You can’t make people accept you. Everyone’s prejudices and values evolve overtime and as long as I can be me without fear of violence or loss of opportunity then I am happy to let people evolve organically. 

 

1 hour ago, Shoblongoo said:

I mean we're in an age of reactionary rightwing nationalism that sees diversity as a weakness rather than a strength, where all forms of discrimination that looked like they were going into regression back in 1990s and early 2000s are on the rise again.

But sure...blame feminism...    

I’m going to be honest. As a mixed kid, I see those so called reactionary right wing nationalists and I see their appeal. It has to do with the psychology of the perfect cult recruit. I don’t agree with their positions for self preservation reasons but even if they weren’t around I’ve grown up long enough being “not white enough” to deal with being called a minority in a mean way. I’m kind of used to it sad to say.

With feminism, it’s much more complicated because I’ve read feminist literature and my own personal assessment is that I get more substantial and practical political and social critique from feminist papers that disavow patriarchy while the ones that double down are 30-50 pages longer and say nothing that would warrant the extra reading.

If I were to identify as a feminist I would subscribe to the academic works of Allison Jaggar. Androgyny feminism is eloquent and CONCISE as written by her. 

But SJWs would tell me I am sexist or transphobic from the content reasonably presented. 

So with feminists I have what I call the PPI rule. You say Patriarchy, you’ve lost me. You say Privilege, it depends on your context but accuse me of straight or white privilege and we are done. You say Intersectionality and I say get the fuck away from me with your mixed race minority hate speech. Don’t even try to explain yourself I’ve literally read the book of the academic who proposed this lunacy and if her points suck at defending racism, I fail to see how yours will fare differently since she’s your source. 

I can keep an open mind to a point but once intersectionality comes up, my mind is closed for business. 

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On 10/18/2019 at 5:37 PM, Dr. C said:

YES! YES! And a thousand times YES!

I don’t have any negative sentiments towards atheism itself but I do have qualms with people playing games of “what? I’m not dogmatic! I have no religion!” using my sexuality as justification for religious intolerance.

I don’t take any pleasure in citing incident after incident but I’m not going to just take people saying “What about THiS bad thing and THIS thing the church did” lying down.  My ACTUAL position is I’ve met atheists that are cool and I’ve met Christians that are cool. It has no bearing on my thoughts and attitudes towards you but my attitude on the matter of religion being bad for society is aggressive neutrality.

I’ve got a laundry list of things I would say to smack down any Christian who tries to misrepresent atheists as bad for society but such a position hasn’t been argued in this thread.

My issue with LGBTQ advocacy is very simply I’m not interested in evangelical atheism figuratively speaking and I am definitely not interested in cancel culture cyberterrorism. 

You can’t make people accept you. Everyone’s prejudices and values evolve overtime and as long as I can be me without fear of violence or loss of opportunity then I am happy to let people evolve organically. 

 

I’m going to be honest. As a mixed kid, I see those so called reactionary right wing nationalists and I see their appeal. It has to do with the psychology of the perfect cult recruit. I don’t agree with their positions for self preservation reasons but even if they weren’t around I’ve grown up long enough being “not white enough” to deal with being called a minority in a mean way. I’m kind of used to it sad to say.

With feminism, it’s much more complicated because I’ve read feminist literature and my own personal assessment is that I get more substantial and practical political and social critique from feminist papers that disavow patriarchy while the ones that double down are 30-50 pages longer and say nothing that would warrant the extra reading.

If I were to identify as a feminist I would subscribe to the academic works of Allison Jaggar. Androgyny feminism is eloquent and CONCISE as written by her. 

But SJWs would tell me I am sexist or transphobic from the content reasonably presented. 

So with feminists I have what I call the PPI rule. You say Patriarchy, you’ve lost me. You say Privilege, it depends on your context but accuse me of straight or white privilege and we are done. You say Intersectionality and I say get the fuck away from me with your mixed race minority hate speech. Don’t even try to explain yourself I’ve literally read the book of the academic who proposed this lunacy and if her points suck at defending racism, I fail to see how yours will fare differently since she’s your source. 

I can keep an open mind to a point but once intersectionality comes up, my mind is closed for business. 

I always like to distinguish between academic feminism and what I've colloquially dubbed 'tumblr feminism'

Pretty much everything in academic feminism makes solid-good sense to me. And yes...that includes your dreaded 'PPI' words. (more on that in a bit)

Those terms--as I understand them in the purely academic sense--are descriptors of real social, political, and economic conditions. And understanding them + the conditions they describe yields valuable insights into the state of the world today. (insights that I routinely find myself using in my own professional life, and would be worse at my job if I did not have)

Of Tumblr feminism or SJW's or w/e you wanna call it: I attribute that more to people being stupid on the internet + the online culture of trolling and shitposting and everything being reducable to 150 characters that accompanies it.

I generally try not to pay too much attention to it or put too much stock in it. Look strictly to academic feminism for guidance on interpreting current events. And point out where people are being overly dismissive of the scholarly works and insights by conflating it with pop-culture bastardizations (i.e. the 'SJWs'). 

I admittedly don't know what the tumblr feminists are doing these days with "intersectionality" to bother you so because--again--I try not to pay too much attention to them.

But as I understand it, its literally just the social study of how identifiers and associated biases overlap + interact. And how looking at those overlaps and interactions better explains social attitudes and prejudices than looking at things like attitudes on race and sex and religion each individually in a vacuum,  as though they have no bearing on each other.  
________

EXAMPLE:

There are stereotypical characteristics that are considered masculine characteristics desirable in men and stereotypical characteristics that are considered feminine characteristics desirable in women.

Gender theory tells us what those characteristics are and why they are.

Some characteristics that come to mind are physicality, aggression, and assertiveness; the characteristics of the stereotypical "alpha male."

...now imagine that you have a white man and a black man both exhibiting these exact same traits...

-The white man exhibits them and is praised for his rugged manliness. It is said that this is what a man should be.
-The black man exhibits them in the exact same manner and is rebuked as a "thug." It is said that this kind of behavior is why ((those people)) can't hold down jobs and get targeted by the police.

Conventional social science would hold that you look separately at racism as the reason for the disparate treatment and patriarchal norms as the reason for the underlying behavior. 

"Intersectionality" holds simply that you're looking at one comprehensive issue rather than two separate ones: the full array of social expectations and cognitive biases, and how they affect the way individuals are perceived and valued by society as a whole.

In the above-cited example: how society devalues the lives of black men at the intersection of race and gender. By simultaneously holding that it is the masculine ideal for men to behave a certain way, and that black men who behave this way are rightfully putting a target on their backs + deserve to be treated differently and worse for it.

And you can do that across the board with issues of age, disability, etc., sexual oreintation, etc.

That sounds--perfectly reasonable to me.

What is your objection??? 


 

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2 hours ago, Shoblongoo said:

I always like to distinguish between academic feminism and what I've colloquially dubbed 'tumblr feminism'

Pretty much everything in academic feminism makes solid-good sense to me. And yes...that includes your dreaded 'PPI' words. (more on that in a bit)

Those terms--as I understand them in the purely academic sense--are descriptors of real social, political, and economic conditions. And understanding them + the conditions they describe yields valuable insights into the state of the world today. (insights that I routinely find myself using in my own professional life, and would be worse at my job if I did not have)

Of Tumblr feminism or SJW's or w/e you wanna call it: I attribute that more to people being stupid on the internet + the online culture of trolling and shitposting and everything being reducable to 150 characters that accompanies it.

I generally try not to pay too much attention to it or put too much stock in it. Look strictly to academic feminism for guidance on interpreting current events. And point out where people are being overly dismissive of the scholarly works and insights by conflating it with pop-culture bastardizations (i.e. the 'SJWs'). 

I admittedly don't know what the tumblr feminists are doing these days with "intersectionality" to bother you so because--again--I try not to pay too much attention to them.

But as I understand it, its literally just the social study of how identifiers and associated biases overlap + interact. And how looking at those overlaps and interactions better explains social attitudes and prejudices than looking at things like attitudes on race and sex and religion each individually in a vacuum,  as though they have no bearing on each other.  
________

EXAMPLE:

There are stereotypical characteristics that are considered masculine characteristics desirable in men and stereotypical characteristics that are considered feminine characteristics desirable in women.

Gender theory tells us what those characteristics are and why they are.

Some characteristics that come to mind are physicality, aggression, and assertiveness; the characteristics of the stereotypical "alpha male."

...now imagine that you have a white man and a black man both exhibiting these exact same traits...

-The white man exhibits them and is praised for his rugged manliness. It is said that this is what a man should be.
-The black man exhibits them in the exact same manner and is rebuked as a "thug." It is said that this kind of behavior is why ((those people)) can't hold down jobs and get targeted by the police.

Conventional social science would hold that you look separately at racism as the reason for the disparate treatment and patriarchal norms as the reason for the underlying behavior. 

"Intersectionality" holds simply that you're looking at one comprehensive issue rather than two separate ones: the full array of social expectations and cognitive biases, and how they affect the way individuals are perceived and valued by society as a whole.

In the above-cited example: how society devalues the lives of black men at the intersection of race and gender. By simultaneously holding that it is the masculine ideal for men to behave a certain way, and that black men who behave this way are rightfully putting a target on their backs + deserve to be treated differently and worse for it.

And you can do that across the board with issues of age, disability, etc., sexual oreintation, etc.

That sounds--perfectly reasonable to me.

What is your objection??? 


 

The whole thing falls apart where mixed race minorities are concerned.

Politically speaking, nationality is not just self identifying as x ethnicity but also belonging to that group. By repeatedly having it indicated that I am not white by the conduct of white peoples around me, my white nationhood is this denied. 

SJWs will maintain that white is a SKIN COLOR. This not only leads to incredibly racist attacks towards “white Mexicans” and also claims of “The Holocaust is not a big deal because Jews have white privilege”. When a feminist goes for trying to disavow my minority status (when my eyes are kind of a giveaway that something else is going on) by accusing me of white privilege, I lose my one scrap of identity that has been left to me by the white community itself. Although Koreans are just as guilty of doing the reverse, in either case it is acknowledged I am a minority. By claiming I am not a real ethnic minority you take away my experiences of being treated as one.

Intersectionality does “meh okay” with interactions between class, sex, race etc. (No new insights you wouldn’t find in other political schools of thought and the insights you do get require an exhausting vocabulary lesson) I find its net to be unproductive but harmless but the treatment of mixed minorities is TERRIBLE.

Rather than just make things simple and treat mixed race as its own thing, I get asinine claims of my white heritage mitigating chink eye and  tiny asian penis jokes among other things. 

The other is the even more asinine claim that I am both white and Korean at the same time as in somehow I have BOTH identifiers despite being soft rejected by BOTH.

Can you imagine the asinine image of a child of slave owner and slave whipping themselves and other black slaves and then beating the crap out of themselves along with their fellow black slaves who hate their master and want to take it out on the offspring of the Slavs because they know they can get away with beating but up a pariah? Can you picture a German Jew whose father is a card caring SS officer escorting themselves to a gas chamber? Can you picture the half black half Mexican daughter of my former coworker, beating up her mother for stealing an attractive man from the black community like other black women did to her in high school? None of these images make ANY sense but with the magic of intersectionality  and a hint of stupidity, this is the claims feminists make to double down against racism towards mixed kids.

Myself and other mixed kids I have talked to and I’ve had this conversation so many times at this point all agree that yes, we like white supremicists better than feminists because  intersectionality has crystallized and normalized mixed race racism as part of mainstream feminism itself and when you read the literature it is easy to see why. At least white supremecists are “nice” enough to call us minorities.

So my response is simply intersectionality is unproductive redundancy at best and the angel wings on the back of neonazis at worst. Is it to hard to ask educated white people to stop accusing me of white privilege? The hypocritical irony is PAINFUL and RACIST! 

 

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1 hour ago, Dr. C said:

-repeatedly having it indicated that I am not white by the conduct of white peoples around me, my white nationhood is this denied. 

-claims of “The Holocaust is not a big deal because Jews have white privilege”. 

-asinine claims of my white heritage mitigating chink eye and  tiny asian penis jokes

-half black half Mexican daughter of my former coworker, beating up her mother for stealing an attractive man from the black community like other black women did to her in high school

Yeah thats not intersectionality and that sure-as-hell isn't feminism. That's people being dumb and using words they don't understand. 

This is like someone telling me they don't believe in evolution because a monkey can never become a man. (i.e. "...okay...I'm glad you don't believe that, but thats not what 'evolution' is...")

I say this as a white man married to an Asian woman with a half-white, half-Asian daughter: there is absolutely nothing in the by-the-books usage of those terms + the social theory behind them that strikes me as incorrect or inappropriate. 

And if anyone ever tells me “The Holocaust is not a big deal because Jews have white privilege”  (which literally no one has ever said to me btw. I've had white supremacists tell me its not a big deal because Jews deserve it;  I've never had a feminist tell me it wasn't a big deal because the Jews have 'privilege') my response isn't going to be well clearly all that feminist talk of privilege  is a bunch of bunk.

Its going to be you keep using that word, and I don't think it means what you think it means.  

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3 hours ago, Shoblongoo said:

Yeah thats not intersectionality and that sure-as-hell isn't feminism. That's people being dumb and using words they don't understand. 

This is like someone telling me they don't believe in evolution because a monkey can never become a man. (i.e. "...okay...I'm glad you don't believe that, but thats not what 'evolution' is...")

I say this as a white man married to an Asian woman with a half-white, half-Asian daughter: there is absolutely nothing in the by-the-books usage of those terms + the social theory behind them that strikes me as incorrect or inappropriate. 

And if anyone ever tells me “The Holocaust is not a big deal because Jews have white privilege”  (which literally no one has ever said to me btw. I've had white supremacists tell me its not a big deal because Jews deserve it;  I've never had a feminist tell me it wasn't a big deal because the Jews have 'privilege') my response isn't going to be well clearly all that feminist talk of privilege  is a bunch of bunk.

Its going to be you keep using that word, and I don't think it means what you think it means.  

Kind of ironic how people don't understand how racism works, nowadays...Considering how they taught the Civil Rights movement in schools and whatever type of bullying that goes on the playground.

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17 hours ago, Shoblongoo said:

Yeah thats not intersectionality and that sure-as-hell isn't feminism. That's people being dumb and using words they don't understand. 

This is like someone telling me they don't believe in evolution because a monkey can never become a man. (i.e. "...okay...I'm glad you don't believe that, but thats not what 'evolution' is...")

I say this as a white man married to an Asian woman with a half-white, half-Asian daughter: there is absolutely nothing in the by-the-books usage of those terms + the social theory behind them that strikes me as incorrect or inappropriate. 

And if anyone ever tells me “The Holocaust is not a big deal because Jews have white privilege”  (which literally no one has ever said to me btw. I've had white supremacists tell me its not a big deal because Jews deserve it;  I've never had a feminist tell me it wasn't a big deal because the Jews have 'privilege') my response isn't going to be well clearly all that feminist talk of privilege  is a bunch of bunk.

Its going to be you keep using that word, and I don't think it means what you think it means.  

I had to read a lot of feminist literature for a fourth year seminary course.

My conclusions were very frankly, I reject patriarchy, I reject privilege within the context of patriarchy theory and I reject intersectionality hardcore.  The author of the theory simply did not address mixed race minorities adequately at all leaving those who subscribe to her theory to fill in the gaps in ways that suit their purposes. Ignorance is being informed not filling in missing information. That’s called manipulation.

When it comes to political schools of thought my political science degree affords me enough formal education for me to make informed choices about this kind of thing.

Here, I’m not saying I’m right and you’re wrong. One of the core tenants of political freedom is Voltaire. Though I will tell you that I certainly will not defend the right of someone to say Jews have white privilege. I draw a line somewhere. 

My honest take is patriarchy is generally not worth the extra 20-30 pages of extra reading that patriarchy theory produces per article. Liberals, socialists, conservatives, Marxist’s and environmentalists have long covered many of the topics patriarchy theory does and they do so in more concise ways. 

One of the few things that distinguishes patriarchy theory is however, it’s incredible springboard into hate speech towards mixed race minorities.

Ignorance and race based tangents aside, you cannot and should not call out straight privilege on an individual level. On an institutional level, okay but people have just as much a    Right to be in the closet for their own reasons as they do to be out. Freedom of sexual expression means freedom to silence as well. 

That is why I tolerate people saying f*****t. Yeah it’s a nasty word and it “shouldn’t be said” but I would rather acquit the guilty then condemn those just trying to get by. Things have gotten better but things have not gotten so better that the fear of being disowned by your family/friends is gone so I feel it must be taken into account when you are attacking those displaying hatred. 

Feminism has it’s place but liberal, Marxist, and socialist feminism got along just fine making insights about women in the world before patriarchy came along. It is a functionally obsolete theory that does more harm than good to feminist literature  in the form of convolution and society at large via those who either ignorantly or deliberate use the convolution to their advantage to claim a moral impunity. 

14 hours ago, Armchair General said:

Kind of ironic how people don't understand how racism works, nowadays...Considering how they taught the Civil Rights movement in schools and whatever type of bullying that goes on the playground.

Loving vs. Virginia was 52 years ago at this point. It’s depressing how many LGBTQ people and activists forgot how little of a chance they have without the suffering of interracial couples to get their civil right to marry. 

Its hard for me to take cries of religious institutions treating them unfairly seriously when I see how little respect for mixed race minorities most LGBTQ people and activists have.  I will not defend homosexuality exclusion in churches but I can’t defend how taken for granted and disenfranchised I feel as a mixed kid from their actions either. If it’s a question of who is morally superior, I’m not smelling two piles of poop to see which stinks more. Just shovel the stuff and clean up.

 

 

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