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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   3969 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 9, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Why is LGBTQ so important for liberals in terms of foreign policy?

For example, when debating Russia, arguments often amount to Russia is evil because they aren't onboard with pride. Russia isn't putting LGBTQAASASFDSFDSFDSFDSFSD people in concentration camps, they simply seem not to have pride flags while having a don't ask don't tell attitude. Why does that infuriate liberals that much?

Countries in the middle east can engage in all sorts of questionable behaviour but, often it is a lack of LGBTQ flags that infuriates the left. Again, they aren't mass-executing LGBTQ people or having concentrations camps, they simply don't celebrate it or want it rubbed in people's faces.

It seems like existence of pride parades seems to be a key benchmark for judging the moral virtue of a country. Why is this benchmark so central?

So, can you elaborate what "want it rubbed in people's faces" means? Because that's probably where you're going to find the answer to your question, since "not rubbing it in people's faces" includes

  • making it illegal for individuals to "promote homosexuality"
  • making same-sex couples and households headed by same-sex couples ineligible for the legal protections available to opposite-sex couples
  • not allowing transgender adults to change their legal gender and
  • banning all gender-affirming care
  • making it illegal for people suffering from gender dysphoria to adopt children
  • changing the status of marriages by a trans individual with a person who shares the same birth sex as them to nullified
  • defining violent criminal acts carried out against LGBT people as criminal offences under Russian law such that fact that crimes which are motivated by the sexual orientation or gender identity of the victim is not considered an aggravating factor when the court determines the sentence
  • providing no anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people and having no designation for hate crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity
  • deeming the distribution of "materials promoting LGBTQ relationships" to minors, which was then updated in 2022 to extend to apply to anyone regardless of age, thus making any expression deemed a promotion of non-traditional sexual relationships illegal
  • ruling the international LGBTQ movement to be "extremist", outlawing it in the country, the the proceeding day sending security forces to raid bars, male saunas and nightclubs across Moscow
  • ruling homosexual acts between consenting males were against the law until 1993
  • never approving a request to hold a gay pride rally

Hopefully you can see why that would infuriate anyone, much less liberals, and how it appears a little more than "simply don't celebrate it".

Hopefully you can see why that would infuriate anyone, much less liberals

I wholeheartedly support every single bullet point you have here, and so do a whole lot of people in the US.

I wholeheartedly don't support every single bullet point I have here, and so do a whole lot of other people in the US, too. I suppose we cancel eachother out.

The question is whether those things would 'infuriate anyone' and the answer is clearly not.

That is one answer. I think another answer can be that people think they aren't infuriated by those things but, in fact, are.

I think we are working from radically-different premises and should probably not share a government.

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