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I'm not american, but welcome to how atheists (and gays, and so on) felt under the moral-majority-style religious right. It was the same kind of split were the moderate religious right was publicly saying not believing was fine, but they were actively politically allying (and thus empowering) a more rabid wing that would regularly go after people who do something that goes against their beliefs. Like, it's fine to be an atheist, as long as you don't do anything that might offend random christian activists.
To be fair, the woke actually still feels worse to me since it has more internal institutional backing inside academia, but there definitely is some symmetry here.
Your argument would be stronger if you focused on gays instead of atheists. I have no recollection of atheists facing any discrimination. I can 100% understand they thought the moral majority people were annoying but there are not any big everyday life frictions.
Gay potentially. But they did successfully lobby to keep gay bath houses open, during the AIDS pandemic. So they were not lacking political power.
I am also moral majority. Don’t be gay. It’s bad for you. Just find a nice wife.
You don't need to save me or anyone else, we don't want you to. Just live your own life. Other people being gay does not affect you.
I can imagine to an actual gay person hearing comments like that feels a lot like your fellow Americans hating you.
This argument is a good one right up until people start blaming me for the negative consequences of your personal choices.
It seems to me that Liberalism is going away and is unlikely to return for the forseeable future.
What you've shown me is Authoritarians wearing the skinsuit of the latest crisis to pass increasingly draconian laws. The article makes it clear that the local community, the victims father, and the governor of Wyoming were all committed to not trampling on the rights of others for the failure of personal choices.
The Authoritarians saw an opportunity to gain more power, and neither side decided to stop them. Liberalism dies in the dark. It is not a fundamental fact, an universal law, and the sweet seductive whisper of hurting your outgroup is such strong primal vice of humanity. Liberalism requires active support.
Liberalism will return, it is the currently known best possible solution to a multi-polar society. The foreseeable future will require us to re-learn that bloody lesson.
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To be fair to my argument. They actually did believe creating a moral society was good for the gays. I still believe that 1980’s culture was better for the gays than 2020.
In one area it seems most certain to me is with respect to children. Would Sam Altman be happier in the closet sneaking off for gay sex twice a month but with a loving wife raising his children or with the motherless child from a surrogate. To me it’s fairly obvious the former is better for him.
And obviously the children are effected.
Other people's children. Those people don't need you to come in and save their children. Just like you don't need the progressives to come in and save your children. This entire problem is because both sides want to "save" other people's kids. Stay in your own community and stop sticking your nose or your opinions in places that don't affect you.
Yes I'm sure Gays were so absolutely grateful that they definitely didn't protest soooo hard to stop it, and definitely aren't existing in a multi-generational state of trauma, forcing the rest of us to deal with that gratitude... I'd say the observed outcome of people's actions is that the 1980s culture was not better for the gays. Of course right-wingers are very biased in their opinion about this, because they need to see themselves as the hero, not the villain. Have some epistemological humility, the arrogance is staggering.
You mean a bitter wife who knows he's cheating on her with men but can't say anything about it, can't divorce him, being forced to hide who he is because otherwise his community will shame and ostracize him?
What I really don't get about you right-wingers is the amount of complaining you do about having to hide who you are around progressives because otherwise you will be socially shamed and ostracized. And then you turn around and say that other people should suffer that fate and call it the better outcome. Here you are getting a taste of your own medicine and it is bitter, but rather than learning, having empathy, understanding the other side's feelings, you cling to the delusions that when you do it, it is ok, it is moral.
We truly are fucked.
Maybe some people really are just better?
The rise of mental illness and reported happiness surveys would seem to strongly support that some people really just have better ideas/values.
I don’t believe gay people were ever banned from jobs or banks. I don’t believe their speech was restricted back then.
Also your saying it’s ok to torture kids (hopefully not having a mother is just mildly). Society does have responsibility for the vulnerable.
I also have not once said anything about being bitter. I think homosexuality is bad for society. I’ve never once said I am a libertarian so there is no hypocrisy. I do think society has a duty to protect the commons. If something is bad for society then we should want LESS of it.
But the difference between the 1980’s and today is I don’t believe the 1980’s tried to take offer communication systems so that debate ends. I don’t think they banned the POTUS from mass media. Or put him in jail. Etc.
No argument, but it might shock you, that I consider Christian Activists and Progs Activists to be Untermensch of the same caliber. Y'all are barely more evolved than apes. That sweet seductive vice of tribal conflict is just too much for you to resist. Like children in candy shop, you lot can't control yourselves.
Progs think you are torturing your kids. Who's to say they aren't right and that you are? What evidence do you have?
Are you a Consequentialist or a Deontologist? Christians are almost always required to be the latter so stop trying to use the arguments of the former. If I showed you the reduction in mental illness and increase in happiness flowed from prog values you would not change your beliefs, so stop trying to use that as your argument. It's disingenuous.
This comment expresses differently. link
Additional evidence:
This forum is full of conservatives complaining about having to keep quiet and call a man in a dress a woman. It's been a common complaint for years at this point. You might not be bitter, congratulations, but it is so incredibly common that to dismiss it, would be laughable.
Of a shock to no one, escalation begets not equal response but an increasing one. I think WhiningCoil said roughly: When the younger child pokes and prods the elder, and the elder hits the younger, sometimes its best to turn a blind eye because the younger clearly was equally involved and its an important lesson that escalating has a response.
Do me a favor and don’t accuse me of supporting things for reasons I have clearly expressed are NOT the reason and that I am acting in good faith. My beliefs here are not due to “tribal conflict”. I actually believe homosexuality is bad for the individual and a net negative to the commons.
I don’t support firing people from government jobs for being gay/pregnant. Though religious institutions should have a choice.
I do though have no problem with schools choosing what books to give to students. End of the day they costs money and someone has to choose what to buy. Someone has to tell children what to read. But they can buy whatever they want on Amazon. Or we can go 100% voucher system.
I am also making no claims that the culture war doesn’t exists. It has to exists. All societies have cultures and they have a huge influence on the wealth of the nation and the happiness of the civilization.
99% of the population still agrees we shouldn’t have an elementary school showing a pornographic video of a 40 year old man having sex with a 10 year and how the student should handle that encounter. All societies have cultural lines. Greece taught their young men how to terrorize their local peasantry so civilization has had all sorts of norms.
I don't think you are acting in bad faith, I think you sincerely believe these things. I don't think you are waging the culture war here. This gets at something more high level, that I am probably doing a bad job at communicating it.
Right wingers and Progressives make about 90% of the same arguments on why their morality is the better one, the structure is the same, the goal is the same, the specific details are just different. Like the serial numbers are filed off. You both want to save "the innocent" particularly other people's "innocent". And it makes no difference whether those people want to be saved by y'all or not. But there is a massive blind spot, you both can't see how the same your argument is, and you both think your the right ones, both using the same exact reasoning for it too. This is a lack of cognitive empathy, the ability to take yourself out of your own mind and put yourself in someone else's, to see the world from their viewpoint. And its made more extreme by how similar your arguments are, this isn't some alien x human difference. This is tribalism, the inability to put yourself in the outgroup's shoes.
But the most galling part isn't that you are tribal, it's that you can't account for it. It doesn't compute. It's an epistemological arrogance.
I can recognize that you and I have different beliefs, I can empathize with why you have those beliefs(at a high level, I don't personally know you), and I can still view you as a human-agent. Do I think my beliefs would be better for you, of course, who doesn't think that. Do I feel the need to save you from your poor beliefs? Your children from the poor beliefs of their parents? Absolutely not, you are your own person, your own community, and I respect the freedom and human dignity for y'all to chart your own course. I can also recognize that my beliefs might not be the truly correct ones, and thus the existence of other communities with other beliefs is a net good.
So then why do you feel you should force your beliefs on others? To save them, when they don't want you to, when they don't see it as saving them. Leave them alone. You might believe that homosexuality is bad for the individual, and negative for the commons. Then leave, form your own commons, create your own community, and if it truly is so, then your community will flourish and the Progs will wither until eventually there is one left. Tend to your own flock and let prog's tend to theirs.
The failure to do so, is that tribal instinct. The primal, childish drive to have your own way, because your way is the only way. It is the vice of lesser men. And I pity the fool who would boast of winning their small battle while damning our species to hell.
I stand by this, and you avoided answering it.
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Yeah, you're really not helping my impression here. Progressives literally say 100% the same. It's fine to be a conservative religious, as long as you're like one of the good ones in their tv shows who lives a conservative lifestyle and is spiritual in some undefined way, but who doesn't actually espouse any conservative values nor seems to have strong specific religious convictions, either. And certainly doesn't "spread hate" about trans people, or "threatens reproductive rights" or whatever.
It's true in a sense, you can mostly live life just fine as a religious conservative as long as you don't trigger random progressive activists.
I think at this point we can all agree if you lose a culture war - you mostly can not just go live your life. Not in 2020.
I do think it’s an interesting question whether you a gay could just live their life in 1980. Probably not in pro sports. Elite investment banker you were probably mostly fine.
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