Offensive off-topic post hidden
@puzzlegal, I don’t need to hang out with as many trans people as you do to know it’s not reasonable or practical to restrict restrooms according to birth sex. I don’t support bathroom bills, or most of the other things the Trump admin is doing. I disagree with you on trans policy in three main areas: sports, prisons and shelters, and the assessment of children before medicalisation.
But I think I opened Pandora’s box here. And I suspect everyone believes that because in some ways I sympathise with conservatives or evangelicals, I must agree with them.
No. After experiencing hatred and rejection from supposed liberals, I started really listening to conservatives, and developed sympathy for the devil… or maybe empathy is the better term. I feel like I understand the position of conservative Christians, even though I don’t and can’t share them, because I don’t believe in a god or any religion.
The thing about religion is that most of them set out rules for what is right and wrong. It’s where the majority of people in the world get the specific rules of morality they follow. Progressivism isn’t a religion, but in the last couple of decades, it has developed its own rules of morality, and it’s a universal morality: progressives believe everyone must follow their rules, or they are doing wrong (causing harm).
Collective-you call it “hate”, but it might as well be “sin”. This “hate” has nothing to do with the emotion of the same name: what you mean when you say opposing a particular policy or expressing a particular belief is “hateful” is that you think it is morally wrong to do so.
Inevitably, these progressive moral beliefs sometimes conflict with religious moral beliefs. You believe they are spreading hate, they believe you are promoting sin. Some religious people deal with this conflict by retconning their religion to fit the still-evolving progressive morality. Some become atheist or agnostic. Others choose their religion over progressivism, and in doing so must reject conflicting progressive moral beliefs.
So this is how I see the situation: you think you are just asking for gay and trans people to be left alone and to be able to live their lives in peace, but what you are actually asking is for religious people to give up or substantially change their religion, or to hide their religious beliefs from society. And increasingly, this is not a plea, but a demand, with ‘consequences’ like being fired and blacklisted for refusing.
You don’t want to be forced to change or hide your religion. No one does. Even non-religious people like me don’t want to be silenced and forced to subordinate their conscience to a religion or political philosophy they don’t share: it means forcing them to do wrong or to silently endorse wrongs, in their (our) own view.
Politics is the new religion, the new source of opposing and incompatible beliefs about what is good and right. So the Culture War is akin to a religious war. The US dealt with religious pluralism by banning instituting a state religion, and more or less tolerating their neighbours believing differently to them. Other countries chose religious persecution, legally enforced discrimination on the basis of religion, and religious wars. Maybe that is America’s future now, and I don’t know which side will prevail. I do know that in a civil war, everyone suffers.