Ah, okay, I guess I misread you. Then, yes, we certainly do differ on this point. In my opinion, preventing the Klan from rallying is like letting the cockroaches have the run of a dark kitchen. But it sounds like we’re going to have to agree to disagree on that one.
Banning the Klan won’t make the idea go away. Until we actually have Orbital Mind Control Lasers, it will never be possible to control what people believe. Nor would I like to live in such a world.
I won’t stand by while you ban the ideas behind the Klan because, for all I know, you might, the next day, ban some other belief that I personally believe in. Once you start categorizing beliefs into “acceptable” and “unacceptable”, you cross a line that should not be crossed.
The day that the Klan loses the right to hold their odious beliefs is the day that this country dies.
I can see a major flaw in your logic here Stoid!
How do you define what is a choice and what is unavoidable?
The evidence that homosexuality is genetic is shaky to say the least, so is it OK to express offensive opinions about homosexuals? How about Anti-semitism, is that OK? Depends on whether you consider Judaism to be a race or a religious creed doesn’t it? There is evidence that serial killers have little to no control over their actions, so no-one should express a negative opinion about them? How about expressing negative opinions about couples in inter-racial relationships? Now that’s a choice, so I should be free to express whatever opinions I like about them?
The issue isn’t quite as black and white as you hope.
Ha, ha, what a silly–
>>–zzzzap—<<
Drinking Bud Light will make me a rich and powerful athlete. SUV’s are superior passenger vehicles. Adam Sandler is funny. Al Gore once said he invented the Internet. These pants will make impossibly beautiful women want to have sex with me. Need to find out truth behind Meg Ryan’s affair with Russell Crowe. Must buy text-enabled cell phone so I can day-trade while in line to purchase lottery tickets.
>>–zzzzap—<<
::blinks groggily::
Um, what was I saying?
I agree with you, Cervaise. Given that most everyone in our culture, to some degree, values the freedom to express one’s ideas, the KKK would evoke far more sympathy by casting themselves as the underdogs in a Constitutional battle against “big government” to exercise their rights to speak and to assemble than they ever do with their rather pathetic rallies.
The Klan held a rally in Cleveland this past January, right in front of the Justice Center(!), and were even given police protection and a place to change into their robes. Out of the 15-20 people who showed up to see them, maybe 2 were there to actually see and support the Klan. The rest were there to mock them.
A quick aside – whether it is or isn’t genetic is completely irrelevant as to whether it is or isn’t chosen. The former may be on shaky ground, but the latter is fairly well-established At least if the testimony of homosexuals themselves is to be believed, and I have no reason to disbelieve it.
Good point, and I knew someone would bring it up.
My logic applied perfectly to the two examples Scylla gave, which happen to be the two topics/opinions that set off a firestorm when I gave them. I don’t think anyone can rationally argue that being a hunter or a Republican is beyond one’s ability to choose. I think getting indignant about someone else’s disagreement with your choices is unfair.
I think we should all offer whatever opinions we feel comfortable offering, understanding the potential hostility we are likely to engender for some of them. My point in my argument was that to be fair, you should look at the nature of each opinion that you are reacting to, and take that into account when evalutating your reaction. Is it fair? Have they attacked your humanity, or the choices you have made in your life as a result of your opinions?
In your example, I believe homosexuality, like ALL sexuality, to be beyond choice. No one chooses what turns them on. If a guy gets an erection when he sees naked women in babydolll pajamas with blonde hair and giant breasts…did he CHOOSE that? No. It just is what it is. Every educated, non-religious person I have ever spoken to understands that sexuality is beyond our choosing. But yes, there are those who will debate this. They are free to. They are likely to offend. If they have a problem with others finding their opinions offensive, they shouldn’t share them.
There are people who will argue the earth is flat. That doesn’t mean their opinions are valid.
As for Jews, Jews themselves, as well as non-Jews, consider a Jew a Jew if they were born to Jewish parents. Most of my friends are Jews, and pretty much none of them is religious. They still identify as Jews because of their ancestors and as a result, their cultural experience. It’s not a choice unless they choose to be religious. And if I want to express that I think the Jewish religion is hooey, I have a right to do that. It is a choice to believe or not.
As for couples in interracial relationships, they have also made a choice. A choice they know will upset some ignorant, racist people. Those people can choose to offer their opinions or not.
My point, ultimately, was that people can choose what offends them. What I suggest is that if you find yourself being offended, you should look closer at the nature of the offense, and that you should expand your view of what is acceptable for people to express publicly. To boil down my point about it further: if two people are judging something, and one judges it good, the other bad, it is still a product of judgment and everyone is entitled to their opinion. You can’t reasonably expect others to tiptoe around your OPINION of anything. You can reasonably expect them not to make ignorant and unkind remarks about who you are based on factors outside your control that have no bearing on who you are. They might anyway, tho.
stoid
Yeah, I’ve always been amazed that people could ever convince themselves that homosexuals choose to be gay! Let’s see… I don’t find my own sex attractive to begin with, and I notice that gay people tend to be reviled and abused in this society. Hmm. I think I will be homosexual!
The logic boggles.
stoid
Stoid:
I used those statements you refer to as the first thing that came to mind. I purposefully didn’t attribute them to you. TO show you where I’m coming from try this:
I may have opinions about pornography in general. I might even have guesses about what those that make it and those that sell it are like.
However, I realize that each person is a unique individual. Combine that with the fact that I know very little about the porn business. In trying to be a good person, it becomes clear that I really can’t make any valid judgements of you based on your career choice. Any opinions that I may hold in that matter are likely deeply flawed.
Knowing that this is a board dedicated to fighting ignorance, it would speak very poorly of me if I were to shoot my mouth and flaunt my ignorance by posting my unsupportable opinions and judgements.
Of course, I have every right to do so. If I choose that course though, I am likely to be called to task for ignorance, and rightly so.
More importantly, I would realize that I was a jerk for having done so.
Criticizing things I don’t know about inevitably leads to embarassment in my experience.
Furthermore, it has been my experience that people have somehow misconstrued the fact that they are entitled to their opinion as somehow suggesting that the opinion has merit, or is valid, when in fact, no worth is implied.
It’s also been my experience that when people defend a statement by saying “I have a right to my opinion.” You can safely translate this as “everything I’ve said is bullshit.”
Now a gay guy may assert to me that other men are attractive to him, and that this is generally true, and a characteristic of being a gay male.
I may not understand this. I may not personally agree with it. However, I have no cause to doubt him at his word. I accept the data that he provides, because I a) lack his experience in this area b) have no better data and c) have no meaningful claim to a better explanation.
Now, if I were to assert that this gay man wan’t actually attracted to other men, but only thought he was. If I were to tell him that what he was attracted to were the physiological aspects of a man that most resembled a woman. If I told him that he would be much more satisfied if he simply stopped projecting his desires for females onto male anatomy, or that his projecting in this fashion represented a flaw that made him untrustworthy.
If I were to do these things, I would likely get myself into some well-deserved trouble.
If I was discussing this with a fairly open and considerate gay guy, maybe he might even give my assertions some consideration. In examining his own motivations and those of other gay men he knows, he might conclude that I was wrong and politely explain why this was so.
If I persisted in my assertions, supporting them by opinion alone, than this guy might get a little peeved, seeing as he knows quite a bit about it and I am admittedly ignorant.
If I again choose to persist, based on opinion, somewhere in there I have crossed a pretty broad and well-lighted line.
I am a jerk. An unsupported opinion isn’t worth shit compared to the evidence of experience and knowledge.
I’ll give you another example:
I think my barn is white.
What color do you think it is?
You’re entitled to your opinion of course, but whose do you think is worth something?
I think you are mistaken on several counts.
You can certainly have an opinion about pornography, and you can decide whether you approve of people who sell it * based on that alone * because you are the ultimate arbiter of what is acceptable to you and the criteria you will use.
Now, what you cannot reasonably do is extrapolate from one thing to another, for instance:
“You are a pornographer, therefore, you must be a sexually free person, therefore you must cheat on your spouse.” One thing doesn’t have anything to do with the other, although it may look to you like it does. It would also be unfair to do what was actually done to me: I was turned down for business insurance on my collection of vintage photography (once, I have since gotten it elsewhere) because the insurers basically told my agent: “She’s a pornographer, therefore she is a bad person, therefore she would have no compunction about setting her house on fire to collect the insurance money.” (Can you believe that shit? I was outraged. Then I was amused that people could be so ignorant.)
In other words, you can * reasonably * decide that you don’t like me * simply because I am a pornographer and that is so deeply abhorrant to you that you cannot look beyond it.* What you * cannot * reasonably do is decide that because I am a pornographer, I must also be a pedophile, rapist and bank robber, and that I probably kick small dogs and steal candy from babies.
Now, in the case of my judgments that you were so offended by, in neither case did I say that you were, in toto, a bad human being. I declared my feelings about two things that you embrace, you did the rest.
The one with better color vision, obviously. 
I have to say I don’t really understand what you are asserting here. The only thing I can think of is back to our hunting debate, which I thought we covered…I don’t have to hunt to form a reasonable opinion of whether it is disgusting or not. And I do get to say so.
You were insulted by my assertion that you like to kill animals…like I’ve said roughly a dozen times already…if you go out to kill animals it is *not unreasonable * to conclude that you * like * it.
And back to the OP…there is nothing wrong with my saying so! Being a hunter, or a Republican, or a Christian, or a pornographer, is not the same thing as being a Jew or Black or gay or female, or disabled, and expressing opinons about the first set of things is not equivalent to expressing opinions about the second set of things.
The first set is things that we choose for ourselves based on our opinions of their value. That * does * indicate something about who we are and how we think. The second is things we are through no fault or control of our own and say exactly nothing about who we are or how we think.
stoid
Scylla, what a deft way of putting it!
Something that drives me up a wall is when someone tells me what I believe, religiously. I have had a few people say “You believe this (horrible thing)” and I say, I don’t, over and over. I explain what I do believe (they are my beliefs, I think I oughta know) but to no avail. Apparently some people are so arrogant, or so stubborn, that no matter what facts they are presented, they KNOW more than you. Doesn’t matter that they have no actual personal information on the issue, or personal experience.
I think this attitude is going to drive almost anyone up a wall, after a while. Especially if they have patiently been explaining themselves. (And, as an aside, I think you are the epitome of patience, Scylla.)
And if a woman has a baby, it must be because she wants to deal with dirty diapers. :rolleyes:
There are a lot of reasons people make choices. If a person who actually DOES something you have no experience in, and this person tells you what they feel about a certain activity - why disbelieve them? You don’t know what they feel, you can’t read their mind, you don’t know anything about the activity. Your knowledge on the subject is minimal or nonexistant. Your knowledge of the person you are assigning emotions to is practically minimal or nonexistant. But you still insist on holding the “opinion” that they feel something they insist they do not.
It seems obvious that such an “opinion” pretty worthless.
[sub]Oh, and I know…shhhh! I’m invisible to Stoid. She doesn’t see or hear me (or Freedom2, and who knows who else.) We are on her “ignore” list, so she doesn’t have to answer our questions or comments.[/sub]
I agree. It would speak poorly of me, but I could certainly choose to dislike you based on your being a pornographer.
Let’s try a couple of equivalent statements (not my opinion, just examples.)
-“You hunt because you like to kill animals.”
-“You purvey porn because you like to help people degrade themselves.”
-“You kill animals because their lives and suffering are without meaning to you.”
-“You purvey porn because the suffering of people that is caused by its creation and dissemination means nothing to you.”
I’ve been on that list.
It seems kind of silly, but I don’t understand the motivations involved in Stoid’s choice.
Therefore, rather than risk being in error, or possibly insulting to Stoid who knows her own motivations better than I, I will not assert my opinions on this matter as fact. Rather I will suggest them and defer to what Stoid chooses or does not choose to reveal about them.
She does it because:
-
She doesn’t like Yosemitebabe right now (Yosemitebabe may recall that we have clashed almost violently in the past. Fortunately the debate didn’t get carried past the debate by either of us.)
-
It is difficult to engage multiple parties in debate simultaneously, so therefore you choose perhaps with reasons, or perhaps arbitrarily who you will respond to.
My opinion is that it’s kind of silly to ignore somebody who’s debating your points on a message board. May I suggest that if you do not feel like directly conversing with that person, why not simply quote the question or point without attributing it, and respond only to the point or question?
My hunch is that the reason is #1, but of course I can’t read minds here. And Scylla, I cannot even remember what clashes we have had. I am sure we have had them, but it never occurred to me to put you (or anyone) on a “ignore” list. I have had clashes with slythe, for instance, and a few other people. But hold no ill-will towards them. I’d never dream of ignoring any of them.
Almost impossible to believe (in my opinion) since there was this passive-aggressive psuedo-“response” that she gave (quoting someone else’s post directed at me, and basically agreeing with their comments towards me.) That seemed to be a pretty obvious way of “responding” to me, while still effectively “ignoring” me. A lot of effort to go to, to still maintain the facade of “ignoring” me.
Agreed. And, in some instaces, gutless.
Ugh. Typos. “In some instances, gutless.”
Nice try, but I don’t think it flies.
Which of these things is not like the others?
Statement One.
Why?
Because this is the structures you have given:
“You participate in [fact]. You must enjoy [fact, precisely the same fact as first fact, expressed differently, but still neutrally]”
Statement two:
‘You [fact]. You must like that because [value judgment about fact]"
Three:
"You do [fact] because you [feel this particular way about something having to do with fact, but not the fact itself]
Four:
You do [fact] because [value judgment and unsupported assertion about fact, followed by judgment of your feelings about the unsupported assertion about fact]
I was responsible for Statement One. And you have still not really refuted the fact in question, not really. You have said that you like all the other aspects of hunting, that there are many things about it which draw you to it. You have also said that you like the chase, the stalk, and the “win” of actually killing the animal, it gives you a rush, a sense of accomplishment, and you brag about it later. Stated differently, you like killing animals. What YOU have a problem with is the, shall we say, incompleteness of the statement, and the way stripping it down like that * sounds * . “I like to hunt” sounds kinda manly and cool. “I like to kill animals” sounds kinda creepy. But the core fact is a true one. If it weren’t, if you actively disliked killing things, you wouldn’t do it. I never said that every single aspect of it was as great as every other, and I never asserted anything about the way you feel about animals in general. But you keep wanting to wriggle out of this simple truth: hunting is killing animals. You like hunting. You like killing animals. You have said it, just not that way.
Let’s try it something a little less emotionally charged:
“I like dancing”
“Oh, you like standing up and wriggling your body while music plays”
“Well, it’s more than that. I like the people, I like to drink, I like to watch other people, I like to dress up, I like going out at night.”
“Well, why don’t you just do all those other things and forget the dancing?”
“Well, I like to dance, too, it’s just that that isn’t all there is to it.”
“So, you do like standing up and wriggling your body to music.”
“Yes, but not by itself”
Same thing. You like to kill animals…within the context of going out with your buddies, being in nature, challenging your skills, there are lots of reasons WHY you like killing animals, it isn’t necessarily that you get off on their pain or enjoy the sight of blood…but you still like killing animals.
And I STILL get to have an opinion about it without doing it myself!
And you should remember why. I’ve stated it multiple times, and I’ve even stated it in this very thread.
stoid