I am becoming more and more convinced that Lissener is a sleeper agent working undercover for Fred Phelps. He must be a paid agent hired to portray gay people in the harshest possible light. How else can we explain his hypocritical denunciation of His4Ever’s intransigence when he is also deaf to reason? His idea of debate is the same as a fundie’s, i.e., in place of reasoned argument based on sound premises, his idea of argument is to mulishly restate the same bald assertions over and over and over while absolutely refusing to engage any arguments that might open his mind. Talking to him in GD is like doing a rehearsal of Monty Python’s Argument Clinic sketch.
His other tactic is namecalling gay people who want to use persuasion instead of abuse to change their opponent’s mind. He has called Homebrew and me “Uncle Toms,” “obsequious,” and posting flat-out lies:
I have NEVER agreed that my humanity is open to debate. What I am debating in GD is the fundie view and I’m not giving an inch.
Lissener, you’re an embarrasment to all reasonable gay people, so stop helping, you dizzy queen!
That’s a matter of perspective. I think I’m fairly reasonable and I don’t find him particularly embarrassing. A little too abrasive, impassioned and emotionally-involved maybe, plus I’d be pissed too if he’d been calling me names. But I really don’t see how this thread is ‘helping’ any further.
Here’s me (in another thread): *Until the natural reaction of the “mainstream” American is to react to such statements as “I just think that homosexuals are deviants and abominations before God. I’m sorry but that’s my opinion” in exactly the same way they would react to “I just think that blacks/jews/women/[your group here] are inferior to white men. I’m sorry but that’s just my opinion”—until then, nothing will change. They must be driven into the closet, underground, the way neo-nazis and the KKK are forced to exist today. *
—a thread in which gobear did nothing but disagree with me, to the degree that he launched this present Pit thread.
And here’s gobear (later, in yet another thread):* . . . I would like to see homophobes like you treated with the same social oppobrium that racists and anti-Semites receive, for you and they are branches of the same poisonous tree.*
I agreed with the sentiment, but not with the way you expressed it. I was under the mistaken impression that being civil, logical, and persistent would persuade His4Ever to open her mind. I was wrong, and I apologize to Lissener.
IMHO – you gotta try reason, logic, and particularly “jiujitsu reasoning” (switch the scenario so that the apparently illogical person is in the shoes of the person he/she condemns) first.
There may be a time for an appropriate rant. I’ve just started a Pit flaming of another poster, only the second time I’ve done that in 30 months here.
Reason, compassion, empathic attempts to see their perspective and then show them where their POV is wrong, these will work 99% of the time.