Not to mention the fact that gay people are born into Orthodox Jewish families at precisely the same rate they’re born into everyone else’s families. Even if the persecution is only aimed at members of their in-group, it’s still worthy of condemnation.
I don’t understand your disagreement with what I said. Are you assuming that I was intending to imply that “trying to force one’s views on others” = “being a bigot”? Because I wasn’t.
My point was simply that, pace Polycarp, it makes no sense to argue that anti-gay-marriage evangelical Christians are the ones trying to force others “to abide by their beliefs” but anti-gay-marriage Orthodox Jews are not. AFAICT, anti-gay-marriage Orthodox Jews as a group are just as much in favor of legally prohibiting same-sex marriage for anybody, because they personally disapprove of it, as anti-gay-marriage evangelical Christians are.
I would be happy to be proved wrong about that, mind you, but so far it doesn’t look likely.
Straight people makin’ bacon, number one cause of gay people. Only cause, so far as we know. So maybe they should knock it off, take up knitting. Yeah, that’ll work.
The Tao’s Revenge:
Thanks for the apology. I want to be clear that at no time in this thread was I addressing the issue of gay rights in modern American society, but was merely correcting errors in Biblical interpretation.
Kimstu:
No question, there are many in the Orthodox Jewish camp - as in the evangelical Christian or Catholic camp or even the secular humanist camp - who are happy to legislate morality as long as it’s the right morality, of course. As a group, we’re no less guilty of this short-sighted view than others. I shudder to see how well they like it when “infant mutilation” or “inhumane animal slaughter” becomes a political issue.
But he did. That’s the beauty of it. You deliberately set up where you wouldn’t respond to certain tactics. By doing so, you let anything by that uses those tactics. And people tend to believe what they read unless they have a reason not to do so. Saying you won’t argue with something because it’s too stupid doesn’t somehow make people not believe it.
Oh, and I can prove you’re not gay. First off, we have your protestations of a crush MeanOldLady, who you have previously identified as female. We have the fact that the only time you’ve ever proclaimed yourself to be gay is in a hypothetical. We have the fact that, to be relevant to this thread, you would have to be trying to marry a man, which is typically something only gay or bisexual people do.
But, most damningly, there have been scientific studies of what goes on in the brain when you are attracted to someone (Google it). It would be simple to set up a test that checked to see if you were more attracted to women or men.
Not that this is really important, as the law also prohibits straight men from marrying other straight men. Plus there is no scientific test that can identify what race someone is, so race couldn’t fit your criteria either. So your sexuality is irrelevant, and scientific testing is irrelevant.
And, finally, insisting that everyone who argues with you has to be a lawyer is just stupid. Don’t think we haven’t noticed that you define argument as apparently meaning only what lawyers do. Non-lawyers don’t know the law well enough to argue with you by your standards. You aren’t winning people over with this tactic either.
You claim to be wanting to fight ignorance, so you might want to try tactics that work.
Ah, so you do get what went down. Excellent. Though I’d replace “snotty” with “insightful”. You do realize this is The Pit, right?
Here in the Pit I’m free to do either one. And to be honest, I thought I provided the perfect rebuttal to your pretzel twisting by citing this excellent summation:
[QUOTE=Whack-a-Mole]
Race is an irrelevant qualification.
[/QUOTE]
But since you asked for me to break it down for you, here you go. The feel-good Gordion Pretzel you tried to construct has at its heart plain old run-o-the-mill bigotry. It’s believing that your White Martian will think and act a certain way because of his outward appearance. That his color better qualifies him to get done a job that you view as beneficial. Surely you can see how that would be fallacious reasoning.
Now, that is not to say that there might be real benefits of electing the White Martians. White Martians everywhere might then feel like they have more of a voice and more of a chance in life. And that is a good thing. But it still boils down to you choosing the White Martian for the color of his skin, shell, or fur, or whatever the case may be. In other words, you wouldn’t vote for that person if he were of the color of the majority. This is textbook bigotry. The question you’re really trying to answer is can racism be justified. And that’s the crux of the issue. The problem is that non-whacky conservatives think that it cannot, while not-whacky liberals keep trying to make it happen.
Oh, heavens, there seems to be some misunderstanding. I didn’t mean to imply that I thought you treated me that way. Just that it’s your general demeanor.
And you know, if you’re gonna write stuff that makes me giggle, I’m gonna giggle. Odd that you find that insane.
The former Cecil seems to feel there isn’t really much of an argument for or against male circumcision. Hard to make a case, but both sides have plenty of ammo to fight for quite awhile. However female clitoral mutilations are beyond cruel, backward and inhuman and should be outlawed by any decent sort of people.
The latter, well a society that was turning against using animals for food would have either developed a super human sense of empathy, or more probably, a better source of meat. Either one would be an amazing thing to see.
I’m sure you would, in the same way that the tone deaf person hears no problem with her singing.
What possible definition of bigotry are you using that makes this make sense? Treating people differently based on the color of their skin is not bigotry, unless you think the doctor who advises me (as a pale redhead) to use more sunscreen is a bigot. Bigotry involves obstinate and incorrect beliefs about groups of people. If your beliefs are accurate, and if you’re playing a strategic game based on accurate beliefs, you may be many things, but “bigot” is not necessarily one of them.
Nobody doubts that.
I’m saying that assuming what a man will think or do based on his skin color—or how well he will do it—is bigotry, plain and simple. I believe in free will and therefore do not believe that men of any color are bound to act or think one way or another based on their skin color.
Your doctor example above doesn’t work because the doctor is treating your skin coloration (lack of melanin) itself. He’s making no judgement beyond the skin.
If you assume, that’s foolish. But if you play the odds, and you know that in general people respond more to people who look like their family? That’s not foolish, that’s just how humans tend to work. Calling it “bigotry” is silliness.
What do you think legislation should be based on? I’ve seen arguments that legislation should seek merely to address stable strategies (only permit something that would be stable in society, a sort of Kantian view). Thus, murder is not a stable strategy because past a certain point, society would implode. However, such a position is unsustainable. Homosexuality and celibacy are also not stable strategies.
My favoured position is to refer to Maimonides (as Hitchens did).
But you are assuming. That’s the point. You’re assuming that person A will be better for X, why? Because of the color of his skin.
Also, from your comment here it seems like you’d be okay with racial profiling, then? As long as the odd can be argued to justify it. Is that right? If not why?
I’ve explicitly explained why I’m not assuming, any more than if, drawing a 13 in a game of blackjack, I might say “hit me” but not assume that I’ll get a card less than 9. If you don’t know what “play the odds” means, just ask.
No, it’s wrong. Being falsely stopped or questioned by the police is an unpleasant byproduct of police protection; it needs to happen, but we as a society have a vested interest in minimizing its happening to any individual. Profiling unjustly and disproportionately piles this burden on a handful of innocent people.
Voting for minority candidates has no such effect.
Look, if you’d like to get back to a more, “invigorating tone”, no problem. But I thought you preferred one that was more analytical. Your choice.
Now “playing the odds” is “assuming”. It’s just not a blind assumption. It may even prove to be correct if you have the odds in your favor. But your argument works both ways. It’s a reason to vote for a minority candidate—or—if you’re in the majority, a majority candidate. To pull out the MLK card, it seems you either embrace the idea of judging a man not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character (and his brain and accomplishments), or you don’t.
Sure it does. The victim pool is simply smaller, maybe as small as the one other candidate. But you deprive him of your vote by an accident of skin color. You also deprive society of whatever talents he may have by assuming that his skin color means he would do an inferior job than the candidate you prefer because of the melanin level in his skin. This is rank racism. Plain old bigotry that you think you can justify because the victim is not downtrodden.
How about the “candidate” is not a politician, but a candidate for a job, or a promotion, or a scholarship? Is it equally fine that the people doing the deciding choose a person that has a skin color similar to theirs?
And I think racial profiling much more acceptable form of using “race”, not less. Let’s say you’re in a state bordering on Mexico. You know that there are X number of illegal aliens in your state. The odds, as you say, of an illegal alien being Hispanic is vastly greater than he being Scandinavian. Hypothetically (with inflated numbers), if, say, the probability of a Hispanic in your state being an illegal immigrant is 1 in 5, and the probability of a Scandinavian in your state being an illegal immigrant is 1 in 2,000,000, virtually 0, don’t the odds justify asking Hispanics for proof of residency, but not Scandinavians? If not, why not.
I looked back at our exchange and would like to revisit this, which I might not have fully appreciated what you were saying:
I think what you’re missing is that a thought process can be understandable, even rational, but still be bigoted. Yes, people tend to be more comfortable with those of the same race. But that says nothing about a man’s qualifications or abilities. Now if you think it’s okay for someone to say, “I don’t care about qualifications or abilities, I just want a guy with ________ skin color in office.” Fine. But that’s bigoted on its face. And if you think that people are more rational and want the best person for the job in that office—however he or she chooses to define that—and then they use skin color as the qualifying factor, that too is racist.
It’s the same for job applicants. The illegality of it aside, if you use skin color as the indicator of whom to hire, aren’t you guilty of racism? Based on that thinking, IBM would never have hired a black man at all.
Your defending a racist decision making process by accident of the size of the victim pool or the flavor of victim. Neither of those things matter. One is either applying a racist, bigoted thought process or one is not.
Again, and in addition to allusion to the MLK quote, as Whack-a-Mole so succinctly put it:
That should be the mantra for those opposed to racism and bigotry.
Once again, a command performance by the white trash sisterfucking douchebags in deflecting attention from the moral horror that is their monomaniacal obsession with denying human rights to sexual minorities, this time with a wholly irrelevant angels-dancing-on-pins argument about race-based voting. And, of course, another shake of the head to liberals who can’t stop engaging in unwinnable nonsense debates on conservatives’ pre-fixed terms.
I’ve explained myself to the best of my ability, but the rest of your post still operates according to a misunderstanding of what I said, equating “assuming” with “playing the odds” and other such misunderstandings. I can’t explain myself any better than I already have.
In yet another episode of Preachers Behaving Badly, I give you Pastor Charles Worley who has figure out a way to deal with North Carolina’s problem with gay people.
I really like that last line. I would not be at all surprised to find out that this is part of the High Biology curriculum in North Carolina
The queers *AND *the homosexuals? Man, this guy is thorough.
Ingenious! It’ll also solve the problems of infertility, paedophilia, asexuality and Catholic priesthood (no tautology intended). We just need a few more camps.
It will be the most tastefully decorated concentration camp in history.