The [del]saddest[/del] [del]worst[/del] funniest part is, 10 years from now when his frontal lobe is fully-developed and he realizes what a stupid, evangelical ass he used to be, all of this will still be archived for the world to see. Kid should really just write 95% of the glurge he spouts into a lockable diary.
Except that that’s completely wrong, and I’m astonished you can even argue that.
Is anyone arguing that there weren’t famines in the USSR? Or that it was a less shitty place to live than the US? I certainly wasn’t, it was my OP. However arriving at the conclusion that the US has no issues relating to poverty and hey, no-one starves there, is completely incorrect. Poverty in the US (brought about mainly by the polarisation of wealth, as there sure as hell isn’t a lack of cash in your country) and the social costs that come with it are, as far as I can tell, the BIGGEST problem facing it.
I treat people like individuals, and Qin has demonstrated he’s extremely intelligent and furthermore very well-read for someone of his purported age. I don’t want to dismiss him as being beneath the threshold of expectations because he hasn’t been alive for an arbitrary number of days. If he really is the age he purports to be, and is sincere in what he says, there is potential for him to be able to think and reason better than he currently does, which for a large part sound like conservative mantras rather than reasoned opinion.
I’m not sure what the “Sir Humphrey” thing is supposed to be, do you have a point you want to make?
You’ve missed my point - he clearly knows a lot. However with that knowledge and intelligence he doesn’t seem to have considered his opinions. The shocking lack of empathy he demonstrates when discussing things like abortion, homosexuality and religion shows that he has knowledge of these issues, but hasn’t actually projected himself into thinking what it must be like to be affected by them. If he had, I very much doubt he’d be quite so adamant in the positions he holds.
I’m not expecting him to know everything (I certainly don’t) but I DO want him to have a proper foundation for what he thinks other than his parents/pastor told him to think it.
Whilst I see what you’re saying, a lot of people do, particularly when they expose themselves to alternative opinions. As far as I can tell Qin is simply ignorant in the strictest sense of the word, I’m not using it as shorthand for dumb, I’m saying he lacks experience or knowledge of a lot of what he talks about. I’m willing to bet he’s not met anyone who is gay, or discussed with someone who has had an abortion why they chose to do it, or even talked with someone who lacks his religious beliefs why they don’t want to be forced to live in a moral system based on his. Reading opinions on the Dope counts for something in this respect, but it’s nothing like as tangible as doing it with a real person.
Someone I met last year at my summer language program in Sweden was a US marine and was also studying for a degree in political science. We used to talk a lot about our thoughts on politics and the world in general, and on some issues we didn’t come to the same conclusions. However we both recognised that experience of being in the world and talking to people who felt differently to us had helped us realise when our thinking was dogma, and when it was based on some kind of evidence. He happily admitted he had become less conservative as he’d spent time around the world and in college, and I similarly said I’d become less liberal in some ways as I’ve grown older. It works in both directions.
What frustrates me is clearly Qin is capable of being able to think more widely than he currently is, the tools are at his disposal, yet currently he seems to choose not to. THAT is my problem, not that he doesn’t hold the same opinions I do.
That’s my hope too. As I explained when I PMd him telling him I’d started this pitting I’m not doing this out of malice, I’m trying to call him out on his behaviour. I’ve got no problem with people holding positions that aren’t the same as mine, but I would like to at least hear some kind of proper rationalisation of why they hold them simply than “well that’s my opinion, it’s a free country”, particularly when their opinion is one that supports social policy that has the potential to significantly harm others through a lack of compassion or empathy.
In fairness who hasn’t said stupid things when they’re younger? I certainly have. It’s no crime to be too young and to not have the experience and knowledge that might help bring you to a more balanced position. Arrogantly parroting the rightness of your position without said knowledge and experience, however, is a pretty big sin in my book.
He only said that ‘homosexuals who are in a position of fame can “come out” and be *more *accepted than if they were say random office drudges’, not that acceptance of gay people is 100% in the entertainment world. Also, all your cites are about actors, whereas the question was more broadly about the creative industries. And many of them seem pretty silly - for one thing, Rupert Everett has had a pretty respectable career since he’s been out, certainly much better than 99% of people who pursue acting.
I just don’t really see how you can possibly say that it’s *not *more acceptable to be openly gay in most creative field than it is in many other fields (sports, physical labour, politics, office work, etc.). Quite a few other reasonable posters in that thread said more or less the same thing. Out of all the very stupid things that Qin Shi Huangdi has said, that just doesn’t really seem like one of them.
I think pitting a teenager for having forthright (and what we may consider misguided) opinions is fairly pointless. (though I guess that’s why we have the pit yes?).
Being a teenager is all about outward certainty born of an inner turmoil. I say cut him some slack and just stick to debating the issues. If anyone is interested in getting their points across to him, then sober, rational and reasoned debate is the way. I’m not saying it *will *work, merely that the opposite approach is guaranteed to fail.
And this isn’t intended to be patronising. Again, that approach is also counter-productive.
<nm>
My cites are about actors (namely ones who are known) because Qin’s point was about famous people coming out. The sheer number who either don’t come out because they feel they can’t (or are actively advised not to) lest their careers suffer suggests his view isn’t correct. Regardless, you’re creating a straw man - I didn’t say that it’s easier to come out in arenas like sports, building trades, engineering etc. That’s an entirely separate debate.
You know, while I disagree with Illuminatiprimus’s pitting, especially because I don’t think that anything that Qin said in the other threads linked to in the OP are that unreasonable, I think the people saying “Oh, he’s just a kid…he’ll grow out of it”, are being even more patronizing and insulting. There’s nothing Qin has said that I haven’t heard people 40 years older than him saying, and people who dismiss him because of his youth, in my opinion, are just trying to delegitimize his viewpoint.
But that’s what he’s saying…that one of the reason you see more gays in Hollywood is because Hollywood is more gay friendly and it’s easier to come out there, especially if you’re famous. Your cites don’t actually disprove that.
You appear to have missed the point of Poly’s, ummm, observation. You may benefit by re-reading it.
Oh, hell, let the boy rock and roll. The only opinion I had at sixteen that was true was that I had the best dog in the world, ever. About everything else, I was wrong.
Quite to the contrary, they’re giving him credit for being *smart *enough and *perceptive *enough and *curious *enough to “grow out of it”. There are plenty of people who aren’t, and that’s why you hear some who are 40 years older still sounding like adolescents.
… fuck it, low hanging fruit:
So, nothing much has changed for you, then ? 
Well, the dog passed away, so somebody else has the best dog in the world. Just not the best dog ever.
Yah, I gotta pile on to that one. Illuminatiprimus, I read all those articles you posted. They all demonstrate that homophobia and discrimination exist in the acting world. They do not show in any way that it is harder to come out in Hollywood than in a coal mine.
And thank god for that.
Yeah, the contrast between the one article he posted which said that 81% of gay actors are out in their professional lives, and 94% are out to their fellow performers, doesn’t seem to fully support the argument that actors are equally or less accepted than those in other professions.
A good chunk of what Qin talks about is obviously stuff that he’s less than one question deep about: he reads stuff on some right-wing news source and repeats it. Fine, whatever. No sense in paying much attention to that stuff.
What is truly strange is when he has obviously come to some conclusion on his own, like when he called Vladmir Putin the best world leader. I mean seriously, what the fuck is going through his mind when he put two and two together and came out with that guy as a role model?
Thank god that when I was his age, and into my 20s, All I had was the paper Zine community, and not the internet. There are no more than 50 copies of any of my maniac rantings, and they are almost all most certainly in landfills.
Joe
He’s annoying. Like a teenager.
Has devotion to a faith that claims to command, ‘judge not’, and judges others pretty harshly, pretty often. Seems like ordering up an ugly life lesson to me, but everyone has their own path in life.
Blinded by the light, I suppose. It will be interesting to see if the real world falls on him hard, in the years ahead.
And even if Qin Shi Huangdi’s explanation for why there are more out gay people in the arts than in other fields* were factually incorrect – something not proven by Illuminatiprimus’s cites – I wouldn’t call it ridiculous or offensive, and it doesn’t appear to be rooted in any of QSH’s moral or religious beliefs. Other people in the thread agreed with him but were not called out by Illuminatiprimus over it. QSH even began by saying “I imagine”, making it clear that his explanation was just his speculation and not something he considered proven fact.
QSH has posted some stupid, offensive things on the SDMB, and I wouldn’t have expected to find myself defending him in a Pit thread, but I really don’t see the problem with this:
*FWIW it was not QSH who first suggested that there’s a higher than average percentage of gay people in the arts, that’s the premise of the thread. The OP was Paul in Qatar.
And in the grand tradition of missing the point the Dope has decided to stare intently at each tree and say they can’t find a forest for want of trying. Seriously people, you’re ignoring his statement about making China Christian but choosing to focus on the one thing he said that I linked to that may or may not be correct?
Okay, to allow this discussion to proceed without going further on a hijack, I, Illuminatiprimus, am completely wrong in my assertions that it is difficult to come out in Hollywood or if you are famous, despite my linking to a survey where barely half of actors in Britain said they could be out to their agents (it’s clearly all wrong). It is, in fact, so easy to come out in Hollywood and the associated fields that no-one has ever been advised that it’s a bad move if they’re an actor, or had to keep their sexuality hidden if they are related at all to the entertainment industry (like Liberace - who was open about his sexuality his entire career) and anyone who is straight in Hollywood faces an uphill struggle of reverse discrimination. I also said in my OP that the arts had no homosexuals in it, and anyone who suggested gays were more creative were deeply homophobic and offensive to me personally (you can read in black and white where I said it in paragraph… um, oh, it’s there somewhere). So I’m wrong, Qin and everyone else who is deciding to go with this issue is right, and we can now move on with the rest of the topic.
Happy now? Fuck me…