That’s why I think it was good the Royal Navy forcibly stamped out the slave trade, and it wouldn’t have mattered whether that was motivated by religious or by humanist/enlightenment beliefs.
I wasn’t equating slavery with being transgender. My point is that most people consider coercing others to act in accordance with their beliefs to be good if they think other people not following those beliefs is sufficiently bad and harmful. For another example, you probably don’t think it should be legal for a hotel to refuse to let black/gay/trans people stay there (I don’t think this should be legal, at any rate), even though this may involve coercing the hotel owner to follow your beliefs.
“But the hotel owner’s belief is bad and hurts other people,” you may reply. I agree. But this is what religious people believe too. Eg, a religious person may believe an embryo has a soul from the day of conception, and therefore abortion is murder. Or a non-religious person may believe it’s murder based on philosophical arguments. Murder is obviously hurting people, so it would hardly be morally right to simply ignore it and say it’s not your business. (To be clear, I don’t hold this belief and I support legal abortion, but I think it’s reasonable for people who do hold it to want to ban abortion.)
“My source is I made it up” isn’t a defense of tyranny, and that’s what they are doing. Anyone can claim anything to be “true” using religion, which makes it fundamentally meaningless. It’s just a demand that they be allowed to indulge their worst impulses in any way they want without resistance, or complaint by their victims.
Also, they are total hypocrites who suddenly lose all their belief in the validity of “it’s my religion” when it’s a religious opinion they disagree with. Because it’s not a genuine principle; just an excuse for tyranny and cruelty.
I echo Czarcasm’s response to this assertion, requesting specific examples.
Because AFAICT, it’s very common for many “gender critical” advocates to claim that some current transgender-rights controversy in the news involves somebody being fired or canceled or whatever just for “expressing disagreement”, or “stating that sex is real”, or something innocuous-sounding like that.
When what actually happened, it turns out, was that the individual was fired or whatever for obstinately misgendering a trans co-worker, or harassing a trans co-worker for just going about their business in accordance with company policy, or calling transgender people “sick perverts” and obscene epithets on social media, or similar not-at-all-innocuous behavior.
So yeah, whenever I see somebody harrumphing that “gender ideology has gone too far” and innocent people are being unfairly persecuted just for having different beliefs yadda yadda, I’d like to see the receipts.
I mean, I’ve seen enough virulent homophobes similarly claiming that they’re being unfairly persecuted “just for having different beliefs” that I don’t automatically take such claims at face value.
I think there exists a core of basic ethical beliefs that are common to almost all religions and non-religious philosophies, and that humanity has been gradually evolving toward consensus on these beliefs.
If action is taken against (for instance) slavery in accordance with basic ethical principles of not mistreating others (optional addition: “because they too are created in the image of God”), I would say such action is “good”. If someone fights against slavery due to dogmatic belief in some belief system which justifies other horrible things, that would be a case of doing good for bad reasons.
At this point, multiple people in the UK have won unfair dismissal cases against their employers due to this issue. They may well have said things you personally find objectionable, or that break SDMB rules. But their employers would have been within their rights to fire them if they had been purposely misgendering colleagues or calling trans people perverts on social media. (NB: I wouldn’t call myself gender critical, since I don’t share most of their beliefs.)
It’s not like this is hypothetical. There is a vocal contingent of posters here on the board who openly say they think disagreeing with their views on gender, no matter how minimally or politely, is as bad as being an open racist or a Nazi, and that any discussion of the subject is offensive. I don’t know if they’d say their beliefs are objective, but it’s a safe bet they would want to fire anyone who expressed disagreement.
I used to agree, but now I doubt it. I think these ‘basic ethical beliefs’ are mostly the result of the Enlightenment, and the world no longer seems to be on a trajectory to adopt them universally. We’re seeing a rise in fundamentalist Islam, of illiberal and intolerant right-wing movements in the US, Europe and India, and an increasing rejection of Western-style liberalism in China. Meanwhile left-wing movements in the West are more interested in criticising their own countries than in spreading Western ethical principles to peoples that don’t believe in them.
I don’t think those two options are actually distinct. It’s perfectly possible for a religion to oppose slavery for the same reasons we do, while having different beliefs on something like homosexuality. But regardless of their reasoning, you’d agree it’s better if they impose their slavery ban on non-believers too, rather than saying it’s none of their business? Do you think they have a moral obligation to do so if they have the power?
Allowing other people to believe and live differently to you is an important liberal value, which I support. But it has to be balanced against preventing wrongs, especially to third parties - whether your idea of right and wrong comes from a religion, or another ethical framework.
Maybe I should start another thread to discuss this?
Sounds perfectly possible, but again, I think I would need to see the circumstances of specific examples before I could just take your word for it that there’s a significant problem with “people getting fired and/or blackballed from their profession for expressing disagreement with these ideas, even outside of work”.
Again, please, let’s see citations of the specific statements that you are interpreting in this way, before we just take it for granted that your interpretation is correct.
I’m not really taking DemonTree’s side in this argument, but I also think the particular objections raised of “uh, does this even happen” is pretty silly.
As I said, employers can still fire someone for misgendering a colleague (or a student in this case) or expressing their views in an objectionable manner. In fact, they are may be obliged to, since it could be considered to be creating a hostile environment for trans employees if they don’t prevent this.
The same rules would also prevent an employer firing an employee for expressing various pro-trans rights views (and trans people themselves are already protected under equalities law).
The courts are still in the process of figuring out where the line is, but they seem to be doing a reasonable job.
Unlike the US, where they misgender colleagues in Congress, ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are legally defined based on sex at conception, and some trans people have been unable to get a passport at all?
Tolerating different views can be difficult to negotiate and won’t please everyone, but do you really prefer a fight to the death in the culture wars?
You talk like I have a choice. As a cishet white male I’m well down the list but they’ll get to me eventually. And it’s not about “tolerating different views”, it’s about not tolerating persecution and murder.
Given the pic in the link box it appears that the law does not apply to trans folks with wheels. I guess those folks can’t ‘do bad things’ by definition?
So fucking stupid. The whole rationale is that women are freaked out by male-appearing people in their bathrooms, but under this rule, any male-appearing person has the right to enter the women’s bathroom as long as they claim to be a transman? What problem is this solving, exactly?
I’m guessing there is some sort of accelerationism at work. If the rule says, “Women must tolerate letting male-appearing people entering the lady’s restroom,” then it may be a rule purposefully designed to create backlash and fear among women, so as to make the anti-trans side’s argument stronger.
Women must tolerate letting male-appearing people enter the lady’s restroom is the anti-trans side’s argument. Not that the required effect of bathroom bans on transmen is ever discussed since the actual target of said legislation is, and only is, transwomen.
Well, right. I’m not sure where we’re disagreeing.
The anti-trans side knows that the best way to strengthen their argument is for as many male-looking people to enter the lady’s restroom and unnerve the women as possible. Right now, they may think there are too few male-looking folks going into the lady’s room for their side to gain enough traction. They think, “We need to make it worse, first, to make it better.”
My point is that most people consider coercing others to act in accordance with their beliefs to be good if they think other people not following those beliefs is sufficiently bad and harmful. For another example, you probably don’t think it should be legal for a hotel to refuse to let black/gay/trans people stay there (I don’t think this should be legal, at any rate), even though this may involve coercing the hotel owner to follow your beliefs.