A copy of this post has been forwarded to The Hague for the attention of the International Court.
Did you send it to the Jamba Juice at the International Food Court?
Actively persecuting religion is not a necessary part of atheism.
mswas’s defense of course will be that he/she was talking about Communism, not atheism. Except when it comes time to bash atheism again, at which point suddenly Communism = atheism again.
Too radical and unconventional, I prefer more orthodox juice.
“I went in for a banana smoothie and they only peeled the tip off before juicing it.”
It’s getting late, I was only checking in. Sure, in this country we have an idea of traditional marriage. That’s simply a fact. Can’t dispute it. But you said one thing here, that would be a terrible idea…
The idea of dispensing with calling any nonreligious (civil, in a courthouse) marriage a marriage, and “demoting” them to civil unions. I wouldn’t do it. It would cause the grand daddy of all shit storms. There are people who only had a civil wedding in a courthouse. They are married. It’s legal. “Downgrading” them would cause (like I aid) a real shit storm.
For logic so twisted and empty, I hereby bestow a Klein Bottle Award.
I hope you’re not referring to the Thule Society. Yes, the Nazis had plans to eliminate churches after they won the war, but that’s totalitarianism for you. The only religion Hitler really cared about was Hitler, IMO.
That’s not what Marx meant by that phrase at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. Nor did originate with Marx. de Sade did mean it that way, but then, he *was *a well-known nutter.
Of course, I don’t expect you, of all people, to check your facts before spouting your mouth off about religion.
Arguably it did have an anthropomorphic personification in the endless public pictures and statues of Stalin. Certainly the current North Korean regime, nominally communist, seeks to deify its own “dear leader”.
Just because Hitler may have had different *opinions *than you on some matters does not make him a bigot. And calling Hitler a bigot is a cop-out, and tells us nothing about what motivated him. He was simply upholding tradition, and what he saw as best for society. Or so I’ve come to learn recently, in these many illuminating threads.
Oh yes, he was just different and we are terrible people for not undertanding him. Imagine how hurt he must have felt when people tried to stop him him. We should have shown tolerance for him, and let him do his thing. What about Hitler’s feelings? How dare anyone judge him.
(Just in case anyone doesn’t get it, your comment was sarcasm and so is mine). We are saying about the same thing here. 
No, see, the fact that Hitler hated Jews and thought they were inferior and he had that whole “vernichtung” thang sort of suggests that he was, in fact, a bigot. Just like someone who opposed SSM because they hate gays is, in fact, a bigot.
The Godwinization doesn’t really help, and comparing the Holocaust to the SSM debate is a rather bombastic form of false analogy.
I’m actually surprised by this level of willful ignorance on the subject, from Dopers of all people. If we assume that there are, say, only 5 million people in the US opposed to SSM (a dramatic underestimation), are we really saying that it is totally beyond the realm of possibility that as few as .0001% oppose SSM for reasons other than hating gays? .001%? .01%? .1%? 1%? 100% of people who are opposed to SSM do so because they hate gays? Really?
A much more accurate analogy than Hitler would be the civil rights era, during which time some people opposed civil rights because they hated blacks, and others opposed the creation of sweeping civil rights laws because they thought that the societal disruption from changing civil rights laws in one fell swoop would be too great. It may be comforting to believe that everybody who thinks differently does so because of secret hatreds on their part, but it’s not 100% accurate. People who opposed the civil rights struggle were wrong, but they weren’t necessarily all bigots. Even though, sure, their opinions should be seen as shockingly wrong these days, ignoring their actual motivations and mindsets and simply declaring “racists!” is not in the serve of truth or understanding.
I’m not sure why this is a contentious issue.
I suspect that “Dear Leader” is seeking to deify “Dear Leader”.
The point, which I have repeatedly made, is that favouring continued inequality for gays is hateful of itself. It doesn’t matter if it’s out of timorousness or out of slavering, wild-eyed, masturbating-in-the-basement fag-hatred; the product is the same.
It’s the sufficiently advanced stupidity which is indistinguishable from malice. Name it and shame it, I say.
As well, we have history on our side. The nation has survived every civil right granted to blacks and other minorities. Blacks are no longer slaves, no longer suffer from Jim Crow laws or unfair measures at the ballot box or seperate-but-equal laws or miscegenation laws. We have come far in equal civil rights among races, and the nation not only has survived but is better for it.
All that’s being fought for in this case is the right to marriage. Compared to the miles we’ve crossed for equal treatment for minorities and women, this is but a step or two. To think that this is what will damage if not destroy America is…shortsighted, to say the least.
Yes, I know, you’ve defined people who aren’t homophobic as homophobic anyways if it suits your rhetoric. However if, for non-bigoted reasons they support discriminatory policies you’re perfectly happy to say that they’re bigots anyways.
You’re using “bitgoted” to mean “not actually bigoted, but supporting policies for non-bigoted reasons that have a discriminatory effect”, and the mistake should be obvious to you.
If they’re not doing it out of hate… then they’re not doing it out of hate.
This isn’t rocket science here.
The result may be the same, but that doesn’t mean that the motivation is, and it is indeed the motivation you’re discussing when you claim that someone is a bigot/homophobe. Homophobia and bigotry are all about attitudes/motivations/views.
Shame it? Go for it.
Name it? Go for that too, but realize that naming something means applying the correct name and not the one that’s most inflammatory/rhetorically flashy. A reactionary does not, necessarily, equal a gay basher.
Just like animal shelters who put cats down because they’re unwanted cause the same result as someone who tortures a cat to death, but saying that they’re both cat haters is inaccurate at best. Why is this so hard to understand?
It’s not hate, it’s indifference to the rights of others.
This example is easy to understand, and accept, but it’s not the same as the SSM debate. Shelters put cats down because they do not have the resources to care for the cats, they do not have a choice that includes never euthanizing. Every anti-SSM advocate knows damn well that they have a choice, and that the choice is practically costless to them, yet they choose to support discrimination anyway.
When a shelter puts down cats that it knows it can adopt out at little to no cost, I think it’s safe to describe them as cat haters.
What other actual reason could it be? If we’ve proven that it’s not a financial burden to the straight world (and even if it was, so what?) and we already know that we don’t make these heavy decisions based on religion (snicker), then WHAT IS THE REASON? The only reason I can come up with is that you (not “you” you) think people who fuck people of the same sex are somehow less than human and less deserving than the rest of the citizens. What else could their motivation be???