Actually, I imagine that he’ll use this opening we’ve created, and his next post will be about cats.
Probably a lie about cats.
“See, spectrum? All you really need to reform you is a little pussy.”
Or a dodge. “In some places it may be legal to shoot cats. I don’t know, but I think it’s legal in Belgium.”
Guys, bodswood’s not going to answer the question. To him, it’s enough to say that he feels a certain way. In his mind, how he feels triumphs over everyone else’s feelings, all the conclusions of scientists, indeed any other belief or fact. It’s enough for him to feel a certain way - don’t expect any better. You can argue with this idiot, or the cat, or a brick wall until you’re blue in the face. It won’t change anything.
He’s the purest example of intellectual laziness I’ve ever seen. He crows about being “open” but in the face of a mountain of evidence, won’t question his beliefs. If he got it into his head that there was no more water, you could throw him into a lake, and every time he surfaced he would gurgle, “It’s just my feelings. I feel that there isn’t any water.”
Perhaps if we don’t engage him, he’ll scurry away. If not, our blood pressure will be lower. At any rate, he gives us all an example of the lazy, empty-headed dogma that underlies the politics of the religious right.
He already has. He’s posted elsewhere, but not in this thread. He’s a true coward.
He scuttles away under a different rock like a centipede when the sun hits it. I thought he was bad in the evolution GD thread. Clearly it’s a pattern.
For discussion: Do we have any reason to believe he was any more inclined to accept Queer people after our methodical argumentation than he would have been if spectrum had simply nuked him as he is wont to do?
The sad thing is, I really had high hopes for him in that one. He really seemed, for a while, able to listen to reason and evaluate facts. He seemed able to change. That’ll teach me to have faith in humanity.
None, I think. But that’s him. It may not be so with others.
I’m split on the whole spectrum deal. I’ve had a couple of run-ins with him and I definitely think he would be well served by holding his temper back a little bit and, above all, learning to differentiate between important issues and unimportant ones.
On the other hand, I certainly do understand why he’s so angry about this. This issue regards one of the worst, if not the worst, injustices of our time and place. I have serious trouble understanding how anyone even has the energy to care about who someone else falls in love with, let alone actively oppose loving relationships and their legal rights. Sometimes I want to put my hand through the computer screen and rip the throats of the cowardly, disgusting, pathetic little bigots spreading their evil poison, these malicious crawlers who spend time and energy to make the world worse than it has to be. spectrum’s anger is justified, there’s no doubt about that.
I don’t think it’s that ironic- not that I’m the arbiter of irony. This kind of getting pissed I agreed with all along, though. At least in this case spectrum started calm, and at least he waited until he saw the whites of bodswood’s willful ignorance before letting loose. Good enough for me, anyway. There’s only so much good faith to go around.
Nope. If bodswood wasn’t such an asshole, though, it could’ve turned out differently, because he had nowhere left to run other than right out of the thread. He could’ve either conceded the point or quit. He quit, but if he wasn’t an asshole, maybe he would have actually considered option 1. Now the question is, is there anybody out there who thinks gays can’t be “real” lovers/ spouses/ parents/ etc. but who isn’t also an asshole?
My guess: no, for the same reason there aren’t any people who live in Paris but not in France.
My problem with this is twofold:
- He doesn’t confine his rage to this issue, and has been extremely ugly to other folks on other issues. While I very much appreciate his apology to me, what I’m really hoping for is a change in behavior. I’m hoping he won’t freak out on people as much in the future.
- He doesn’t give people the benefit of the doubt on this issue–as evidenced by his premature exasperation with Polycarp earlier in this thread.
- He lacks complexity in his thinking about these issues. While respect for the rights of folks who are gay is of course a paramount issue, there are complicating factors (e.g., the rights of people to engage in harmful pseudoscientific crap therapy if that’s what they want to do). And while the treatment of folks who are gay in our society freakin sucks, it pales in comparison to the treatment of folks who were Jewish in 1940 Germany, or treatment of folks who were black in 1880s Alabama.
Be angry. But temper that anger with reason. Many people do it on many issues; I believe it’s vital to being a good advocate for an issue.
Daniel
…and my problem with the above statement is also twofold:
- I apparently can’t count.
Daniel
Agreed and agreed.
This I cannot understand. So Jews in 1940 Germany were treated even worse. Is that a reason to be less angry? Should we expect less because someone else had even less than that?
I’m sure there are, actually. Hanlon’s Razor clearly states “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity”. In this case, it needn’t even be stupidity. Ignorance will do quite well.
No, I agree with you here. My problem is that spectrum himself has claimed that those who advocate “reparative therapy” are on the same level with the KKK and “[insert Godwin reference here]” if I remember his phrasing correctly. These hyperbolic claims tarnish his credibility and insult the victims of mass lynchings and gas chambers. It is unnecessary to use such hyperbole: you can still make a very strong case against “reparative therapy” and other such fuckedupedness without Godwinizing yourself.
Daniel
Hm. I would argue that someone who is so ignorant as to believe such things is, though maybe not inherently assholistic, at least living in a state of assholism.
(Maybe I just lack perspective, but it seems to me that most of that stuff should trip a compassionate person’s bullshit meter, even if they’re missing the specifics.)
Eh, I’d say it depends. Say you’ve got a young teenager, raised in a very sheltered environment, who never really encountered a different point of view. (And yes, there people like that)
Sometimes, you have to account for things like that.
Those are the types of people one should strive to influence.
True.
Exactly. Someone who sincerely believed that homosexuality was somehow harmful for society, children or whatever, and (and this is important) was capable of changing views when presented with opposing evidence wouldn’t qualify as an asshole, in my opinion.