I think we’re moving closer to the same point here, and I’ll try and clarify the difference as I see it. I’d be happy to dispense with the dickweeds, which were in response to the fuck yous, and continue the discussion.
In my case, where I was robbed, the primary motivation for the crooks was robbery, I am hypothesising that they may have had a secondary racial motivation in chosing me to rob ( I don’t know this, but going by their epetaths I can sure see it factoring in ) rather than a black man ( assuming they had a choice, which I don’t know either, I may have been the only person around ). The point is, they were out there to rob someone, anyone, and if the only people out had been black, or yellow, or white, or green, that’s who they would have robbed.
Contrast that with your “typical” gay bashing; “Hey, those two guys are kissing, let’s get them!”. In this case, the primary motivation is to hurt someone because they are different. If the two people involved had been of opposite sexes, they would never have been beaten. Likewise that poor man those assholes dragged behind the truck in Texas would never have been dragged if he was not black.
That’s a big difference. While you or I or just about anyone who has reached adulthood has experence with persecution, and thus can understand it, it’s usually just someone being an asshole. shrug Assholes happen. I am sure they happen to gay or black folks too*. Racism and gaybashing are not just cases of someone being an asshole, it’s directed assholery, that is, they wouldn’t have acted that way to you or me, but feel compelled to act that way towards someone they don’t even know based on a physical characterist that that person has no control over.
And that can muddy the waters as well. In your example above the abusive scumbag beats the shit out of the gay guy and steals his wallet. If he would have done that to anyone, than it’s not gaybashing. If he only did it because his target was gay, then it is. The problem is that we on the outside may never be able to tell one way or another. There’s a million shades of grey, as with anything. The difference is that with black folks, with gay folks, there are a lot more instances that are not shades of grey but are clearly black and white.
I had thought of this line of reasoning Dave and I don’t think it holds water. Here’s the problem as I see it.
In the hypothetical gay-bashing I gave you, what was the primary motivation? Was it money, or anger? Or was it both?
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the fact that these guys were gay was enough to move my hypothetical attacker to action. Had they been straight, he would not have been angered.
Now, let’s look at police indifference. I guess if the primary motivator is that gay guys don’t deserve diligence, than we have a pretty clear case of persecution according to your most recent logic.
But, let’s just say the police are generally lazy and indifferent, and they do a bad job for gays because they feel that they can get away with it.
It seems to me that this gay person has suffered pretty severe discrimination and persecution, but according to you it’s not because the primary motivation for it was laziness.
The problem with defining the difference by motivation is that you are putting the definition in the hands of the guy doing the persecution, not the person being persecuted.
If it is so different, then how is this motivation communicated to the persecutee so that he knows that it’s not a pure prejudice thing and he’s not supposed to take it personally?
For example, let’s say there’s a gay guy who looks very effete and lives in a tough neighborhood.
Let’s say that he is a consistent target for robbery because he appears to have money, and he appears to be an easy target. He gets robbed a lot.
Now let’s say these robbers are purely professional. They truly couldn’t care less that the guy is gay. However, as professional robbers they know that they need to intimidate and instill fear in their targets.
So each time this guy gets robbed he gets called “faggot,” and “queer,” and gets beaten up some and generally bashed around, because fear and intimidation is a weapon.
This happens six times in as many months. The rational for the robberies is purely economic.
According to you, what happened to this guy is somewhat different and his experience does not equate to a true prejudice based attack.
I’m pretty sure that you are wrong. It seems to me that this guy has been persecuted quite badly, and I see no real substantive difference in the quality of what happened to him than had it been the other way around and they bashed him first because he was gay, and only secondarily for the money.
Let’s go a step further and Godwinize it, why don’t we? Let’s assume for the sake of argument that we can peer into the mind of Hitler and discern his motivations. Let’s assume, again for the sake of argument that Hitler chose Jews as a target primarily because it seemed efficacious and convenient to do so. Let’s say he really didn’t personally hate them or anything, they were just a good target to galvinize the nation, a good scapegoat. Let’s assume that everything that followed, the holocaust and what have you derived directly from this. Hating jews wasn’t the primary motivator, he didn’t even hate them. It was just necessary to have a target form him to focus the country on and build his Aryan mythology deal and gain control of the Nation.
So, if we assume that the primary motivation for the holocaust was political, then by your definition this was somehow different, or not as bad as real persecution. Obviously this is an extreme example but hopefully you see the real problem with defining your difference by the primary motivation of the one doing the attacking. It is not as if the Jews suffered any less if Hitler wasn’t doing it personally, does it?
The suggestion otherwise is kind of absurd, and a little bit offensive, I hope you’ll agree.
If you can’t discern which is which and nobody else can, than I have to kind of figure that this difference you’re talking about isn’t really useful or informative.
I’ve thought about what you suggest before and thought about other possibilities as well. I’m reasonably certain that it is meaningless to put persecution in the eye of the persecutor.
In fact, I think that what you are suggesting is something of a “no true Scotsman” fallacy. Persecution is persecution as far as I can tell. If you’ve been persecuted, the experience is defined by what happened to you, not by the priority of motivations in your attackers’ head.
It’s not any better or worse depending on the motivations of your persecutor.
It’s not like anybody getting brutally beaten in the process of a robbery is gonna say “Hey, well at least it’s not a racially motivated attack.”
For this same reason I don’t see any meaningful difference from being chased and beaten up for wearing a dorky uniform, than had it been specifically because I was Catholic.
Okay! You’re against hate crime laws! That’s no reason to be so obtuse, especially since nobody’s discussing that.
The difference is that you probably wouldn’t have been chased and beaten up if you weren’t wearing a dorky uniform, despite your Catholicism. Weirddave would probably have been still robbed if he were black.
And there’s a huge and obvious problem with comparing childhood “persecution” with adult persecution. Kids beat up other kids because they can. Anything that sets you off from the group can be used as a catalyst harrasment. Using training wheels, sneezing funny, referring to stages in a videogame as “levels” rather than “boards”; these can get you plenty of flak as a kid, and just about everyone had to put up with that stuff, but they mean nothing in the adult world. The fact that just about everyone was persecuted as a child (not necessary through beatings, though - beatings didn’t go on in my neighborhood, but there was plenty of verbal harassment & ridicule) makes pointing it out meaningless.
Well, breaking my own cardinal rule, I haven’t read this whole thread – the pissing contest(s) were boring me – but if we go WAAAAY back to the OP, and assuming you’re not talking about some other point that I’ve missed, then you’re wrong here, GUIN.
First, BSA is asking to be included in the state employees’ charitable giving campaign, which is AFAICT identical to the state employees’ charitable giving campaigns in dozens of other states. So they are only asking for “public taxpayer funds” to the extent that the public employees are (obviously) taxpaying members of the public – and by that measure, they ask for public taxpayer funds everytime they ask anyone for a donation. But if you mean that they are asking for public money (i.e., government money), no, they are not.
Second, PETA is commonly included in public employees’ charitable giving campaigns. It is in my state (and county, and those are two different charity drives), and IIRC was included in the Connecticut campaingn at issue here. So even if you construe BSA’s request to be included in the campaign as “trying to get public taxpayer funds,” then, yes, PETA is doing the same.
What the Court said was that Connecticut has determined that while it is okay to discrminate in the provision of your charity services (like providing services only to women, or only to gays, or only to another minority), it is not okay to discriminate in membership or hiring. The Court further said that while BSA admittedly does the latter (giving Connecticut a legitimate reason to exclude it from the campaign), it (BSA) had not shown that PETA did the latter as well, such as would justify excluding it too.
Unless you guys are now talking about something totally different that I’ve missed because I haven’t read the whole thread, in which case my apologies.
In this thread, Scylla, you’ve tried to show that you were persecuted for being Catholic. And that somehow that allows you to empathise with homosexuals and throw off any accusations of homophobia directed toward you.
But the simple facts are you are white, conservative, straight, and belong to a mainstream religion. You haven’t in fact been persecuted for any of those traits.
If people pick on you a lot, and you find that uncomfortable, you might want to look a bit deeper for a reason.
You’re right about the first part. We’re still talking about the charitible giving of the state employees. However, I find this part that I quoted to be somewhat disingenious. You set these situations up to be equivalent, i.e. targeted services and hiring practices. Then you suggest the courts have wrongly decided that they allow discrimination in one but not the other. But that’s not truly accurate. Providing targeted services to a group such as a battered women is not discrimination. Actively banning gays from being hired is discrimination.
Besides that, what service would Hartford Gay and Lesbian Health Collective offer to a straight man or woman? What would that deny? I know the Gay health center in Dallas doesn’t ask your sexuality when you go in for an HIV screening, so they don’t seem to be discriminating. Furthermore, the HGLHC’s Rainbow Room program explicitly welcomes gay-friendly straight folks. "We foster a welcoming and accepting environment for lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgender, same-gender-loving and questioning youth and their friends up to 21 years of age.
It’s absurd to compare the two.
Furthermore, the implication of listing PETA and nebulous gay and other minority groups is that conservative or religious groups are blocked, which is false. A quick glance through the list of organizations that receive funds shows American Center for Law and Justice, Catholics United for Life, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Catholic Relief Services-USCCB, American Jewish World Service, and Christian Reformed World Relief Committee
I certainly never suggested the court’s decision was “wrong,” for the precise reason that I’m not sure myself if it is or not. I haven’t looked at it that closely. But the court certainly did decide to allow discrimination in one but not the other – or, rather, it stated that this is what Connecticut allows, and that’s okay. I’m not certain it is okay – but I’m not certain it isn’t. Therefore, I raise the issue as problematic without taking a position on whether the court’s decision was right or wrong.
Why is providing targeted services not discrimination? It obviously is. You are providing the services to the group you are targeting – gay, young, battered, Klingon, whatever – and by failing to offer those charitable services to others not meeting the target criteria, you discriminate against those others. It’s clearly discriminatory, but keep in mind – not all discrimination is bad, much less illegal. The question is: Why is discriminating in targeting services okay, but discriminating in membership is not? At the moment, I don’t know the answer to this question (the legal answer, I mean) because I haven’t had the time or inclination to read up on it.
This appears to be arguing that these groups do not in fact discriminate in the provision of their services, which misses the point, which is that the Court said they could do so and that would be okay. Why would that be okay? Not to mention, the Rainbow Room does discriminate on the basis of age, by only offering its services to people up to 21. Again, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. I am merely saying that an obvious legal argument to make is that the very same groups are being allowed to discriminate in one aspect, while being told they cannot discriminate in other aspects. And why is it “absurd to compare the two”? Because you say so?
[quote]
Furthermore, the implication of listing PETA and nebulous gay and other minority groups is that conservative or religious groups are blocked, which is false.[/quoe]
Well, that may be your inference, but it wasn’t my implication. I talked about PETA because the person I was responding to talked about PETA, and the decision in question mentioned PETA by name.
I’m thinking the law states that it is not discrimination per se which decides legality or illegality. Rather it is how that discrimination is currently justified by said organization. For example, there could be a case made for not assigning male counselors to female rape victims due to trauma. I don’t know if the facts are there, as its just an off the top of my head example, but if there were then the organization is discriminating but for reasons which are factually substantiated and defensible.
The BSA, however, has made no case for their choice of discrimination to my knowledge except that it violates their internal codes. So far as I am aware, no reliable evidence has ever surfaced indicating that gay scoutmasters or scouts were a threat to the health, safety, or productivity of their respective troops. There is only the passage “morally straight” and some vague insinuations of threats to children (i.e. molestation). This is an example of unsubstantiated discrimination founded only on (or so it would seem) religious beliefs of those in high positions.
Is the distinction rather muddled? Quite likely. Is it perfect? Hardly. But the BSA easily falls on the unsubstantiated side along with many religious organizations. They make no justification for their actions except internal morals and codes which thus bars them from public promotion or funding.
Oh and P.S: I don’t know of any GLBT charity which excludes straight folk who wish to apply as well. They probably do exist, but all I have encountered are instead mostly filling in for the inadequacy of the service provided by more overarching groups. For example, many GLBT homeless need a safe space and therapy which are not necessarily available at your average homeless shelter. Thus, a GLBT-focused homeless organization might be founded.
I’d like to say that I know a gay boy who at age 14 was doing anti-homophobia educational interventions in other high schools. Damned articulately, too, judging from the time I was in his group. If the topic were an anti-discrimination policy for a youth group, I’d have no qualms about including him in the discussion despite his age. I’d say it depends on the youth.