Why is holding anti-gay organizations responsible for what they say and do some sort of infringement on their freedom? Anyone who tells other people that these assholes are anti-gay is “arguing against their freedom”?
Even if that weren’t ridiculous tripe made up to support a flailing nonsense argument, it still raises the question of why their freedom to be homophobes is sacrosanct but you feel no similar feeling about my freedom to marry, which is an actual freedom that this organization actively opposes.
Thread is too long, so it might have been covered already:
What about the businesses that let the bell rings outside their buildings? Around where I live, it’s the Walmart and two local grocery stores. Do the stores necessarily advocate for SA or is it more of a reason of tradition that they’re out?
I think the Salvation Army just asks if they can set up their kettles. I know there’s been flack in the past because Target wouldn’t allow the SA to set up in front of their doors.
It’s really not that hard to donate. I can’t even order a pizza online without getting asked to donate. If your excuse for donating to the SA is because they have the kettles then I don’t really have any sympathy for your position.
Given that charities exist that do not bolster an anti-egalitarian attitude in their charitable works, one’s refusal to stop donating to a charity that does is taken by others as an admission of complicity in said anti-egalitarianism.
I have already read your post more than once. There is no reading that is flattering to you; in fact, that post and your other recent ones in this thread are not even coherent. A non-argument does not become an argument no matter how slowly it’s read.
But reading slowly assists reading comprehension. The problem is you’re not understanding the entire context. If you have a way to comprehend that doesn’t require you to read slowly, then let me temporarily be unlazy for a minute, and frame it for you. :rolleyes:
Emphasis added by me, and it’s to that which I responded:
That’s it. It’s a tit for tat meaningless response to a meaningless “proof.” OtakuLoki’s argument is faulty, primarily because there’s no argument.
In the context that I’m discussing, I’m not talking about anyone else’s arguments. If you reread the thread (at a speed that’s comfortable), I’m sure you’ll be big enough to admit that you just weren’t comprehending.
Faulty assertion as well. How is the standard for laziness of an argument defined? Without an objective means of measurement, you’re just blowing hot air out of your ass. If you need something to be clarified, I’m certainly unlazy enough to do so for you. :rolleyes:
My points have been:
[ul]
[li]The Salvation Army does good things, despite the bad things.[/li][li]I believe in personal freedom include recognizing that everyone has the same rights.[/li][li]I’ve (correctly) called a very specific faulty argument faulty.[/li][li]I’ve said I’m a lazy giver, but it’s okay, because some help is better than no help.[/li][li]Your free to disagree with the previous point.[/li][li]I’ve (correctly) pointed out that some people can’t follow discourse in threads. (I now apologize if I mistook that for poor reading comprehension.)[/li][/ul]
Quite frankly, some of you have some collective rage that is clouding your judgment and ability to participate in an adult manner.
Give to whom you want for whatever reasons you want. Especially during this time of year you can help elevate someone from misery, even if it’s only for a short time. Whether or not they’re gay. Whether or not the sponsoring organization is gay friendly or anti-gay or is Republican Party or the Democratic Party or Chevez’s Venezuela.
Well, I can do that. You can’t, because your choice of charity doesn’t help gay people.
Incidentally, I’ll give you a spot of advice that is unrelated to the topic at hand, which is that generally I’ve found that it’s the people with the weakest and least-supported arguments who spend the most time complaining about other people’s “lack of reading comprehension.”
Nobody has failed to understand your point. You’re a lazy giver and you don’t mind supporting bigotry. That’s perfectly clear.
But your actions don’t support this. Why should we believe you? You’re lying to yourself. If you say you support gay marriage while donating to an organization which is demonstrably anti-gay marriage, you’re no better than a corporation who gives lip service to one cause (say, preserving the environment) while donating to a counter-cause (say, environmental exploitation). You’ll only convince people who are as lacking in logic and lazy at investigating as you are lazy at donating.
You told OtakuLoki that their “argument [was] faulty” without being able to give any reason that it was. That means you don’t have a reason. Then, to make matters worse, you followed it up with a direct falsehood when you claimed that they were “arguing against their [i.e. the Salvation Army’s] freedom to do as they please” – which could only be true if they had argued in favor of somehow stopping the Salvation Army from acting, by government force or the like. Which, needless to say, they hadn’t.
Now you’re trying to get past this by trying to bluff by suggesting that the only incomprehension of what you’d said could lead to objections.
You have, pretty clearly, shown that you don’t care about freedom, since you’re willing to financially support organizations working against it, and given the enormity of the Salvation Army’s actions in New York (it was a fairly big story, I’m sure you heard about it), that seems like a fairly gentle way of describing your position.
By the way, attempting to bully me by suggesting I’m stupid with this “reading comprehension” nonsense won’t work on me, no matter how many times you try. And frankly, I think anyone who’s not stupid who reads your posts is going to recognize that for what it is, the bluster of someone who is trying to distract from the vacuity of the position they now can’t back down from. I’m sorry you are feeling backed into a rhetorical corner but you might consider stopping digging rather than using this rather childish “reading comprehension” tactic. It doesn’t make your non-existent arguments any stronger.
[QUOTE=Balthisar]
judgment and ability to participate in an adult manner.
[/QUOTE]
I’m sure I’m not the only one here who is simply desperate to have your approval for my “adult manner” of participation.
Nonsense, as you don’t have to be in a family to get into a shelter. Thus the “other woman” could have just gotten in by herself. The bit about sleeping outside is bogus.
HOW DARE YOU question the veracity of a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-random-person-on-the-Internet who claims to have been discriminated against because they are gay!!!
That’s a nice thought that is backed up by no evidence whatsoever. What are your grounds for knowing that that particular shelter, contrary to the claims of the poster in that thread, would have accepted that woman by herself? Are you familiar with that shelter? Do you know the person who posted the story?
It’s sad, although not ultimately surprising to me, that people are willing to go to any length, even making shit up whole cloth to dismiss claims that a group is homophobic. A group that, as we know, publicly engages in political advocacy aimed at continuing the oppression of queer people, and has even made the news with their threats to close shelters in protest of anti-discrimination laws.
People being denied services for being queer is not their policy but it’s fairly widespread; there is lots more information if you look for it. Of course, no number of instances is going to satisfy people determined to defend this organization even despite its officially homophobic stances. If their overt, official, well-documented political work to oppress queer people doesn’t make you sour on them, why would widespread discrimination against gay people do so?
Those statistics were for the US only. And even if we include ONLY men from the United States, we are surely close to a million if not over it by now since the US came into existence.
But let’s think globally, which is how I was thinking when I said it kills millions.
If it’s less than “in the millions” I’ll be very, very surprised.
But, if it hasn’t killed millions, my sincere apologies to The Straight Dope Message Board posters who were mislead by my egregious fallacy.
Everything is anecdotal when it comes to proving that an organization is slyly underhanded. It’s not like the homeless are known for being good at self-advocacy.
You may be right. Maybe she could have pretended to be single and got in at the same shelter. The question is, why should she have to? And the salient point is, maybe she didn’t know she’d have to. Once the whole family came in together requesting shelter, they knew she wasn’t single. At that point, it would be too late to pretend a lack of affiliation. Shelters sometimes split people up by family unit, especially when young kids are being housed (to protect them from other homeless people, who are unknown quantities with regard to mental illnesses/potential pedophilia). And you have no idea whether they had room for another single person.
Whether this particular incident actually happened or not, I don’t know. I don’t care. Because things like this ARE happening at Salvation Armies across the country, regardless of what some ivory-tower PR rep is saying from HQ. The fact that the person posting that appears to be a professor, and claimed that other professors called in on the homeless student’s behalf, is sufficiently convincing for me. That claim doesn’t trip my bullshit meter whatsoever. The fact that it trips yours speaks poorly of you.
This is a dangerous line of reasoning, and if you carry it out to it’s logical conclusion, you’ll have to stop spending money, period.
Think about it. Every time you go shopping at wal mart, target, etc, you are putting dollars in the hands of very wealthy individuals who lobby and support republican candidates, who are in turn very homophobic.
Just because Target and whatnot don’t have an open policy on discriminating against gays doesn’t make them any better than the Salvation Army. If anything, at least the SA is OPEN about what they support.
Any big corporation that you spend money on is actively supporting and lobbying politicians who are homophobic and support homophobic legislation. This may not be relevant to them but it is in fact happening.
That’s the biggest problem with his claim (though the rest of your post is spot on, too.)
The standard of proof these defenders of the Salvation Army are employing here requires us to disprove speculation, like DrDeth’s speculation that there was currently room for a single woman in the shelter. Mere speculation is enough to exonerate this organization from charges of homophobia – even though we already know that they are officially and publicly a homophobic organization.
If your own idle speculation is enough to convince you that this group’s actions are all on the up-and-up, that’s pretty much indisputably motivated reasoning going on. There’s no way to prove anything to people who will then just invent more speculation to defend this group.