Ok you get the idea, and in all of these cases the people most worked up and angrily opposing it would never in their life engage in any of the controversial things. So why do they care so damn much? What does it effect their life is someone somewhere is doing something they don’t like?
But changes to society and legislation that actual effects them, often negatively and severely they don’t care about and don’t get worked up about.
Basically why does it seem a lot of humanity gets worked up about the idea someone somewhere is doing something I think is wrong, RELEASE THE KRAKEN WHARGARBLE*%&^$@#!
Because some people have a very keen idea of what is right and what is wrong.
Like me - I feel strongly that everyone should know the difference between effecting and affecting!
Regarding the anti-gay issues, I have this sneaking suspicion that these issues DO effect them personally.
Their opposition to gay marriage is that it will somehow destroy their straight message. Isn’t that like saying that if a man could marry another man, they all would? Seems like a reflection of their personal desires.
And it seems like so many fundamentalist preachers who attack gays eventually get caught engaging in gay sex. And so many priests who spend so much time attacking gay marriage seem to eventually get caught abusing altar boys.
As the old question goes, “Why are you so bothered by what they are doing?”
Some of those issues have an understandable counter argument. Some people, for instance, believe life begins at conception. To them, abortion is killing another human being - murder. One does not have to have been murdered to be vocal against it. Legalized marijuana, some are concerned, will lead to more car accidents and deaths due to impaired driving. Whether or not I agree with the argument, I can at least understand where they are coming from.
Some, though, are just based on an attitude of “my morality is right and should be enforced on everyone”. Gay marriage, AFAICT, falls squarely into this category. I really don’t understand this thought process. Picking on Christians, because I am one - why would you want to legislate your religious beliefs? Woudn’t using the law to force others to (at least pretend to) believe as you do be antithetical to the core concept of Jesus teachings? If salvation is a gift freely given and freely received, doesn’t that also mean that it can be freely rejected if one so desires? Oh, geez, you got me started. Let’s just say I don’t understand and leave it at that.
ETA - not saying gays are rejecting salvation, just saying even if they were what business is it of mine?
I’m as happily and properly married today as I was yesterday. Not sure what the big deal is- nobody’s forcing pastors to perform gay church marriages(hint- in the eyes of the law, it’s the marriage license that counts), but rather judges and JPs.
Some people live in utter fear that someone, somewhere, is enjoying themselves.
Some live in fear that their own children will use marijuana. This is reasonable because use of marijuana might lead to smoking. As for impaired driving, often the same people who worry about that will use their cell phone while driving, or even text.
Well, but the issues do affect them. At least, these people feel they do.
Say you’re in a position of power and privilege within society, on multiple practical, legal and psychological levels. Society in general reinforces, in multiple concrete ways, the idea that you’re superior. You can get married if you want, with all the associated legal and social benefits, while some people can’t. You have sovereignty over your body, while some people don’t. You’re considered to be part of a superior race, with all the daily benefits that entails. Because of all this, you have the option of seeing yourself as an intrinsically superior person, regardless of who you are as an individual.
If everyone can get married, everyone has sovereignty over their own bodies, no race is considered to be inferior to any other race…then you’re not intrinsically superior any more. You never were.
There are people whose self-image and self-esteem rest more on those general categories than on anything they’ve done as individuals. When you erode the exceptionality of those categories, you’re attacking these people’s sense of who they are.
Absolutely, grude. We should all quit talking about issues that don’t affect us.
For example, I have no intent to be racist and I’m white so it’s not going to affect me. Therefore, I see no reason to have laws about racism. Heck, I don’t see why all those free people were so worked up about slavery either. A whole war over something that didn’t affect them in the slightest.
What about all those Americans who got worked up over that Jewish issue in Germany a few decades ago? What a bunch of busy bodies!
And the issue of being raped while drunk? I’ve never been drunk, and won’t be raping anyone soon. So I shouldn’t have an opinion on that issue either. How does it affect me if someone is doing something I don’t like?
Humans are completely awesome at self-deception and fantasy-thinking. And deep inside we’re utterly terrified of this universe and all the things we cannot control. Most people simply block out the things they don’t want to think about, as if by doing so, those things don’t exist. Others grab on to one thing that isn’t the way they want it to be - usually other people doing or being things they don’t want to have to admit exist in their imaginary self-world, and focus all of their anger at the whole of existence on that one idea, that one event, that one thing. As if by being angry and fighting against that one intrusion into their magical view of the world, they can force it to be the way they want it to be.
When this one thing is injustice or evil, this can be a mostly good thing. When this one thing is other people’s happiness, then it is pure evil.
I think what the OP was getting at are people who get all worked up over things other people do that don’t cause harm or foul to themselves or anyone else.
In all your examples, millions of innocent people got harmed.
This, I very often will have to do some serious self examination when approaching a relatively new issue I haven’t given much thought to. Very often on the surface I am very much against it but upon looking at my reasons closer find no logical reason to oppose something.
I think it’s self validation. If one believes that SSM is wrong than everybody involved in SSM is telling you with their actions that you are wrong, very wrong. Nobody likes to be wrong, especially in something as important as faith, and so they fight back.
Yup. The OP is basically an example of begging the question.
Though I happen to agree none of the examples in the OP are harmful, those who are angry about them clearly do not. That’s exactly what we differ about.
People care about issues that have the potential to affect them.
I don’t have children. But I’d be upset if the government got rid of public education. When I’m old and decrepit, I want to know that the person who programmed the ElderBot that will wipe my ass is going to be well-educated. I don’t want a malfunctioning ElderBot. I want one that works!
Pretty much everything I care about has some connection, however tenuous, to me. I care about my environment because I don’t want the air I breathe to give me Alzheimer’s. But I also care about the other’s people environments. When everyone is sick and dying, we don’t have a society. I don’t know how to live without society.
So people who have strong opinions about stuff have those strong opinions because they believe those isses do affect them.
Frequently prevents a kid from growing up feeling (knowing) they were an accident/mistake/inconvenience. Hard to say, really, whether it’s a good or bad thing in the bigger picture. I tend to think it often IS murder. But then I also have a hard time saying murder is always wrong.
Well, heaven forbid that kids should be alive to think that they were a mistake. :smack:
Anyway, when it comes to abortion and ballots, I’ve come to a point where I will vote for your right to do it… but for me, doing so feels just as wrong as if I were voting for your right to own slaves or to commit genocide against the Jews. We all have to compromise somewhere I suppose.