I once dated a girl in West Texas who thought I was narrow-minded just because I did not like Country-Western music. That relationship did not last long. The OP’s scenario is much worse. Really, the signs are there – run for your life.
Nah, it was just normal tolerance. It only seems wonderful in this day and age where it’s virtually extinct.
I’m afraid you’ve extrapolated too much from the Red scare of the 50s and the Hollywood blacklist. Remember we’re talking about a whole country full of people, some 150 million or so, and the people involved in those cases were a teeny tiny minority. Even in America’s heartland where I grew up, and in schools where teachers weren’t shy about talking how awful it was in England that you had to pay $6 in tax for every $10 you earned, teachers also stressed that people had a right to their own beliefs be they Communists, Nazis, whatever. Most of the rest of society adhered to this belief also, as it bespoke to a freedom denied to many people in other countries around the world, and it was a mindset I’ve carried with me through most of my life. (Admittedly, each of the aforementioned were very much in the minority and therefore unlikely to achieve their nefarious ends, but nevertheless each was accorded the right to believe as they wished and their rights to free speech honored. It was only after they’d begun taking action intended to harm others that they stepped over the line and began to encounter societal disapproval and pushback.)
Actually everything I’ve said about it was true. I know it’s hard to believe but really hardly anyone was on drugs. And most kids grew up in two parent homes with widely accepted values and discipline both at home and at school that lead to their actually learning things while at school and passing from grade to grade as a result of having actually learned the subjects and passing the requisite tests. Crime was a great deal lower than it is now, and it’s been much higher than now for most of the last 50 years. Etc., etc., etc. I’d really like you to list sometime the strange and mistaken claims I supposedly make about pre-counterculture America. Hardly anyone ever does, you know. Mostly they just issue blanket denials, make silly mocking comments about Ozzie & Harriet or Leave It To Beaver (both of which were sitcoms and not documentaries, btw), and then amusingly reverse themselves and claim the societal changes I’m objecting to were necessary because racism. :rolleyes:
Again, show me what statements I’ve made about that time that are wrong.
More than anything else you’ve said, this statement right here shows you don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about. For one thing I had already reached majority by the time hippiedom began to…uh, flower (heh, heh). For another, do you really think I’d have the common sense conservative values I have now had I been half a generation younger and grown up in a hippie commune? It is to laugh.
I submit that the better course of action would be to be friends with people despite their disapproval of homosexuality (as long as they aren’t trying to harm or disparage anyone who’s gay, that is) out of the realization that different people come to change their minds over time (just like you did) and that the person they are now isn’t likely to be the same person they’ll always be. I believe in more of a live and let live approach that allows other time to come to their own realizations in their own time. This approach allows me to enjoy the friendship of people I otherwise like, while at the same time not feeling obliged to confront or reject them because they feel differently than I do about certain subjects. I disagree with almost every friend I have about certain things, and if I rejected their friendship accordingly I’d have very, very few friends indeed. Besides, I don’t know of anyone who ever changed their minds on subjects like racism or homosexuality because other people harangued them about it. It might make those inclined toward social justice warriorship feel all superior and high-minded, but the real answer to changing minds about these kinds of issues comes about mostly from real life contact with people from these other groups and the creeping realization that their objections are superficial and that the people they dislike based on those superficial objections are really not all that different from anyone else. Given enough time and contact I believe that most people eventually come to find a common ground and become friendly and accepting of one another.
I think that is both profound and sound advise. I have said it before and I will say it again. It isn’t that I don’t like minorities, alternate lifestyles or anything of the sort because that was never the case. My true prejudice lies with the holier than thou Social Justice Warriors that somehow think they know something other people don’t and that is almost always the domain of a very special type of white person. Don’t try to educate me about what black people (or any other groups) might possibly find offensive because it is hardly ever true. I grew up in a very poor area that was roughly 50/50 black and white. My Facebook feed is filled with comments from every possible demographic. I like them all personally for different reasons but the only thing we agree on is that we all hate Social Justice Warriors that have no idea what they are talking about.
My dream is to start a multi-cultural hate group that targets white, casual and entitled Social Justice Warriors only because they annoy the piss out of almost everyone but themselves without truly accomplishing anything.
Aside from the fact that I’m gay and dating someone who thought that it was wrong would just be freaking weird, I also realize that a lot of (if not most) anti-gay prejudice comes from religion. Even if I were straight, someone being religious would be a deal breaker unless they happened to meet, if not exceed every other possible criteria.
The distinction between criminalizing sodomy, and criminalizing homosexuality, is a distinction without a difference. At any rate, even in the sodomy statutes, homosexual sodomy was regularly punished more harshly than heterosexual sodomy. Also, simply being gay could be enough to have you involuntarily confined to a mental institution. Acceptable treatments for homosexuality at the time included electro shock, castration, and lobotomization. There were no openly gay actors when you were a child - not on film or TV, at any rate. Gay bars were routinely raided by police. Getting caught in such a raid would, in almost all instances, mean that your life was effectively over. You would lose your job, probably your home (if you rented), certainly any children you might have had, and most of your straight friends. Prosecutions for homosexual sodomy were not remotely rare.
The idea that only a small number of people at the time were prejudiced is absurd on its face. These attitudes were common and wide spread. There were no safe harbors at the time, not even in the big cities. There was no significant shift in attitudes until the early seventies, and up until ten years ago naked homophobia was a frequent winning strategy for conservative politicians. It is literally only this decade that polling showed a majority of Americans supported gay rights.
So, yes, America was vastly less tolerant in the fifties and sixties, by any conceivable measurement, and this broad, societal prejudice existed not just for most of your life, but most of mine, as well.
It’s still amazing to me that anyone thinks “social justice warrior” is an insult.
Me, too. But I find it especially ironic when he’s saying they think they are “holier than thou” when that’s his entire argument. He is better than everyone else because he doesn’t let someone’s bigotry get in the way of dating them.
What’s even funnier is that he’s talking about how he doesn’t need someone to tell him what is offensive, when he’s the one who used “Mammy” as a term for someone he loved. And he definitely can’t claim it’s not really offensive, since he now gets mad when someone else refers to her that way (as he well should).
I’ve yet to meet anyone who is particularly annoyed by SJWs who doesn’t have some latent bigotry. The term just means “Someone who cares about some social justice issue I think is unimportant.” Or, most often, “person who called me on my bigotry.”
Being allowed to unnecessarily offend people is the real entitlement. You think you’re entitled to say what you want and no one else can say you’re wrong.
You mean, the smiley most people would interpret as “I’m not really calling you a communist”?
But, congratulations. You posted something with two possible interpretations, and I took the most favorable one–the one that isn’t completely stupid and irrelevant to the conversation.
You got me.
As for Starving Artist, I’m not quoting his dribble. He just keeps getting more and more out of touch. He now wants me to believe that you could be an open Communist in 1960 and everyone would treat you fine.
Again, you were either sheltered in some weird pocket of tolerance or grew up in a different 1960s than everyone else, including my parents and grandparents.
Deal breaker for me.
You just contradicted yourself. You’re dating someone of another race who thinks dating people of another race is wrong. So you couldn’t have dated them before they changed their mind.
More likely, you were just friends, and no one has said you can’t be friends with someone like this. But dating, even the casual kind, is still a situation where you may wind up falling in love and wanting to be with that person for a long time, maybe even the rest of your life. And if that person is currently a bigot, and you don’t know that they will change, it’s dumb to get into such a relationship.
There’s a little (but only a little) leeway with friends, but there’s none with someone you date. If you date someone who is homophobic, it means you don’t see homophobia as totally wrong, and thus you are a little homophobic yourself.
With a friend, there’s at least the possibility you’re not all that close, and you’re giving them a chance to change. But dating is basically a trial phase for intimacy of some kind.
As for gay people who are okay with people thinking they are fundamentally wrong and going to hell for who they are–I’ve not met them, but I’m sure they exist. But I see them on the same level as those Jewish people who have neo-Nazi friends.
You don’t really have principles if you don’t stand up for them. I can say I’m not racist all I want, but if I regularly hang out with racist people, I’m lying.
So, yeah, said Jewish person is just the prototypical “self-hating Jew.”
One of the biggest problems on this board when it comes to argument is the overwhelming tendency of certain people to mischaracterize something their opponent said and then seek to treat that mischaracterization as a factual basis for dismissing a claim they don’t like. I didn’t say everyone treated communists fine; I said that most people would be accepting of their right to believe in it if they wanted to. I also said that if they began to evangelize for it they would then run into problems.
Let me give you an example. Let’s say you’re at a party and one of the people there is known to be a communist or to have communist leanings. As long as he didn’t make an issue of it he or she would be treated more or less the same as everyone else. Basically, people who held beliefs outside the norm were considered to be very much in the minority and therefore not much of a threat. They were largely considered to be harmless crackpots, but even then if they were personable and otherwise acted like everyone else they’d be treated pretty much like everyone else. Same with athiests, beatniks, pretty much everyone with outsider views (except for Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan). It was mostly only if and when they might begin to agitate for their cause that people holding objectionable political views would begin to experience pushback. Believe it or not people could even be Republicans and Democrats and still socialize with each other. It was an amazing time, largely free of road rage, drugs, drive-by shootings and militarized police forces, and the country had yet to become splintered into numerous politically divided subgroups who all hate each other.
So, uh, good job, social justice warriors!
Damn interesting to see how many people would end a relationship with someone just because they have different views. My wife is Catholic and I am agnostic and don’t base anything in my life on religion. We have a great marriage that couldn’t have happened if I had tossed her aside just because she bases her belief system on Catholic principles.
Kind of interesting too, to see people who are so intolerant of different point of views preach tolerance to all people and lifestyles.
I am a Conservadox Jew. Most people including myself are sinners – I have no right to judge homosexuals.
Modern Liberals are the most intolerant people. Like Communists during Soviet Era.
In 1960 my parents and grandparents understood very well that disagreeing with progressive Communist ideology is a crime punishable by from six months to 7 years of imprisonment.
I don’t see many people saying they’d end a relationship with someone who believed homosexuality was wrong, rather they seem to be saying they wouldn’t be in a relationship with such a person to begin with. This is my position as well. I wouldn’t need to know upfront that a person thought that homosexuality was wrong to get a sense of what kind of person they were and that we would not be compatible as romantic partners. And some views matter and are more consequential than others. So to say "oh you do this or that just because a person has a different view than you is to trivialize and minimize the importance of that particular view to the person making the decision.
Also, being intolerant of intolerant beliefs is not intolerance. Nice try tho.
Pure unadulterated rubbish. See above. The only things I ( a “Modern Liberal”) don’t “tolerate” are people and ideas that don’t treat everyone fairly and with respect.
I do not know. I had disagreements with Liberals and Conservatives. But the vast majority of personal attacks come from Liberals. Is it a coincidence?
Even Anti Semitic posters on Russian forums are not nearly as vindictive as many Liberals.
I think you have an unusual definition of “attack”, one probably not shared by most.
Minor attack – rudeness.
Severe attack – threats.
Very severe attack – stalking.
Dealbreaker for me. I’d be happy to be friendly with someone who thinks homosexuality is morally wrong. (In fact, several of my friends believe that) but I don’t think I could date such a person.
All the time. I am straight, but I have a lot of gay friends. I used to be the secretary and webmaster of a “gay” social group. I am still active in events that identify as “gay” versions of the activity. Not that the activities themselves are sexual, or that sex takes place during them. But they are marketed to gay people, and are intended as gay-friendly places. I would want my romantic partner to be comfortable with my supporting such activities and to join me at them from time to time.