If you want to quote a whole post (tags, pictures, and all) try this button:
1 Like
I thought it was āGive Me Liberty Or Give Me Methā
2 Likes
The woman in the video isnāt just willfully ignorant, sheās filled to the brim with hate. Yes, fear leads to hate, but she and her ilk want to hate. Thatās why they cling to their ignorance so tightly. Without one, they have no reason and very little excuse for the other. Itās a lifestyle choice, a really shitty lifestyle choice.
15 Likes
Well, I think itās also better form to not use adjectives as nouns when talking about people - we donāt talk about āthe wheelchairedā or āthe blindsā. A lot of women donāt like being referred to as āfemalesā.
If It doesnāt really matter then we all might as well use the terms that are preferred by the people those terms refer to. The only reason to argue about whether or not to use them, or to second guess they are or ought to be offensive to some people, would be if it really was important to use the term we were using.
7 Likes
Ha! Talk about throwing their rhetoric back in their faces! They want to double down on being gay as a ālifestyle CHOICEā, then they are making a choice to be hateful.
BTW, folks, Iām happy to see this conversation back on track and it seems without much resentment from anyone. I feel like I did something good here today!
16 Likes
Hate. It is a response to āthe ones who are different from our tribe and therefore are a danger.ā What is needed is a change in the haters perception. The āoutsidersā (for now it is trans-folk) are a perceived threatā¦ Hateful people may not be open to change as you say. But change is happening and they can benefit from learning and accepting change or they can try to spread the hate. As responsible, reasonable people, we owe the hateful our understanding and compassion. Teach them our strangeness is no danger and is in fact no worse than their own strangeness. In this way we can prove that love is stronger and better for them than hate. Arenāt we all supposed to be sinners and fall short of the glory etc. I say this because even though I am an atheist, and Iām pretty heās a fable Christ had some good points. There really arenāt any outsiders, just people who need love, new perceptions and understanding.
6 Likes
Itās really the best practice.
I worked retail grocery for a lot of years a long time ago and we had our share of crazies that would wonder in.
We would ask them to leave. Some we had to say āyou canāt come backā because you knew they would.
One guy would shop during the late evening hours and talk to people about the evils of alcohol and Jesus, etcā¦ to the customers. Our boss was like ādude, people donāt want to have their beliefs questioned at the grocery storeā
Heād bother all of us, too. Heād pick a tragedy in the news and relate it to people not praying enough.
Fucking pain in the assā¦
7 Likes
I donāt disagree with you. Unfortunately, when people consciously turn a blind eye to information which contradicts the choices theyāve made, itās very difficult to get them to see anything that deviates from what they choose to believe. Youāre welcome to try, but this particular woman and her family, as has been pointed out upthread, is notorious for this kind of behavior. Theyāve insulated themselves from civil society in order to feel entitled to continue on with their hate fests.
Best of luck in your quest to make the world a better place, one fundamentalist Christian at a time.
6 Likes
As far as you mean āwe owe everyone our understanding and compassionā I agree. As long as we arenāt saying that transgender people and their allies have some responsibility to be the grownups in the situation.
9 Likes
āOweā is the wrong verb to use. Victims do not owe their oppressors understanding and compassion. It can certainly help oneās long term peace of mind to come to an understanding about and feel compassion toward those who wish to oppress others, but the obligation does not run in that direction.
11 Likes
Those kids need some compassion ā I doubt that they get it at homeā¦ The best hope is for the kids to reach the age of emancipation and run away as fast as they can. It took a while for some of the Phelps kids to wake up and break the spell that their father had cast on them, but it eventually happened.
Fuck the mother.
9 Likes
I appreciate and admire your compassion. I wish I could be more like that, but when it comes to people like this, Iām pretty much done with them. Weāve had enough history behind us of hatred and bigotry.
Hereās how I look at it - there are people you will never be able to drag kicking and screaming into a more just society. Some are just dumb as rocks and canāt be changed because they canāt process a whole heck of a lot.
PLENTY know damn well what side of history they sit on. But itās their thing.
I just donāt have the time to be understanding of someone in 2016 that is apoplectic about their gay neighbors.
I donāt even bother trying to have a conversation with that anymore. I just either stop listening, or if they are insistent and being dicks, tell them to grow the fuck up and SHUT the fuck up.
5 Likes
Why I hardly evenā¦
2 Likes
The reality is that a lot of change is generational, and that if someone is that angry about homosexuality at that age they will be that angry about homosexuality until they die.
A little beside the point, but I wonder if it has occurred to this woman (it hasnāt) that by having 12 children her odds of having at least one homosexual child are quite high, even higher if we believe the āolder brotherā effect. I donāt recall who said it first, but it if werenāt for heterosexual sex, there would be no homosexual sex.
6 Likes
You say that like itās a bad thing. Tolstoy? MLK, Jr.? Bonhoeffer?
āYouāre only as big as what makes you angry.ā ā William Sloane Coffin
(Yeah, yeahā¦ Of course everyone gets angry. But why, and what does one do about it?)
4 Likes
Yes, it is absolutely often generational.
Iām a sort of old gen Xāer. Born when LBJ was prez. Our generation sort of straddles a lot of stuff when it comes to society. I meet many of us that are luddites (to me, especially since Iām in IT) and a lot that love tech. I meet plenty of my peers that have a more progressive attitude about issues such as the topic here. And a lot that are as bad or worse than their parents, unfortunately.
HOWEVER. They have access to history and information just like the rest of us.
1 Like
There were some Pew polling results not that long ago that showed marijuana legalization was way more generational than ideological. With the single exception of democrats who would have been the right age to be hippies, the republicans of one generation were more likely to favour legalization than the democrats of the previous generation. Gay marriage isnāt as extreme, but the generational effect was still huge.
My recommendation for social issues is to figure out if you are right or wrong. If you are right then just make as much noise about it as possible. If you are wrong be as quiet about it as possible. Actual arguments and trying to persuade people is basically pointless. 30 years from now the kids will be making the right call on anything that has been brought to their attention, and injustice will persist in areas that no one is paying attention to.
2 Likes
Eww. My Dadās workplace started a transition to SAPā¦ten (?) years ago? Theyāre meant to complete the transition next year. 
4 Likes
Well, one can hope otherwise ā my grandfather was pretty racist, like Archie Bunker except born and bred in the South (Nashville to be precise). Over the years he really mellowed out, not just about race but in general. At one point his church hired an African American pastor, and if there was any one specific milestone that changed his thinking, Iām wondering if that might have been it. (This was all before he met my wife, whoās Ethiopian.)
Iām astounded by how reactionary a lot of people I went to high school with have become. (Really, just astounded that itās non-zero.)
6 Likes
Iāve heard a LOT of SAP horror stories over the years. Some of them directly from those involved, and some when SAP is abandoned $89 million and two years into implementation.
The Target story is just one of the latest. As I wrote, āThe story of the fiasco begins, as narrative convention requires, with the adoption of SAP inventory management softwareā¦ā
4 Likes
