Sign of the times

[dualstow]

I find the whole idea of a "hate crime" to be stupid. Isn't every crime an act of hate?

The South Park guys have a brilliant episode on this.

[Pointedstick]

How do you survive out there in S.F. with ideas like this?

You are a great free thinker.

It's certainly honed my patience and tolerance, that's for sure.

But what I've found is that there are a lot of libertarian-types in the closet so to speak, afraid to express their beliefs for fear of reproach by the liberals surrounding them. This was me for a few years until I decided it was bullshit and just started saying what I really believed, but in a calm and nonthreatening manner (this is an ongoing process; I'm not at all naturally good at this). What I found was that a lot of people secretly agreed with me but just needed to see someone else publicly admit it.

Now half the people on my team own guns and talk about them during lunchtime like the completely normal topic that it is. I feel like I'm making progress at least, and it feels good to be an ambassador for my belief system.

[MachineGhost]

Looks like she harassed the wrong gay guy. Still, I find it hard to believe that anyone would call this a hate crime.

Its not a hate crime, its a brown-nosing crime.  I never understand why religious conservatives can't understand the principle of radical tolerance and then act all surprised when they get bit (or murdered in this case) for ignoring it.  That's the real difference between a libertarian and a conservative (or a pretend-Libertarian that is actually a Republican in the closet when the going get tough).

[murphy_p_t]

Looks like she harassed the wrong gay guy. Still, I find it hard to believe that anyone would call this a hate crime.

Its not a hate crime, its a brown-nosing crime.

? because the latino has a brown nose ?

I never understand why religious conservatives can't understand the principle of radical tolerance and then act all surprised when they get bit (or murdered in this case) for ignoring it. 

Why do you wish to impose your ideology (radical tolerance in this case) onto others? This mindset seems rather hypocritical of someone proclaiming "radical tolerance".

Who is surprised that the sodomite might also be a murder? In her faith, both male sodomy and spilling the blood of the innocent are crimes which call to heaven for vengeance.

By definition, a martyr is someone who will sacrifice himself for a belief and / or other person, even if this costs dearly.

That's the real difference between a libertarian and a conservative (or a pretend-Libertarian that is actually a Republican in the closet when the going get tough).

Does being libertarian also mean being closed-minded to moral persuasion?

[Pointedstick]

Does being libertarian also mean being closed-minded to moral persuasion?

Speaking as a libertarian who is very open to moral persuasion, you're going to have to be a lot more persuasive than calling gay people "sodomites", trying to connect homosexuality and murder, and proclaiming that a murder victim is a martyr because she provoked an unstable person into violence. I don't think it was her intention to sacrifice herself at all... seems more like she foolishly and tragically underestimated how dangerous of a person she was dealing with when she decided to insinuate that he was a pedophile.

[rocketdog]

I'm including another example of a Christian martyr because it is relevant to the specifics of this thread.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Stachowicz

I don't see how that qualifies as "martyrdom"?

[rocketdog]

Like I said, I think it's geographical. Here in Silicon Valley, it's the Christians (I'm not one of them, for the record) who are practically a persecuted minority, often in a similar manner to what you describe.

What seems more important to me is that we learn to respect each other equally regardless of who believes what, not that we swing the pendulum too far in the other direction and provoke a well-deserved backlash against the initial backlash.

Absolutely!  I agree 100%.  Everyone should be free to disagree with one another (and even engage in some good-natured ribbing), as long as we exercise mutual respect.  Because after all, what would we ever talk about if everyone always agreed on everything?

[rocketdog]

I find the whole idea of a "hate crime" to be stupid. Isn't every crime an act of hate?

The South Park guys have a brilliant episode on this.

Really?  I'd love to see it.  Do you remember the episode name or number? 

[rocketdog]

How do you survive out there in S.F. with ideas like this?

You are a great free thinker.

It's certainly honed my patience and tolerance, that's for sure.

But what I've found is that there are a lot of libertarian-types in the closet so to speak, afraid to express their beliefs for fear of reproach by the liberals surrounding them. This was me for a few years until I decided it was bullshit and just started saying what I really believed, but in a calm and nonthreatening manner (this is an ongoing process; I'm not at all naturally good at this). What I found was that a lot of people secretly agreed with me but just needed to see someone else publicly admit it.

Now half the people on my team own guns and talk about them during lunchtime like the completely normal topic that it is. I feel like I'm making progress at least, and it feels good to be an ambassador for my belief system.

I hope this doesn't stray too far off the beaten path of this thread...

I run a message board for local atheists in my city, and we recently had a heated debate on guns in the aftermath of the Sandyhook shootings.  I found it interesting how some people can be so open-minded and logical about religion and science, but their minds snap shut when it comes to firearms.  It's like they can't recognize that they're engaging in the same close-minded rhetoric that religious apologists do. 

I trotted out statistics, and studies, and posed various hypotheticals, but they wouldn't engage me on the facts, they only wanted to appeal to the emotion of preventing dead children.  I'm all in favor of preventing dead children too, but I just couldn't make them see that banning guns was not the way to do it.  Not to mention the Constitutionality aspect.  (Yes, some of them even said we needed to abolish the 2nd Amendment!  Abolish it!  Just like that!).

sigh. 

[Pointedstick]

ur doin' it wrong, unfortunately.

I've converted a bunch of mildly anti-gun people. Let me tell you: facts don't come first. You have to start out by being a relateable, non-threatening, non-stereotypical ambassador. In my experience, a common problem is not knowing any (open) gun owners and holding negative stereotypes about us all being coarse fat rednecks. Help them make the mental connection between guns and someone they respect (you). Show them you're an ordinary person, just like them. Don't argue or debate, it's not time yet. Just be comfortable in your own skin.

Encourage others to come out of the "gun closet" if your social circle or workplace is not a majority gun owner environment. Help to normalize gun ownership and gun owners. Not by arguing against gun control, but just by talking about guns in a non-political manner and sharing the topic with others.

Once mildly anti-gun people realize that they're surrounded by normal people who own guns, their attitudes will slowly start to change. They'll begin to feel left out of the group whenever the conversation turns to Magpul furniture and semi-wadcutters. They'll want to learn the lingo so they know what you're talking about. They'll become curious. THAT'S when it's time to explain them the difference between semi-auto and full auto firearms and using logical arguments about why gun laws never work.

You don't change someone's mind with facts. For emotionally-based beliefs, facts only cement an already-held position. To convince, you have to employ more a social or emotional means of persuasion.

Now the hardcore anti-gun people: they're probably hopeless. Don't even try.

[murphy_p_t]

Does being libertarian also mean being closed-minded to moral persuasion?

Speaking as a libertarian who is very open to moral persuasion, you're going to have to be a lot more persuasive than calling gay people "sodomites", trying to connect homosexuality and murder, and proclaiming that a murder victim is a martyr because she provoked an unstable person into violence. I don't think it was her intention to sacrifice herself at all... seems more like she foolishly and tragically underestimated how dangerous of a person she was dealing with when she decided to insinuate that he was a pedophile.

PS...I re-read the article to see the point you raised about insinuation of pedophile...I interpreted the statement a bit differently about sleeping w/ boys (the older women would likely refer to any man under 40 to be a "boy").

I specifically chose the word "sodomite" for the precision of the term. From dictionary.com: ( lowercase  ) a person who engages in sodomy.  Sodomy is defined as: copulation with a member of the same sex.

Simply using the term homosexual describes an orientation / preference of one who may be chaste and avoid the act of sodomy. Gay can simply mean someone who is lighthearted, or someone with a homosexual preference. My reason for using the word "sodomite" was to be precise.

[Pointedstick]

Let's not kid around here. I think that even subconsciously, you said "sodomite" because it's a harsher, more judgmental term. And regardless of whether or not that's what you meant, that's how it sounds, because the only people who ever use that term are those who see homosexuality as something weird, creepy, or immoral.

That's symptomatic of the problem: using loaded terms. If you had said "gay", there would have been no ambiguity because the subject at hand was a murder committed by a homosexual person. Nobody was going to wonder if you meant that he was just happy. The article makes it clear that he was very much unhappy, in fact.

Furthermore, the alternative sentence "Who is surprised that the gay person might also be a murder[er]?" still seems rather prejudiced and full of false equivalency between homosexuality (a sexual orientation) and murder (a crime with a victim).

[rocketdog]

ur doin' it wrong, unfortunately.

I've converted a bunch of mildly anti-gun people. Let me tell you: facts don't come first. You have to start out by being a relateable, non-threatening, non-stereotypical ambassador. In my experience, a common problem is not knowing any (open) gun owners and holding negative stereotypes about us all being coarse fat rednecks. Help them make the mental connection between guns and someone they respect (you). Show them you're an ordinary person, just like them. Don't argue or debate, it's not time yet. Just be comfortable in your own skin.

Encourage others to come out of the "gun closet" if your social circle or workplace is not a majority gun owner environment. Help to normalize gun ownership and gun owners. Not by arguing against gun control, but just by talking about guns in a non-political manner and sharing the topic with others.

Once mildly anti-gun people realize that they're surrounded by normal people who own guns, their attitudes will slowly start to change. They'll begin to feel left out of the group whenever the conversation turns to Magpul furniture and semi-wadcutters. They'll want to learn the lingo so they know what you're talking about. They'll become curious. THAT'S when it's time to explain them the difference between semi-auto and full auto firearms and using logical arguments about why gun laws never work.

You don't change someone's mind with facts. For emotionally-based beliefs, facts only cement an already-held position. To convince, you have to employ more a social or emotional means of persuasion.

Now the hardcore anti-gun people: they're probably hopeless. Don't even try.

Oh, believe me I did.  These are people I've known for a couple of years, people I'm friends with and see socially on a regular basis.  I don't even own any guns, a point I was sure to make.  I didn't even raise the topic on the message board, so when someone else did I just started asking those subtle questions. 

I think some members did see my point because they seemed to come around a bit.  But at least one member was just totally closed-minded about it.  I just found that weird, that there was no willingness to say, "Hmm, I still don't agree with you but I can see the point you're making," or, "Y'know, I never heard of that study, so let me read it and get back to you." 

Believe me, I was infinitely patient and reasonable, as I know all-too well that you can't beat common sense into people.

[Pointedstick]

Well then you've taken the most important first step: planting the seed. Give them time. If they respect you and your opinions, it's only a matter of time before they start to think about it a bit. And at least, the next time the subject comes up, they'll probably remember what you said. And the more gun owners or at least gun supporters they encounter, the more the herd effect will begin to subtly convince them that there may be something to this whole gun thing. As social animals, group conformity pressures are very strong.

Knowing a bunch of normal safe gun owners but believing gun ownership to be dangerous and extreme introduces uncomfortable cognitive dissonance.

does it? certain personality types like the most of the people found on this forum find it (cognitive dissonance) uncomfortable, i really wonder if other types do or are even capable of noticing that they hold countless contradictory opinions...

[moda0306]

I don't know about the rest of you, but the gay/lesbian people I'm friends/acquaintences with are some of the most healthy, responsible, fair-minded people I know.  Especially the gay ones... the "sodomites."

There are probably people who are mentally unstable, and that probably translates into more volatile sexual behavior from their "norm."  This might make it appear that "sodomites" are crazy... when I think the causation is probably the other way around.

[Tyler]

Like I said, I think it's geographical. Here in Silicon Valley, it's the Christians (I'm not one of them, for the record) who are practically a persecuted minority, often in a similar manner to what you describe.

I remember when I first moved to the Bay Area. A young millennial I worked with who had lived in San Francisco all her life and gone to Berkeley was very proud of her city.  I remember one quote vividly: "San Francisco is the most tolerant and open minded city in the world!  Unless you're Christian or Republican, in which case you should leave."  Spoken with not even a sense of hipster irony.

[MachineGhost]

? because the latino has a brown nose ?

No, because like Paul Ryan's reputation in high school, evengalists or proselytizers (sp?) stick their noses where it don't belong, i.e. the butt crack.

Why do you wish to impose your ideology (radical tolerance in this case) onto others? This mindset seems rather hypocritical of someone proclaiming "radical tolerance".

"Radical tolerance" is a passive live and let live non-coercive philosophy, not an activist, brown-nosing morality imposition onto others like evengalizing or proselytizing is.  So you're projecting here.

Who is surprised that the sodomite might also be a murder? In her faith, both male sodomy and spilling the blood of the innocent are crimes which call to heaven for vengeance.

That's sounds suspiciously like bigotry just to support your pre-existing religious beliefs.  Hardly any different than learned racism.  So don't be surprised that other people don't put up with your B.S. if you try to act on it.  I don't advocate violence and violence is not a proper response to being a victim of, say, a Jehovah's Witness pioneering efforts, but it seems to me that is a risk y'all have to live with when poking the proverbial hornet's nest with a stick.  You can't profess any surprise after the fact because you do not have any upper moral ground with intolerance compared to tolerance.

Does being libertarian also mean being closed-minded to moral persuasion?

Nope, but making sexual orientation a moral issue when homosexuality is a fact of Mother Nature where sexuality is a continuum of grey is an increasingly anarchronistic philosophy to sell.  The world is becoming more secular and scientific every day, not faith-based.  Good luck!

[murphy_p_t]

I'm including another example of a Christian martyr because it is relevant to the specifics of this thread.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Stachowicz

I don't see how that qualifies as "martyrdom"?

She gave/lost her life "giving witness" to Christian morality...trying to dissuade someone from leading, what she believed, to be an evil lifestyle.

What do you see lacking which would preclude her from being considered a martyr?

[MachineGhost]

Now the hardcore anti-gun people: they're probably hopeless. Don't even try.

I would betcha they have emotional traumas, so its still an emotional issue, they just need psychotherapy.

[dualstow]

found it, rocketdog:
http://southpark.wikia.com/wiki/Cartman ... Crime_2000

I find the whole idea of a "hate crime" to be stupid. Isn't every crime an act of hate?

The South Park guys have a brilliant episode on this.

Really?  I'd love to see it.  Do you remember the episode name or number?

[rocketdog]

I'm including another example of a Christian martyr because it is relevant to the specifics of this thread.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Stachowicz

I don't see how that qualifies as "martyrdom"?

She gave/lost her life "giving witness" to Christian morality...trying to dissuade someone from leading, what she believed, to be an evil lifestyle.

What do you see lacking which would preclude her from being considered a martyr?

That's not the definition of a martyr.  A martyr is someone who willingly sacrifices their life rather than abandon their religious ideals or principles. 

This woman was killed (quite unwillingly, I'd imagine) because she deeply offended (persecuted?) someone else (who may himself have been mentally ill, or at least unbalanced). 

[rocketdog]

found it, rocketdog:
http://southpark.wikia.com/wiki/Cartman ... Crime_2000

Awesome!  Thanks dualstow, I'll check it out this week. 

[dualstow]

Don't look now, but Delaware just became the Sodomite State. ;-)

[rocketdog]

Don't look now, but Delaware just became the Sodomite State. ;-)

Why, what happened?

[Ad Orientem]

I don't see how that qualifies as "martyrdom"?

She gave/lost her life "giving witness" to Christian morality...trying to dissuade someone from leading, what she believed, to be an evil lifestyle.

What do you see lacking which would preclude her from being considered a martyr?

That's not the definition of a martyr.  A martyr is someone who willingly sacrifices their life rather than abandon their religious ideals or principles. 

This woman was killed (quite unwillingly, I'd imagine) because she deeply offended (persecuted?) someone else (who may himself have been mentally ill, or at least unbalanced).

That's partly correct. A martyr in the religious sense of the term, is usually someone who is killed expressly for their religious beliefs. Moral principals don't count. Willingness or not is not always a factor. Martyrs, at least in the Christian faith, are not expected to be quasi suicides. Simple murder based on religious hatred is sufficient. A contemporary example might be Fr Daniel Sysoyev, though he has not yet been formally canonized. And of course some martyrs do fit the more traditional pattern of enduring torture and death after being offered the chance to save their lives if they apostatize. A personal favorite of mine is  Saint Yevgeny Rodionov.