Oh give me a break. Black people are the only people who have suffered from American society's norms? What about the Irish, or Catholics, or people who dont speak English? There is no limit to the amount of suffering or adversity of x with relation to y you can find in a society because there is no limit to the number of outlying 'minority groups' you can find that dont quite fit in. It's quite clear the the more inclusive you try to be for everyone with laws, the more and more you push out those people who actually are the norm, and then you get Donald Trump. Once the norm is gone, you dont have a society anymore. This is actually the major line of thinking with groups like the alt right. Limited to this they are quite correct, their solutions are of course idiotic.



And I would have agreed until the past 10 years or so. It's getting out of hand now and the source of the problem is anti discrimination legislation.



Which I agree with. Racism and bigotry is part of human nature, and will never go away.


Well I still take it as a compliment, because I generally don't do any of those things, so this leads me to believe you really do have problems dealing with my arguments.



Sorry not lagtight, uke_master. Nice evade BTW. No one wants to call out their own.

Maybe this has been brought up already, but you know the same US principles of freedom and the US civil rights laws that protect gays and racial groups also protects your Christian sect from being discriminated against.

Contrary to the caricatures of the right, most American liberals and progressives have a sense of national identity and pride as well. But as a younger (in multiple senses) and more diverse coalition than the GOPs, we are focused more on what we can become than preserving what we were (not that it doesn't have that element as well). Republicans sometimes think of patriotism as synonymous with American exceptionalism and so forget that you can love or appreciate your country without thereby assuming that it is better than all the others. I love my family, but that doesn't mean I think we are better than everyone else or can't become better in ways that aren't just about recovering a prior way of doing things.

What is truly distinctive about the alt-right is not the claim that we need some kind of social norm of what it means to be American, but that this social norm has to be based on a racial and/or ethnic identity, and in the case of America, that racial identity is white European. I'm pretty skeptical of the prior claim, but the latter is clearly false. America is made up of its people, and almost 40% of Americans are not white. You can't have a national identity for a democratic country like the US that excludes that many people. Thus, the alt-right understanding of America cannot function as a unifying ideology for the US. Whatever they are talking about, it is not about America as it actually is (assuming, as we can't, that we aren't actually talking about ethnic cleansing).

No question. Contrary to caricatures of the left, right wingers are intelligent and care about their values and nation too.



Actually in their point of view they are concurrent. They believe that the values of America are European values. They're not entirely out of the ballpark here; just look around the world for non-European examples of republicanism.

That's a very recent trend though. Prior to immigration changes in the late 1960's America was by a vast majority, white European.

I disagree completely that America can't function as majority white European; certainly it did so quite well for nearly 200 years. I'm not alt-right though, so I don't care particularly about this point.

While I think this is true of most Republicans, I am not impressed by the nihilistic wing of the GOP base that gets off on drinking liberal tears, triggering the libs, shocking PC conventions and the other performative acts of political dominance that Trump has exemplified and encouraged.

Huh? There are lots of republican countries outside Europe. Are you using some special definition of European such that eg India, Japan, South Africa, etc are counted as European as well?

Of course I agree that America can function with an explicitly pro-white European ideology in theory - laws supporting white supremacy have been the law of the land for most of America's history. What I'm saying is that the alt-right goal of returning to that time again is either delusional or extremely sinister. Our country is today too racially and ethnically diverse and egalitarian to include any single race or ethnicity as part of what it means to be American. Doing so will inevitably lead to the kind of social conflict that national identities/ideologies are supposed to tamp down on. I have no problem with people who want to celebrate their European heritage. What I oppose are the attempts by the alt-right to exclude people without that heritage.

So the christian customers who were verbally abused and then thrown out of the coffee shop by the gay owner, around the same time as the "gay cakes" incident, there was no uproar about that, and no legal case ( I dont know whether that was because they didnt make a complaint), should the coffee shop owner face the same punishments as the christian baker?

It's no different on the extreme left, buddy.



Outside the physical space of europe there are a few, sure, but I wouldn't say 'lots.' And the ones that are, were either under direct Western rule until recently and/or have a high percentage of Europeans in their populations.



It can function well, with a high percentage of white europeans in reality, not in theory. That is settled history. What is far from settled is whether western nations can actually survive 'diversity' of the caliber and intensity that marks the last 5 decades with no end in sight. In this idea you find a lot of support from the right. America's immigration policy was closed for periods to allow integration of mass amounts of immigrants, and that is always dependent on a large and 'norm heavy' majority to work.

What the alt-right gets very, very wrong about this is that they think the problem is racial diversity.

I agree with you on race, I don't think it particularly matters what race someone is, but I don't agree if you're insinuating American values can survive constant and intense immigration without cooling off periods of integration and melting-pot-ism which depends on a strong and large core of 'Americans.' That is of course what Trump and his supporters are concerned with, and they are right to be concerned. The left brands this 'bigotry' which is just a silly pejorative...clearly bigotry is a good thing when confronted with the values and goals of an organization like say, the Taliban, or Stalinist Russia, or ISIS, or the Mexican drug cartels. So there is always going to be some kind of intolerance or slightly hostile indifference present when you really love your own culture. It's most often benign.

The left also calls it 'racism' which it is only insofar as the vast majority of people wishing to come to the USA are brown. The intent is not 'racist' however, which is something the left just cannot seem to understand. These consistent and malevolent misrepresentation of the concerns of the right are why Trump and his followers brand leftist media organizations 'fake news.' It's amazing to me so many smart people on the left can fall for it, but it really comes down to both sides refusal to listen to each other. It's easy to misrepresent someones opinion when 1) ones own opinion is heavily contingent upon perceived injustices created by the other side and 2) you have no idea what the other side's actual opinion is and don't do a damn thing towards understanding it.

Haven't seen that story details, but agree that customers shouldn't be mistreated only for being Christian.

I suspect he is referring to this story. It certainly wasn't for "only being" Christian, this was a group aggressively promoting hateful, homophobic propaganda around the city that the owner, quite reasonably, took offense to.

The whataboutism is strong here. IIRC neeel was one of the gang who thinks the CRA is bad, that society should be allowed to fire anyone or deny them access to public goods for being black, or christian, etc. Certainly doesn't want to take these basic protections enshrined in western democracies and include LGBT people in the same jurisprudence. So it is doubly hard to take seriously the faux concern about the poor homophobic victims being "verbally abused".

there was no "faux concern", I just wondered if the same standards applied.

Absolutely. If a hateful, anti-christian group had been proseltyzing around town with ludicrous fearmongering, I'd expect a christian coffee shop who quite rightfully told them that this was offensive. But I wouldn't then leave out every shred of context and try to present it as just random christians being verbally abused.

Here is the kicker: the same standards DON"T apply, at least not legally. Christians and blacks have extra legal protections here. Gay people do not. I think your whataboutism is immediately thrown out if brought to court, but there is at least a question, a possibility of legal action, when the "victim" is a homophobic Christian. If the "victim" is a hateful gay, there isn't even a CRA-esque law that might in theory be applicable because, at least federally, it is entirely ok to kick out gay people simply for being gay. That is the asymmetry that I think should be corrected, that gay people should have the same legal protections we've given other groups for decades.

And of course it is "faux concern". You want none of these protections for anyone, right? As in, you aren't actually concerned about aggressive homophobes being told they are offensive and getting kicked out, right? You think there should be no legal protections against that, right?

I am not sure your portrayal of "proseltyzing around town with ludicrous fearmongering" and "aggressively promoting hateful, homophobic propaganda around the city" is accurate. Do you have any links or anything I can read that will show that?

How is it faux concern? again, I want to know if someone ( Pokerlogist in this case) applies the same standards. I have no idea where you get "faux concern" from? I havent expressed any concern, other than whether the same standards are applied.

I know you're ignoring me but I really have to ask again, is sexual preference an immutable characteristic? I can show you a lot of evidence that it isn't. Even if you could prove that it was, there is a big difference in discrimination against visible immutable characteristics and non-visible ones. The immutable characteristic of being black is plainly visible for all to see. It's really not possible to a priori discriminate against a religion or a sexual preference; it can only happen in specific circumstances where information regarding someones religion or sexual preference is revealed, as in the case where someones sexual preference is vital information like the gay wedding cake case. In that sense, asking for equal legal protections against discrimination for gays, like they exist for blacks, isn't feasible.

Regardless, it seems pretty silly for government to force muslims to bake wedding cakes for sikhs, or any other example you want to come up with. Why don't you apply your reasoning and argumentation and fight the good fight in that arena? Is this really about equal rights? It seems, at least coming from people like you, less like a civil rights action and more like a biased and intolerant power display, because you don't seem to really give a **** about equal rights. It seems like you just want government muscle behind your victim group.

You seem pretty ignorant about the story you are referencing. Is this why you presented it as simply christians getting "verbally abused" without any shred of the context? I've shared the link. Quotes and links to the homophobic propaganda they were distributing around the city are right there.

The same standards don't apply because, when you actually include the context, this isn't remotely the same legal situation. I believe this case would be immediately thrown out under current federal law. Where there IS an inconsistency, is anyone who advocates for the status quo, that christians and blacks should be protected but gay people should not be.

Nobody ITT has been advocating that you should never be subject to the "verbal abuse" of being called offensive. Nobody ITT has advocated that public accomodation laws should be meaningfully strengthed to the point where you can't kick out people like Huckabee Sanders, that businesses have no rights to remove anyone from their establishments. Far from it. So when somebody who wants to entirely remove the CRA-style laws, is worrying about fringe cases you clearly don't think are bad yourself, and nobody ITT is worried about either, it is hard to take it seriously.

Actually, when you bizarrely created a second account, I never got around to ignoring your second account. It meant I accidentally read the start of this post without realizing it was you.

However, since you have led off, once again, with this disgusting, homophobic question right back on the ignore list your new account goes.

You take the tactic of just blowing off things by calling them "disgusting" (and "homophobic") a lot, but at some point you need to realize that this approach loses its power and looks more like you're avoiding difficult questions rather than taking an informed and principled stand against something. It sounds a lot like a fundamentalist "don't ask questions" ear-plugging.

For those who don't follow along closely, it would be more informative and functional for you to link back to a previous exposition on that topic than to just call it disgusting and shut down the conversation.

You're welcome to dig through the beginning of the thread where I elaborated at some length to neeel actually iirc about why I found that particular line of questioning so homophobic. I've also made over 75 posts ITT addressing many issues from probably every major poster here. So I reject the charge that I'm avoiding difficult questions.

Many people ITT have opposed extending the current legal canon that came from the CRA to include gay people. There have been a lot of arguments. The overwhelming majority I did not label as homophobic. I was opposed to the comparison to pedophilia, and to the "naturalistic" argument about whether being gay was immutable. So i reject the charge that I'm doing this frequently.

I looked at your link. I can see that the posters that were being distributed had rainbows or rainbow flags on them. Im not sure I see what was homophobic. Theres one that has a speech about being self obsessed. Is it that it is saying that gay people are self obsessed? Its not clear, it says "we", so perhaps they mean everyone ( if that was the case, then I suppose they might not have the rainbow background).

Then theres one that says "Love hasnt won yet". I dont see whats homophobic about that one.

The one with the rainbow hands dropping a dead foetus, I dont think , for example, its suggesting that gay people kill foetuses. Its pointing out who ( in their opinion) is really oppressed. I can see that someone might find it offensive though.

The one talking about god, is pointing out what the rainbow symbolises for christians.


I will concede that christians in general are perceived as anti-gay, and I can see how you would assume that any time christians talk about gays, its going to be negative.


I dont think you get to just stick "homophobic" on something and think youve proved anything.




Whether something applies legally, and whether an individual applies the same standards consistently, are 2 completely different things.


for the 3rd time, I asked about this case, because I wanted to see whether the same standards were applied consistently. I dont know why thats so hard to understand? yes , in both cases I think both people have the right to refuse service. but I am asking what someone else thinks

You are free to argue ( as you have done) that its not the same, and therefore the standard doesnt apply. I would appreciate if you stopped the strawmanning though.

I dont understand, how is the question "Is sexual preference an immutable characteristic" disgusting and homophobic?

To the best of my knowledge there is no single simple answer to this. Some, perhaps the majority, of people experience their sexual preferences as immutable, but those preferences are also reinforced socially. Others experience that their preferences change over time, but not necessarily in a way that is entirely consciously motivated. There's also a problem here with potentially conflating mutability with ontology, i.e. people's preferences may be both somewhat mutable but not in a way that we have much conscious control over, although I think it's also wrong to say people don't make any conscious choices about sexual orientation at all, under any circumstances. In any case, the simplest answer is no, sexual preference is not an absolutely fixed and immutable characteristic for all people.

But, you should also ask whether immutability is, or should be, relevant to legal classifications addressing discrimination or legal rights. Just as an example, religion is clearly not an immutable characteristic but we deem it worthwhile to treat religious identity as a protected class. I think the tendency to arrive at immutability as a criterion for determining which characteristics ought to be protected derives from the analogy to race/ethnicity, and I get the appeal of trying to find simple criteria, but there's nothing that forces us into that choice, and in fact we don't insist on its importance elsewhere.

For a more comprehensive argument both about the science and the legal issues, this article is worth reading.

Lol

Because that is progressive strategy-->to insinuate moral corruption as the ultimate source of his opponents argument. That way he never has to deal with problems with his own viewpoint, and can basically win every interaction without putting forth logic or substance at all.

Then 1) it can't be unfairly discriminated against and 2) it cannot be legally protected the way other immutable traits are.

Immutability is the fundamental basis of illegal discrimination.

No, we do not. Religious belief and expression is protected against laws from governments. Beliefs and expression themselves are in that sense, protected, but they certainly aren't protected from social stigma or social judgements, or arguments against their efficacy. Similarly, the government has no right to enforce moral qualms about homosexuality with laws against its behavior, and in my opinion violates the separation of church and state, so homosexual preference is already equally protected in this sense.

What LGBT activists seem to want is not equal protection from government as religion as they've had that for quite a number of years. What they seem to want is government power behind the social and moral acceptance of their behavior/preference, religious people be damned. You certainly don't see Christians going around saying atheists shouldn't be able to criticize Christianity or calling them disgusting bigots for doing so. Yet, as witnessed multiple times in this thread, that strategy has been absolutely crucial in LGBT activists gaining leverage over criticism. What we have here is not a civil rights issue over an immutable characteristic, but a moral one. The painting of opponents in definition and substance as moral villains is illustrative of this fact.

Of course it derives from it, it's the basis on which the entire gay rights movement was launched---that it was as bad to discriminate against someones sexual preferences as it was to discriminate against black people. A lot of black people didn't agree.

Citation needed.

We're not talking about social stigma here, we're talking about anti-discrimination law. That's what "protected class" refers to, and as a matter of law religion is a protected class. See titles II, III, and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Stop making **** up. Vast numbers of Christians don't say anti-gay things. These specific Christians, however, proselyted explicit, homophobic propaganda around the city. That you somehow jump from my criticism of this specific group of homophobes to me assuming ANY time christians talk about gays is negative is just ridiculous.


Ya think? It is completely clear and obvious they are speaking with the voice of a fake gay person. OBVIOUSLY this pamphlet with bloodied rainbowed hands overaborted fetuses, talking about how love and acceptance (ya know, things that gay people talk about with a rainbow flag in the background) is a hypocritical, flimsy, transparent lie, etc, OBVIOUSLY this is an attack on gay people. My goodness.

Great. I only ask that the NEXT time you choose to include the actual context in your whataboutisms. Because when this is described as simply Christians being "verbally abused" by gay people, without the crucial context, it makes it appear like you think it is one where the same standards DO apply and that people like me are making some type of inconsistency. Since you seem to accept my argument that indeed they are not the same - legally OR morally - I'm doubtful there is anyone ITT for whom your example poses some challenge of consistency.