I'm not a fan of conflict. Yeah, I know that sounds shocking, but I'm serious. I don't really like the yelling and screaming, it's not pleasant. I try to preface any discussion with "I'm not attacking you, I just want to share ideas." And yeah, sometimes sharing ideas involves calling them dumb. I'm not saying you are dumb, I'm saying that your assertion is. Which, in some cases, it may be. If you assert that there's no such thing as France, that it's all a Canadian conspiracy, I'm gonna call that shit out. I don't really need to respect your view there, because it's stupid and demonstrably wrong.
You are more than entitled to your opinion. If you want to think that France is a Canadian conspiracy, there's nothing I (or anyone) can (or should) do to stop you. Think it all you like, it's your brain. Just be aware, when you put things out in the public forum, people may not be as big fans of your idea as you are. Which, I think, is pretty reasonable. I am more than entitled to like the music of DragonForce, just as all my friends are entitled to reject that opinion. And, as an addendum, no I do not get my knickers in a twist when they say "DragonForce is gay" rather than "it is my opinion that DragonForce is gay" because the fact that it is their opinion is both obvious and implied. Similarly, when I say "that's stupid" to someone, the implied meaning is "my opinion of what was just said/done is that it is stupid." Calling someone out for not implicitly saying it is a rhetorical attack on a strawman and makes you sound like a whiny bitch.
To labour the metaphor, my opinion on DragonForce doesn't affect anyone. Well, it may in the sense that I might play them when people are around, and groans may be expressed. But the position I hold on the quality of their music doesn't threaten anyone else's position, nor does it render anyone's opinion valid or invalid by its own merits. Your opinion on said band is (I hope) unchanged because of mine.
The keen eyed among you will have spotted where I'm going from a mile away, here. I'm pro-choice. That's not my stance on abortions, either. That's my stance on EVERYTHING. Want to get an abortion? That's really your choice (well, to a point, that's a complicated issue, but essentially it's your choice). Want to have sex with a consenting adult member of the same sex? Your choice. Want to marry them? Yep, you guessed it. The reason for this stance is pretty selfish, I'll admit; I don't give a shit what you do as long as you extend me the same courtesy. By not giving a shit about what you do, provided it doesn't adversely affect anyone else, I promote the meme that you shouldn't give a shit about what I do provided I'm not adversely affecting anyone else, affording me the freedom to do whatever the hell I like, within reason. It's not a particularly nice way of looking at things, but it's realistic as all hell.
This is, of course, nothing new. Live and let live is so old hat, it's gone in a circle and become retro cool, worn by guys who go to dingy pubs to watch indie bands while sipping expensive beer. And as a stance to compete with other stances, it fails miserably. If your position is live and let live, then "why not let us just get on with our persecutin'?" wail the homophobes/fundies/whatever. Of course, then you have to add provisos to your stance, which makes you look weak willed and leads to the dismissal of your position. The nice thing about seeing the world in black and white is that you don't have to re-evaluate your position, because it's black and white and you're in the right even if those heathen liberal atheist godless faggots try to trick you with word games. So, fuck that, I'm over live and let live.
My new mantra is "why do you care?" Say it with me. The 90s had it with the slacker mentality, it's just so right on.
"Gay people shouldn't get married!"
"But why do you care?"
"Because it devalues wholesome Christian marriage!"
"Again, why do you care?"
"Because Christian marriage is the only way a man and woman can procreate without sinning..."
"And, why do you care about that?"
"Because if you sin, you go to hell..."
"So don't have sex outside marriage. Why do you care if other people do it?"
And so on it goes. Just keep descending down the "why do you care" spiral until we all collectively realise that the reason you care is a fault of your own. I'm the first to admit, the only reason I care about stuff is because it may, in the long or short term, affect me if I don't care about it, so it's in my interest to care. Does it mean I don't love and care about my girlfriend, my family, or my friends? Of course not. It'd make me very sad if anything happened to them, and so I only want good things to happen to them. That sounds generous and altruistic, but realistically, it's just my brain doing what it's evolutionarily programmed to do. Doesn't make my feelings or devotion any less real. Hell, it makes them more real, because they don't come from magical God-blor, they come from my real brain that is real and demonstrable.
Dump live and let live, adopt "why do you care?" It's basically Socratic method in a flannel jacket, and the great thing about it is, eventually, opinions get dredged out of that untouchable realm of "whatever the hell I feel like" and enter the realm of facts. And facts, my friends, is where "dicks" always win.
Interesting sidenote 1) While writing this I was reading a whole mess of peer reviewed journals on the topic of homosexuality, specifically its genetic nature, the benefits (and detriments, there are some, like any genetic trait) it has for society and an interesting one that demonstrated that the whole world could never turn gay, so calm down, fundies. What was really interesting is that every overtly anti-gay paper that professed to be "published in journals" (they rarely, if ever, said "peer-reviewed" hint hint) was actually published in a right wing, conservative or Christian website/journal. Even the ones that didn't profess to be published anywhere were found on, or cited by, such websites. Stranger still, there were no pro-gay papers. There were papers that said from the outset that they were anti-gay and papers that expressed no judgement or assessment of homosexuality until the very end, and even then the discussion was analytic rather than moral. Funny that.
Interesting sidenote 2) Conservapedia's take on homosexuality is very strange. I mean, obviously it's anti-gay, but it's also very... I'm not quite sure the word for it, but naive springs to mind. Read their articles, they are quite funny. One concern is that homosexual men are a bridge to giving HIV to their wives and girlfriends. I don't mean to strawman here, but I don't think many gay guys have lady friends to share their naked fun times with, sorry. Now, I'll concede that closeted gay men who are desperately trying to hide their orientation from their wives/girlfriends are probably at a risk for doing this, but (at the risk of tarring them all with the same brush) they are probably in the Ted Haggard mold; all-for-show family men and holier than thou wankers trying to hide the way they are naturally because of some oppressive indoctrination, religious or not, while at the same time being too selfish to come clean and stop cheating on their partners. If they were cheating with a woman, they'd be bastards, but no, they're just repressed now. Ugh, rant over. Anyway, read it, it's by turns funny, upsetting, infuriating and confusing.
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