[@Vor] More or less agree 100% with what you said. You can change all you want in laws (like in Russia) but if the people are unwilling to accept homosexuals you can't force them to like homosexuals.

[@Vilageidiotx] Gon reply in a quote because I'm too lazy to constantly scroll up to counter your points. Also, it lets me comment while I read which is better.

[quote=@Vilageidiotx]
This is going to seem a little bit like it coming out of nowhere, like out of left field or something, but this thread sort of reminds me of a conversation that everyone who knows my father had to have with him last October. In October of 2015, the Kansas City Royals (American Baseball) won the World Series (Baseball championship among the parts of the world that matter, namely the US and Canada). I just happen to be from that exact same city. And really, the entire place got really into it. There was a homecoming parade that basically shutdown downtown. I had to work that day, a few miles south of the event. The foot traffic was enough to make me fifteen minutes late despite planning for it. In a midwestern US city, that type of thing is unusual. Surreal even. If you see pictures of it on the internet, it looks a whole lot like an ant colony in a sidewalk crack. 

[color=red]Sounds pretty damn fucking annoying. Not anything I'd get mad about. In the same way I'm not mad about gay prides. The reason I find gay prides unnecessary is because they do not offer constructive furthering of acceptance for homosexuals. The fact that it obstructs the city is just a small side note for me.[/color]

The reason I bring that up is to set up the conversation everyone had to have with my father shortly after. He is the type of guy who secretly thinks he is the only person in the world doing enough work. Everyone else is too lazy or something. He also absolutely [i]hates[/i] professional sports. There have been plenty of "My tax dollar" rants about that in the past, and about how frivolous people are being, drinking and just watching people play a game and all that. So when that parade happened, and when he heard a few co workers complain they couldn't get the time off to go there, he sorta popped. I got a variation of the rant a few days later. The gist was something to the effect that people were childish for being interested, that blocking traffic was denying hardworking people proper access to the roads, that there are better things to do, whatevs whatevs. And he was legit pissed off about it. 
[color=red]Don't assume I'm pissed off, because as I said, I really couldn't care less, gay prides happen like once or twice a year here. Like mentioned above, they are not furthering acceptance and therefore are not useful. Tax funding for these projects, therefore, is nothing more than funding a party. Which is stupid IMHO. If they did it through crowdfunding/entry tickets or some shit like all the other festivals and parades do, then I really, really couldn't care less what the fuck they do.

But that's not how it goes.[/color]

How dare anybody do something in public that he had no interest in?

And the sort of "Dude, who the fuck cares?" reaction I had to that is basically the same one I have to the complaint about public homosexual events. Like, your argument seems to be marketing one in essence. A sort of "I think the way you sell your candy-bar is shit because the ad campaign doesn't appeal to me" thing. [color=red]Then you should maybe consider reading it again, because that's not what I think.[/color] But that isn't really the point. You'd have to get solid evidence that gay parades don't appeal or effect anybody at all to show them as absolutely useless, and even then, that would be more of a marketing gaffe than anything else. But as this stands, the argument seems to be "Gay parades are bad because I personally am not convinced by them." [color=red]I can't prove a negative. If the organizers can come with constructive ways of showing me that gay prides do further acceptance (in my country which is already very very accepting) then sure, be my guest, have all the gay prides you want.

[img]http://cdn.hpdetijd.nl/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/gaypride_hp.jpg[/img]

My question then also is; do things like this belong in there? 

[url=http://www.hpdetijd.nl/2015-07-29/gay-pride-gegijzeld-door-commercie-en-politiek/]I suggest you translate and read this[/url] because it shows exactly why I have issues with the gayprides here and I am backed up by it by the creator of the gayprides in the Netherlands. Commercialisation of the gay pride has come thus far that it's no longer about acceptance, it's about 'showing you support homosexuals' even if you don't. I mean, even the SGP had a float. For those that don't know the SGP, it's a Dutch party that is notoriously Christian and notoriously anti homosexual. .. does that make sense to you? Because to me it shows that the event is no longer about acceptance but PR.[/color]

And the thing is, I suspect we both share basically the same view on Homosexuality itself. I am not personally gay, I don't know very many gay people, it isn't a part of my life beyond it coming up in political discussions. But the difference I suppose is that, if I were to see a Gay Pride parade, the only effect it would have on me (assuming there isn't something funny to point out) would be to make me think "Looks like Main St is plugged with gays, better take Grand so I can get to where I am going."

[color=red]I can sense you're missing the backdrop of this discussion. There was a discussion about this in the status bar - about how homophobia is inherently bad and all homophobes were evil. I set out to prove that isn't the case and that the number of homophobes is drastically over exaggerated. This wasn't about gay prides to begin with. But I do enjoy discussions about this so I'm just gonna continue. 

I don't want to petition to ban gay prides. I think people should be able to do whatever the fuck they want and if they're happy then cool. But it irks me that the government uses it as a PR-pony, funds it to 'look good' and is essentially just funding a festival for no reason. No other festival gets this type of funding, no other festival gets clearance to be hosted in the center of fucking Amsterdam, so why should homosexuals?

We want to accept homosexuals right? So why give them preferential treatment? Let them host a festival on the Malieveld in the Hague like all other festivals. Let them pay for it themselves, with minimal funding. 

I think you're mistaking me for someone who really cares for this topic a lot and made this thread because of that. This is not the case. The case is I made this because we argued about it in the status bar and I wanted to continue the discussion. [/color]

 I mean, shit, we had one of the more brawling Trump Rally's earlier in the spring, with people yelling about the wall and getting in fights with counter protesters and all that fun stuff. I don't particularly like Trump, but when I saw his rally, my reaction wasn't one of disgust, it was one of route-recalculation. It's a public place, and I'm only a tiny fraction of the population. As you said yourself, "Nobody really cares about what you think." [color=red]Understandably, but you can't do this in Amsterdam. I am not American. We don't have 200 different blocks. We have tiny narrow streets with canals between them, that are hard to navigate, especially in a car, and if you go into a street, find out it's blocked, and then a car pulls up behind you, congratulations, you're stuck for the coming 5 hours before the blockage is removed.[/color]

I also feel like you are using the free speech argument backwards a bit here. The vibe I get from your argument is that vehemently disliking homophobes is an abuse of freedom of speech? [color=red]No. This is not what I am saying. Read again.[/color] But wouldn't a person who is gay, or even just really pro-gay, naturally be inclined to dislike people who dislike them? [color=red]That is their good right, just like it is the good right of homophobes to strongly dislike homosexuals. I am saying this works both ways and homophobes have rights too.[/color] And wouldn't, by the standards of free speech, a person who openly hates group A be open to the rebuke of group A? If you don't like the gays, the gays have every right not to like you. There is a sort of equal and opposite reaction thing that, really, both sides get confused by. If a person is openly homophobic, they should expect an equal and opposite reaction. If I spit on my neighbors cat, I've earned him spitting on mine. We don't seem to have a problem with homophobes being, like, lynched or anything, so I don't think that particular detail is out of control. [color=red]The online hunt for homophobes I'd say is quite equal to that. Doxing someone and getting them fired is easy nowadays. It happened before.[/color] If the biggest threat is people saying stupid shit on tumblr, I think we're doing okay in the free speech department. [color=red]My post really didn't have anything to do with free speech outside of the fact that homophobes have a right to free speech too.[/color] And really, except for the people everywhere who seem to think free speech means saying silly shit without being called out on it, I think the western world's free speech situation is doing quite well right now [color=red]Refer to the comic in my OP. I don't disagree with you. It becomes a problem to me personally when social media platforms that really are just public platforms at this point (yes, twitter is a private platform, but it's so big and so public, it should be classified as such) are becoming echo chambers for those with specific sets of opinions, with the other side being blocked from accessing it or are severely limited in their ability to do so.[/color]

Democracy is a simpler thing to respond to: I do not think there is such a thing (outside of sci-fi novels and high school essays) as a society that can produce an ideal form of government. [color=red]I have a solution, which is simply to switch government forms whenever society needs it. Fascism is great post-war if you lost. Communism is great when you need to carpet-bomb your country with factories. Democracy is great for small countries with good education systems. Dictatorship is great when you lack decisiveness and flip-flop between policies like the USA. There's benefits to all government forms, there is not one ideal form, there are many that in my opinion you need to combine.

But with human beings leading the countries, this can never exist.[/color] The photo on the box for democracy might be the old stiff-lipped citizen society of Athens as we want to remember it, but open the box and yes, it is true, you get a populist mess that veers with the wind. The photo on the box for Republicanism might be the stoic citizen-farmer-soldier Roman, but open it and you get corruption and more populism. But at the same time, look on the box for Monarchy you see the enlightened monarch, open it and you get George III, or Charles II of Spain, or Nicholas II. The box for Communism might be progression to a socialist utopia, but inside that box is Stalinist sycophantic bureaucracy, or whatever the fuck was up with Pol Pot. Fascism had the platonic, meritocratic dream-world, but the reality... i mean, holy shit [color=red]Don't confuse fascism for nazism.[/color]. Humanity is just a messy species. It's what we do. Democracy as we practice it seems to keep society relatively balanced at least. For better or worse, we don't veer off in the Quixotic directions that modern anti-democracy seems to inevitably take. It seems like you're stuck with limited choices; corruption, or Caligula. 

That being said, I am perfectly find with the rest of the world doing their own thing, because I understand that I don't really understand the rest of the world. If continental Europe wants to play with fascism again or something, go for it. I admit my Anglo-Saxoness makes it difficult for me to understand the attraction, but if you want to give everything up to some goofy fuck with a messiah complex and alcoholic-uncle type opinions, knock yourself out. Just don't invade France. [color=red]I just want Antwerp back, man. [/color]
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