[quote=@Buddha][color=red]The screamy bit was meant more towards screamy internet people. Some of them find their way into the real world.[/color] [color=red]Yes, I've been to gay prides, I've seen in person how fun but absolutely useless they are.[/color][/quote] Fair. You just pulled up gay prides multiple times, so it does read like you had an axe to grind. I'm not arguing they're politically valuable, but they're still a useful social outlet for a group that doesn't typically get to safely be public. [quote]You're right in that most people (at least in the UK) don't care one way or the other - and that's great. However, when people [i]do[/i] care, it sucks for LGBT+ people. [color=red]Yes. Just like it sucks to be pro-environment and to hear people say they don't care.[/color][/quote] I don't think it's comparable. Pro-environmental people don't typically (reasonably) have to fear for their safety in a given situation where they're just being themselves. Walking down the street with your pro-environmentalist partner is not the same as walking down the street with your same-gendered partner. One can be made to feel shitty as a pro-environmentalist in the same way that one can be made to feel shitty for being LGBT+, but the stakes are a lot higher for LGBT+ people who want to live the same way that cishet people do. Being physically attacked is a real threat for LGBT+ people and if you're walking down the street as a transgendered person or holding hands with your same-gendered partner, that's much more apparent than walking down the street as somebody who has opinions about the environment. LGBT+ people are walking targets. [quote]Still, I can't help but read a chip on your shoulder when you pull up gay prides three times. Unless they're vastly different in the US [color=red]I am Dutch.[/color] [...] Most LGBT+ people would be delighted with a world where people can pursue life in their own way (including being homophobic), but it's not unreasonable for them to want and expect the same legal rights and social acceptance as cishet people [color=red]Hey holy shit!! We both live in countries where this is already the case! WOW! imagine that[/color][/quote] Sorry, het leek me alsof je amerikaans was en daarom vond ik het belangrijk, het engels context te beschrijven. Eigelijk hebt je het bijna (maar niet duidelijk) gezegd, dat je Nederlands bent, maar dat heb ik niet echt gezien. But, still, at least in the UK, social acceptability is still at the very least a new thing and, in rural areas (which I know well), not guaranteed. I expect it's the same in the Netherlands for rural areas. [quote]it does sound like you're in some way offended by LGBT+ people when they're doused in sparkles and boas and ... you know, gay stuff. [color=red]Not at all. Why would that offend me? If anything I think it's a nicer fashion statement than some of the modern fashionable clothes we see nowadays.[/color] It's just gays having a gay party. [color=red]What's the difference between a gay party and a party? IMHO they are the same.[/color][/quote] 1) You pulled it up multiple times so it sounded like you had an axe to grind (as I said before) 2) Sometimes, LGBT+ people want to party in an LGBT+ way (which they rarely get to publicly do). So that LGBT+ness would be the difference between a party and a gay party. [quote]LGBT+ have historically had a pretty shitty time of it - let 'em party one day a year. If you don't like that stuff, do what I do and just stay at home that day. [color=red]No, I'd rather go out and do stuff I want to do. I'm not going out and beating LGBT people up, in fact, in real life, I don't even say I disagree with the idea of gay pride. So I think that earns me a right to do whatever the hell I want, innit?[/color][/quote] Yep, do what you want. Again with the feel I got that you had an issue with prides. Since you're keen to underline you don't, I'll take it back. [quote][color=red]I feel like you didn't read anything I posted after my OP, did you?[/color][/quote] Nope, genuinely didn't. There was a helluvva lotta text. [quote]I'm pretty sure you've actually just defined a bigot. At least in my book, somebody who is intolerant and can't live by a 'live and let live' mentality is [i]precisely[/i] a bigot. [color=red]Sorry, can you read, isn't that exactly what I just said? I didn't say shit about not letting the LGBT people live their lives. In fact I've advocated nothing BUT that the entire thread. If someone can advocate being anti LGBT and at the same time remain respectful, then you really have no business calling them a bigot, because that's not a bigot, that is just someone with a differing opinion. Please don't put words in my mouth.[/color][/quote] I'm not putting words in your mouth. You said that X doesn't make one a bigot. I'm saying it kinda actually does. It's not putting words in your mouth, it's just disagreeing with you. I'm not saying you're an anti-gay advocate. I'm saying that somebody who is intolerant (of anything, and not necessarily you) [i]is[/i] a bigot. People who are respectful are tolerant and that has to mean, "[i]I[/i] don't like it, but [i]you[/i] can do what you want if you're not hurting anybody". Those people are not bigots. People who believe that something that harms nobody* is wrong and that therefore it needs to be banned or curtailed are not tolerant: those people are bigots. They are attempting to enforce their own personal worldview on everybody else - this is not respectful. *[sup]unless one follows the 'gay marriage causes floods' policy, which I think we can agree is probably not a thing[/sup] I agree that throwing round the word "bigot" at people that disagree with one isn't useful. But, still, when it's actually bigotry, it [i]is[/i] bigotry. [quote]The law in the UK does not forbid the opinion that homosexuality is wrong, or even the dissemination of that opinion, but nor does it protect the people with that opinion from [url=http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2016/08/18/man-who-claims-god-punishes-gays-with-floods-has-his-home-destroyed-in-flood-of-biblical-proportions/]being ridiculed[/url] or told, more roundly, to fuck right off. It does, however, explicitly forbid the dissemination of the opinion that LGBT+ people should be [i]harmed[/i]. [color=red]Great, we're on the same page then, since I actually wrote that LGBT people should not be harmed even if you are against them. Thanks for repeating what I already wrote.[/color] Talking free speech is all well and good, but in the UK at least, it's freedom [i]within the law[/i]. That is to say, one cannot advocate committing a crime. Discussing whether or not something (killing gays, for example) should or should not be legal is fine, but until you've won that argument one way or the other, the law's position is absolute. [color=red]Same as above. I'm not sure what you're trying to argue here.[/color][/quote] You mentioned in the title of this thread, EU vs US contexts. Here's the British context. [sup]I know that's a touchy subject recently :([/sup] Could be different elsewhere. [quote] - the same privileges that the people that advocate against them have historically enjoyed. People who advocate against the rights or the lifestyle of a group that [i]does no harm to anybody whatsoever[/i] fall into one of two camps; the religiously insane; or the interminably selfish. The 'god will smite us all' group, I think most people would agree, basically comprises dumbasses. [color=red]Not at all. I do not agree. They just have differing world views. This is not a battle of right vs. wrong, it's a battle between multiple right's.[/color][/quote] Multiple rights? They clearly have a differing world-view, but they're the people advocating that some people do not deserve certain rights to facilitate their harmless lifestyles and that some people do. LGBT+ people are generally more than happy for everybody to have the same rights to live their lives, I think. It's the anti-gay lobby who want to deprive LGBT+ people of the ability to live their lives the same way cishet people get to. [quote]All of this cuts both ways, of course. I'm sure there are plenty of LGBT+ people (or supporters) who are militant and intolerant of people peacefully disagreeing, and they're bigots too. The only thing is, it's almost never the anti-gay bigots that get the shitty end of the stick. [color=red]loloolollolololololololololo[/color] Ain't no anti-gay bigot who's afraid to be with their partner in public. [color=red]Interracial couples, polygamous 'couples', couples where one or both sides have strict parents, couples with differing religions[/color] Ain't no anti-gay bigot whose right to marry/have consensual sex with the person they choose is something that has to be fought for. [color=red]polygamous people. Many anti-same sex marriage people actually advocated that if people of the same sex are allowed to be married, so should they with their 3 cousins and 4 girlfriends. And they're not wrong.[/color] Ain't no anti-gay bigot whose sexuality and how it relates to free speech and the law is called frequently into question. [color=red]There also isn't any sexuality that is as outspoken about their sexuality as the LGBT community. People that have sex with cars are not really heard. There's not many of them but they exist. I wonder how we'd feel if people like that wanted to get vocal about their rights to marry a car. Because marriage is a lot more than marriage, you know? It's about taxes, paperwork, benefits, etc. I agree homosexuals should be able to benefit. But where do you personally draw the line?[/color] [/quote] Okay, so I was mostly thinking the white cishet anti-gay advocates, so you do raise some valid points, but I'll address them: 1) Interracial couples have had the shitty end of the stick everywhere in the past and still do in some places nowadays. Still, the places where they have issues are the same places where LGBT+ people also have issues while there are places where inter-race is cool where LGBT+ isn't, though. 2) Polygamous couples: if everybody is happy with an arrangement where there's more than two people, more power to them. I think the law should also allow for it, in the same way it allows for groups of two. But, still, they come in either the strictly religious (whom I broadly discount from sensible discussion) or the very-much minority of secular people who share partners in some way or other (who aren't typically anti-gay advocates). 3) Couples with strict parents/religion: can be shitty for them at the family level but that shit ain't upheld by law (at least in the EU/US), as far as I'm aware, so I consider it irrelevant. 4) Polyamorous people: genuinely don't know how I feel about incestuous breeding (on account of it being shitty for the kids who have a better-than-average chance of coming out differently abled while I don't wanna live in a world that dictates who gets to breed) but I don't have an issue with polygamy or polyamy in and of themselves, and I think people who want to honestly make a commitment to each other in whatever configuration applies to them should have commitment respected, both socially and legally. So, no, I agree: they're not wrong. 5) Perhaps the reason that the LGB community is as outspoken as it is is because it's the widest, most obvious sexuality-based community whose rights are typically challenged. They're the loudest voices in that field nowadays on account of being the most numerous group. 6) People who have sex with cars: live and let live. Until we invent cars that can have an opinion about their own sex lives, then it's really not my place to say. And if they want to get married to the car, then, fuck it, I don't waive my right to find that a bit weird, but I'm happy for them to do that and I'd like to think if I met them and/or their car in a pub, I'd have the good grace to be polite and, at the very least, not talk about the ins and outs of who/what does what to whom/what. 7) I stand by 'almost never'. You've picked up on the exceptions. The majority of people who advocate against gay rights are people that are heterosexual: quite apart from anything else, it's not in the interest of people with even rarer sexualities to advocate against LGB groups.