[quote=@Buddha]I mean, I think this is exactly the reason why gay prides are so bloody useless. If it was like a regular old festival, I think it'd do a lot more to show that gay people are just like us straight people, except they like a different sex (namely, the same as theirs). Now it's enforcing that they are different somehow and that enforces the 'different than us = bad' thing that you see in our tribal nature.[/quote]

I think you're overthinking the division aspects. Everybody's welcome at prides I've been to (except sometimes kids in some areas, because of explicit sexual themes and/or heavy drinking) - it's just gay-themed. Unlike basically every other organisation and event which defaults to being straight-oriented and catering for the majority, and nobody's asking for all events to have a token gay thing for the gays. They just gayly do gay stuff and have a gay old time.

Yes, they are pointing out that people are different, but people [i]are[/i] different. It's not saying that different is bad, and people that draw that conclusion are the problem.

[quote]Tolerance doesn't mix well with democracy. Like I said, tolerance only has to extend as far as the majority within a country wishes it to extend. There's really .. not much more to it except your personal idea of tolerance.[/quote]

I mean, tolerance is just that: tolerance. Being unable to tolerate another social group (whether at a personal or governmental level) is still intolerant. It has nothing to do with democracy, although I like to think most people would uphold and vote for tolerant parties and policies.

[quote]Let me argue in the name of a religious nut (whether he be Christian, Jewish or Muslim) and say that homosexual sex is in fact dangerous. It does harm people because it means they can't go to paradise/heaven. It does harm people because it is inviting the devil into our society.[/quote]

Okay, I'll expand my definition to [i]provable[/i] harm. A drunk driver has a high chance of doing provable, measurable harm. People are more than welcome to raise the concern that their denominational deity might have an issue with Steve and Carl at it like rabbits next door, but it seems to me to be obvious that that is a supposition that can't be proven and therefore holds little weight as an argument. Burden of proof and all that.

[quote]... which is forcing their worldview upon others that do not share this worldview. It's really not that hard, dude. The worldview that everyone should have an equal chance at living their life in the same way as others is a worldview in and of it's own. Even though I agree with this worldview I also acknowledge that it's still just a worldview and not everyone has to agree. The majority believes in this worldview and therefore you'll find that this is the worldview that everyone more or less agrees with.[/quote]

I agree that there's a paradox in that in order to be truly tolerant, one has to tolerate intolerance. But I don't think it's inconsistent to propose a version of events where LGB do their thing behind closed doors while bigots do their thing behind closed doors and nobody is bothered by anybody. And then either group should have the opportunity to be out and proud, if they'd like to take it.

[quote]Because if you disagree, you'll be branded negatively in a social regards[/quote]

and rightly so? It still boils down to whether people can share or not. People that can't share are on the level of five year-olds, and I don't respect five year-olds or think their arguments tend to be very valuable.

[quote]I make it a point to not judge other cultures, ideas or people. Reason being that yes, I can actually see why Wehrmacht soldiers fought for Hitler, and I respect them for fighting for what they thought was right. Yes, I can actually see why Hitler did what he did - I do not agree with it, but I can see [i]why[/i] he did it and to a degree I think he deserves some objective respect for building an empire the way he did. 

Note that that in no way means I agree we should kill the jews. It just means I can see his ideology, I can understand it, I can still disagree but respect that he fought for it.

And yes, in that regard, I also respect ISIS fighters who fight for their ideology. Because that's what you do.[/quote]

My point was mostly, you can respect people for doing what they believe in (as opposed to being duplicitous), but if it comes to picking sides - which you have to do in a situation with the intolerant (whose mantra by definition has to be "this bar ain't big enough for the two of us") - I'd like to think most people would pick the tolerant.

On a side-note, I've actually read a lot of Hitler and... I don't understand his ideology. Mein Kampf is a mad rag of random assertions based on nothing that wouldn't scrape a pass in a secondary school essay, as is basically everything else I've read by him. Not that I think I'd be won over by his arguments anyway, they really aren't even arguments. I'm not convinced he wasn't a pioneer of postmodernist irony whose art project got really out of hand.

[quote]So no, I don't pick between either of them. They are both right - or at least both think they are right, and therefore, both have a right to defend their claim.[/quote]

They both have a right to defend their claim. Neither has a monopoly on truth.
It doesn't stop you looking at ISIS fighters and thinking "boy howdy, that's fucked up. I much prefer the other guys".

[quote]Although the white people have the most agency, they are also the biggest group that is trying to help LGBT people [i]because[/i] they have the agency. I believe this comes more from a PR perspective and they really don't care about LGBT people, but they're still helping.[/quote]

Which is fine: I don't expect all MPs to have a personal experience of being LGBT, but when they see that laws are unfairly affecting a proportion of society and that that portion of society would like them changed and that society would generally support it (despite it having nothing to do with the rest of society), then that's a completely reasonable thing to do.

I mentioned white people because you brought up challenges interracial relationships can face, and I hadn't had those in mind when suggesting that LGB sexualities have the most challenges.

I'm not
[quote]blaming white people for all the shit[/quote]



[quote]Gay community there is big as fuck.[/quote]

Try the villages. Rural places in the UK are backward as fuck. It's getting better, but they're obviously streets behind metropolitan areas.

[quote]Like we discussed before, in most western countries, LGBT people too enjoy the freedom that straight people do. Legally. Most of the time it falls under the umbrella 'no discrimination' laws.[/quote]

There are also many countries in the Western world that do not recognise equal marriage. In (most of) the UK and in the RoI, it's very, [i]very[/i] recent. Again, since you've lived in such a tolerant country that's been very ahead on these issues, maybe it's not such a hot topic for you because it has no reason to be. LGB people in the UK have only been equal citizens for a year or so now.

[quote]What you believe [re marriage]doesn't matter in this case.[/quote]

I'm not saying what I believe marriage should be is how it is. But my argument is internally consistent. The state should treat its citizens equally in a way that doesn't advantage or disadvantage straight couples, LGB couples, or single people, unless it can be proven that any of those humans somehow deserves more or fewer rights than any of the others. I'm a big advocate in the UK of Civil Partnerships being extended to straight people because right now we have a funny situation where LGB people have access to rights that straight people don't, which isn't fair, even if it's a refreshing change of pace.

[quote]Well actually until you're 21, a parent is supposed to take care of their children no matter how intolerant they are.

Doesn't help that shelters for children like this are often lackluster and shitty.[/quote]

Neither of these are really helpful the child, I don't think. A parent that wants to disown their kid isn't going to take good care of that kid just because you force them to keep them.

[quote]But that's exactly my point. There's little to complain about nowadays in most countries. The EU actually enforces that member states offer some degree of equality between people legally.[/quote]

It doesn't enforce equal marriage and, at least in the UK (excluding NI), gay people don't really protest against the government any more because, as you say, there's nothing to really complain about. At the social level, there's still strides to go to make sure that LGBT kids in schools, for example, aren't bulied, but that's the social level.

[quote]Which is again my problem with gayprides. It's stopped being about acceptance and instead is a commercialized practice funded by the government.[/quote]

I think it's now both. But it's not a bad investment from the government, because the big gay prides are big money. It may well leave one with a sour taste in one's mouth, but many many events are funded through advertisement (at least in the UK).

That doesn't take away from all of the good stuff there is in gay prides (which I've already tried to indicate).

[quote]Agreed, I was just raising the point that there's many smaller groups that do not get benefits simply because they're smaller.[/quote]

And one can support both, like I support the very small minority of straight people that would prefer civil partnerships to marriage. And then there are some (we use paedophiles as an example) I go into more detail on lower down.

[quote]It's all generational, man. In 20 years we'll probably have reached the point where nobody cares anymore bar the religiously devoted.[/quote]

Let's hope so.

[quote]Oh no. I mean the USA has a long way to go socially, but what I have been saying is that in most western countries, LGB people are on equal footing already. And the transgenders are coming closer too.[/quote]

The USA and plenty of other places, too. It depends on the locality, and not the location.
But, yes, gay people are finally getting to legal equality: and, at least in the UK, now they have, they broadly don't protest. They might still campaign to change the social landscape, but that's not against the government.


<Snipped quote by Jig>

Yeah, I'm a rude person.

[quote]Actually, we had a political party here called Party Martijn. They were a group that voted for the acceptance of pedophiles - medically/psychologically. They didn't want pedophilia to be legalized but rather wanted there to be more professional help for people that had pedophilic ideas in their head and wanted these ideas gone.

[...]

I was never against this party, in fact I kind of supported the idea of it even if I'd never vote for them (one-issue parties are a no-go for me). People, even pedophiles, have a right to democracy in our society, and if they had wanted to legalize pedophilia, I would've accepted that if they were the majority. That's how democracy works.[/quote]

I don't disagree with any of this, apart from disagreeing that I'd 'accept' paedophilia if it were legalised. I would accept the paedophiles were acting within the law, but would not waive my right to challenge that law because I broadly agree with the UK age of consent as it is.

[quote]So, I disagree in the sense that there's other sexualities that want to be heard but that others, including LGBT people, do not want to hear.[/quote]

[i]Or[/i] that are inclined to put their head above the parapet, because nobody wants to be 'the paedo guy' and you've already pointed and laughed at a hypothetical guy who wants to get it on with his car. You're right that there's at least an element of the public not being willing to hear their point of view, but I don't think that's the whole issue, and I don't see the connection between LGBT protests and the silencing of more niche interest groups' rights.

Apart from anything else, the LGB question is quite an easy argument to thrash out. It has nothing to do with the very difficult question of consent, and entirely to do with tolerance. No consenting LGB person can be harmed by another LGB person who also consents, so the argument boils down to whether or not to be tolerant of the act of same-sex, uh, sex and whether the people that do it should be on equal legal footing with those that don't. As you say, much of the West (though I think less of it than you) has broadly decided that it's none of their business, which is nice. The paedophile/zoophile case, meanwhile, both boils down to how one measures consent, who/what is able to give consent, and what 'harm' actually is; it's a messy argument. Animals and kids both have different statuses in terms of legal protection to adults, which is something that would have to be taken into account.

I agree that having that argument is going to be difficult for those groups because they will be shouted down and accused of perversion by both straight and LGB people alike, but that's not the only reason those voices are hard to hear. And it's a shame that people aren't prepared to listen, because frankly there's a damn good argument to be made for being tolerant and understanding of people who are attracted to kids provided they're prepared to not fuck any kids. At the most cynical, there's 'know your enemy', at the most sympathetic, there's 'you're a human being and can't help the way you feel', and, somewhere in the middle, you have 'let us know if there's anything you think we can do to help you not fuck kids'.

I don't normally like the 'born this way' argument because it's normally applied to the LGBT+ community when actually the better argument is 'none of your fucking business'. However, it seems highly unlikely that paedophiles or zoophiles choose their orientation given that at least the former are the #1 acceptable target on basically everybody's list and it's therefore unfair to judge them for who they are. If they fuck a kid, well, that's a crime and they're almost certainly harming the child one way or another*, so judging them by their actions is reasonable as they are a criminal in both the legal and social sense of the word.

*inb4 ripostes about statutory rape and such. Kids are idiots and there's no real way to means-test who is and who isn't 'ready for sex' and therefore able to give legal consent, so the age of consent is by necessity an estimate and somewhat arbitrary. The blanket-ban on sex with people under the age of consent is therefore not exactly neat, but does at least protect those that fall within it that do need protection and provides a very deft legal framework for who can and can't give consent, especially when one takes into account a grooming/domestic abuse scenario, where one side is manipulated - kids being stupid, they're vulnerable to this. That said, I don't think it's unthinkable that a 13 year-old could be mature enough to make decisions about their own sex-lives, but the majority of kids are idiots and need protecting from themselves as much as they need protecting from the big bad wolf. So, yes, a functioning adult that lives an adult life who fucks somebody under the age of consent is playing with someone that should be deemed to be too stupid to say yes unless proven otherwise (which one can't) and that basically falls under the same social category of fucking somebody who is too drunk to clearly give consent.