(04-13-2017 11:29 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote: (04-13-2017 11:08 AM)JRsec Wrote: (04-13-2017 10:27 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote: (04-13-2017 09:01 AM)MinerInWisconsin Wrote: This is not likely to happen but what if a few other states do pass similar "bathroom" laws. They would also become off limits to ncaa events and presumably, conference events too. Kansas, Texas and whatever other states that are contemplating these sorts of laws would have to join with each other and NC to organize a new semi-national athletic association. Weird.
While other states are considering these laws, it's the last stand of backward bigots in a world that is changing every moment. They continue to deny how the entire world has entirely changed regarding LGBT rights within the last 5 to 10 years... and it's never changing back. It's similar to racial segregation, where it went from being reluctantly tolerated outside of the South in 1960 to how they were universally rejected everywhere by 1965, yet a group of hardcore bigots continued to deny progress for several years (e.g. George Wallace's presidential runs).
If a manager in our company decided to apply a rule like HB2 in one of our offices, he/she would be fired for discrimination. Our clients (many of which are larger than we are... and we're one of the 50 largest companies in the world) would also EXPECT us to do that, as well. They do not want to work with discriminatory organizations. Once again, these aren't left wing organizations that we're talking about here (and some are actually well-known targets of liberals). These are places that want the best and brightest educated talent... and the best and brightest educated talent today UNIVERSALLY rejects discrimination against the LGBT community.
And yes, I will continue to use the word bigot. If that bothers people, then so be it. The world is finally waking up that such bigotry has been in place for far too long and it has no place in society. I have such a visceral reaction to these types of bills and stories because sports (as much as I love them) are trivial diversions compared to this type of bigotry. If it's not me calling out such bigotry, then it will be those much more important in people's lives, such as their children, grandchildren, and essentially every educated person under the age of 30. Places like the North Carolina legislature can have their last stands on this issue, but from a general societal perspective, it's as settled of an issue as racial segregation was by 1965.
1. Wallace wasn't a bigot. Wallace was an opportunist and demagogue who was elected at the end of his career with the African American vote.
2. Enforcement of laws of equal access is a viable position.
3. Forcing a vision of morality on a free society is not. At the very point people are not free to shape their lives and associations by their personal understanding freedom dies. If they abide by the laws there should be no crisis. If they don't then they break the law. But, the forcing of associations crosses the line of what any free government can impose and at that point you become other (fascist comes to mind).
4. Note Bison's response of forcing the law with pitchforks. Note your own implication that anyone who disagrees with you is somehow uneducated. The greatest ally in the defeat of bigotry is the loss of fear of the object of your bigotry. Forcing the fearful to do anything only reinforces their world view. Going to school with, working with, living in neighborhoods with other kinds of people are ways in which through daily discovery you find that others are not so different from yourself. But labeling, and trying to intimidate people into accepting a position only brings about an equally willful defiance.
5. What I take exception to here is your attitude that shouting your position loudly enough is going to produce the effect you desire. It will not. Displaying your tolerance will beget tolerance, your patience will beget patience, and in the case of bigotry familiarity does not breed contempt, but rather understanding. My objection here is not toward the goals you set forth but the manner in which you seek to reach them. It is boorish, counterproductive, and almost as ignorant as the other position. Why ignorant? Because allowing a passion to overcome reason and compassion is just as destructive as bigotry.
Now young man with promise, put that in your pouch and smoke it over from time to time and you and your children might be able to avoid unnecessary violence and angst. Faith in the goodness that can be reached in others always produces longer lasting and better long term results than vilifying them. Dr. King knew this and practiced it even at the cost of his life, but the resultant shame and horror at the results of extremists turned the South against a century old evil. In the end it accomplished more than 4 years of civil war.
The tactics that you and others have employed in your argumentation labels and vilifies. Brother that is right out of Joseph Goebbels play book. I then read Bison's post and all I image are the brown shirts coming in the night for those the state labels as offenders. Remember it is just as evil when it comes from the left as when it comes from the right. If in your pursuit of what you believe to be justice you become what you abhor, at least in practice, was your methodology effective and worth it, or destructive of your ultimate aims and the catalyst for the loss of your soul?
I'm tired of hearing a nation that should be in constant debate as to what is right four our society taking polarized positions where all conversation ceases and battle lines are drawn. It is only a recipe for disaster.
JRsec - I respect your opinions quite a bit on this board.
However, this notion that people need to somehow be tolerant of intolerance is simply trying to find an excuse for discriminators to justify their bigotry.
During my freshman year of college in 1996, I lived next door to a transgender female and a gay male. As a sheltered kid from the Chicago suburbs, I thought this was insane and literally scary when I moved into my dorm. However, after about a week, I realized how much of an ignorant (funny that you apply that word liberally in your own response) idiot I had been towards LGBT people for my entire life up until that point. Unfortunately, I saw some of the most vile and awful discrimination that I have ever seen in any context against them and other LGBT people on campus... and mind you that Illinois was even then considered to be an extremely liberal university. So, no, I don't have any sympathy for the "You need to tolerate my intolerance!" argument. The intolerant people ruled the world with reckless abandon up until 5 years ago and now they're suddenly whining that they're being "forced" to change. I have zero sympathy. None. Nada. The people whining now are the ones that forced everyone else to change to their viewpoint for decades. The hateful discrimination that I saw against LGBT people with my own eyes has absolutely no justification and it's not merely "an issue of disagreement". It's bigotry and it has no place in this world. Period.
And Frank I am old enough to have witnessed a King march, old enough to remember the riots in Pontiac and Boston against bussing, old enough to still feel viscerally about the Viet Nam war and the pain on both sides of that and I've been lucky enough to know the Carters and Desmond Tutu and was a freshman decades before you when the hatred toward the LG's was much worse even before the B&T were even added to the lexicon. I'm afraid that you are confusing people's personal moral viewpoints from actual hatred shown toward the LGBT community.
I seriously doubt after 25 years of dealing with the public in an official capacity and another 20 in business that you will find many people in North Carolina who would perpetrate hateful acts and crimes against the LGBT community. That is however fundamentally different from saying that they accept any of those lifestyles as being something they could identify or socialize with, and I carefully say lifestyles because of the massive complexity in genetics and more scientific classifications that might totally blow the minds of some of the masses. When lawmakers get involved it is silly. Equal application of law and equal access are the main points here and I would not debate them. But a stance against people who simply would not accept that biological classification or lifestyle as being something they personally would support is their choice, and they have a right to that choice as long as they do not persecute, denigrate, abuse, or perpetrate a crime against those who are, or do embrace that biology or lifestyle. Tolerance is accepting that others might have a lifestyle or genetic makeup different from your own and granting to them the same access and rights that you would expect. To group those people with the socially compromised that would perpetrate hateful acts or crimes against those who are different is just plain wrong. It is in and of itself an act of intolerance. There is much intolerance on both sides of this issue, but there are reasonable people who may not like one side's viewpoint or the others, but do not label and abuse the other side, but simply acknowledge the differences and grant the rights to the other side that they would expect for themselves.
Now I'm more of a libertarian than I am anything else. As long as government stays out of the lives of the citizens as much as possible and people are gracious enough to let others live their lives as they see fit so long as it doesn't result in criminal behavior, I'm fine. But my point here is that when you cut off dialogue you polarize many on either side of an issue that otherwise would have simply agreed to disagree, but would have equally supported the rights of each other in spite of that disagreement. When you do that Frank, you only grow the numbers of radicals on either side of an issue. We are a Republic for a reason. Republics support the dialogue that must take place between the pluralistic issues that confront us all and it operates in a kind of bargaining of stances that maximizes the acceptability of a law or decision.
The appropriate argument with regards to North Carolina doesn't need the voice of vox populi to be resolved. The Federal Government will resolve the issue. But to call out a State and label its people is folly. The bill even if it passed would be struck down by the courts. That's pretty much the end of the story. The level of vitriol on either side is merely the symptom of polarization that exists today. That is what concerns me! If we don't learn again what tolerance means, we are doomed as a society.
I've done community organizing work, pro bono work on behalf of the poor, counseled all manner of folks, and have taken stands against unjust rulings and bills in the past. I've been threatened on multiple occasions, labeled by liberals and by conservatives, stood against Democrats and Republicans, and in spite of all of that conflict I found wonderful folks on both sides of the spectrum with which I could concur on some things and remain in open opposition to them on others, all without labeling or hating them.
This issue needs time for the fear to subside on the part of some, law to stand in the interim, and most important no casualties on either side until the interim stands long enough for the fears to be assuaged and acceptance to be voluntary instead of forced.
But for the record, in spite of the many issues we face today and the zeal of millennials for social justice, there was significantly more tolerance in the 70's than there is now, not in laws, but in practice. It's odd to me now that we have the laws that would guarantee equal access and equal rights we have far less tolerance.
I had a much easier time discussing all sides of an issue with all parties 30 years ago than I do today. Why? Today we can't get past the emotions long enough to hear one another.
I also find your generation to be woefully under-informed about your own local histories. Skokie Illinois was/is the home of the Amercian Nazi party. Sault Ste Marie Michigan was a place where the practice of not employing Native Americans was once so terrible that some Southern women I knew worked on behalf of the reservations while their husbands were stationed in the area. In Oscoda Micighan there was a curfew in the 60's against African Americans being within the city limits. Pontiac and Boston I've already referenced. Why do I reference these? Because I've been to 47 of the 48 contiguous states and have lived in more than a handful. Prejudice and bigotry have been in each. People pick their prejudices. They do so to either feel important or because they have an unrealistic fear of the object of their prejudice. But on a hopeful note I'll tell you where I have seldom found prejudice, in retirement homes. Old folks have usually lived long enough to realize that all of it is merely a form of self delusion. Now they value what another person believes and does. They find in old age that they have much more in common and that gives them a sense of peace when they no longer have the energy to hate.
I hope we can all live long enough to find that commonality, but none of us will if we don't work together. It's not that our individual lives depend on it, but that our nation depends upon it. In spite of our differences we are still one of the best places to live on earth! But, from my vantage point in chronology that is threatened today as it has never been in the past. Keep that in mind as you grow older. JR