[xpe]

> When I was against gay marriage, I sat down and tried to think a lot about... [many details] ... You can disagree about gay marriage but realize that there are definitely things gay couples should have in a legal sense too; hospital visitation rights as one. A lot really was uncertainty about metaphysical and philosophical ideas I think.

Good points. I am glad you thought about it, even if you came to different conclusions than I would have.

> But all you had to do to shut all that down was to accuse me of homophobia and bigotry.

To state the obvious: I never accused you of that.

I'm not stating the obvious to be confrontational; I'm saying it because I've heard this argument frequently from people I know that disagree with my politically.

For example, I've met thoughtful people that feel attacked because they want to think through issues rather than jump on a bandwagon. I am very glad they are being thoughtful and see nuance in the issues.

So here is what I hope to learn: I'd like to know why you feel this way. Do you personally think that someone like me, perhaps from a different political philosophy, is judging you (as opposed to the underlying ideas)?

(I have some guesses, but I would rather not speculate.)

[Noos]

I'm saying it because the left learned very quickly that you can bypass the hard work of arguing positions by instead arguing the holder of them is irrational and or evil in a sense. It's much more effective to call someone else evil than to put forwards your ideas of good.

By calling me irrational, I do not need to be compromised with or taken seriously; compromise and dialogue is based on the fact that people are both making good faith efforts to engage. Part of what is chilling about the whole social media thing recently is that it's arguing that it causes people to be in an irrational state and not to be taken seriously. Go home trump voters; you are drunk on social media.

So yeah, there is a lot of judging going on, because that kind of judging is more effective than compromise. You yourself sound like you are open minded more because people will need time to come to the undeniable truth than anything.

[vladTheInhaler]

A big part of the confusion is that you seem to treat this like an abstract matter of philosophical debate, because frankly, you don't really have a personal stake in it. That's not meant as an insult, just a statement of fact. As a straight, white male, neither do I. But it's not reasonable to expect someone to engage in dispassionate discourse about their own safety and their right to be treated like a human being. It's easy to forget because of how rapid and sweeping the change in public opinion was in the US, but in many other countries (and quite a few places in this one) LGBTQ rights are still a matter of life and death.

And this is the problem with so many debates - the people who are largely comfortable with the status quo are confused because people in marginalized groups are screaming at them, when they didn't really do anything to those people. In fact they may, in some abstract way, be supportive of their struggle. But the people are screaming because a third party has a gun (literally or figuratively) to their heads. So in order for there to be a real conversation, first we need to get that guy to put the gun down. Nothing else can happen until then.