| First, there is no straw man here. A straw man is a misrepresentation of your position, which I then argue against. You proposed a fictitious law endorsing hate speech -- in other words an illegal law. Straw man. First, it should be clearly noted that no one is calling for criminal penalties. So the social penalties against gay men were perfectly okay? Third, in a free society, you deal with the consequences of your actions This is an appeal to a minimal standard of behavior. You are free to be a jerk to people you don't like. That's not a wise, compassionate, or great way to be. Finally, again, there was no straw-man, and granting that introducing the notion of hate speech solves the issue Oh brother. You concoct a straw-man law as part of your argument, then grant it as part of my argument? You have a habit of misplacing referents when it is convenient for you, with the effect of placing fictitious positions into other's mouths. You have done this in this thread and others. I leave it as an exercise for you to find and correct your mistake. therefore they don't like me as much, therefore they prefer to do business with someone else When people go digging up stuff from six years ago and use it as the basis of a mass action for an issue that they have won, it crosses a line. So, your position is basically that all supporters of anti gay marriage political positions must be as socially stigmatized "as bad as racists," and that your job as a social activist isn't done until that's the norm. I'm sorry but that defies logic and is simply vindictive. We need not adhere to arbitrary, vindictive, and oversimplified social patterns of the past. (Isn't that part of the point of marriage between whoever wants to marry?) We will be further along in our journey as a pluralistic society when a gay marriage is no big deal at all, just like being in an inter-racial relationship is no big deal in the more cosmopolitan parts of our country. Your activism will be done not when your former opponents are sufficiently shamed and vilified, but when young people find your current attitude and those of Brendan Eich to be the quaint and incomprehensible stories of a past era. Plenty of "perfectly legal" crappiness got done, and in some places still gets done to people with the "wrong" apparent sexual orientation and outward appearance. Doing more "perfectly legal" things that resemble a witch-hunt is only "an eye for an eye making the whole world blind." |