The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Tolerance!

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Wed Apr 03, 2013 9:23 pm

You need to document your dreams more often, Piney. That's hilarious :-P

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Pineapple » Wed Apr 03, 2013 9:56 pm

I don't often have ones that memorable, this one was from yeaaaaars ago.

The only other one I really remember in any detail is from like 2 years ago and was about pigeons.

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by West Filly (?) » Wed Apr 03, 2013 9:57 pm

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Perpetual Motion (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 2:53 am

Ugh. You know what's really stupid? I've been extremely frustrated with myself today, and at one point I started pinning the blame for my stress and confusion on this thread. It was reading the stories of others here that prompted me to really question myself in the first place. And now I can't stop. Every part of my being is being scrutinized and challenged over and over, and I can't help but feel that I'd be happier if I simply never cared about it in the first place. Awkward memories from my childhood keep cropping up as "evidence" of one thing or another, as do bits of myself that simply don't make sense no matter what context I put them in, and sometimes they're just disturbing.

I know that none of this is your fault. I wouldn't be so troubled if those issues didn't already exist under the surface, after all. It's just really frustrating, and I feel like I need to blame something. I'll just blame myself instead. I'm the one responsible for my own mind, and I'm the one getting all bent out of shape over something that has never actually been a part of my life, and probably won't be for a long time.

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Momo (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 11:17 am

Convictions in the absence of doubt are meaningless. If you question an aspect of yourself - whether or not you change as a result, that's self improvement. Never feel obligated to change, but if all this questioning is bothering you, feel free to vent here.

And there's no such thing as evidence in your childhood. Every kid experiments with gender roles. Kids test boundaries. It's how they learn.

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Perpetual Motion (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 12:22 pm

Most self-discovery stories I've seen always seem to have some element of "I should have known I was _______ when I felt ________ as a child," though. Really, all of this thinking just makes me paranoid. What is relevant? What am I imagining? What's just a meaningless coincidence? What if I'm ignoring something important? What if I'm what I am thinking about doesn't mean anything and I reach the wrong conclusion again? It's an awful, stressful feeling, but I can't do anything about it. The only way to make it stop is to bear with it and hope that things just click some day.

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by doodlesplat » Thu Apr 04, 2013 12:28 pm

[quote="Perpetual post_id=16181 time=1365058432 user_id=77]...[/quote]I'm not an expert, but I can try to provide a positive opinion. We all have uncertainties about ourselves or our past. If it gives us negative feelings, our mind may try to hide it from us for our own good. Sometimes it doesn't do this well and the repressed feelings can brew until they start causing serious problems in all parts of life. Introspection, even while disturbing or painful, can be a difficult but rewarding road to resolution. You don't have to travel alone; support from others is possible and encouraged. When you do make it through, the freeing from the burden of uncertainty and the knowledge from having understood yourself better can give you a lot of confidence and positive energy that is way more worthwhile than to live blissfully ignorant but subconsciously tormented. Hang in there, you have lots of support here and this is something you will conquer, it is just a matter of when.
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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by West Filly (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 1:06 pm

In my experience, you've got it backwards. After a trans person has figured out their identity, we then find ourselves looking back on our lives through the lenses of our gender, just to pick out all the things that fit. Why? Well, because there's a damaging view in LGBT circles that seeks to validate LGBT behaviours and thoughts by saying we were "born this way". There's a typical trans narrative that speaks of the person who has always felt like they were trapped in the wrong body, starting from their childhood. The problem with specifically validating these particular beliefs is that, without equally supporting alternate narratives, you're invalidating someone who didn't always feel this way. The society is assuming that we are born this way, when there's always the possibility that some of us aren't. Even if a lot of us, or most of us are, congenital or genetic factors are not what defines LGBT. Sexuality is about how you feel and what you want to do about it. Gender is about how you feel and what you want to do about it. That's regardless of the cause for such feelings. The feelings define what you are. Your history is just a sort of "out of interest" thing.

Another reason Trans people will look upon their past is because we all wish we had figured it out earlier. The earlier the ball gets rolling, the more of your life you get to experience as the person you feel you are. We only get so many years out of our bodies, and there are certain things that you only get the chance to do when you're child or a teenager. I've missed a few eras out of my life by spending them as someone I don't want to be. When I look at some of the things I did in my youth I resent that I didn't do this back then.

I mean here's some pictures of me when I was about 15 or so.

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That's how I'd dress for a normal day. I look at these and think "COME ON" and I know, from the comments I got off my friends on Myspace at the time, that I'm not the first to look at these and think "that person looks like a woman". At the time, however, I used to think that this was the right way for me to dress. Thing is, looking back at all the people who were around me, I have to admit that even for a European I was dressed rather unusually. It's hard to say for certain if this was a gender thing or if I was just a bit of a rule breaker. Thing is, now that I'm fairly certain about my gender, I have a habit of looking at my past through female lenses, and I do wish I had started to do this back then. It's hard for me to be objective and say "there's every possibility that I was just a bit experimental or only androgynous in my youth."

Of course, it all stems back to this: After a trans person has figured out their identity, we then find ourselves looking back on our lives through the lenses of our gender. For someone who hasn't figured it out, I have to say that the past isn't necessarily where you ought to be looking. How do you feel? Would you want to experiment just a tiny bit? For someone who hasn't figured it out, self discovery is a long process, and it all takes place in the future.
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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Cthulhu Inc (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 1:35 pm

You also look very, very British. :-P
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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Snowfire (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 1:52 pm

I was gonna say IWF is very British looking. But then again, if I showed everyone an IRL photo of me, you'd think I was straight out of Ireland.

Red hair, freckles, very light colored skin that burns REALLY easily if I'm outside in the summer for more than 5 minutes, etc.

I'm 50% Italian and 50% Irish, but you couldn't tell I was half Italian by looking at me. I'm also the only one in my family with red hair. My dad has black hair, and my mom has brown hair.

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Bigdog (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 2:16 pm

IWF, this sounds creepy since I'm basing it on photographs of you at 15yo, but I'll say it anyway: you were pretty then and you're pretty now (or at least a few months ago when you posted the picture of yourself at a friend's house). :allears:


I absolutely, 100% agree with you on the exclusion and invalidation that result when we define people by their conformity to a certain stereotypical experience or way of manifesting identity. I'd just recently been locking horns with (possibly well-meaning) idiots in certain SA threads who think that we absolutely have to double down on homosexuality being genetic so that gay people will "deserve" rights and marriage, because if we don't play the game on the terms of bigots then how will we ever defeat those bigots?? :-I Sure does make me feel good to think of pulling out my metaphorical credentials to prove that the things that make me harmlessly different aren't my fault and so, finally, it will be wrong to hate and persecute me for them. Bit of a squeaker there but we pulled it out old chaps. :-I :-I (Sorry if this seems like taking away from the issue of trans rights in order to make it about my cis self. I view it as an allied sentiment, not a replacement one.)


To sidestep into the derail, as far as I know the biggest single ethnic influence in my ancestry is Norwegian, and I think it shows. I'm pretty much a Viking. A slightly thick in the midsection Viking, maybe, but a Viking nonetheless. :gotcha:

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by londonarbuckle (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 2:23 pm

You were/are an absolutely adorable young lady, WestFilly. :allears:
jerrylee wrote:
Thu Apr 04, 2013 2:16 pm
I'd just recently been locking horns with (possibly well-meaning) idiots in certain SA threads who think that we absolutely have to double down on homosexuality being genetic so that gay people will "deserve" rights and marriage, because if we don't play the game on the terms of bigots then how will we ever defeat those bigots?? :-I Sure does make me feel good to think of pulling out my metaphorical credentials to prove that the things that make me harmlessly different aren't my fault and so, finally, it will be wrong to hate and persecute me for them. Bit of a squeaker there but we pulled it out old chaps. :-I :-I
I agree with this 1,000%. When I was younger and just beginning to feel out my anti-homophobia, I never understood why people made the "born this way" argument. I mean, I understand why people argue that now, but I just never got why, if someone actually did happen to choose to be gay/trans/whatever, it would make them any less deserving of their rights. We really need to be careful about how much we frame our arguments in the bigots' terms, especially now that we're making more progress than ever before.

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by BackgroundPony (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 3:27 pm

Everyone is adorable around here. :awesomedash:

I've never understood the massive importance of the 'born this way' argument either. I mean if someone was straight as an arrow and then decided to try a same sex relationship, and enjoyed it, and stuck with it simply because they enjoyed it, what does that mean? Do that have to decide that they've always been a homosexual, or that they always will be, or that they've been lying to themselves before, or that they're lying to themselves now? Of course not! It simply means that they like what they like right now. That's all you need to get you through the day. The only reason it becomes such a big deal is because society treats it as such.

If and when we get to a rational society that respects individual decisions without putting them under a microscope and forcing you to swear that you are THIS way and can never change, people will be free to shift back and forth naturally as they feel the need. Not based on what anyone else tells them, but based on who they like right now, regardless of that other person's sex or gender.

I don't know that we'll ever get there, but it's a nice thought anyway.

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Weird Autumn (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 3:52 pm

There's an argument from (primarily) the religious right that goes "being gay is wrong because it's succumbing to temptations of the flesh something something morality God." They maintain that homosexuality is a moral choice, and the left's response has generally been to maintain that homosexuality isn't a choice at all but rather an innate, immutable part of a person's identity. The belief is that if sexuality isn't a choice-- the same way, say, skin color isn't a choice-- then there can be no moral basis to persecute people for it. The corollary to that, of course, is that if sexuality is a choice, if it's something flexible that can change over time, then there is a moral grounds for persecuting people for it... which is, of course, utter nonsense, but nobody ever really thinks about that element of the debate thanks to American conservatism's uncanny knack for controlling social narratives (and the American left's suspicious reluctance to ever seriously question them).

In reality, sexuality is a fluid thing, and for some people moreso than others; some people really were "born that way" and go their whole lives being pretty much exclusively being attracted to the opposite gender (or identifying as a gender different from the one assigned to them at birth, or whatever else), while for other people it shifts and changes and is never the same from one day to the next; maybe their tastes are constantly shifting from boys to girls to something in between, maybe they only care about certain qualities in a partner and aren't concerned with male or female, maybe they're a boy one day and a girl the next and like to keep switching every couple of weeks. There's no one right way to be gay or straight or trans or any other identity you can think of, and it really isn't a question of "choice" or the lack thereof.

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by !saak (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 4:11 pm

Omigoodness IWF, you're positively gorgeous :allears:
Perpetual Lurker wrote:Most self-discovery stories I've seen always seem to have some element of "I should have known I was _______ when I felt ________ as a child," though. Really, all of this thinking just makes me paranoid. What is relevant? What am I imagining? What's just a meaningless coincidence? What if I'm ignoring something important? What if I'm what I am thinking about doesn't mean anything and I reach the wrong conclusion again? It's an awful, stressful feeling, but I can't do anything about it. The only way to make it stop is to bear with it and hope that things just click some day.
The thing about Eureka moments is that they don't just happen, they're the result of working at it, experimentation, trying out new things. What's key here is that you do things and reflect on your actions.
It's really easy to get stuck in this thinking pattern without actually getting anywhere. If you can't find the answers in your head, you need to put something new in it. This you do by doing something you don't normally do. :)
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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Snowfire (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 4:14 pm

Not really gender or sexuality related, but:

http://now.msn.com/first-integrated-pro ... -school-ga

What... the... actual... fuck...
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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Daionus The 23rd » Thu Apr 04, 2013 4:18 pm

:starity:

...Well...

I'm happy that it's happening, but horribly disappointed that that's been going on for so long.

Anyways, does anyone know why the equality profile pic on Facebook thing is over? Did the fad just end or did something really good or really bad happen?

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Snowfire (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 4:22 pm

[quote="Daionus post_id=16194 time=1365106683 user_id=1]:starity:

...Well...

I'm happy that it's happening, but horribly disappointed that that's been going on for so long.

Anyways, does anyone know why the equality profile pic on Facebook thing is over? Did the fad just end or did something really good or really bad happen?[/quote]

I'm glad they are finally doing it too, but I mean, the story shouldn't be "we are finally having our first inter racial prom". It should be "our school has had segregated proms for YEARS, what the fuck is wrong with us?!?!"
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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Madeline (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 4:35 pm

West Filly, never stop being awesome.

As far as the segregated prom goes, another one of the bits of evidence that racism is alive and well and people who say it's over are either naive or being disingenuous, and probably racist.

Re: the "born this way" argument: I know we've moved on, but growing up I was a huge homophobe, same as my dad. It wasn't until I encountered the "born this way" biological arguments for homosexuality in high school that I changed my mind and realized I was a bigot. I also don't think making everything sexual and gender-related out to have purely social causes tells the whole story. Even if they are mostly or even purely social (which I doubt, or there would be no need for HRT or SRS in the first place), our brains are still changing to adapt to them. At the same time, I agree that there must be some sort of social/learned component or these things would never be fluid at all, and yet they are very fluid indeed. In conclusion, I'm just a goof on the internet who hasn't got any answers. :ponder: :v:
Last edited by Anonymous on Thu Apr 04, 2013 4:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Gravenstein » Thu Apr 04, 2013 4:36 pm

Snowfire wrote:
Thu Apr 04, 2013 4:14 pm
Not really gender or sexuality related, but:

http://now.msn.com/first-integrated-pro ... -school-ga

What... the... actual... fuck...
The only vaguely non-horrible part in that article is the tiny bit where it mentions that the segregated proms were privately hosted, and therefore the actual employees of the school aren't necessarily directly responsible for trying to encourage kids to act like it's still the 1950s. :-/

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by doodlesplat » Thu Apr 04, 2013 5:05 pm

I was trying to understand each side of the 'born with it or not' argument, but I wanted to extricate it from the politics, so I tried a thought experiment:

Someone tells me their favorite food is X. Then they go on to either tell me they discovered X last year and loved it ever since or that X has always been their favorite food since birth even after trying other stuff.

Under this hypothetical situation, my immediate impression would be, alright, X is their favorite food, both background stories are equally valid and, ultimately, rather irrelevant. So I suppose this is also the stance I have towards the original argument. That I feel so neutral towards it feels strange and natural at the same time. What this implies once the complexities of the original are added back in is something I haven't worked out. This is where I ask for opinions :]

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by londonarbuckle (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 5:41 pm

Snowfire wrote:
Thu Apr 04, 2013 4:14 pm
Not really gender or sexuality related, but:

http://now.msn.com/first-integrated-pro ... -school-ga

What... the... actual... fuck...
Hope for the future. :-I :facehoof:

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Perpetual Motion (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 5:44 pm

To be perfectly fair, this is exactly the same kind of dogpiling that happened to that congressman who started to support gay marriage when his son came out to him. All that should matter is that good is being done. Do not sour the victory by berating people for not doing it soon enough.

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Ninetails (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 6:35 pm

doodlesplat wrote:
Thu Apr 04, 2013 5:05 pm
I was trying to understand each side of the 'born with it or not' argument, but I wanted to extricate it from the politics, so I tried a thought experiment:

Someone tells me their favorite food is X. Then they go on to either tell me they discovered X last year and loved it ever since or that X has always been their favorite food since birth even after trying other stuff.

Under this hypothetical situation, my immediate impression would be, alright, X is their favorite food, both background stories are equally valid and, ultimately, rather irrelevant. So I suppose this is also the stance I have towards the original argument. That I feel so neutral towards it feels strange and natural at the same time. What this implies once the complexities of the original are added back in is something I haven't worked out. This is where I ask for opinions :]
Personally, on whether or not people are born with it - while it's my belief that people are born that way and are really just discovering it, I'm also of the belief that it shouldn't matter - the conclusion comes first in this case. If you're gay or trans or something, you can probably look back and realize all the evidence you had, because being gay or trans or something influenced you into doing certain things or liking certain things - but other people can like or do those certain things for entirely different reasons. If someone were gay and they told me they didn't feel like they were born that way but came to be anyway, I'm not going to say 'You're not really gay!', nor am I going to say 'But your feelings are wrong!' because no matter how much I argue the fine print of their history, it's not gonna change the part where a dude has sex with dudes.

Ultimately, trying to argue whether or not people are 'born that way' is society's attempt to define it, and I really feel that the entire argument should be thrown out because those who argue it's a choice are typically those who have no right to define it and simply want to discourage it, defining it in such a way as to shame anyone who is LGBT. And what would they get if it turns out being LGBT is a choice? They get to make hateful remarks and claim it's 'science'? They get to attempt to eliminate LGBT (which has been scientifically proven to be a stupid idea)? Being LGBT is largely a matter of emotions and feelings, and trying to strip them down to 'Oh, you were always that way' or 'Oh, you just chose to be this way' is simply disrespectful to how feelings work. I could understand if this were a plain scientific study, but the vast majority of cases where this is debated are nowhere close to being plainly scientific.

I'm leaning more toward saying that yes, people are born this way and are merely coming to realize it. But I'm not at all liking that this has to be debated in the first place.
Perpetual Lurker wrote:To be perfectly fair, this is exactly the same kind of dogpiling that happened to that congressman who started to support gay marriage when his son came out to him. All that should matter is that good is being done. Do not sour the victory by berating people for not doing it soon enough.
I agree with this, that we should celebrate that this is happening... Though I'll also confess that I had to do a double take at that headline. I thought it was a joke at first :-I

Also, Westfilly, you look a lot like one of my friends who also happens to be British. I hope you have a similar accent because I love British accents :-I

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Snowfire (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 6:47 pm

[quote="Perpetual post_id=16200 time=1365111878 user_id=77]To be perfectly fair, this is exactly the same kind of dogpiling that happened to that congressman who started to support gay marriage when his son came out to him. All that should matter is that good is being done. Do not sour the victory by berating people for not doing it soon enough.[/quote]

Like I said, I'm glad that it is happening. It's good news. What pisses me off is that it's 2013, and we are still dealing with this kind of shit.

If it came off as dogpiling, then I'm sorry. That's not what I intended. :fluttersmith:
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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by BackgroundPony (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 6:52 pm

[quote="Perpetual post_id=16200 time=1365111878 user_id=77]To be perfectly fair, this is exactly the same kind of dogpiling that happened to that congressman who started to support gay marriage when his son came out to him. All that should matter is that good is being done. Do not sour the victory by berating people for not doing it soon enough.[/quote]

Maybe. Is it the same people who used to hold their private 'whites only' proms who are now involved in this new one, or is it just that they've all died off or lost interest and someone who isn't human vermin has taken over? And while I do agree that we should laud people for having a change of heart to the right side of an argument, there's also the monstrous fact that they were still engaging in segregation until this year and thought it was okay. Gay rights is a relatively new concept for the mainstream. (I realize how incredibly long the struggle has been going on in reality, but most people don't see that, sadly) This is the time when reasonable people who have never really thought about the issue all that much are having it brought before their nose with a constancy that they can't ignore, and are being forced to examine their preconceptions. On the other hand, the time for that self-examination with regards to racial segregation was 50 years ago.

So yeah, good that they're getting around to it finally, but I'm not going to try to quell my disgust all that much.

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by CapacitorPlague » Thu Apr 04, 2013 7:36 pm

When anyone expresses surprise to me about people still believing some antiquated idea, I always mention that this group still exists. :pinkieshrug:

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Ninetails (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 8:18 pm

Speaking of dumb news!

A&M University, in my lovely conservative home state of Texas,voted on a "Religious Funding Exemption Bill", formerly the "GLBT Funding Opt Out Bill," so now students can freely choose to not pay for the university's GLBT resource center, all in the name of religious freedom!
After three hours of tear-filled testimony and impassioned debate, the senate voted 35-28 to approve the measure to allow students to choose not to pay portions of their student fees to specific university services that conflict with their religious beliefs.
Because nothing quite says equality like stating you hate a group of people and refuse to help them :jingo:

In all seriousness, I'm not going to play the persecution game and argue that LGBT people have it worse than these people, and I'll admit that religious freedom is important. But honestly, when you're expressing your religion by explicitly refusing to help a group of people, I don't care how rough you have it - screwing over another group is never right. If you think your religion is telling you to ditch people because you don't agree with them, that's not religion talking, that's bigotry.

And, according to this article, the students were largely in opposition to this, so I'm seriously wondering what the hay happened.

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Snowfire (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 8:24 pm

[quote="Kitty post_id=16205 time=1365121127 user_id=137]Speaking of dumb news!

A&M University, in my lovely conservative home state of Texas,voted on a "Religious Funding Exemption Bill", formerly the "GLBT Funding Opt Out Bill," so now students can freely choose to not pay for the university's GLBT resource center, all in the name of religious freedom!
After three hours of tear-filled testimony and impassioned debate, the senate voted 35-28 to approve the measure to allow students to choose not to pay portions of their student fees to specific university services that conflict with their religious beliefs.
Because nothing quite says equality like stating you hate a group of people and refuse to help them :jingo:

In all seriousness, I'm not going to play the persecution game and argue that LGBT people have it worse than these people, and I'll admit that religious freedom is important. But honestly, when you're expressing your religion by explicitly refusing to help a group of people, I don't care how rough you have it - screwing over another group is never right. If you think your religion is telling you to ditch people because you don't agree with them, that's not religion talking, that's bigotry.

And, according to this article, the students were largely in opposition to this, so I'm seriously wondering what the hay happened.[/quote]

That's like North Carolina changing their state Constitution to have an official religion. Even though it is a direct violation of the First Amendment.

They basically said "we don't care". So it's okay to ignore the First Amendment, but God forbid someone tries to make it a little harder for you to buy a gun, you lose your shit and spout off about the Second Amendment. Sorry North Carolina, you can't have it both ways.

Regarding the Texas thing, if this is due to extremist Christians or something, please understand... we are not all like that. I, along with many other Christians, have a soul and a fucking brain in our head.

Sigh... I hate this planet sometimes :fluttersmith: .

P.S.- Not mad at you Kitty. I'm just saddened by the whole thing.
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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Ninetails (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 8:33 pm

Snowfire wrote:
Thu Apr 04, 2013 8:24 pm
Regarding the Texas thing, if this is due to extremist Christians or something, please understand... we are not all like that. I, along with many other Christians, have a soul and a fucking brain in our head.

Sigh... I hate this planet sometimes :fluttersmith: .

P.S.- Not mad at you Kitty. I'm just saddened by the whole thing.
'S alright, I'm a Christian too :-P And from what I've heard, Texas has been pretty liberal lately (though I can't remember if this board is where I heard that :squintyjack: ) and this is more of a local thing.

And I'm not gonna blame a state or a religion for people's bad choices. I'm gonna blame the people for using the state or religion to justify those choices.

Gravenstein

Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Gravenstein » Thu Apr 04, 2013 8:40 pm

Hey, still on the topic of states passing/trying to pass stupid hateful laws:

Virginia is for lovers! (Unless you're not into straight vaginal intercourse!)

Of course it's largely a symbolic gesture, since Lawrence v. Texas kind of made antisodomy laws unconstitutional 10 years ago, but still: way to be progressive, dickheads. :-/

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Perpetual Motion (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 8:47 pm

Snowfire wrote:
Thu Apr 04, 2013 8:24 pm
[quote="Kitty post_id=16205 time=1365121127 user_id=137]Speaking of dumb news!

A&M University, in my lovely conservative home state of Texas,voted on a "Religious Funding Exemption Bill", formerly the "GLBT Funding Opt Out Bill," so now students can freely choose to not pay for the university's GLBT resource center, all in the name of religious freedom!



Because nothing quite says equality like stating you hate a group of people and refuse to help them :jingo:

In all seriousness, I'm not going to play the persecution game and argue that LGBT people have it worse than these people, and I'll admit that religious freedom is important. But honestly, when you're expressing your religion by explicitly refusing to help a group of people, I don't care how rough you have it - screwing over another group is never right. If you think your religion is telling you to ditch people because you don't agree with them, that's not religion talking, that's bigotry.

And, according to this article, the students were largely in opposition to this, so I'm seriously wondering what the hay happened.
That's like North Carolina changing their state Constitution to have an official religion. Even though it is a direct violation of the First Amendment.

They basically said "we don't care". So it's okay to ignore the First Amendment, but God forbid someone tries to make it a little harder for you to buy a gun, you lose your shit and spout off about the Second Amendment. Sorry North Carolina, you can't have it both ways.

Regarding the Texas thing, if this is due to extremist Christians or something, please understand... we are not all like that. I, along with many other Christians, have a soul and a fucking brain in our head.

Sigh... I hate this planet sometimes :fluttersmith: .

P.S.- Not mad at you Kitty. I'm just saddened by the whole thing.[/quote]

Technically, isn't upholding someone's right to disapprove of homosexuality due to their religious beliefs in the spirit of the First Amendment? I mean, if their religion teaches them to disapprove and not support it, which isn't exactly directly harmful to anyone, then that right should be protected under the law.

Gravenstein

Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Gravenstein » Thu Apr 04, 2013 8:53 pm

edit: I can't read. :pinkieshrug:
Last edited by Gravenstein on Thu Apr 04, 2013 8:57 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Snowfire (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 8:54 pm

[quote="Perpetual post_id=16209 time=1365122875 user_id=77]
Snowfire wrote:
Thu Apr 04, 2013 8:24 pm

That's like North Carolina changing their state Constitution to have an official religion. Even though it is a direct violation of the First Amendment.

They basically said "we don't care". So it's okay to ignore the First Amendment, but God forbid someone tries to make it a little harder for you to buy a gun, you lose your shit and spout off about the Second Amendment. Sorry North Carolina, you can't have it both ways.

Regarding the Texas thing, if this is due to extremist Christians or something, please understand... we are not all like that. I, along with many other Christians, have a soul and a fucking brain in our head.

Sigh... I hate this planet sometimes :fluttersmith: .

P.S.- Not mad at you Kitty. I'm just saddened by the whole thing.
Technically, isn't upholding someone's right to disapprove of homosexuality due to their religious beliefs in the spirit of the First Amendment? I mean, if their religion teaches them to disapprove and not support it, which isn't exactly directly harmful to anyone, then that right should be protected under the law.[/quote]

Except, as Kitty said, the students didn't want this. So the school went against what the student body wanted.

It reeks of bureaucracy and bigotry.
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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Dexanth (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 8:55 pm

[quote="Kitty post_id=16205 time=1365121127 user_id=137]
In all seriousness, I'm not going to play the persecution game and argue that LGBT people have it worse than these people, and I'll admit that religious freedom is important.[/quote]

There's a time and a place to not play the 'It's worse for me than you' card, but in this scenario it's absolutely applicable to say 'Yea, sorry, but you shouldn't be able to choose what you do and don't get to fund here and suck it up'

I've always wished my tuition didn't go to help fund athletics and would have instead funded things like chess clubs or computer societies or what have you, but I don't get to selectively deny funding to them, even though I think a lot of sports culture leads to non-sports inclined students being directly or indirectly harmed.

The thing is there's this fake narrative of 'war against Christianity' that's been increasingly promoted over the last few years, which is one of those cases of 'Whaa, our perfect bigoted WASP society isn't allowed to remain bigoted, woe is us' and I don't really have any sympathy for that.

Daionus The 23rd

Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Daionus The 23rd » Thu Apr 04, 2013 8:56 pm

Why can't we just destroy the human race outright and end all bigotry forever?

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Perpetual Motion (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 8:56 pm

Snowfire wrote:
Thu Apr 04, 2013 8:54 pm
[quote="Perpetual post_id=16209 time=1365122875 user_id=77]

Technically, isn't upholding someone's right to disapprove of homosexuality due to their religious beliefs in the spirit of the First Amendment? I mean, if their religion teaches them to disapprove and not support it, which isn't exactly directly harmful to anyone, then that right should be protected under the law.
Except, as Kitty said, the students didn't want this. So the school went against what the student body wanted.

It reeks of bureaucracy and bigotry.[/quote]

If the student's don't want it, then they will simply refuse to opt out. They're still opted in to funding the group by default. :pinkieshrug:

doodlesplat

Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by doodlesplat » Thu Apr 04, 2013 8:58 pm

Gravenstein wrote:
Thu Apr 04, 2013 8:53 pm
Maybe if A&M was an entirely private university, but about half of their funding comes from Texas' taxpayers. :-/
Therefore, what is needed is an "A&M Funding Exemption Bill" for the taxpayers. :-I

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Ninetails (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 9:01 pm

It was that most students oppose it, not all of them - according to the comments, the school's senate is run by students, too.

Still, it's hard for me to expect that no foul play was involved :-/ Especially with this:
Some senators cursed, and some students stormed out. The woman tallying the senators' decision started crying as the votes were cast.
I just think that this is the kind of issue that never should have been debated. If you don't want to support LGBT people, then go to a college that doesn't, don't take things away :-/

And I don't think that refusing to pay for a support center is exactly harmless. It's making sure that this resource center gets less funding, and hammers in anti-LGBT sentiments whether they want it to or not. It's bigotry plain and simple, no matter how it's dressed up.

[quote="Daionus post_id=16213 time=1365123402 user_id=1]Why can't we just destroy the human race outright and end all bigotry forever?[/quote]

Well, let's be fair - the fact that people are outraged at this and willing to post it to the Internet in said outrage is proof enough that there are people who know darn well that this is wrong, and that means that we should, at least, not call down space lasers on every nation just yet. The battle may be hard, but at least we know we've got an army.
Last edited by Ninetails on Thu Apr 04, 2013 9:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: The Gender and Sexual Minority Thread: Love and Toleranc

Post by Perpetual Motion (?) » Thu Apr 04, 2013 9:02 pm

Whatever taxpayer money was previously going to the organization still goes to the organization. It's just that any student can now opt out of having a portion of their tuition go to the organization. The support center will still be funded. It will simply not receive money from a (likely small) portion of the students.

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