Opinion of TJ in Cleve

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Hopefully TJ by now has abandoned his stated intention to ground his future children for seeing their SOs if one of them turns out to be gay.  FF if so.

Anyone who believes that LGBT folk are not worthy of the same rights as straight people is an HP. He's nice and he's personable, but I'm not sorry. We need to make loud and clear that there is no room for these views in any decent society. They perpetuate the idea that gay people are inherently "less than," and it is absolutely not okay.

nobody cares

Incorrect.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Child abuse is more inexcusable than opposition to SSM.  I hope we can all agree on that much.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Yeah, I really don't have much to add beyond what Snowguy, afleitch, David, etc. have already said.

Tony, I've known you for a while here so I am familiar with your contempt towards the issue of SSM in general.  Please don't take this personally, because I'm not out here to demean or condemn you, but I do believe it's possible you have certain mild homophobic tendencies you might be trying to suppress.  You are an outspoken feminist, I think you would agree, so it is rather curious that you don't incorporate some elements of intersectionality in your postings, at least as far as this issue is concerned.

And, I do think that "privilege" plays something of a role here.  (FTR I generally despise that term because of the connotation of 'collective guilt' it carries and because I think it totally mischaracterizes the root causes of inequality, but that's a topic for another thread.)  If you are not someone from a group that society marginalizes, looks down upon, tries to cast away, or outright denies certain things to them or tells them to 'settle' for lesser substitutes of what other people enjoy, then it's easy to minimize these issues because you are not directly affected by them.

I don't think that people like TJ can or should be forced to change their outlook on this issue because of their sincerely-held religious beliefs (none of which I will try to apologize for... and child abuse is a whole different matter, obviously), but fortunately society is becoming more accepting and someday these conversations will no longer be necessary.

But until that happens, it's best that we work for both social and economic equality, and understand that this can't be achieved simply by nationalizing the private sector and making everything free.  That's why BLM works so hard for social change: free education won't end racial profiling or systematic racism in the workforce.  The same goes for LGBT equality, which goes beyond marriage benefits.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Like I said, I wasn't trying to chastise you or make you feel bad or anything, Tony.  I know you support gay equality and I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.

Anyway, this thread has certainly gone downhill, so I'm going to hold my peace now.