Scary prediction of US fundamentalism and gay equality

[Virge]

Shannon,

I saw your profile & read a few of your comments long before yours on this thread. My first thought was "Fantastic! This guy and I will have lots to talk about!" It seems we do but not exactly what I had in mind in the beginning.

I started a point by point dissection of your comments so far and after taking a jog with my dogs decided I was doing the wrong thing. If I did that I'd be fighting to BE RIGHT and I would have done it. I'm really doing my best in life to move past the struggle to BEING RIGHT and devote my thoughts and energy to DOING RIGHT.

In this case, DOING RIGHT pretty much compels me to make a friend of you even though things appear not to be headed that way. That means I'm not going to say anything in here that will escalate this debate with you and hope you and I can work together to disprove this prediction. For almost a year I've been searching all over for anything to help me believe its wrong. I need your help but so far you've been no help whatsoever and just postured, huffed up and referred to me as a character from a children's book in order to attack something that both of us hope doesn't materialize.

Do you know what happened when Ed Hubble came out with his well researched proof that the universe was expanding? He was ridiculed, mocked and called an idiot by... (drum roll, please.....) Albert Einstein. After about a year, they met Hubble showed Eistein what he had and begged him to help prove the universe wasn't expanding. Once that happened Einstein called in his entire posse to disprove it and then they all came out with a scientific version of 'HOLY SHIT THE UNIVERSE REALLY IS EXPANDING!!!'

Attacking ideas with fallacious arguments (which you have done) and ad hominem attacks (chicken little references) have no effect on the truth of the idea itself. All it proves is how unreasonable and illogical you are willing to be when presented with ideas that challenge what you believe.... just like Einstein did to Hubble. It's not a sign that one of us is smarter than the other. It simply shows that you, like Einstein have some very strongly held beliefs that something is right and you don't like what you believe to be challenged.

As for your proposal that the women's voting rights movement would disprove this prediction of violence.... I wish you'd researched that better. There's a museum in Washington DC devoted to women's rights. Going there will show you how wrong you are about them not enduring violence and discrimination before during and after the push for their right to vote. You're very right about how sources can give false information. In this case you'll be hard pressed to find a history book that tells the details of what they endured because there's been a great deal of shame about it that people who write histories have tried to conceal..as they have done about treatments of Native Americans, Irish, Poles, etc....

I asked you to at least check out the "Wedge Document" of the fundamentalist christian Discovery Institute to which you gave a single possible reference in your defense of fundementalist christianity when you said "There is no hidden agenda."

Really? You need to at least read a summary of the wedge document and see their five, ten and twenty year goals towards pushing christian fundamentalism into art, media, sciences, medicine, government, public education, courts, and literature. Then you need to try to find out why the wedge document is taught in most non-denominational 'christian colleges." Famous people who have quoted from it include Supreme Court Justices, Roy Moore and Tom Parker of Alabama, Michelle Bachman, Rick Santorum, Bryan Fischer, Scott Lively (they man in charge of exporting christian fundamentalist homophobia to third world nations) and that Ayers guy running for the US Senate from Missouri who said women who'd been truly raped had the power to spontaneously abort any pregnancy resulting from rape.

Here's the easy spot where you can laugh these challenging bits off as conspiracy theory, call me a whack job who needs to be on meds or.... stop acting like Einstein and try to prove the universe isn't expanding.

Send me a message if you're up to helping me out.
Thanks.

[ChadCoxRox]

Whose freedom? ... And that aside I'm not sure what you have in mind.

The intent was exactly as your surmised...to provoke thought from a different perspective. Hope it works.

Loved that example. The White Fang clip was a perfect demonstration.

[AlohaShannon]

*Sigh*.

To be quite honest, my core beliefs are not impacted in any way by this thread. I lose no sleep over it and it does not hurt, shake, or rattle me.

I do not look at one source and attribute their agenda or beliefs to every other organization. To do so is ludicrous and in my opinion, the backbone to conspiracy theory arguments.

I choose not to spread fear or push to fit a very large group of people into a very narrow box.

I choose not to respond to your passive-aggressive post in a like manner.

I choose to no longer open this thread as the content is tired, I have stated my opinions, provided you with an example as you requested, but you insist that I said nothing of any value.

My refusal to get sucked into conspiracy theory arguments is not because I am close-minded or unbending. It is because I really just don't care about the topic. I wish you the best of luck with your quest and hope that you realize that just because someone doesn't share you opinions does not mean they are ignorant.

Oh, and really you don't need to private message me any more about this topic. I don't care enough about this to pay any heed to the arguments you present.

[ChadCoxRox]

[I][SIZE="4"]Fundamentalists in the USA are better organized than they have ever been. They are also more extreme and irrational than ever.

An old gay man, a historian and possibly one of the most intelligent men I've ever met has made some predictions based on how the fate of abortion has been changed by fundamentalists in the USA.

He predicts no later than 2020 there will begin another era of domestic terrorism this time directed towards gays and the people who support their efforts towards equality. With fundamentalists being both better organized now and with even more of their own in government the direction of gay equality is still very much undetermined. He predicts it may very well turn out much worse for a very long period before the fundamentalists are pushed out of power.

I've been spending much time for several months trying to find anything to make me think this guy's predictions are wrong. I haven't yet.

Thoughts?

This is a great and quite articulate post meme. My thoughts are that such a movement, if it does happen as predicted here, will have little effect in reducing the value of equality for LGBT amoung our nation's citizens or our judicial, political and economic systems enough to carry the movement backward to any substantial degree unless we are so severely weakened as a nation by some other catastrophe allowing such a shift to be a distraction from much worse consequence. I think your proposal for discussion is wonderful and important. I however am unable to engage in any appreciable depth here as I reserve my energies for such elsewhere apart from GS. Thank you very much for adding a thoughtful and engaging thread. I'll try to follow and participate as much as I can find time or find myself compelled.

[Virge]

Thanks for the reasoned approach you're taking, CCrox. I thought I made it real clear up front that I'm doing my best to prove this prediction wrong. Your quoting what I said really makes it clear a second time.

Let's say there just a 0.0001% chance of it coming true. That's most likely right there in the range of probabilities for being in a direct hit by a tornado, being eaten by a bear or cougar, witnessing a fatal car crash, or being in a restaurant when someone chokes on food.

Are all the people who have storm shelters, bear size cans of pepper spray when hiking, with first aid kits in their cars and know the Heimlich maneuver paranoid conspiracy theorists or chicken littles? To me this is just one more of those types of possibilities that I'd rather know about in advance than when it's too late to prepare for it. I do wear tin foil hats once a year --- on my birthday, New years Eve... LOL.

I've posted this same question in other forums (gay and straight) and HATE to stereotype the people who react negatively right off the bat... but stereotyping wouldn't be a problem if people who get stereotyped didn't make it so easy for them to be stereotyped. Anytime someone has started yelling things like "conspiracy theory" and "chicken little" it's always just a matter of time before they get around to the real issue about it that bugs them. This time was no different. I'll leave it at that.

[ChadCoxRox]

Thanks for the reasoned approach you're taking, CCrox. I thought I made it real clear up front that I'm doing my best to prove this prediction wrong. Your quoting what I said really makes it clear a second time.

I've posted this same question in other forums (gay and straight) and HATE to stereotype the people who react negatively right off the bat... but stereotyping wouldn't be a problem if people who get stereotyped didn't make it so easy for them to be stereotyped. Anytime someone has started yelling things like "conspiracy theory" and "chicken little" it's always just a matter of time before they get around to the real issue about it that bugs them. This time was no different. I'll leave it at that.

I would suggest your proposal is far more important and deserving of considered thought and conversation than the expense and distraction of personal offense. A more casual approach, or at least more forgiving, might be less intimidating or off-putting. Not to say you were solely such, I think it is a reasonable topic for discussion that will not prove productive in debate if emotions have already clouded the pool of discourse. You are quite skilled as demonstrated so I'm sure you'll agree.

I am unaware of any pattern or thread of concern as you describe but I can easily imagine how a such a theory might be entertained solely for the sake of discussion as the idea is not totally unreasonable. I am however VERY aware of a pattern and thread of ill will amongst our own culture toward propagation of fear and conspiracy. Knowing this well makes it understandable there'd be little patience for those who perceive it foremost than the sincere effort to simply have a conversation.

Anyway, as I said, I don't engage in such in any depth on GS because I reserve that energy for things more valuable to me personally. I just want to try and assuage your defenses by acknowledging your sincerity. If we can take the subject further without more negative bullshit (from any direction) then fine. I'm all for that.

[phillyboy1234]

I think comparing homosexuality to abortion rights is like comparing apples and oranges. And to think that the far right will simply give up on fighting abortion and just move on to the next topic seems absurd.

[Virge]

No one has compared homosexuality to abortion. I agree it's absurd to believe the far right will simply give up fighting abortion, but in case you haven't been keeping up with events in the past 10 years they are making abortion either illegal or logistically almost impossible in many states so they're actually winning their fight against abortion.

Can you not see the same strategies used against abortion being applied to gay equality? They are attempting to pass laws state by state to actually legalize discrimination against gays! (the Arizona bill and all it's clones haven't gone away yet... they'll be back) They are fighting in virtually every state against gay equality the same ways they fought against abortion.... And they're resorting to tactics that are worse than anything in their efforts to ban abortion.

The comparison is ONLY of the tactics and strategies of the fundamentalists and their right wing political puppets. They are almost identical.

[phillyboy1234]

No one has compared homosexuality to abortion. I agree it's absurd to believe the far right will simply give up fighting abortion, but in case you haven't been keeping up with events in the past 10 years they are making abortion either illegal or logistically almost impossible in many states so they're actually winning their fight against abortion.

Can you not see the same strategies used against abortion being applied to gay equality? They are attempting to pass laws state by state to actually legalize discrimination against gays! (the Arizona bill and all it's clones haven't gone away yet... they'll be back) They are fighting in virtually every state against gay equality the same ways they fought against abortion.... And they're resorting to tactics that are worse than anything in their efforts to ban abortion.

The comparison is ONLY of the tactics and strategies of the fundamentalists and their right wing political puppets. They are almost identical.

It won't happen. The Republican Party is currently imploding, much like the Democrats did in the 60s and 70s. You will certainly continue to have Repbulican strongholds, but as it stands now the Republicans can kiss goodbye to a long future without doing something to attract more than the old white male vote. Let's face it: going on a rampage against gay rights isn't going to attract many votes.