How is that wrong again?! It is true that they are trying to gain legitimacy. It is no longer about rights but now it is about acceptance. The time has come now to the point where anyone who holds an anti-gay position is criticized and/or boycotted. Now we have not just reached giving gays equal treatment but making changes to accommodate a different lifestyle.
The second point OSC makes is sourced in a discomfort from social disruption. There is a tendency to blame many current state of affairs on the gay movement.
I think in summary we should all reflect on the amount of insight this guy has and the capabilities of prediction he possesses. Just by simply observing things, he makes some deep accurate predictions that are very remote in the future. The article you linked to seems to be written in 1990.
I disagree with who you are as a person, and on that basis, I think you should be denied rights that are routinely given to the rest of the population. Additionally, I find you personally foul and repulsive, and your very nature disgusts me. But it's nothing personal!
Wait, what? You're upset? You want to fight back? You think that just because you're a human being you should be given the same basic consideration under the law as anyone else? HOW DARE YOU PERSECUTE ME BECAUSE OF MY BELIEFS!
Just so you know, this is what you - and Orson Scott Card - sound like when you try to use this "argument."
Is "don't buy from Nazis" really the same as "don't buy from Jews"? It's not about attacking people who disagree, it's about withdrawing support from those who attack others.
Let's say, someone beats their wife brutally, but they're very good at bowling, and always treat you respectfully. Would you feel good about going bowling with them, regardless of how much objectively correct things about bowling they could teach you? Or would you realize the world is full of people who know as much and more, who don't come with quite such a bad aftertase?
It sounds equivalent to "don't buy scripts or other moviemaking services from Communists."
The distinction you are attempting to draw about attacking others makes little sense given the examples I cited. Opponents of polygamy, supporters of Obamacare and opponents of privacy all favor attacking others (polygamists, people who don't buy health insurance, and people who don't cooperate with spying). Most public policies involve attacking someone - all laws are ultimately enforced at the point of a gun.
There is still a difference between bigoted, chauvinistic superstitions and scapegoating, and disagreements about public policy happening in good faith.
You haven't answered my second question. Have you at least thought about it?
It's just music! Why can't people "just listen to the music" which itself has nothing to do with antisemitism? Oh, but that's different, because it strikes close to home for them, right? Well no, the same goes for any homosexuals or those having empathy for them. Or people who just don't like the idea of the US sinking into chaos (violent revolution) because some truly believe that what homosexuals do in their bedrooms or marriages is to blame for their own abysmal performance in both.
You could argue that you personally don't mind listening to Wagner, but that's not an argument for what others should do - surely you understand that. Likewise, the person that started this subthread didn't say everybody should not listen to OSC, but simply asked if anyone else has the same reaction as them. That's perfectly legit, and making such a fuss about is just silly.
Is the article really that good? It seems like the only good thing anyone has to say about this article, is that what someone else said in alleged attack of it is fallacious...? I found it cringeworthy personally.
Lastly, it's not like someone said OSC made good points with X and Y, and then someone else replied "but he's a homophobe!". The ad-hominem complaints are silly anyway: the post itself is only on here because of who wrote it, not because it's that good, and a negative ad-hominem is kind of a valid response to a positive ad-hominem.
I don't actually have a good answer for your second question. It's a tricky one, which is why I wrote nothing. In the specific circumstance you describe I probably wouldn't bowl with the guy - heck, I've cut people off for far less (e.g., slut shaming in my presence). On the other hand, my cofounder is a big proponent of all sorts of things I oppose (Obamacare, basic income, extreme feminism) and I have no plans to cut her off.
I suspect the reason this jumped out at me is that it's literally an attempt to ostracize a hollywood writer for his other views, and being the good liberal that I am (culturally speaking) this jumps out at me.
So I guess at this point I'm walking away with far less certainty of my views than I started with.
As for the article, you are right that it's not position #1 good. It's a well written version of the same sort of fluff that HN has way too much of, nothing more.
The problem with this logic is that by characterizing preferring one lifestyle to another as an "anti-X position" and therefore something that is by default wrong, we encourage the dismantling of our entire culture.
If we are to say that the only acceptable view is that being gay is as good as being straight, then we must logically do the same for the following
* Being transgender
* Being a sex worker
* Eating shit for sexual gratification (no chance of AIDS!)
* Having sex with animals (without harming them)
I'm not sure that any of the above are very immoral, but I'm not comfortable with teaching that they are ideal, or advisable. I'm also not comfortable with teaching children that becoming a sex worker is as good a career path as any other.
We as a society need to maintain a balance between protecting everyone's rights, and allowing people to have their own personal tastes and opinions. This balance should be based on enforcing the most basic laws that guarantee a person's right to life and safety. Gay people should be free from threats of violence. But so should everyone else, including groups who will never be considered as oppressed by liberals, like nerds in high school. As for tastes and preferences, this isn't something we can decide in a top down way.
The entire anti-bullying push is based on a narrative in which bullying results from our society being insufficiently inclusive. If people were more tolerant of differences, we are told, the motivation for bullying would go away.
However this reasoning only applies to certain kinds of bullying, such as bullying of gays (and [1] argues it doesn't even apply in this case). Nerds are bullied because of their actual weakness, not because they are different per se. The sub-culture is a response to bullying, not vice versa.
In order to deal with this kind of bullying, we would need a new narrative in which people have an innate tendency towards picking on other people, and that if not kept in check, this can reach to physical violence and other extremes.
The original essay was written in 1990, his follow up was October, 2013 - he stands by everything he wrote in it, with the only change in his position is that he's no longer seeking to criminalize sexual activity between gay people. That's the progress he's managed to make in 23 years.
Is this different from, say, the black movement? What if there were no longer segregated schools and bathrooms, but african-americans were prohibited to adopt children and black history were not allowed to be taught in schools?
edit: I'm not from the U.S. so I don't know everything as far as minority rights go over there. In my country there are laws agains racism, and they're trying to pass anti-homophobia laws too. I do have a problem with both of these, though, as anybody expressing a racist opinion can be simply jailed without bail. I find the U.S. stance on free speech much more... how do I put it... free?
It's not really any different from the black movement. People who defend institutionalized hatred of gay people don't seem to understand this, and are forever perplexed as to why people affected by it feel so strongly about the issue.
To go a step further, to those who want to continue denying gays rights on the basis of their sexual orientation, they think that allowing gays to marry is just as bad as jailing someone for expressing a racist opinion. They literally do not understand the difference between these two things, hence the virulence of argument.
In the US, it boils down to: you are free to be as much as a bigot as you like in your personal life (there are some special laws about renting and employment) but as long as you are not combining your bigotry with another crime (assault, harassment) you can let your hate flag fly.
I think this helps society blow of some of its racism and bigotry in a safer way than just repressing it, but it's an ongoing struggle between too much freedom and too little, like everything else in America.
The time has come now to the point where anyone who holds an anti-gay position is criticized and/or boycotted
You say that like it's a bad thing.
It is no longer about rights but now it is about acceptance
(a) There are still lots of rights that many states and organisations do not recognise. (b) There is no difference between rights and acceptance/legitimacy.
There is no difference between rights and acceptance/legitimacy.
In a society that hopes to remain free, there must be a difference between these. There must be space for dialogue, for experimentation, for uncertainty, for personal preference, for disagreement. "Everything which is not prohibited is mandatory" is a totalitarian motto.
For example, although I find Nancy Grace repulsive, illegitimate, unacceptable, unwatchable, and generally awful, at some level I realize she has the right to produce her execrable television programs, and I don't seek to undermine that right.
Perhaps I'm quibbling over a minor point, as I certainly have no quarrel with criticism and boycotts of OSC (or of anyone really), even though I don't choose to take part myself.
Your argument is nonsense. People can voice intolerant opinions all they like, but when they make laws that affect a specific group of people on the basis of that intolerance, they've gone a long, far step beyond just voicing an opinion. You want to be intolerant? Great, have at it. But you don't get to back your intolerant beliefs up with intolerant laws. Intolerance in this context isn't about personally disliking a group of people, it's about actively discriminating against them on a widespread basis because of that dislike, and yes, there should be zero tolerance for that sort of thing.
The second point OSC makes is sourced in a discomfort from social disruption. There is a tendency to blame many current state of affairs on the gay movement.
I think in summary we should all reflect on the amount of insight this guy has and the capabilities of prediction he possesses. Just by simply observing things, he makes some deep accurate predictions that are very remote in the future. The article you linked to seems to be written in 1990.