At the risk of putting the thread back in the "just picking apart everything other people said" camp, something GlyphGryph said irks me massively and I need to slap him.
Social progress is made by convincing those who oppose it that they will be ostracized if they remain committed to making things worse.
GG, ostracizing those who you perceive as "wrong" is how the whole repression of LGBT started. With a bunch of old guys going "Lets ostracize the gays because they are doing something we see as wrong"
Doing it in reverse doesn't help anything, and is the essence of "Fuck You Got Mine" that you criticized earlier.
You may now return to your regularly scheduled flamebait.
I disagree. We have to ostracize
someone. Or would you prefer we let everyone do whatever? How about, say, Westboro, do you feel societies ostracization of them is wrong? International condemnation of South Africa's Apartheid policy? Even though the ostracization of the latter was a factor in it's end? Not ostracizing implies a perfect world where everyone does the right thing. And when people believe (as they often do) that people disagreeing with their highly unpopular view is ostracization, what then? It calls into question what is allowed and what isn't! Is your personal idea of ostracization more correct then theirs? The argument, taken to it's conclusion, is madness.
This is in the other direction I think from glow-cat: People
can be wrong. They have the right to present their arguments free of prejudice, but from then on, people can disagree, or anything else, all they want. I re-iterate: It is a person's right to be a bigot. It is everyone else's right to ignore them.
If they, like CVS pharmacy recently did with their decision to stop offering cigarettes, choose to make a moral decision, they can.
Minor, and more of a "providing information" than "contributing to the discussion" thing, but CVS's decision to stop selling cigs had jack-all to do with morality and everything to do with public image -- they're wanting to expand their health services and really can't do that without biting a huge hypocrite bullet if they're still selling cigs. It helps that said expansion is slated and likely to make them several times more money than their tobacco product sales were.
So... not the best of examples. Their decision is pure cold-blooded number crunching. The only "right" or "wrong" they're considering with that decision is "more money" or "less money".
Incidentally, one of the (probably the) biggest reasons we are seeing a general increase in diversity among media? Market demographics are changing. Women having more buying power, previous minorities achieving (near) plurality in certain nations, globalization (and, by extension, new foreign markets) is growing, etc., so forth, so on. People are increasing hiring diversity -- which strongly influences content diversity -- because it gets them an edge on understanding a growing portion of the market. Just... don't confuse that for anything related to higher order functions -- right, wrong, moral, immoral, etc. That particular facet of the shift has nothing whatsoever to do with that stuff, and everything to do with profit maximization.
...It's a related concept. While moral judgments are all well and good, sometimes persuasion by people who
do have conscience is best. I'd prefer bigots know enough to keep their stuff to themselves then go around bothering everyone (I'd like most if they reformed, but I am no idealist). I think that in the future the fact that no one shows these view will lead to it becoming less popular culturally, although there are many reservations to this. It helps.
I mean if we want to get really philosophical, I hope people do put pressure on Video Game companies, and use arguments entirely anathema to mine here, and change things. Morally I think they are in the right and hope they succeed. But ethics do not favor them (or oppose them!). My frame of mind for what is ethical and acceptable, and what I think is right and best, are far apart.