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[mainiac]

What do you think?

It's a bit like the gold standard.  Everytime the institutions screw up people want to scrap them and go back to lawless anarchy.  But the lawless anarchy will screw up all the time while the institutions can be fixed.

[Willfor]

Man, think of how simple it would be if all the world's problems were religion's fault instead of peoples? Then we'd actually have to confront underlying issues, and all of that! Things might be complex.

Apparently MetalSlimeHunt has never met an atheistic homophobe. Given that I have, and that it's impossible to convince them that they're being irrational, I'm pretty sure other explanations need to be present other than "religion is homophobia's source". Given that even societies that have completely rejected religion have persecuted the LGBT community, maybe we shouldn't give atheism the silver bullet seal of approval.

[Vilanat]

Because you met an atheistic homophobe it somehow excuse religion's role in homophobia?

Haven't bothered to look it up, because it's so darn obvious, but i bet there's a study out there that shows Homophobia is vastly more common with religious people.

[Frumple]

... yeeeeeaaaaah, walking by TV, I can tell the news is going to be thoroughly pissing me off for at least the next few days. "We stand in solidarity with the LBGT community, but this was both an act of terrorism and a hate crime, and now we're going to spend all our time talking about terrorism. We're sorry dead gay people, but we've got something else to dedicate our screen time to." Latter half implied, but the former was only just shy of being verbatim; they didn't actually say they were going to stop talking about the hate aspect, they just spent 75+% of the time talking about other things. Vulgarity does not exist to properly express the sentiment this engenders.

[Teneb]

... yeeeeeaaaaah, walking by TV, I can tell the news is going to be thoroughly pissing me off for at least the next few days. "We stand in solidarity with the LBGT community, but this was both an act of terrorism and a hate crime, and now we're going to spend all our time talking about terrorism. We're sorry dead gay people, but we've got something else to dedicate our screen time to." Latter half implied, but the former was only just shy of being verbatim; they didn't actually say they were going to stop talking about the hate aspect, they just spent 75+% of the time talking about other things. Vulgarity does not exist to properly express the sentiment this engenders.

It's almost like every political discourse ever.

[Frumple]

Eh, at least those tend to be fairly blunt that they're only going to be talking about one or the other (or other, or other, or etc.) side of things. It's that attempt to... I'unno conflate or some shit, th'head's not really working right at the mo', that gets to me. Focusing on one or the other is okay, it's when you claim to be all about both and then strongly demonstrate that you're not that gets to me, I think. If you're going to say you stand in solidarity, goddamn stand in it. If you're not, express your sympathies and move on. Somethin' along those lines.

[Baffler]

Eh, at least those tend to be fairly blunt that they're only going to be talking about one or the other (or other, or other, or etc.) side of things. It's that attempt to... I'unno conflate or some shit, th'head's not really working right at the mo', that gets to me. Focusing on one or the other is okay, it's when you claim to be all about both and then strongly demonstrate that you're not that gets to me, I think. If you're going to say you stand in solidarity, goddamn stand in it. If you're not, express your sympathies and move on. Somethin' along those lines.

There's only so much they can say beyond that they're standing in solidarity (whatever the fuck that even means) though, while they can talk endlessly about the terrorism angle and, to be blunt, that's what the vast majority of the people watching the news are most concerned about in this story. They have their agenda just like anyone else.

[Frumple]

Pretty sure there's a hell of a lot they could say about the state of violence against the LGBT communities in the US, and whatnot. Discrimination and such, too. At least enough to split the airtime something a bit closer to 50/50.

But sure, they've got their agenda, and their way of handling things, and yeah, much of their viewers likely don't actually give two shits about the hate aspect or anything involved with it. Doesn't mean their way of handling things doesn't piss me off a bit.

[Vilanat]

The fact that he chose a gay club is only secondary to his decision to carry on a terrorist attack, which in itself is only a byproduct of his radical islamic thinking.

It's just like in the hypercacher in Paris terrorist attack it was obvious why one of the terrorists chose jews, but it was also obvious that if it wasn't jews, it would have been others, so killing Jews was not the reason for the terrorist attack in the first place.

His prime motivation in Orlando was not to kill gays, it was to kill Americans. killing American gays, just like killing French Jews in Paris, is considered in their twisted minds like "Hitting two birds with one stone".

Or do you still believe his father statement that he was simply "angry about seeing two gay men kiss in Miami"? because that dad also stated his own support for his brothers in the Taliban.

[Sheb]

Should be kept in mind that just because ISIS claims this as one of their own doesn't mean they have anything to do with the planning.

Also, what Vilanat says.

Which reminds me of that Al-Qaeda magazine that advocated organizing terrorists attacks in the Dordogne region of France "Target both Britons and French, strike two crusaders with one stone".

[SalmonGod]

And even if you think I'm wrong about everything else, there's no doubt we wouldn't have anything resembling the world's current persecution of LGBT people without religious justification.

Homosexuality was harshly persecuted under the Soviets and Nazi Germany, completely unrelated to religion.  There's historical precedent.

I honestly don't believe religion has anything to do with it.  I think it's authoritarian culture.  An authoritarian leadership will want a homogenous population that's easy to understand and control.  Those living in an authoritarian culture will be eager to attach their prejudices to authoritarian structure's willingness to persecute in pursuit of homogeny.  The authoritarian structure does not have to be religious, and in the absence of religion, I firmly believe that social reactionaries will simply create alternate authoritarian structures to buddy up with others who share their prejudices and pursue their goals.

The one advantage that religion has is it assigns responsibility for the persecution to an authority that is above humanity and doesn't have to explain itself.  So when challenged, the religious can simply say "because god says so", which is a lot easier to treat as a dismissive final statement than "because glorious human mortal leader who can be asked his reasoning directly and lives in that palace over there says so".

Yeah, it's no comfort to victims to assert that freeing them from persecution isn't as simple as eliminating a group, but I don't believe in false comforts.
Just like you said, it's not a real solution until the real problem is dealt with.  I don't think that eradicating religion would be dealing with the real problem, and is a logic that could be argued to share common roots with its enemy.  Worse, it gets in the way of dealing with the real problem, because it feeds religious people's persecution complexes, which usually makes them double-down on their fundamentalism.  So we get more conflict and hatred over a pursuit that won't actually accomplish anything.

[Spehss _]

... yeeeeeaaaaah, walking by TV, I can tell the news is going to be thoroughly pissing me off for at least the next few days. "We stand in solidarity with the LBGT community, but this was both an act of terrorism and a hate crime, and now we're going to spend all our time talking about terrorism. We're sorry dead gay people, but we've got something else to dedicate our screen time to." Latter half implied, but the former was only just shy of being verbatim; they didn't actually say they were going to stop talking about the hate aspect, they just spent 75+% of the time talking about other things. Vulgarity does not exist to properly express the sentiment this engenders.

Dedicating air-time to hate crime against gays would be of interest primarily to gay people or people who are interested in that kind of issue. Dedicating air-time to talking about terrorism can be of interest to anyone in the nation.

One series of stories has a smaller market than another series of stories, and the news network's primary interest is getting people to watch so they can make ad-money. Makes sense to me to angle for the largest possible viewers as possible. Especially nowadays when the tv networks have to compete with the internet.

[Frumple]

... you were ninja'd, space.

[Loud Whispers]

Is it true Hillary Clinton's top backer killed the Onion

Seems too funny to believe, especially given how it's the Onion

[Spehss _]

... you were ninja'd, space.

?

Because other people talked about it then I'm not allowed to weigh in on my opinion? _{^{I didn't read any posts prior to mine but past the one I responded to so maybe other people already said what I said I dunno I can't read.}}