We support equality except at work!Follow

You have to remember we're good at beach volley ball too; some competition there and such.

I suppose you'd more about that part than me. I can't say I have the same motivation to follow the men's beach stuff.

I'm sad about our lack of a dominant speed skating team. How's short track? I'm not really paying enough attention.

I always cheer for the dutch.

"All the comparisons"? I made one comparison. You complained about it, and I replaced that comparison with a list of other comparisons. Yet, you continue to ignore those and focus on just that first set. If your argument is valid it should work against those other comparisons I used, and the fact that you keep moving away from them suggests you know your argument isn't valid.

I'll ask again: Why should we add sexual orientation to the list of criteria protected from discrimination but *not* add height, or weight, or hairstyle, foot size, body odor, or any of a thousand other random things we might include? I've asked this question over and over and none of you have an answer. That should be a huge hint to you that you're missing something.



I think a very small percentage of the population hates homosexuals. I think a roughly equal percentage of those people fall into both the GOP and Democratic parties. I don't believe that this group has any more influence over the positions of the GOP than it does for the Democrats. Statistically, African Americans are much more likely to overtly express negative or even homophobic feelings and take action on those feelings than any other group in our nation. African Americans overwhelmingly vote Democrat. Clearly, homophobia and/or hatred of homosexuals does not outweigh other political factors when people make voting decisions Joph. So suggesting that hatred for gays is somehow a special feature of the GOP is not just wrong, but unfair to the entire issue.

Conservatives oppose special treatment within our laws for *everyone*, not just that one group of people you liberals are trying to highlight right at this moment. I keep trying to make you see this by asking about other groups that you aren't fighting for right now. See, for a conservative there's no difference. It's not about me opposing something for homosexuals, but me opposing it for *everyone*. But for you liberals, it's about one group that you're focusing on at the moment. You've decided that you like that group and feel you must provide some benefit to that group to show that you like them (or at least that you don't hate them).

As a conservative, I think that's a completely backwards way to look at things, and causes these issues to become incredibly arbitrary and subject to unfair application.




You're kidding, right? Who's "they"? You're making a crazy unsustainable claim Joph. It's laughable. You believe that conservatives must oppose some benefit you want to bestow on a group because you've justified that benefit on the basis of being "for" or "against" the group. Conservatives do not make decisions on that basis. How many times do I have to explain this?

You made numerous comparisons, I quoted them earlier in the thread.

I guess you're so well taught that you don't even realize anymore when you do it.

Given that all the speed skaters I see in action regularly earn their living by speed skating there aren't any jobless ones that I know of. I don't know any openly gay ones either and all the short ones are Asian which probably interests you but not Gbaji.

I miss watching Katarina Le May Doan skate.

I already did. Several times. The default position in a free society is that each individual within that society is free to do with his property what he wishes. Since employment is a choice of the employer to use his property in a given way (in this case to employ someone), then the default position is that he's free to use any criteria he wants to use when deciding who to hire.

So my argument is that we should not need to add any criteria to that small list unless the case can be made for adding it. The default is that the employer is free to use any criteria he wishes to use when hiring people. The exceptions are that race, sex, and religion cannot be used as criteria. Those are exceptions because they are not the norm (obvious, yeah, but I feel like I really have to drill this into people's heads). So if you think we should add additional exceptions the argument has to be made for adding those exceptions.

Does that makes sense?




It's not about minority or majority. It's about the rationale behind a position. The majority can still be "wrong". Appeal to popularity is a logical fallacy. This is why I'm asking people to actually make the argument for why sexual orientation should be an exception in our laws. And so far, no one has been able to provide a non circular or arbitrary "strong" argument for that exception. I'm still waiting.

Edited, Nov 13th 2013 3:41pm by gbaji

Probably because of the lack of a cheap cable package that would actually cover it. If I have to go online to watch, well, there are other websites out there that do that kind of thing. Though they usually skip the skating part.

No way. They're about stripping liberty from God fearing freedom loving Americans who just want to hate gays and say they don't really hate gays because they wouldn't hire pedophile drug rapists (oh! did I says that? I meant "short people") either.

Sure. But which actions, towards which people, and in which circumstances? The details are important. Unless you're advocating for making all discriminatory actions against all people under all circumstances illegal, then you kinda have to provide a justification for this particular discrimination against this particular group of people in these particular circumstances.

Which is what I keep asking, but no one seems to be able to do. What criteria do we use to make that determination? As I stated earlier, a logical criteria is to examine the broad socio-economic condition of the group in question and determine if some specific discriminatory action(s) is affecting that condition to a sufficient degree to result in a significant and clear disadvantage for that group.

Historically, we have been able to show this for religious affiliation, and for sex, and for race. Thus, over time, we've added each of those to a short list of criteria which cannot be used to discriminate. That's the criteria we use. The problem is that when you try to apply that criteria to sexual orientation, it doesn't work. There is not very clear and significant differences in socio-economic status that can be tied directly and purely to sexual orientation. Certainly not when compared to other groups for which we allow discrimination (such as short people, as I mentioned earlier). There must be some objective threshold of "harm" at which we decide is sufficient to justify prohibiting discrimination, and sexual orientation doesn't meet it.

That's why we should not add them to the list. It's not about liking or disliking homosexuals. It's about homosexuals simply not being disadvantaged sufficiently within our society to justify this special protection. Again, you're all free to disagree, but if you do, then you have to actually make the case that they are sufficiently disadvantaged. And to do that, you have to first show their degree of overall disadvantage and then show that this is greater than any other currently unprotected group and thus they require special protection. If you can't do that, but still argue for them to be granted special protection, then your position is not based on any objective criteria but rather some form of preference for a given group. Which is a **** poor way to do things IMO.

Let's all get naked and scream "false equivalency!" at each other for a few hours.


At least then we'd be naked.