Johonebesus wrote:To Mike:
Look twit, you're completely missing the point, or maybe redefining the point to better suit your tastes (in fact, this isn't the first time you've done it).
Look moron, you're trying to evade by getting personal. Don't think I'm not willing to escalate in that direction if you persist.
I'm not talking about moral absolutes.
Bullshit. I quote from you:
You wrote:Parading down the street in only a leather thong and humping a total stranger while riding on a float shaped like a phallus is shoving it down people's throats.
And when challenged, you said:
No, by that logic having a float in a parade carrying huge signs saying "non-Christians are going to burn in hell forever" would be shoving religion down our throats.
In other words, you
did say that being open with your sexuality is "shoving it down peoples' throats" and is just as aggressive as outright hatemongering.
I was never arguing that any sexual displays are intrinsically more pushy than religious displays, because "pushy" is necessarily subjective.
Then it's too bad you didn't say it was merely offensive to certain people. You said it was "shoving it down peoples' throats." That's an absolute statement that it's pushy.
What is pushy to you may not be pushy to me. This discussion is about relative social norms, not intrinsic absolutes. I never made any appeal to popular opinion, because we are talking precisely about popular attitudes.
Can you backpedal any faster?
From an absolute perspective, it's pretty hard to have "pushy" sexuality. Anything short of persistent, unwanted advances isn't quite "pushy", and I don't know if "pushy" adequately describes rape. You are correct that my point boils down to "people find it [highly] offensive, therefore it must be more pushy," because I was talking about subjective values.
Now, perhaps I should have been a bit more clear and precise to begin with, but I wasn't trying to start a detailed philosophic debate. Let me try to be more clear. "Shoving it in their face" is necessarily relative to social norms and values.
Bullshit. It is no more intrinsically "relative" than the term "pushy"; it is, in fact, nothing more than a synonym of the above. You're arguing that "shoving it down peoples' throats" is completely different from "pushy"
It is my belief that homosexuality should be judged by the same standards as heterosexuality. Society isn't there yet, but that is where we are headed, despite the best efforts of the conservatives.
None of which in any way supports your asinine claim that public openness about one's personal sexuality is more "shoving it down peoples' throats" than public displays of religion, massive churches, weirdoes carrying "John 3:16" signs to sporting events, etc.
Now, there are two significant differences between the lesbians in the bar and sex on parade. First, there is a difference in degree. Our society holds that graphic sexuality is inappropriate for public display. That is called lewd or indecent. "Light" displays of sexuality, holding hands, hugging, a little kissing, even heavy kissing in a semi-private environment like a bar, are generally considered acceptable. Stripping almost naked and simulating sexual acts in public is not. Most people do not like it. The degree of distaste runs from mildly put off to greatly offended and shocked, but the vast majority of folks find it inappropriate at some level. According to the last polls I saw on the matter, the public is about evenly split as to whether little displays of homosexual affection are highly offensive. Many people who would find my float offensive wouldn't be much bothered by just seeing two guys kissing.
The second difference is the level of intrusiveness. A "little" display can be ignored quite easily. If you see two men kissing and don't like it, you can very easily look away. In fact, you might not even notice it if you don't look for it. On the other hand, my float is a very large display, on the public street, not only in clear view of everybody nearby, but designed specifically to grab as much attention as possible. The very point of the display is to call folk's attention and make it difficult for them to ignore the offending behavior. It is much more intrusive than a little kissing. A large building is somewhere in the middle. While it is large and harder to ignore, it is still passive. If you drive down the street and see a large church, then my float turns the corner, which one is going to grab your attention?
The float, since churches are EVERYWHERE. This hardly makes them less pushy, since they were built on land which was granted to them for free by the state, and are supported by tax deductible contributions. Are you arguing that if you become desensitized to something, it must be less pushy? In a world where there were normally no churches, one would be rather taken aback to discover a huge building with a giant cross permanently situated in the middle of a residential neighbourhood.
Now, inherent in this line of reasoning, but unstated previously, is that society has norms and values that are relative and subjective, but real none-the-less, and that it is undesirable to deliberately shock and offend as many people as you can for no good reason. Perhaps I should have stated it in previous posts, but it didn't seem necessary. Obviously, I was wrong. It does seem to me that, whether one agrees with social norms or not, it is at best counter-productive, and at worst morally wrong, to try to offend as many people as possible with no goal other than to make them mad or upset. You started to get the point when you agreed that "it's politically unwise for gays to act like that in public," but then you went back to insisting that I must be talking about moral absolutes, which I was not.
The phrase "shoving it down peoples' throats" is a statement of its intrinsic nature, not peoples' reactions. Your furious backpedaling changes nothing.
Anytime we discuss concepts of lewdness or indecency, we can only discuss them in terms of relative social norms.
We're not discussing concepts of lewdness or indecency. We're discussing the question of whether it's "shoving it down peoples' throats" to be open about something in public, even if you don't actually do anything
to anyone.
If you want to analyze those norms to determine whether they are logical or have any real value in an absolute way, then that's fine, and I would likely agree with many of your conclusions. However, that is not what I was doing. If I was unclear, then I apologize, but your previous post was not arguing with me; it was arguing past me, not against what I was really arguing but against what you thought I was arguing.
I see, so your actual argument is that "shoving it down peoples' throats" is your personal codeword for subjective social values and moral relativism
