iNow

Not if you're in one of the schools or apartment buildings or historical sites across Ukraine being struck with Russian missiles like right now. Or if your mom and sister are being raped by their soldiers, etc.

Would prefer this type of thing not happen here, please. Is it possible you thought Zapatos was replying to your post immediately prior to his and that’s what triggered this counterpunch, bc it appears to me he was actually replying to my OP and it had nothing to do with you You let me help Migration to other countries after the massive earthquake disaster is likely to drive increases in right wing bile and fascism and various xenophobias. Russia and China and NK and Iran and Saudis and Qatar etc will all likely use their programming prowess to amplify that. At least the Israel government has been keeping things super chill. Oh… wait.

Probably Japan and potentially Singapore, too Correct

Rooting out the bad politics and laws would be far more fruitful still, and in my estimation that social movement which drives actual social change starts with each of never tiring from ridding these rotten turnips from as many potentially supportive heads as possible. The folks pushing these bad politics and bad laws and bad turnips into our schools and public spaces tend to be FAR louder than those who are against them / who support acceptance. It’s well passed time more of us speak up as gladiating counterweights. The problem is worsening globally, and that trend needs to end.

Oh. Poop. I thought debate and investigation were still allowed. Dagnabbit. Why am I always the last one to find out?

I suspect China is stepping in to deescalate. Xi meets with Putin. 2 days later, Russia pulls back and announces new Silk Road investments across the landmass. Xi takes his history of internal power displays and shows the world China is already stronger than US on the global stage. US couldn’t end Ukraine conflagration, but China could. Or not. Can anyone? I bet the West could invade and takeover North Korea and Iran, or India could invade Pakistan if they really wanted to.

Salt is yummy and helps us preserve scarce resources. Allowing vestiges of our learned past to cloud our judgements of persecuted others in the present isn’t so yummy. And it should be made scarcer as a general rule, IMO. +1 for acknowledging “of course it would be better” if we rid ourselves of such things. That’s undergirded my stance here throughout.

We’re slow-walking our way to World War 3. Agree? Disagree? Why?

If you're critiquing the fashion of others, then it's not altogether different. You're saying "their choices" which have ZERO impact on you or your family are somehow not good enough. You're saying THEIR choices don't surpass YOUR personal threshold of acceptance... your subjective arbitrary criteria regarding what is acceptable... Your "social mores" or rules or norms regarding what is and is not allowed in your tribe or group or social unit. Who we love and become intimate with, however, seems far more central to who we are as humans IMO than specious concerns like "you shouldn't wear brown belts with black shoes." I think it does, yes. Perhaps it matters less than if you're vocal about it, but it matters more than zero.

Disgust / distaste / repulsion... there are evolutionary reasons we respond this way. Those reasons are to avoid illness and stop the spread of parasites. When those feelings apply to homosexual acts, it means we find those acts to be unclean, pathogenic, sick... When the bonobo ignores the banana peel because it's too close to a pile of scat, they're feeling repulsion because it's unclean and likely to spread illness to them. When kangaroos avoid patches of grass that are freckled with feces, they're feeling repulsion because it's unclean and likely to spread illness to them. When antelope gather their poo in dunghills, they're feeling repulsion at the idea of it being left in their territories. When bullfrog tadpoles flee the fungus infested ponds, or lobsters avoid crowded dens of crustaceans during viral outbreaks, or nematodes wriggle away from meals that seem to have bad bacteria... they're all doing so to guard against disease. This all makes evolutionary sense. These reasons are all valid, and interestingly many of them involve feces, dung, poo, dookie, excrement, etc. It's entirely possible these feelings against male heterosexual acts have similar deeply primal mostly unconscious tendencies, I grant you that. However, it's hard to escape the conclusion that despite evidence to the contrary these feelings many of you have toward male gay sexual acts are themselves rooted in a belief or feeling that they are unclean, pathogenic, sick, likely to spread parasites, likely to lead to illness, likely to lead to death. That's what I'm trying to get you to understand. Feeling that way even in the face of contrary evidence (safe sex practiced by hetero and homo couples are equally likely to lead to negative outcomes, there's nothing specifically about the gay version that makes the risk higher)… feeling that way is a type of bigotry. Why does this matter in context of our broader civilization? Why should we attempt to root out bigotry and bias in all of its many forms? Well, if you don't already know the answer to that question yourself without me spelling it out for you with construction paper and fat crayons, then I'm afraid you're likely too far gone for me to convince anyway. There's nothing unclean about safely practiced male gay sex. If you feel otherwise, then the problem is with you and the tens upon tens of millions of others who feel the same way. Indeed, couldn't agree more. Unfortunately, right now today in the actual present in the actual reality we share, my state ALONE has a staggering NINETEEN (19) bills targeting the LGBTQ community, and there are 340 (three hundred and forty) more being actively pursued in the other 49 state legislatures (an average of 7 each). We're a LONG effing way away from "normality" and lack of "threats." We must ask ourselves which side we're going to be on, because there is no middle ground on issues like this. Join or die.

Once you've convinced people to believe in absurdities it's not hard getting them next to commit atrocities.

Nonsense. Unfamiliar with cognitive behavioral therapy? Why wouldn’t you if you could? You seem to have conflated me with someone else. I have several guns in my home, safely locked, and I will teach my children to respect and use them safely when they’re old enough. I’ve actually posted multiple times about the deep problems with a punishment / incarcerate first mentality and now critical it is we reform to focus more on rehab and reintegration into society.

Ignoring the cosmologists off topic nonsense and returning to the actual discussion at hand... It's a distinction without a difference, especially in context of my own points encouraging acceptance. Your comments suggest otherwise. If it walks like a duck... For decades, people felt distaste or disgust at couples of different faiths. For decades, people felt distaste or disgust at couples of different nationalities. For decades, people felt distaste or disgust at couples of same gender. Now, you say the couples themselves aren't the source of your distaste / "mild feelings of revulsion," but there's no distinction. You may as well be saying you don't feel distaste for the couple, just the way they breath or drive or exist in other parts of the world. They're one and the same. You don't have "mild feelings of revulsion" toward heterosexual acts, ergo the dependent variable here is the fact that they're gay males. The words distaste, and revulsion, and disgust all stem from a deeper idea that there is something rotten, diseased, unhealthy, contagious, and detrimental in the act. It suggests that male gay sex in your view is about the spread of pathogens and parasites... the underlying evolutionary pressures that causes animals to feel disgust in the first place... to avoid illness. It means you think male gay sex is a type of illness, even though you've compartmentalized your mind so much that you can with a straight face claim to accept homosexuals "as they are." This is a majorly important part of who they are, though, and yes. Yes, that's borderline bigoted, no matter how many times thou dost too much protest. x-posted with Charon who touches on the same point re: disgust as a well studied mechanism to increase group health For the same reason it became unacceptable to say nigger, or retard, or faggot, or ad infinitum. As long as these problems have plagued us, IMO it's not enough merely to not same them. We need to encourage being against them... anti-racist. Anti-bigoted. Anti-finding perfectly normal acts "repulsive."

I don’t need a special badge or patch on my jacket to point out the obvious This is irrelevant since we’re discussing his disgust of others doing that.

Recycling

In most senses, specifically herein

This would be boring if it weren’t so annoying. Dim - You’re saying sometimes stories from religion have value, correct? If not, please set me straight. If so, please advise who claims otherwise. There are so many conflated concepts here. Atheism and lack of belief in god or gods. Opposition to organized religion, primary of the Abrahamic variety. Perhaps going back to the basics and defining our terms would suffice to move past the bickering ridiculousness.

ChatGPT is similarly confident when declaring plainly wrong answers as entirely valid

Because the one’s you’re expressing here are borderline bigoted and we should always seek to extinguish such positions. Nobody is asking you to abandon your own heterosexual preferences and become a practicing homosexual. The hope is only that you’ll work on discarding the visceral disgust you feel at the mere thought or mention of how two males engage intimately with one another.

*too

But with very little nutritional value plus the likelihood of serious illness after consuming too much And silver sonnets, rainbowed rituals, and hot steaming hymns.

There you go again… troubling yourself with what’s happening inside the minds of others. Mind ya business! 😂 This resonates with me As does this

Most don’t. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism

I’m not sure I see the distinction you’re making and see one as a subset of the other. Perhaps you intend to reference apatheism?