• Don_DickleOP
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      -210 months ago

      Well romans were fine with it. And the US people like to compare themselves to Romans at the height of the empire. But now it seems totally unforgiveable .

      • @TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        lol they were fine with it as long as the queers were whores and such. they could not be citizens.

        only people who had any power in Rome were male roman citizens, and the wealthy ones at that.

        and lots and lots of folks blame the downfall of Rome on it’s ‘decay’ of allowing homosexuality and such

      • @maniclucky@lemmy.world
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        810 months ago

        That’s… disingenuous. Lot of stuff happened between those points, including the murder of homosexuals for the crime of existing.

        The LGBT community keeps the fight up because complacency gets our rights taken away. Justice Thomas has explicitly stated that gay marriage is on his list of wrongs* to right. To say nothing of Project 2025.

        • @TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Western world is still pretty much the only place where homosexuals aren’t. Rest of the world… murdered pretty regularly. Asia, Africa, South America, middle east, are all FAR less ‘progressive’ than Western democratic countries.

          • @maniclucky@lemmy.world
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            110 months ago

            Very true. I’m behind the US lens on this one so it’s easier to speak from what I experience. I know it’s… bad… elsewhere.

  • southsamurai
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    5310 months ago

    You’ve gotten enough good answers that I think it okay to address a tangent.

    Things are definitely at the point where christofascists, and other hate driven ideologies are getting louder.

    But, and this is vitally important as to why the pushback is making it a matter of public discourse at the level you’re asking about, there’s more allies now than ever.

    Be ready for old man talking here, and ignore if not interested. Disclaimer: I have arthritis, and it’s easier to type gay than LGBTQ, so I’ll be using the shorter word for that reason, not as an exclusion.

    Back in the seventies and eighties, gay rights was a thing for mostly gay people. Before that it had been gaining minor support, and the eighties were when social restrictions started changing enough that gay people were allowed to have some degree of public awareness in both news and fiction.

    I keep bringing it up in various places, but Billy Crystal played the first recurring openly gay character on television. That was in 1977, and ran until 1981. I don’t think it can be said enough how huge that was in bringing awareness of gay people as just people was. That role brought gay into our homes and lives in a way nothing had before.

    When something makes a group real to the majority, makes things stop being a dirty secret and just another part of life, you get kids growing up that are more open and accepting. As acceptance grew, so did the amount of people coming out.

    As people came out, the straights realized that not only had they always known gay people, but they liked them, and even loved them for years, sometimes a lifetime. When that starts spreading, you have more people that are willing to support gay people and their rights as fellow humans.

    Instead of being pariahs, gay people became part of life, part of our hearts. Eventually, more and more people that didn’t have direct relationships with someone gay became allies, supporters.

    However, the more gay people became a part of life, the more noise bigots made, in their own homes and in public. So, instead of it being a dirty little secret nobody talked about, that way of thinking got nastier and louder. Before, it wasn’t something everyone would even know about until much later in life, but as the gay rights movement in the seventies started building up steam, you had more hatred being spewed as well. There had been before, but it was more likely to be handled with dismissive or contemptuous remarks rather than outright venom and bile in the open.

    Now, us folks that were kids during the late 70s and early 80s didn’t just accept gay folks. We would often defy elders that opposed gay rights or bad talked them. As time passed and we grew up, the segment of that generation that became allies tended to be more and more vocal in our support. By the nineties, my generation was moving into adulthood and willing to vote our conscience. We were willing to put our time and money into the cause. Sometimes, we’d put our bodies on the line when things got ugly.

    Move forward to now, and you’ve got two or three generations actively and loudly opposing the bigots, and not just the gay people. The bigots are smaller in number, but have been pandered to by political groups around the world, so have more weight than their numbers should give them.

    Mind you, the bigots also include people of every generation too. Don’t imagine that there aren’t kids even that spew the same kind of nastiness that’s been used since before the 70s. But there’s more in direct opposition to them, and plenty of passive dismissal of the bigotry. Bigotry is not a relic of the past, nor is it limited to older generations; some of the loudest and most obnoxious hatred gets spewed by younger adherents. But the seeming percentage of hate is lower in younger generations, and the seeming percentage of outright support is higher.

    That puts us in the situation we’re in, where hate has a bigger voice than it should, and love/acceptance has to shout louder to oppose it.

    • Track_Shovel
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      1610 months ago

      Hey.

      I really enjoyed your comment. It’s very well written. Nice job. That’s it; that’s all.

    • @tetris11@lemmy.ml
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      810 months ago

      it really feels like it’s at a boiling point though right now. World governments have all shifted more to the right on average than they have in the last 80 years.

      • @ganymede@lemmy.ml
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        410 months ago

        governments have all shifted more to the right on average

        it appears to be the case. though afaict none of it appears to be organic.

      • @MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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        310 months ago

        There’s been some surprising upsets recently though! We were all bracing for a fashy-wave but lots of progressive leaders have been elected lately, after it looked like their hardline iron-fist nationlist counterparts were gaining ground.

        By no means a reason to take it easy and give them a breather, oh no! But we should definitely acknowledge every little bit of dystopia we manage to collectively avert. Even if only a little.

        • @eldavi@lemmy.ml
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          210 months ago

          the fashy-waves were manifested by centrists leaders that we learned were very fashy-friendly after those upsets made those leaders intrigue with the far right; as is happening in france with macron; or clinging on to conservative policies; as is happening in the uk with starmer.

          the people voted left; but all of the leaders went right anyways.

          harris and trump are doing something similar with harris ignoring the will of 68% of americans when with comes to the genocide and trump with project 2025.

      • @TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Because the right offers people stability, authority, etc. People like that.

        They don’t like left because it’s too vague and complicated to understand their points of view.

        Trans people = bad is a lot easier for the average person to understand, than explaining to them what a transsexual person is and isn’t, and the various types of trans/queer identities. That shit requires a dictionary and hours of time to understand.

    • @some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1110 months ago

      Things are definitely at the point where christofascists, and other hate driven ideologies are getting louder.

      Good time to bring up how their numbers are drastically thinning. This is a big win and part of why we need to fight them hard as their fear of marginalization causes them to switch from dirty tactics to outright fascism to cling to power.

      Survey: White Christianity is declining while the religiously unaffiliated keep growing

      • @octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
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        10 months ago

        That bump in 2020 is kind of interesting. The reason seems obvious, but correlation does not equal causation and all that. It does make me wonder if a big chunk of people claiming to be unaffilated are doing so because they think it’s the correct answer to give, not because it’s actually true. (My theory being that the pandemic made them decide they better stop denying Jesus for awhile or whatever)

        • @fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works
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          510 months ago

          Religion is an opiate. The best way to reduce its abuse is by addressing the underlying pain. When people conditions get worse they look to things to help numb the pain.

      • @TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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        610 months ago

        they are popular because they provide simple answers to complex issues.

        People like that. Esp younger folks.

        Just like the alt right is so popular with them, because it gives them simple answers.

        Left doesn’t have simple answers. Wants you to listen to a college course type of lecture on every issue… people don’t care about that. They want a simple soundbyte they can emotionally respond to. Left is very poor at that… there are some examples, but they dont’ really get much traction outside of leftist/socialist circles.

        • @VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works
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          110 months ago

          Also you can spend thirty seconds as a right winger and have them all tell you that you’re great, important, clever, worthwhile, and all those things – spend twenty years dedicating your adult life to leftwing values and you’ll still get spat on by your political peers because your opinion on some obscure issue is 2% different to theirs.

    • Tar_Alcaran
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      810 months ago

      A little late-80s perspective: when I was growing up, “gay” was an insult we’d call eachother jokingly. Nobody “was gay” because that’s a (light, funny) slur. Hell, it wasn’t till I was 28 I realized it didn’t “have a dating-girls phase” that I never grew out of, I was just bi.

      The homophobia is still pretty deeply ingrained even in people who aren’t that old and are really trying. I can only imagine how bad it is for those who aren’t and don’t.

      • @shalafi@lemmy.world
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        110 months ago

        I still have a hard time digesting “gay” as a slur. We simply didn’t use it that way, ever. F@g could go both ways and my gay friends happily slung it at each other. An attempt to take the word back from the haters I guess. At least that word was sometimes used as a real insult.

  • caoimhinr
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    2710 months ago

    Especially America? There are countries executing people for their sexual orientation.

    • Don_DickleOP
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      -310 months ago

      Well in america it seems to seems that people are theologically do things against LGBTQ and enacting them. The news we get and i preface this while knowing America is on the brink of it. That other countries or instutions are savages. Not my opinion but what we see daily.

      • Dae
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        510 months ago

        My guy, there are entire countries controlled by Islamic Extremists where you’re lucky if all they do is kill you when they find out you’re LGBT, and it’s entirely for “theological reasons.”

        I put this in quotes, because I’m not nor have I ever been a Muslim. But Islamic Extremists will kill gay people for supposed “theological reasons.”

        It’s most definitely not just America doing it because “mah holy book says it’s wrong.”

        • Don_DickleOP
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          010 months ago

          Like I said I am in America and all we see is how backwards other countries are on the topic. It just feels like America is now in the process of becoming one of them

  • @TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
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    210 months ago

    The forces of reaction never went away, they just weren’t as narketable for a few years, there. Companies are trying to increase their marketshare among bigots while also not alienating the people that don’t hate gay people. So you get pinkwashed corporate logos and genocide along with cancelled gay shows and an increase in false history nouveau Westerns.

  • @s_s@lemm.ee
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    610 months ago

    Why are people so interested in defining themselves along sexual identity and orientation in relatively recent western culture?

    Why now? Why is it so different from most of human existence?

    Because we are no longer facing famine. The Green Revolution has made our relationship with food so secure we no longer define ourselves in relation to it.

    Throughout most of history people are farmers or ranchers or shepherds or bakers or butchers or millers.

    So, we climb the Biological hierarchy of needs looking for our next characteristic that needs fulfillment.

    • @TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      not even. 1950s we had this idealized version that everyone was heterosexual, owned a home and had strict gender roles.

      That shit is now all blown apart. And for most folks the complexities of it all are beyond understanding.

      And it cuts both ways. I don’t care about other people’s genders and identities, but boy they care about mine. Gotten plenty of sexist slurs from queer/trans people based on my gender and lots of shitty assumptions. I’m bi, but I ‘present’ as a heterosexual dudebro, and it makes non-gender conforming people angry at me for some reason, also many insecure straight men and women. Only people who don’t seem to care are people who are bi, or secure in their sexuality. Way too many people feel the need to do that though.

    • Jojo, Lady of the West
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      410 months ago

      I’d just like to say that I’m not defining myself at any point, I’m describing myself.

      A trivial point, maybe, but there’s still plenty of bigots around and the ones around me use phrases like “defining yourself” to minimize and erase lbgtq+ people’s experiences.

      • @s_s@lemm.ee
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        210 months ago

        Identifying might be the best word to use, given the psychology literature all tends to use that, but thank you for your critique.

        • Jojo, Lady of the West
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          110 months ago

          Also heavily under fire, though the arguments are usually paper thin. They dismiss self-identification under the pretense that it’s not about identity, that your identity can’t be that you’re trans or whatever. Just a fiat argument.

        • Jojo, Lady of the West
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          110 months ago

          And I’d just like to add: you’re right, this is the way the literature talks about it. You’d think the term being used clinically - with a clear, concise, and well-defined meaning - would mean it couldn’t be targeted and attacked the way it is by the religious right. You’d think, you’d hope, and you’d be wrong. And that sucks.

  • @GlendatheGayWitch@lemmy.world
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    910 months ago

    The US isn’t any more concerned about sexual orientation now than any point in the past. Back in colonial times, it wouldn’t have been safe to be anything other than straight with all the hyper religious colonists. They were even forcing their gender conformity and the straight sexual orientation on the Native Americans. Baron Friedrich von Steuben got a pass for being gay, probably because he was the one in charge of training the troops for Washington. 100 years ago, you could be killed on the street for being anything other than straight or denied jobs. The Lavender scare of the mid century brought this more to light. The AIDS crisis that started in the 80s and bled through into the 90s and 2000s as new medicines were being invented, further brought negative light to sexual orientations outside of straight. The cause of all of this attention to sexual orientation has been the religions brought over by colonists.

    In recent years, sexual orientations outside of straight are finally being seen in a positive light with Lawrence v TX (2003) legalizing same-sex relationships and Hodges v Obergefell (2015) legalizing same-sex marriages. In Bostock v Clayton County (2020) legal protections against job discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity were finally put into place over 70 years after the start of the Lavender Scare.

    The attention to sexual orientation has always been part of North American history. It has just changed from acceptance with the Native American peoples to hate, death, and intolerance under the colonists, to a more accepting present day. With some of the positive news in recent years, it can be easy to forget (if you’re surrounded by progressives in a blue state) that the hate of sexuality injected into North America in the 15th Century still has hold over large portions of the population today.

  • @Feathercrown@lemmy.world
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    210 months ago

    It’s finally reaching such widespread acceptance that 1. Actual bigots are getting concerned they can’t be bad people anymore and 2. Assorted people are getting tired of the discourse.

      • @Feathercrown@lemmy.world
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        110 months ago

        I don’t think the site admins would be appreciative of my suggestion :^)

        In reality, forcing higher standards across the board raises the floor and can prevent enough bad behavior to be useful. Education and experience also encourage good behaviors. Basically, make it illegal to be a bigot, and let people learn why they don’t want to.

    • @Etterra@lemmy.world
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      510 months ago

      Well to be fair a lot of those politicians aren’t in the 1%, they just want to be. And they’re more than happy to toe the party line and step on everyone they can in order to get to the top. And then there’s the true believers, but let’s be honest anybody who’s a true believer or anything is crazy.

  • Lem Jukes
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    810 months ago

    All of a sudden? Where have you been the last 80-100 years?

      • Lem Jukes
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        10 months ago

        Right, fuck, my bad. Welp, yeah, I’m sorry to say but I think it has more to do with your progression into understanding more about the world and perspectives outside of your own experience. In no way am I trying to be mean or discouraging. You asked a really valid and important question, and i guess i impulsively reacted and forgot there are people less jaded than me. For what it’s worth i admire you and hope that learning some people are STILL stuck being shitty doesn’t make you think everyone sucks. And I’m proud to learn that another person younger than me just ‘gets it’ that people are people deserving of love and respect regardless of bullshit like who they themselves love.

  • @1984@lemmy.today
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    210 months ago

    It’s all about distraction. All of us seek entertainment because our lives are usually quite dull. So the media feeds us things to have opinions about. Politicians, big tech psychos, gender issues…

    It’s all pointless and keeps us from actually making any real difference. People here on Lemmy fight over which words to use, gender issues, or god forbid, someone admits they are not vaccinated…! Wow. Nuclear bomb right away.

    None of this matters at all, it’s just entertainment… Nobody changes their minds from getting downvoted either. Sometimes it feels like keyboard warriors here think they are fighting some kind of fight. But nobody changes their mind guys, even if you downvote them.

    So it’s actually pure entertainment and distraction from what matters… :) We don’t have to be so serious.

    • NostraDavid
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      110 months ago

      The prosecutor argued that the murder of Shepard was premeditated and driven by greed

      McKinney’s girlfriend told police that he had been motivated by anti-gay sentiment but later recanted her statement, saying that she had lied because she thought it would help him.

      Price said she had lied to police about McKinney having been provoked by an unwanted sexual advance from Shepard, telling TV journalist Elizabeth Vargas, “I don’t think it was a hate crime at all.”[9][37] Rerucha said, “It was a murder that was once again driven by drugs.”[9]

      Doesn’t seem to be a hatecrime. Just a crime against someone that happened to be gay.

    • Don_DickleOP
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      -510 months ago

      yea yea saw the movie. It just kind of seems today more blatant then ever before. And on my off days I am usually on weed and alcohol. While I search for a new state to be stationed at.

  • Call me Lenny/Leni
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    -410 months ago

    That 40 year step backwards comes from good intentioned politicians making deals with homophobic devils so to speak in order to save other people.

      • Call me Lenny/Leni
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        110 months ago

        What does sexual orientation have to do with economics?

        Surely the LGBT population has no bearing on the economy, right? I feel like I’m misunderstanding you somehow.

        • @davel@lemmy.ml
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          110 months ago

          Class war isn’t about economics, it’s about power.

          The “anti-woke” discourse is not as organic/grassroots as it appears; a large chunk of it is astroturfed.

          The media don’t simply reflect the public discourse, they also shape it. Who owns the media? The capitalist class. They use the media to keep the working class divided, fighting each other, and focused on blaming their problems on something, anything but the capital class itself.

          Noam Chomsky - The 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine

          Conservative pundits (and liberal ones, for that matter) are paid handsomely to distract people, to maintain our false consciousness, to pit us against each other.

          Who owns the politicians? Again, the capitalist class, who fund their political campaigns. When politicians like Ron DeSantis rant about “woke ideology,” it’s almost always kayfabe; it’s an act.

          This is not to say that none of it is organic. Our upset and our anger comes from our deteriorating lives under late stage/neoliberal capitalism—wherein the capitalist class squeezes ever more out of us—creates fertile ground for reactionary fervor.

            • @davel@lemmy.ml
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              -110 months ago

              How did this conversation go from “good-intentioned politicians” to whatever might be going on in Iran? Do you even know what’s really going on there? Because I don’t.

              Imperial core countries and corporate media feed us a lot of garbage about countries they consider their “enemy,” so you should be skeptical of what they tell us. With that said, I’m sure LGBTQ+ rights stand to be improved in Iran, but I don’t really know if they’re getting better, worse, or remaining the same right now. What I do know is that the US wants to paint Iran in as bad a light as possible, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the media should run more stories about the plight of LGBTQ+ people in Iran.

              • Call me Lenny/Leni
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                210 months ago

                You then don’t see the irony in telling the LGBT “we stand with you” and then going to homophobic nations and homophobic sects and saying the same thing (because they promise help with a certain advancement in awareness)?

                That goes along with what I was talking about, about people making deals with the devil (a figure of speech by the way). I’m pretty sure this phenomenon does not need any help from class phenomenon, positive or negative, in order to exist.

                • @davel@lemmy.ml
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                  -110 months ago

                  The irony of who telling which LGBT people and subsequently going to “homophobic” states and saying the same thing to whom?

                  If someone understands what you’re trying to say, perhaps they can translate for me.

    • @TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Dude, plenty of Democrats in their 30s who say they are progressive are raging bigots and support racist policies.

      They are just quiet about it. They aren’t saying crazy racist nonsense on tiktok, but if you talk to them about issues like housing or schools… they make it very obvious what they think. Using polite language, of course. Black people are great, as long as they don’t live near them, or go to the same school as their kid goes to! These are the same people who are NIMBY because they don’t want ‘people who haven’t worked as hard as I have’ from living near them.

      • @eldavi@lemmy.ml
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        110 months ago

        They are just quiet about it. They aren’t saying crazy racist nonsense on tiktok, but if you talk to them about issues like housing or schools… they make it very obvious what they think. Using polite language, of course. Black people are great, as long as they don’t live near them, or go to the same school as their kid goes to! These are the same people who are NIMBY because they don’t want ‘people who haven’t worked as hard as I have’ from living near them.

        my favorite version of this “identity politics” minimizing the very real and tragic harms that our hegemony has done to its minorities.

  • ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ
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    110 months ago

    american school system. decades of wrong education by specialising while not having broader knowledge and making education a side hustle while college football is their slave business.

    this has led to a mostly degenrated society. an idiocracy.

  • bizarroland
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    010 months ago

    Aside from what everyone else has said, one of the big leaders to this scenario is that the world has gotten so much safer and so much less violent and so much more accepting that people have to literally scrape the barrels to find something to be outraged about.

    We all of us know that the Republican playbook of taking rights away from people is a thing that is intended to target people and punish them for not adhering to the moral code of the people doing the targeting.

    But the fact that we can spend so much of our national resources on arguing over morality is a side effect of the world being so good that we don’t have to argue over worse things.

    I’m not attempting to apologize or forgive anybody for their stance, but it is true that we are arguing over whether or not it’s okay to have an abortion or whether or not it’s okay to be gay rather than whether it’s not okay to let have the country starve to death or whether or not it’s okay to kill everyone all the time always.

    I’ve said this before and I will inevitably say it again, human history is a pus filled boil on our consciences.

    The only way to fix it is to lance it and to deal with all of the pus. We are in the pus clean up stage of human history, and in time with enough constant patient care, it will get better.