Agreed, I tried to explain Less Wrong to my father and now he thinks we're some doomsday cult concerned that AI's will wipe out humanity and rearrange our atoms in smiley faces. He concluded that everyone here has "way to much imagination" and now he won't listen to anything that comes from this blog.
I tend to explain it as "a blog about rationality started by transhumanists. Has weird and stupid bits, but is mostly good really. The comment moderation system actually works. Addictive." That is: upfront about the weirdness, then in with the good stuff. I suppose it helps that these are people who can expand the word "transhumanists".
Let's say you are interviewing a candidate for a job. In casual conversation, the candidate mentions that he is a member of a rather old and prestigious country club. You've never heard the name of the club before.
You look up the country club afterwards, and are surprised by what you read. The club refuses membership to homosexuals. It revokes the membership of couples who use birth control. Leadership positions are reserved to unmarried males.
The candidate is otherwise competent. Under what conditions would you hire him? Would you want a law passed banning hiring discrimination based on country club membership?
(The country club is analogous to a nicer version of the Catholic church. I left out a couple bad things.)
Religious discrimination is illegal in many parts of the world, and I think that's probably a good thing. Still, keeping this at the object level (no meta-rules or veils of ignorance) it seems to me that discriminating against religious people is fine. I'm curious what other people think.