Swimmer963 comments on Positive Thinking - Less Wrong

20 Post author: Swimmer963 07 March 2011 01:03AM

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Comment author: Swimmer963 14 March 2011 02:13:10PM 0 points [-]

She did that without trying to impose herself into my life or take away my freedoms or damage me or etc. I actually endorse all of that, as far as it goes. The world would be a far better place if more people responded to that situation that way.

I...guess. Maybe I'm just spoiled by living in a country, and belonging to an age group, where the people who are okay with homosexuality say so loudly and the people who AREN'T okay with it don't talk about that. The church I go to (the Anglican Church of Canada) officially accepts homosexuals into its clergy, and that's kind of what I'm used to. So to me, a response like hers does seem pretty awful, but not to you because you're used to worse...

I still think what you said was a good comeback. Not helpful, maybe, but snappy and funny, and it might have made her think...

Comment author: TheOtherDave 14 March 2011 02:29:18PM *  0 points [-]

not to you because you're used to worse...

Don't get me wrong: in my actual life I don't have to deal with much of that stuff.

I go to friends' religious ceremonies with my husband all the time, for example, and nobody blinks... or if they do, they keep it to themselves. More generally, people who don't consider me a social and moral peer are cordially invited to get the hell off my lawn, and I have enough social power to make that stick, enforced by an awesome community in which my basic humanity is simply never in question. (Well, at least not because of my sexuality. I do get a certain amount of "What planet are you from, Dave?" but that's different.)

I suspect that if I didn't have those advantages, I would rapidly lose my sense of perspective.

All of that said, I think it's the correct perspective, and would remain so even if I lost it. It makes no sense to judge people against my social context rather than their own.