Meta(
    title: "Really?",
    summary: None,
    published: Some(Time(
        year: 2023,
        month: 7,
        day: 2,
        hour: 22,
        minute: 42,
        second: 4,
    )),
    tags: [
        "rights",
        "politics",
        "freedom",
    ],
)
---
I wasn't planning on posting today. I have a programming related task that I would rather be doing, something that I find interesting and exciting, but my previous post apparently stirred some things. I'm not going to even link to the replies. You know who you are. But if I ignored what was said I couldn't live with myself.

### Disclosure
I'm a middle aged straight white man. But I do have a dog in the fight when it comes to LGBTQ rights. Several, in fact. There are people who I am very close to, who I love dearly, who are directly affected by the dramatic rollback of their rights which has been occurring accross the US recently. I'm not exactly objective on this issue.

### Moving on, let's confront this head on
> I think they are entirely correct in allowing people to run their business and choose whom they want to work for. If some asshole does not want to make a gay website, it is their stupid decision.

> And so I will side with the assholes, because you cannot fight opressors with equal but opposite OPRESSION.

> I will not be winning any points with the liberals here, so hate me if you want. But I challenge you to stop being full of shit. Your idea of what's right is not necessarily right, and in any event, no one should be forced to do what they don't want -- as long as they are not ACTUALLY hurting others. Not making a website for an imaginary gay couple is not something to talk about.

Senders already expressed part of this very eloquently, but allow me my say anyway please. I can agree, to an extent, that nobody should be forced to do what they don't want to do. That's one of the basics of freedom. But to think it's that cut and dried when you are running a business that is open to the public is problematic at best. This Supreme Court case was all about setting a precedent. We now have the problem of defining how far this reaches. As Sender's said, What about a bank? A Doctor? What about a rental property? Adoption services? I gaurantee that one is back on the table, and that the same people who filed this particular suit would love a chance to make sure that only good Christian white folks can raise families if they can find a way to swing it.

You challenged me to stop being full of shit. Ok, let's cut straight through the fucking bullshit surrounding the case, which is what my original post was about.

> as long as they are not ACTUALLY hurting others

I'm fucking glad this was put in those words, because it has a lot of bearing on my point. One bar for entry in a case like what the Supreme Court just ruled on is that you have to have actually suffered harm, or at least can prove that you are likely to be harmed. They could not do this, and they knew it, so they manufactured evidence. That's a crime, by the way. They perjured themselves in multiple courts, all the way to the Supreme Court. That multiple counts of perjury. Ignoring that for a moment, was this person likely to be harmed in any way? Let's tackle that.

So ok, perhaps in the internet of around 2000 or so, the idea of buying a domain and setting up an entire website for your wedding might have been something that could have taken off. We all know that's not how the internet works today. Couples announce those things on social media, and the same social media provides them applications to do things like make a special page just for their wedding. Even if it were not so, I pretty much gaurantee that just placing a smattering of conservative Christian literature on her premises would right away cause gay couples to immediately look elsewhere. So I would say that this woman who brought the suit was "full of shit" that she believed she was likely to suffer any kind of harm. The Supreme Court was similarly "full of shit" for entertaining that notion, even before it came to light that her evidence had been manufactured. After that came to light, it pretty much shows that they are perfectly willing to flaunt just how "full of shit" they are. They aren't even trying to hide it.

> Instead of separating ourselves into groups with pronouns (inviting friction) and invented labels (LGBTQI... - a new letter gets added every few years, not winning any points here) we should work on integrating the society. Not by fiat, but by being good to each other. Wouldn't it be better to live in a society with no genders, where we are equal in every way and can choose a partner any way we please? Creating new arbitrary gender divides does the opposite, and expecting the general population to truly embrace it is just foolish. Maybe there is a smarter way to accomplish integration that than sticking out like a proverbial sore thumb.

I'm going to admit to something. I used to think this way. It's naive, I was wrong, and I'm not proud that I ever thought it was okay.

You can't just ignore race and expect that society will somehow integrate and get along. The opposite happens, pretty much every time. In times of peace and plenty it might appear for a moment that things are working out all right, but the minute people get stressed they go all in on protecting their own and fucking over anyone who is different. A look at any of the bloody genocidal cival wars of the past century confirms this.

You can insert a lot of different words in the above paragraph and it more or less holds true. Gender and sexual orientation fit right in there.

The first time I heard the far right described as Nazis I thought the person saying it was hysterical. Since then I've been paying a lot closer attention, and have come to the conclusion that they are in fact fascist bastards. I base this on all of the characteristics that they share with the historical version of fascists. They game their followers emotions with propoganda about how their once great country is under the boot of oppression. They encourage both strong nationalism and xenophobia. They portray the opposition as immoral and corrupt. They don't generally have much in the way of substance in what they actually want to do once they gain power of course.

But the most spectacularly obvious parallel is that they have a scapegoat group who are blamed for society's problems. The Nazi party of the early 1930's scapegoated the Jews and sought to erode their rights and influence in society as much as possible in the early days. The fascists of today chose the LGBTQ community, as they only recently really gained any rights and even then the decisions to grant those rights were already widely contested. It was easy. Otherwise intelligent people go along with it in large numbers because they either agree with it or it doesn't directly affect them.

I doubt the person who I'm addressing is going to have his mind changed one bit by what I'm saying. I'm ok with disagreeing, and believe it or not I don't hate you. Hating you would be hypocritical because I have family and friends who think like you do. But I hope that a few more of my peers (of the middle aged white guy variety) can start looking at the big picture a little more critically, because the course that we're on ends very, very badly if history is an indicator.

That doesn't mean that I'm not angry of course. Fuck you Stack, at least until you stop being so "full of shit" yourself. I don't hate you, but you picked a strange hill to die on and I hope that you have a change of heart.