Will Those Who Claim To Be Open Minded Actually Be Open Minded One Day?

[Mr Khan]

thismeintiel said:

VanceIX said:

People voiced their opinion, and that was that Eich was a bigoted person, whether it be true or not. They had every right and reason to do this, just as he had all the freedom in the world to donate for Prop 8. He reaped what he sowed, that's simply how the world is. If a newly appointed CEO was pro-slavery or a Nazi, would you say people should be open-minded of them? People will stand up for what they believe in, and if what they believe in is socially disgusting (as Prop 8 was, imo), then they will be chastised for it. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from speech.

That being said, I am not homosexual, but I am a supporter of gay rights, and believe that they should have access to marriage like the rest of us if they wish. I applaud the community for standing up for their beliefs. 

Again, there is a big difference between voicing ones opinion and actively campaigning to have someone fired for his.  And can we please stop bringing up slavery and Nazis in these types of discussions?  They are only strawmen and you know it.  No one wants to put gay people and chains and whip them, so they'll do our work.  And no one wants to put them in gas chambers and concentration camps.  At least not in this country.  Thinking about it, it amazes me how some can say that the US, as a society, is so cruel to gays, yet in some countries they are regularly tortured and killed for being who they are.  I bet the gay communities in those countries wished they mostly had to worry about fighting for the right to marry, instead of the right to live.

Appeal to worse problems is a logical fallacy. The issues of gays across sub-saharan Africa and the broader Muslim World should not lessen the very real struggle that gays undertake (just like how the desperate poverty found in the slums of Calcutta does not diminish the problems faced by those in the slums of Los Angeles).

The bigger point of comparison with these fringe, radical ideas like slavery or nazism is just how much views change over time. Before everyone found out about the Final Solution, Nazism had a decent amount of respect about it (the kind of respect you might afford a "worthy opponent" as well as a fair bit of mainstream fascination, like the abdicated King Edward of England). Life in the segregated south is still well within the lifetime of many who still live, and so it is easy to remember when one man built his entire political career on standing in the schoolhouse doors, just like he promised.

It is not trying to equate the ills of modern homophobia with the absolute horrors of National Socialism or the generations-long injustice of Jim Crow, but it does suggest that both of these ideas, once quite mainstream and now almost universally reviled, can go the same way.