gorkonsine

il y a 9 ansdiscuss

Liberty versus authoritarianism? I acknowledge such people exist, but I don't pretend to know or understand their full argument of why it should be regulated. At least with the religious people, I can understand why, I just reject the silly premises (that God will smite us like in the story of Sodom). With atheists (presumably Stalinists?), I really don't get it. Besides, we've seen atheistic authoritarian societies before, and they were a complete disaster, not only economically but also as far as having a happy, functioning society. Hint: if you have to have a wall to keep people from running away from your society, and you shoot people who try to climb over the wall, then the fundamentals of your society are not worth preserving. Now it might be obvious that I'm following a fairly utilitarian philosophy here (happy = good), but if you're not religious and don't believe in utilitarianism, what exactly is the goal for your society? Generally, societies which do not value the happiness of their citizens are religious, because they claim that they need to "please God" or act in certain ways to have a better afterlife. Remove the afterlife and deity and what do you have left? Either wanting people to be happy (but still functional; not happy as in drugged-out all the time and unable to keep society functioning), or you're running the society on what makes one person happy and to hell with what everyone else wants, which is basically narcissism (which probably describes North Korea today).

gorkonsine

il y a 9 ansdiscuss

Paying your taxes funds real crimes too. Should I stop paying taxes?

According to you, the people in the Underground Railroad were doing the wrong thing, and should have followed the prevailing laws on slavery, and it was wrong for slaves to rebel, even when they were being brutalized and murdered. Your position is disgusting and repugnant.

gorkonsine

il y a 9 ansdiscuss

I agree that it's a valid choice to make, and people should have the freedom to make such choices if they want. However, you said before that "It makes no difference to anyone if homosexuality is innate, or just a set of chosen behaviours." and that's incorrect. It does make a difference, to some people. To those people, they'd oppose it if it were proven to simply be a choice, whereas they'd have more empathy if it were proven to be completely innate: it'd like being mad at a mentally-retarded person for doing something dumb, compared to being mad at or disappointed in a very intelligent person for making a very dumb decision. I'm not defending this mentality (because again, I have no problem with homosexuality and I think people should be free to have whatever physical relationships they want), but I'm explaining it.

Also, remember that a lot of people (particularly religious ones) want to regulate social behavior, even in the bedroom, because they believe this is important for society's survival and prosperity. So in their view, homosexuals should be oppressed (either strongly by the state, or more weakly by social pressure) for the good of society, and to keep their behavior from "spreading". There's not really a way to counter this mentality by people like us because their worldview is so entirely alien to us: we don't believe in divine retribution for "immoral" behavior (a la Sodom & Gomorrah) and they do, and nothing's going to shake their belief.

gorkonsine

il y a 9 ansdiscuss

There's still plenty of conservative people who believe the being gay is a personal choice, or perhaps something caused by your upbringing/environment, not something you're born with.

Of course, this has as much veracity as the idea that the Earth is flat or that the Sun and planets revolve around it, but there's a lot of people who believe it.

gorkonsine

il y a 9 ansdiscuss

These laws don't usually get changed until people violate them en masse, showing utter disrespect and contempt for the laws.

Remember Prohibition? That wasn't lifted because people wrote to their Congresspeople, but otherwise respected the law and followed it. It was lifted because it was widely disrespected, and a huge black market for alcohol was created, along with a lot of brutal violence. Same goes for civil rights for black people in the 1960s. Same goes for civil rights for gay people (like legalizing gay sex, previously criminalized). People committed the crimes and got caught, it went through the justice system somehow, and either a law was passed or the Supreme Court rule on it. It took a Supreme Court case to nullify the anti-gay-sex laws when some people in Texas were prosecuted for it and it got appealed up to the supremes as a privacy/freedom issue.

gorkonsine

il y a 9 ansdiscuss

Honestly, Yocto is a complete mess and a terrible embedded OS system IMO. Buildroot is far better, and takes far less time to build.

comments