Gay Male Protagonist

[Ripheus23]

2 hours ago, Discofrish said:

Why would we need more gay protagonists when we have Elend

OMG if only, IDK why they had to make him look so dreamy on the cover of HoA, it torments me.

[The Awakened Salad they/them]

7 hours ago, Discofrish said:

okay i realise this could be taken very sarcastically, but as someone who has read books, and fantasy, their entire life, Cosmere being ''straight'' isn't as bad as, for example, heavily sexual books being so. This because the cosmere isn't sexual, and very rarely even romantic at that. I rarely think about it, as someone that often looks for representation in media, because thats not what Brandon Sanderson chooses to focus on.

I see that, but personally for me, I don’t think that I should have to read specific types of books to see myself being represented. I love fantasy and the cosmere contains some of my favourite books. Just because a book isn’t heavily romantic or sexual, it doesn’t mean that representation isn’t as important. Sure, it’s not the focus, and I’m not asking for a cosmere book where the whole plot is centred around sexuality (I’m here for the giant swords and glowy people, after all). But it’s still good to see.

It’s sort of like how Brandon handled Kaladin’s depression. I can’t remember the exact quote, but it’s something like “Hey, here’s this cool fantasy character who can fly and control gravity and he’s really awesome. Also he has depression.” Kaladin’s personality isn’t depressed, just like no character’s personality should be their sexuality. Depression isn’t the first thing I think of when I think of Kaladin. Stormlight doesn’t revolve around Kaladin’s depression. But it’s still a part of him. 

I’m not really too concerned about romance, either. It’s not what the books are centred on, and I don’t read them for that reason anyway. A character can be straight and not in a relationship. Likewise, a character can be gay and not in a relationship. Having a gay character doesn’t automatically mean they need to be dating someone. They can just exist and do cool stuff and be relevant to the plot, and also be gay. 

I hope I didn’t come across as rude, this is just my opinion on the topic. 

Edited April 13, 2020 by The Awakened Salad

[Honorless he/him]

Romance was a fairly important subplot in Elantris (Sarene & Raoden), Warbreaker (Siri & Susebron), Mistborn (Vin & Kelsier) and Stormlight between (Dalinar & Navani, Adolin & Shallan) some of the main leads, especially Mistborn. Sexual & Romantic are very different things.

Also I don't get what you mean by calling those characters gay

[IcaroRibeiro he/him]

Ngl, Sanderon used to be pretty homophobic when he was younger. Now he matured he seems to be slowing reviewing his opinions about LGBT community 

He's very conscious of his own prejudices (even if he's fighting against them) so he not feels comfortably to written about them yet because he's afraid of not depict gay/lesbian characters in a positive, respectful and credible way 

[Toaster Retribution he/him]

9 hours ago, IcaroRibeiro said:

Ngl, Sanderon used to be pretty homophobic when he was younger. Now he matured he seems to be slowing reviewing his opinions about LGBT community 

This will probably lead to a discussion, but here we go anyway, because I find this to be a really flawed statement. 

Brandon is a mormon, and mormons, like a bunch of other religious communities, both christian and others, consider marriage to be something that can only exist between a man and a woman. Men sleeping with men and women sleeping with women is also regarded as sinful (as is having sexual relationships before marriage). This is very much rooted in various religious scriptures. If I remember Brandons early statements on the subject right, this was basically what he said as well. He followed the teachings of the mormon church (correct me if I’m wrong here). 

So, my issue is this: labelling younger Brandon homophobic means labelling tons and tons of religious people and institutions as homophobic, just for having a different idea regarding what right and wrong is. The majority of the ”homophobic” religious people do not hate, persecute or lock up gay people. The ones who does that, who consider people with a different sexual orientation to have less value as humans, those are homophobic. Those who just have different ideals regarding what the right way to live your life is, but also respect everyones right to do as they please, are not homophobic: they just have a different view of life than you. 

So, TL;DR, don’t apply a negative label to a huge amount of people from specific groups due to them seeing the world through a different lense than you do.

 

Edited April 13, 2020 by Toaster Retribution

[+ILuvHats he/him]

2 hours ago, Toaster Retribution said:

This is very much rooted in various religious scriptures.

If we’re specifically talking about biblical scripture here, I’m just going to say it contains arguments for both sides, both for supporting and condemning heteronormative world views. It’s not very cut and dry on a lot of modern, controversial subjects; otherwise, the Christian community would much more homogeneous.

[Honorless he/him]

"don’t apply a negative label to a huge amount of people from specific groups due to them seeing the world through a different lense than you do." I won't, as long as you can do the same for me regarding words like 'sinful', and for some people who choose both to be gay and to be religious. And if religious families choose to love their child rather than condemn them.

and people do use the term institutional homophobia to refer to that. It wasn't long ago that gay men were told to die from AIDS or sent to gay conversion camps

Edited April 14, 2020 by Dreamer

[Elegy he/him]

18 hours ago, Discofrish said:

Cosmere being ''straight'' isn't as bad as, for example, heavily sexual books being so.

I get where you're coming from. However - the Cosmere is a huge universe with tons and tons of characters. Some time ago I spontaneously wrote down all the Cosmere characters I could think of, just to see with what I'd end up with, and the end result was 160 names on a Word document. That's the scope of this universe, and having, like, 2 confirmed gay characters in there is just not enough. Even if representation is not an issue. It's just not plausible, statistically. Okay, I'm going to say it: It's a fictional universe that contains magic, god-like beings, soul-stealing nails and flying knights, yet the most implausible thing is actually the quotient of gay people in it! It's mind-boggling.

However, he promised he'll get around to it, so that's at least something.

[Toaster Retribution he/him]

1 hour ago, Dreamer said:

"don’t apply a negative label to a huge amount of people from specific groups due to them seeing the world through a different lense than you do." I won't, as long as you can do the same for me regarding words like 'sinful',

Many religions do think that a variety of different sexual relationships and activities are morally wrong, which was what I was trying to get to. Furthermore, many religions also teach that all humans are sinful. Every single one of us.

1 hour ago, Dreamer said:

and people do use the term institutional homophobia to refer to that. It wasn't long ago that gay men were told to die from AIDS or sent to gay conversation camps

That is the thing: telling gay men to die from AIDS is defenitely homophobic. I do not deny that those kinds of opinions exist among religious people today: they do. But for the average mormon/muslim/catholic etc, that is a morally reprehensible statement. The vast majority are not homophobic. 

1 hour ago, ILuvHats said:

If we’re specifically talking about biblical scripture here, I’m just going to say it contains arguments for both sides, both for supporting and condemning heteronormative world views. It’s not very cut and dry on a lot of modern, controversial subjects; otherwise, the Christian community would much more homogeneous.

My point was mostly that the christian opposition to stuff like gay marriage is based on scripture, but there are certainly a ton of different ways to interpret the Bible. 

[king of nowhere]

2 hours ago, ILuvHats said:

If we’re specifically talking about biblical scripture here, I’m just going to say it contains arguments for both sides, both for supporting and condemning heteronormative world views. It’s not very cut and dry on a lot of modern, controversial subjects; otherwise, the Christian community would much more homogeneous.

aren't there some specific parts of the bible that specifically condemn homosexuality?

i'm not an expert and I'm not even religious, I'm asking this for personal curiosity, but I know there are some very strange prohibitions in the bible, like a prohibition of wearing clothes made with two different materials, or something if that kind. I'd be surprised if they said nothing about homosexuality after that.

2 hours ago, Dreamer said:

"don’t apply a negative label to a huge amount of people from specific groups due to them seeing the world through a different lense than you do." I won't, as long as you can do the same for me regarding words like 'sinful', and for some people who choose both to be gay and to be religious. And if religious families choose to love their child rather than condemn them.

 

See also: live and let live. I keep suggesting that.

1 hour ago, Elegy said:

I get where you're coming from. However - the Cosmere is a huge universe with tons and tons of characters. Some time ago I spontaneously wrote down all the Cosmere characters I could think of, just to see with what I'd end up with, and the end result was 160 names on a Word document. That's the scope of this universe, and having, like, 2 confirmed gay characters in there is just not enough. Even if representation is not an issue. It's just not plausible, statistically.

On the other hand, how many of those named people are confirmed heterosexual? If we want to care about true statistics, we have to avoid the pitfalls of data handling. You are taking 160 names and assuming that each one of them is heterosexual until proven differently, and that's a reasonable stance to have when meeting people because the vast majority of them are indeed heterosexual. but when it comes to counting, we can only compare the confirmed gays with the confirmed straight.

And there are a ton of minor characters whose sexuality is never mentioned. how about denth and tonk fah? we never saw them with any lover. How about Yeden? the lord ruler himself? It's one of the points I tried to raise early on, when i said that there's a lot of people in the background that we know nothing about: in the end, any book doesn't have room to expand on the personal life of most characters. And sexuality/gender is generally not something very important for a story.

Also consider that in a heteronormative society that isn't particularly aware of homosexuality, most people will assume that they are heterosexual by default. Many people discover that they are homosexual later in life. And in a society with arranged marriage, or simply one where people marry young, several gay people will still marry someone of the opposite sex. Some won't even ever realize; they will be sexually unhappy but never know why. In a prudish society where sexual pleasure is considered sinful (like the one we had until a couple of generations ago) people won't even know that they are supposed to be sexually happy. But here I'm going on a tangent.

But what I mean is, we can't even put on our list of "certainly heterosexual" many married characters. Take all the ladies at court in elantris. what are the chances that none of them is a lesbian? well, perhaps one or two of them really are, but they had an arranged marriage as common for the nobility. how about all of adolin's former girlfriends? just because they were in a relationship with him, perhaps they will discover later in their life that they are really on the other side.

there's also the observer effect. people tend to hang around other similar people. homosexual people tend to hang around with each other, because they have something in common. so they tend to form closed groups, which have less contacts with groups of heterosexual people. that's why people in the lgbt community know a lot of other lgbt people, and people who are close friends with them also know a lot of lgbt people, but most heterosexuals know one or two gays, or perhaps none at all. So, if the protagonist is straight, and the book focuses on him and his close friends, there is less chance that some of them will be gays. for the same reason, if we had a gay protagonist, I would be really surprised if he was the only gay in the book. I'd expect him to have several gay friends/aquaintances.

Heck, 160 names must be close enough to the amount of people I know, and 2 confirmed gays are exactly how many I know, too (technically, one lesbian and one transgender; not counting my bisexual aunt). Because for most of those 160, I don't know them enough to know if they may be gays. because I've never been close enough to those lgbt people to get introduced to their friends. it's not random chance. I'm sure if I had spent more time with the transsexual guy or the lesbian woman I would have met a lot more lgbt people, but it didn't happen.

And so, 2 confirmed gays over a cast of 160 named characters, when filtered through those lenses, are actually a sensible statistic. They certainly feel real to me, because they are consistent with the amount of lgbt people I experience in my life.they are consistent with the amount of lgbt people that most heterosexual people experience in their lives.

 

Edited April 13, 2020 by king of nowhere

[Ripheus23]

2 hours ago, Dreamer said:

sent to gay conversation camps

I want to go to a conversation camp

[+ILuvHats he/him]

27 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

aren't there some specific parts of the bible that specifically condemn homosexuality?

i'm not an expert and I'm not even religious, I'm asking this for personal curiosity, but I know there are some very strange prohibitions in the bible, like a prohibition of wearing clothes made with two different materials, or something if that kind. I'd be surprised if they said nothing about homosexuality after that.

There are a number of quotes from the Bible that specifically condemn homosexuality, but there are a lot of arguments that they are misinterpreted. Context and the ambiguity of translating from the original Greek and Hebrew into other languages makes it complicated, so some of the oft-quoted parts of scripture condemning homosexuality probably have more to say about the views of the translators than the original authors. And then you can take into account a lot of biblical quotes that implicitly support homosexuality. I'm not extremely familiar with the whole debate, but it's not as cut-and-dry as Christians with a traditional view on homosexuality like to say it is. 

[IcaroRibeiro he/him]

5 hours ago, Toaster Retribution said:

This will probably lead to a discussion, but here we go anyway, because I find this to be a really flawed statement. 

Brandon is a mormon, and mormons, like a bunch of other religious communities, both christian and others, consider marriage to be something that can only exist between a man and a woman. Men sleeping with men and women sleeping with women is also regarded as sinful (as is having sexual relationships before marriage). This is very much rooted in various religious scriptures. If I remember Brandons early statements on the subject right, this was basically what he said as well. He followed the teachings of the mormon church (correct me if I’m wrong here). 

So, my issue is this: labelling younger Brandon homophobic means labelling tons and tons of religious people and institutions as homophobic, just for having a different idea regarding what right and wrong is. The majority of the ”homophobic” religious people do not hate, persecute or lock up gay people. The ones who does that, who consider people with a different sexual orientation to have less value as humans, those are homophobic. Those who just have different ideals regarding what the right way to live your life is, but also respect everyones right to do as they please, are not homophobic: they just have a different view of life than you. 

So, TL;DR, don’t apply a negative label to a huge amount of people from specific groups due to them seeing the world through a different lense than you do.

 

So we have a deeply different opinions about what homophobia is. Mormons can view the world whatever they want, been homophobic doesn't imply actively hating or persecute anybody. Have a prejudice is just not seeing a group of people in the same way as other group of people based in whatever preconception the person has. I this case, Sanderson find every single LGBT relationship sinful? So it's a prejudice for me

I didn't even stated anything about his religion btw, I talked about him as individual, you're reaching a bit here . For me the way he sees (or used to see) the world is/was homophobic. Been homophobic doesn't mean the person is a monster or anything, both my parents are a bit homophobic specially father, and was even surprised to discover that some years ago because I never saw him treating bad any gay person, I only discovered that after a private conversation, but I still labeled him as homophobic, and well, I love dad anyway so don't care that much since I'm not gay myself. 

I think Sanderson is probably a great guy, actually having some gay friends and probably even love them and want just good things for them, but it's not block him of his homophobia. Hell, will I judge him for having bad thoughts? Who Am I? God? No, I'll never do that, I think as long he isn't going anything harmful by any means he can still have some eventually homophobe thoughts just fine.

I don't even know why we are having this discussion. I make that comment because it's how I see he's feelings based in his own past and current words. Moral is individual, so according to my OWN moral I see him as homophobic. If you want to discuss this in a more ethic or even legal/lawful field, then it's another discussion 

Edited April 13, 2020 by IcaroRibeiro

[Karger he/him]

2 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

aren't there some specific parts of the bible that specifically condemn homosexuality?

The often sighted quote by anti homosexual preachers is Leviticus 18:22.  "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination."  HOWEVER.  A friend of mine who was both gay and a biblical scholar double checked the Hebrew word translated as "to lie with" and discovered that it was only used to describe illicit or unhealthy relationships

Spoiler

(incest, rape, or bestiality for example)

so it actually might have been a mistranslation with the bible actually saying something more along the lines of "also don't have illicit relationships with other men/women those are wrong as well."

[Toaster Retribution he/him]

2 hours ago, IcaroRibeiro said:

So we have a deeply different opinions about what homophobia is. Mormons can view the world whatever they want, been homophobic doesn't imply actively hating or persecute anybody. Have a prejudice is just not seeing a group of people in the same way as other group of people based in whatever preconception the person has. I this case, Sanderson find every single LGBT relationship sinful? So it's a prejudice for me

I didn't even stated anything about his religion btw, I talked about him as individual, you're reaching a bit here . For me the way he sees (or used to see) the world is/was homophobic. Been homophobic doesn't mean the person is a monster or anything, both my parents are a bit homophobic specially father, and was even surprised to discover that some years ago because I never saw him treating bad any gay person, I only discovered that after a private conversation, but I still labeled him as homophobic, and well, I love dad anyway so don't care that much since I'm not gay myself. 

I think Sanderson is probably a great guy, actually having some gay friends and probably even love them and want just good things for them, but it's not block him of his homophobia. Hell, will I judge him for having bad thoughts? Who Am I? God? No, I'll never do that, I think as long he isn't going anything harmful by any means he can still have some eventually homophobe thoughts just fine.

I don't even know why we are having this discussion. I make that comment because it's how I see he's feelings based in his own past and current words. Moral is individual, so according to my OWN moral I see him as homophobic. If you want to discuss this in a more ethic or even legal/lawful field, then it's another discussion 

Fair enough. Your moral is your moral :-) I am just bothered when people refer to religious people as homophobic, when they are just following their faith.

Furthermore, if you use the word homophobic on Brandon Sanderson, what word should you use on people who wants to lock up or kill gays for their sexual orientation? If we spread the word too thin, it won’t really mean much at the end of the day.

[AonEne he/him]

39 minutes ago, Toaster Retribution said:

Furthermore, if you use the word homophobic on Brandon Sanderson, what word should you use on people who wants to lock up or kill gays for their sexual orientation? 

“Evil” 

(I’m with you on most of this, just saying) 

[Karger he/him]

1 hour ago, Toaster Retribution said:

Furthermore, if you use the word homophobic on Brandon Sanderson, what word should you use on people who wants to lock up or kill gays for their sexual orientation?

Scheduled for execution in any decent society?  In desperate need of professional help?  Yeah those are both more then 1 word.

[IcaroRibeiro he/him]

7 hours ago, Toaster Retribution said:

what word should you use on people who wants to lock up or kill gays for their sexual orientation?

Well, in my society? Criminals. In tradition/honor based societies, I would say just hateful/dangerous people 

Like, we're talking about killing right? This is really way too far. A sane human being will hardly cross the line of killing anyone just for "honor". Most of prejudice isn't manifested with direct or clear violence at least not in secular societies because:

a ) Most laws don't allow it;

b ) Society in general don't accept free violence;

c ) They are members of the same community, so it's harder to desumanize another person that much

Most of prejudice are, instead, manifested in minor behaviors, such as, for instance, not giving a person a job for a person based on their gender, or their skin color, or nationality. Or even a parent who don't let their kids play with poor or immigrant children in school. An homophobic is just a regular person who have contempt, aversion, antipathy, disdain or hatred for LGBT people, yes hate is here, but it's not the only thing that makes someone homophobic. There are even gay people who are homophobic and shows it when interacting with other LGBT people, transgender people are the most likely targets about suffering prejudice in their own community.

I hope now I could displayed a bit better my understanding about what is prejudice and one of the various forms it manifests (in this case, prejudice against LGBT people)

Edited April 14, 2020 by IcaroRibeiro

[Honorless he/him]

The LGBT movements weren't there just to stop them from getting killed or beaten up within an inch of their life. You've heard the saying, "living and not dying are two different things", haven't you? People were fighting to have a life, right to practice their religion, to love, to marry, have a job, have kids, have equal rights, see themselves represented positively, not be disincluded,...

Live and let live?

Live and let live then

 

All I said and am saying is that I'd like to see a character who's a bit more like us

[king of nowhere]

9 hours ago, Karger said:

Quote

what word should you use on people who wants to lock up or kill gays for their sexual orientation?

 

Scheduled for execution in any decent society?  In desperate need of professional help?  Yeah those are both more then 1 word.

 

4 hours ago, IcaroRibeiro said:

Well, in my society? Criminals. In tradition/honor based societies, I would say just hateful/dangerous people 

 

Calm down.

the question did not specify any action taken. Are we talking about people who actively persecute gays? Or are we talking about people who simply do not like them?

Because the first kind of people, they are criminals, no arguments about it. and we do have laws against randomly assaulting people on the street, with hate being a further aggravating circumstance.

but the second kind of people, the ones who simply do not like gays but are not doing anything against them, they have every right to exhist. The key here is that just not liking somebody - not liking everyone who does a certain thing - is not a criminal offence, nor is it an offence of any kind. It actually falls under freedom of thought.

the thing is, we have hundreds and hundreds of different cultures on our world. most of them evolved for centuries mostly isolated from others. most of them evolved really conflicting values. but it was all fine, because membres of those cultures were unlikely to come across each other.

now we have cheap air travel and even cheaper and faster communication, so we are coming into contact with dozens and dozens of cultures that do stuff we don't like. And we disapprove of them. I myself could make a list of things i disapprove that would end up covering over 90% of the human race.

So, you can't really ask people to not disapprove of other cultures. it would require massive brainwashing and destruction of identities anyway. but if we are to avoid a worldwide war among supporters of different ideologies, the only way is to recognize that even if we don't like them, even if we don't like what they do, they have a right to keep exhisting as they are, as long as they recognize the same right to us.

this is the final goal of the "live and let live" phylosophy. It is not an hymn to apathia. Not an invitation to mind your own business - though there is some of that. No, it is an attempt to avoid conflict. It is an attempt to reconcile two people who disagree on a fundamental level, in that as long as they can agree to disagree and leave each other alone, there is no need for conflict.

I can see the criticism "but if we allow this way of thinking, we encourage homophobic people to turn their head when they see a gay being beaten". No, that's not how it works. Live and let live requires that people are willing to treat each other as equals. All those low-key acts of small discrimination are against the ideal. the ideal is that if you disapprove someone's culture you can be curt, cool, businesslike with them. you don't have to be their friend, to be nice. but you  are not supposed to turn a blind eye when injustice is done to them. Treating everyone with fairness is the least you can ask to anybody. It's also the most you can ask.

So, people who are mildly homophobic but who are not supporting active discrimination should not be attacked.

Finally, also consider that until some 50 years ago, homosexuality was regarded somewhat like paedophilia is regarded today. Consider that people were raised in that environment. In the light of that, can you really blame them for "not liking gays"? Can you really expect more from them than "eh, I don't really like them, but they are free to do whatever among themselves"?  Personally, considering how much society changed, I already consider it a minor miracle that a majority of people could come that far.

[discorat she/her]

On 2020-04-13 at 3:40 AM, The Awakened Salad said:

I see that, but personally for me, I don’t think that I should have to read specific types of books to see myself being represented. I love fantasy and the cosmere contains some of my favourite books. Just because a book isn’t heavily romantic or sexual, it doesn’t mean that representation isn’t as important. Sure, it’s not the focus, and I’m not asking for a cosmere book where the whole plot is centred around sexuality (I’m here for the giant swords and glowy people, after all). But it’s still good to see.

It’s sort of like how Brandon handled Kaladin’s depression. I can’t remember the exact quote, but it’s something like “Hey, here’s this cool fantasy character who can fly and control gravity and he’s really awesome. Also he has depression.” Kaladin’s personality isn’t depressed, just like no character’s personality should be their sexuality. Depression isn’t the first thing I think of when I think of Kaladin. Stormlight doesn’t revolve around Kaladin’s depression. But it’s still a part of him. 

I’m not really too concerned about romance, either. It’s not what the books are centred on, and I don’t read them for that reason anyway. A character can be straight and not in a relationship. Likewise, a character can be gay and not in a relationship. Having a gay character doesn’t automatically mean they need to be dating someone. They can just exist and do cool stuff and be relevant to the plot, and also be gay. 

I hope I didn’t come across as rude, this is just my opinion on the topic. 

Oh no you don't come off as rude at all! And I do understand where you're coming from, however I don't think comparing it to Kaladins depression is really fair, because Kaladins depression does have a bigger purpose in the plot but his sexuality doesn't. I doubt he will even have an on screen relationship. 

 

I do agree with you though, it is nice to be accurately represented. And I believe if we let Sanderson have some time he will do it well. I am hoping for something in the next or fifth stormlight archive.

[discorat she/her]

21 hours ago, Elegy said:

I get where you're coming from. However - the Cosmere is a huge universe with tons and tons of characters. Some time ago I spontaneously wrote down all the Cosmere characters I could think of, just to see with what I'd end up with, and the end result was 160 names on a Word document. That's the scope of this universe, and having, like, 2 confirmed gay characters in there is just not enough. Even if representation is not an issue. It's just not plausible, statistically. Okay, I'm going to say it: It's a fictional universe that contains magic, god-like beings, soul-stealing nails and flying knights, yet the most implausible thing is actually the quotient of gay people in it! It's mind-boggling.

However, he promised he'll get around to it, so that's at least something.

You're right of course, but how many of those characters are confirmed straight? I would argue a lot of them are bisexual or fully gay (adolin, renarin, Eshonai, Teft, SHALLAN, JASNAH, etc)

[Honorless he/him]

8 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

 

Calm down.

the question did not specify any action taken. Are we talking about people who actively persecute gays? Or are we talking about people who simply do not like them?

Because the first kind of people, they are criminals, no arguments about it. and we do have laws against randomly assaulting people on the street, with hate being a further aggravating circumstance.

but the second kind of people, the ones who simply do not like gays but are not doing anything against them, they have every right to exhist. The key here is that just not liking somebody - not liking everyone who does a certain thing - is not a criminal offence, nor is it an offence of any kind. It actually falls under freedom of thought.

the thing is, we have hundreds and hundreds of different cultures on our world. most of them evolved for centuries mostly isolated from others. most of them evolved really conflicting values. but it was all fine, because membres of those cultures were unlikely to come across each other.

now we have cheap air travel and even cheaper and faster communication, so we are coming into contact with dozens and dozens of cultures that do stuff we don't like. And we disapprove of them. I myself could make a list of things i disapprove that would end up covering over 90% of the human race.

So, you can't really ask people to not disapprove of other cultures. it would require massive brainwashing and destruction of identities anyway. but if we are to avoid a worldwide war among supporters of different ideologies, the only way is to recognize that even if we don't like them, even if we don't like what they do, they have a right to keep exhisting as they are, as long as they recognize the same right to us.

this is the final goal of the "live and let live" phylosophy. It is not an hymn to apathia. Not an invitation to mind your own business - though there is some of that. No, it is an attempt to avoid conflict. It is an attempt to reconcile two people who disagree on a fundamental level, in that as long as they can agree to disagree and leave each other alone, there is no need for conflict.

I can see the criticism "but if we allow this way of thinking, we encourage homophobic people to turn their head when they see a gay being beaten". No, that's not how it works. Live and let live requires that people are willing to treat each other as equals. All those low-key acts of small discrimination are against the ideal. the ideal is that if you disapprove someone's culture you can be curt, cool, businesslike with them. you don't have to be their friend, to be nice. but you  are not supposed to turn a blind eye when injustice is done to them. Treating everyone with fairness is the least you can ask to anybody. It's also the most you can ask.

So, people who are mildly homophobic but who are not supporting active discrimination should not be attacked.

Finally, also consider that until some 50 years ago, homosexuality was regarded somewhat like paedophilia is regarded today. Consider that people were raised in that environment. In the light of that, can you really blame them for "not liking gays"? Can you really expect more from them than "eh, I don't really like them, but they are free to do whatever among themselves"?  Personally, considering how much society changed, I already consider it a minor miracle that a majority of people could come that far.

Agreed but they were specifically talking about people who actively persecute gays here. And fighting for something better than that is still worth it, isn't it?

Edited April 14, 2020 by Dreamer

[Karger he/him]

7 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

Are we talking about people who actively persecute gays?

I think that is pretty clear.  By persecute we mean kill or imprison BTW so not really a calm down moment.

[Ammanas]

edit: I had a comment, but it didn’t seem to contribute much and I decided to stay out of this thread which is becoming slightly contentious 
 

Edited April 14, 2020 by Ammanas