u This is particularly in relation to LGBT issues. What is "acceptance"? How is it defined, what does it look like, and how would you characterize thought and behavior that does not fit those criteria?
I’ll bite, haha.
So, first off, I’d say one of the things I just oppose in life generally is societal norms and laws being informed by religion in any way. Like that’s always an “absolutely NOT”, to me. That takes shape in many different ways, from Sharia Law in some Islamic countries, to Christianity here in America.
With all due respect, in 2025, with the benefit of science and all we know, and all we’ve been able to refute…. at this point we kind of just humor religion in the interest of not being a dick. With every passing year, it becomes a little less plausible. So while I’m totally cool with people believing whatever they wish, the broad population should not be subject to it or anything inspired by it.
In some places, a female teacher could tell her kids “Over the summer, my husband and I visited The Grand Canyon”, and no one would bat an eye. If that same teacher said she went with her “partner”, or if the teacher were a guy and went with his partner, some parents would freak out about that, and call it “indoctrination”, lmfao.
The basic premise, to me, is this: being straight isn’t “normal”, and anything else is “abnormal”; being straight isn’t “more acceptable” and anything else is “less/not acceptable.” Being straight isn’t a “better” life outcome, and anything else is a “worse” life outcome. And none of it is harmful, plus it’s not anything you “learn” to do (you’re just naturally wired for it, apparently), so it’s not the least bit harmful for children to be aware of it and be exposed to it. I find it foolish and extremely primitive to believe otherwise, frankly, so that part is tough to budge me off of. I’d argue it’s much more harmful to stifle a person’s natural proclivities…
https://www.youtube.com/embed/EuheU0NJGlkPoor Ryan😞😞😞
Case in point: my family used to vacation near a place called Provincetown on Cape Cod when I was growing up. It was kind of an art colony, and a huge summer vacation destination for LGBTQ people. Back then, it was harder to be “out”, so some folks would really let it all hang out on vacation. Like I was probably 11 when I saw a guy rollerblade past me in nothing but a G-string and a sailor cap, true story🤣 But if anything, it cemented my heterosexuality, lmfao.
I wasn’t into it, and it wasn’t even the norm there, but it sure didn’t cause me to be pushed closer to it. I was just like “Oh, ok…. this is a thing that exists, and that guy’s living his best life, and I’m living mine. My way is fine, his way is fine, and it’s all fair👍👍” His life doesn’t need to be my life, nor mine, his. And I’m in his house, in this situation, in a gay party town, really an 18+/21+ situation, so I’ll let the public semi-nudity slide….. honestly, it’s no less scandalous that 2025’s bikini bottoms women wear, as much as I’d rather look at those. I’m just not into the whole Puritanical thing. Lighten up and have a beer, lmao. But to have some folks tell it, I should be gay as a May daisy for having been “exposed” to it, as if it’s some kind of viral illness.
And I don’t want to pile on religion too much, although it often plays a strong role in encouraging these societal ills, but I went to a Catholic high school. Two out of four years, 50% of the time I was there, I was in class once a day with a KNOWN pedophile, a Jesuit. He taught there in 70s, diddled a couple of kids (along with a couple other priests, I’m just mentioning the one I got exposed to), and they “reassigned” to another Catholic high school in Maine, putting kids in danger there. Then they let it blow over for 10-15 years and brought him back to my school. The Best Picture-winning movie “Spotlight” has a scene AT MY SCHOOlL, WITH MY PRINCIPAL AND SCHOOL PRESIDENT, by name, where they’re conspiring to cover it all up. That’s why my alumni donation letters will forever go straight into the recycling bin. The Catholic Archdiocese Of Boston and my school administration was totally fine with me spending an hour a day with a pedo. So any kind of religious moral objection to anything LGBTQ will forever fall of the deafest of ears with me. So they should never even fix their mouths to tell me what it means to be a good and moral person. And this is just one of the aspects, we aren’t even getting into other arenas of life and society. I’ve seen way too much “bad” come from religion…. all of them, really…. to be looking to any of them for moral guidance. It all seems very performative, hollow, and very often hypocritical.
“Just don’t ask me to wear your shoes. And let’s not go down and nail lifts onto the natives’ feet.”, that’s the main point of that quote for me. Freedom of religion is also freedom FROM religion. I know good and bad people of all faiths and of no faith…. the faith or absence thereof isn’t really the make-or-break, in my estimation. They’re kind of just good or bad for whatever reason, and they manipulate whatever they believe or don’t believe to justify or excuse their bad behavior and/or attitudes.
So “acceptance” to me looks like…. acceptance. It’s all good, it’s all acceptable, and we just more or less manage to just mind our own business and not worry what’s going on around us. I think people feel overly entitled to control over and comfort in social situations.
You can probably argue both sides of the aisle overreach to exert such control/comfort. We need to be more emotionally resilient and not let a differing opinion or way of life ruin our day. Like I feel about Christianity the way some people talk about homosexuality. “I don’t care what you do, just keep it out of my public line of sight.” I don’t want to see crosses around people’s necks like you don’t want to see rainbow imagery at a store in June. But I just accept it as a differing way of life I have to accept in order to live in a multicultural society, which I overall enjoy.
“I don’t care if you worship this God, that God, or the third, just don’t tell me about it” is the same as you saying “I don’t care who you romantically involve yourself with, just keep it inside your home.” You don’t want Pride flags in the classroom like I don’t want Bibles or The Ten Commandments. You don’t choose to be LGBTQ so there’s nothing to be indoctrinated with. You DO choose religion, so that DOES leave the door open to “indoctrination.”
Ialways hear “liberal indoctrination”…. patriotism/nationalism, religious piety, excessive worship of the military, teaching a white-friendly version of US history that only tells our kids about the good parts of America, and leaves them blind to reality, etc…. thats all conservative indoctrination, I don’t understand the distinction you guys are trying to make other than incorrectly believing your way is fundamentally correct and therefore needs to be instilled in all citizens….. which sounds a WHOLE lot like indoctrination.
I don’t view “patriotism” as inherently virtuous either. Nothing against it in a vacuum, but I struggle with understanding how it could be good to unquestioningly be obedient to a place you just happened to be born in. I love America in a lot of ways; it greatly disappoints me in others….. why can’t I have that honest, nuanced perspective, instead of just saying “America is awesome and fuck anyone who claims otherwise!”, or have to be called an America-hating Communist because I think we do wrong by a lot of our citizens both historically and in the current day?
That’s my struggle with right wingers. At the risk of being rude, it’s like this kindergarten-brained mentality. You’re either fully on board with the program or you’re against it. It’s very binary. Just like their views on sexuality, haha. It’s hard to have adult conversations with folks like that. Few things are black-and-white, we’re all trying to navigate through gray areas in life. The right wing roots for America like a sports team: blindly, and rabidly. And the specific fan we are is most closely related to the Yankee fan: entitled, arrogant, obnoxious, and victory-lapping over a whole lot of shit that happened well before they were born…
Not a likable bunch😒
But to move towards an ending, I feel like we’re gray area’ing things that shouldn’t be, like just the concept of “respect everyone’s right to be different from you.” More than ever, since this last election, I’m just seeing everyone take their mask off. No one was saying things like “Black fatigue” last year, no one was suggesting that maybe we’re NOT a secular nation and we ARE a white Christian country…. no one said that shit on the campaign trail. But now you feel comfortable, and the veneer of respect is out the window. They’re already saying a lot of the quiet parts out loud now, why not just drop the act altogether?
Anyway…. its been the shock and disappointment of my life to learn the abysmal, abhorrent character of so many of my fellow countrymen. A lot of places are just dragging so far behind, and its just an anchor to societal progress, and as I think will become more and more apparent as we go, American progress in general.
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