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The way she framed it conservatives in Singapore made a deal: "ok, we'll give you decriminalization, but we want to make sure it doesn't go further than that" (to that end they even "fortified" marriage in law). She makes it sound like it's an obstacle to overcome, not a compromise to be honored.
Yes, it's like expressing a preference on what kind of food your neighbor eats, or how often they have sex. It's none of your business, and it's creepy to poke your nose into it.
Do you see some creepy aspect in the story about American Evangelicals spreading their views on homosexuality in Ghana? Or is your only problem with it that you disagree with them?
There was a literal international conspiracy to get them to stop. It didn't not involve direct force, but these people did not recognize they're putting their nose somewhere it doesn't belong. Also, keep in mind when I brought up experimenting with different setups, I explicitly mentioned marriage, not sodomy laws.
They explicitly talk about coordinating to change sentiments within countries as well. This is something they should not be allowed to do, in my opinion.
The countries themselves can make whatever decisions they want.
Mostly yes. Especially if it involves conspiring to use corporations, NGOs, the country's own youth, infiltrating their media, in order to "convince" those countries to change their laws.
This is just silly; no political compromise has the right to endure eternally simply because at one time it was made; was the admittance of California to the union wrong because it overturned the compromise of 1820? Were Republicans wrong for trying to overturn the 1850 compromise?
Except one's food or sexual habits are basically unimportant; politics is not. I have nothing wrong with Evangelicals trying to effect a change in attitude in foreign countries; I disagree with the content of their arguments, but I don't question their right to spread their views wherever they might wish to.
While I'm not some ultra-hawk, on pragmatic grounds, foreign and international groups have every right to put their nose where they like; if something is wrong, it doesn't diminish one's right to intervene to rectify that wrong because it's happening somewhere else.
This verges on being something of a truism; in practice they are sovereign countries and they can do what they like, that doesn't mean they should or that international organisations or individuals shouldn't attempt to prevent other countries enacting a particular policy.
I never said it has to be eternal, but it's incorrect to call it a compromise, if you're already plotting how to abolish it before the ink is even dry on the law that was passed.
The other question is that whether do people from other countries have a right to poke their nose into it. I hold that no.
Putting the word "California" next to the word "wrong" is just a set up for me to say "yes" no matter what the sentence is about. More seriously - don't know. Would have to read up on it.
I'm pretty sure sex is important to the people having it, and food is important to the people eating it. It should be unimportant to their neighbors, and if their neighbors somehow find it important, then they're creeps. Same applies to countries' politics.
There are cases where something very wrong is happening where you could get me to agree, but mostly I think this is wrong.
I think this argument misstates what a compromise really is. By comprising on an issue, one is not implicitly accepting a middle course as the right thing to do, rather one is simply attempting to secure the maximum feasible progress which very often will not be all of what one wants to happen, and should more change towards one's position become feasible, of course that's going to be pursued.
That's just politics, and the point of my 1820 compromise analogy. Essentially the 1820 compromise was devised to ensure an equal balance of free and slave states, thus ensuring neither faction could control the Senate; but of course once the northern states secured sufficient power to overturn that and admit California as a free state without also creating another slave state, they did so, and the south would have done the same had they had the ability.
The other key difference though is that where one's culinary and sexual habits only concern one or two individuals and have no real impact on anyone else, and so there is no real cause for a neighbour to interfere. However, in the case of LGBT rights international observers/organisations are not trying to dictate Singaporean's habits but stop one set of Singaporeans dictating the habits of another set of Singaporeans. So the apt analogy is not someone trying to stop a neighbour having sex, but someone trying to stop their neighbour trying to stop another neighbour from having sex, if that's makes sense.
Never said they do. The point is about respecting the compromise, not plotting to undermine it as soon as possible.
Well, that's kind of my point. When we moved from gay marriage to "bake the cake" to "trans people just want to pee", to "trans women are women" to "if you don't transition teenagers you're a bigot", I'm saying there's no reason to believe this ride is going to stop at any point that is promised at any given moment. For all we know the groomer meme is real, and "MAP acceptance" is the next point on the list.
I don't see that as a difference. The amount of neighbors impacted by you eating a certain meal is precisely equal to the amount of non-Singaporeans impacted by Singapore's marriage laws.
I have missed the moment when international observers started advocating for the absolute sovereignty of the individual. When will they start advocating for non-mandatory taxation?
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It's very possible for compromises to become ossified wisdom, though. The US Constitution was formed upon a compromise piled on compromise (between slave and free states, between small and big states, strong central government and weak central government advocates etc.), and while some of those compromises were overturned or altered, others have stayed and become state wisdom.
Or, to take an example from Finnish history, during the language strife of 1800s, the strongest Finnish-language advocates advocated for a position called "one nation, one language" (ie. Finland's Swedish-speaking minority should be assimilated to the Finnish majority), the strongest Swedish-language advocates advocated for a position called "two nations, two languages" (The Swedish-speakers constituted a separate and superior nation to Asiatic Finns), and the compromise position "one nation, two languages" (both Finnish-speakers and Swedish-speakers were equally Finnish) then became established state wisdom and has remained such to this day.
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I mean, yea, from her perspective it is. I'm curious how you think this compromise works. It seems like your perception of it entails that, since the sodomy law is repealed, nobody is ever allowed to argue for the legalization of gay marriage for all time. This seems like a strange perspective to me, and certainly is not how I understand it. The compromise is about particular legislation happening now. Not about some commitment to never ever changing laws or advocating they be changed in the future.
I think there are many relevant moral differences between states and individuals and between state policies and individual preferences that make this comparison inapt.
The second one. I think evangelicals spreading their views in Ghana is bad, because I think the views being spread are bad. I have no particular issue with people trying to convince others of their viewpoints more generally.
If the conspiracy doesn't involve means or ends that I think are objectionable I struggle to see why I should object to its existence.
How would you even stop this? Should Singapore not be allowed to participate in the global internet, because maybe they'd see things that would change their views on LGBT people? Does the Singaporean internet need to be censored to ensure their present social values are maintained forever and ever? Is it bad to show people ads depicting LGBT people as normal people if such ads convince people that bans on sodomy are wrong?
I don't understand why "convince" is in scare quotes, what methods were employed that aren't covered by that label? I guess I just disagree that convincing people to change their ways by argument is wrong.
I am with Arjin. My values are such that all proselytizing is suspect to me. Anyone who is proselytizing to those who are far away is very suspect. It's gross to try and impress your ideology on people far away.
Can you explain why you strongly disagree with that? Successful proselytizing is hegemonic, borderline colonial. It's clearly an invasive action by one culture on another. Especially in the case that theres a strong power difference between the two groups involved. Clearly that does apply in the case of western institutions trying to cause change to singapore, right?
I don't think this conversation is only about government policy. Cultures and institutions within those cultures are clearly going to attempt to spread their ideologies. But I can say that that is morally bad, even if I don't want to ban communication between cultures which would be impossible. Cultures and institutions that are more aggressive about proselytizing are dangerous, immoral, and not to be trusted. For the obvious reason that they are going to try and covert me, or my people. Definitionally that is something I wouldn't want. It is hostile.
Why? If anything, I would argue that if you don't think your principles in at least some sense apply universally they're not really principles at all. I think my preferred ideology and policies, like almost everyone does, would improve people's lives, and I think people not in one's country have the right to enjoy the benefits I believe would accrue from the enactment of values and policies I believe in.
Maybe? But I don't care. Homophobic political cultures are inferior to those which are not and if their political culture gets 'invaded' then hurrah.
Well this becomes sort of circular. You ask if I don't think my principles apply universally, and I suppose they do, but as I said my principles are against proselytizing to aliens. I don't think there's anything inconsistent there.
I think being allowed to live in a society free from aliens who do not share your worldview trying to actively indoctrinate you into their way of thinking would improve people's lives.
I am definitely not so incredibly confident in the content of my own cultural practices, that I think that everyone would benefit from following them.
Yeah, I'm not interested in conquering other countries in order to convert them, by war or otherwise. Ideally we could all live well enough alone. And it seems obvious to me that a culture that is as conquest hungry as you are (or the west is) should be regarded with suspicion. That's how this thread started I think. Why would anyone try to compromise with someone who you know has no respect for you and is only accepting it as a temporary tactical action. The only reason someone would make that compromise is if they have no other choice, which is probably the case in this specific example. But it's a compromise in bad faith.
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There's a gulf between "never changing laws after this" (unreasonable) and "this compromise holds only until we break our opponents"
The stronger the latter feeling, the more distrust and the less reason for the status quo power to compromise in the first place. If the opponents are going to be immovably opposed until they achieve maximal gains you might as well try to break them first while the mores are still somewhat on your side.
It undermines the very basis of compromise.
If it were a budget law there'd be less of an issue with the idea that we'll redo it next year. This is about social norms that need to be somewhat stable.
To both the LGBTs and the people they're convincing, "break our opponents" here means "convince our opponents our rights matter". Your arguments depend on the idea that gay or gay marriage bad somehow, which clearly can be argued for, and some people here agree with, but without that it's just "people who want law vote for it", which is not scary.
And break those we can't convince. That's always part of it no?
Look at the US government basically setting up a bounty system against people who don't want to do things like bake cakes for gays. Your business, but you could lose your life's work for your religious beliefs. That's breaking someone.
No, it depends on moral beliefs being sticky and having a normative quality: i.e. people who have them want to keep and instantiate them. Some people (in this case trad Sinagporeans) believe homosexuality is wrong. Therefore, when faced with an opponent that has clearly no interest in anything but tactical compromise on the road to utterly overturning your moral principles - the trads (who usually start out with an upper hand) have an incentive to not compromise at all, lest they succumb to salami tactics.
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It doesn't, of course. It means "convince a higher power to impose our will on our opponents." Very few people from either side actually engage with their peer-level opponents. The entire game nowadays is convincing people with power to execute your will over your enemies.
I remember reading something, and I don't remember whether it was here or elsewhere, about TRA groups saying their best strategy was to approach MPs or other people with power quietly, and try and keep what they were asking for out of the media and away from the spotlight. The public must not be told. They must not find out. Because the public will oppose them. But if they can convince these key people, they can bypass the public and force their will on them anyway.
It was Joyce's book.
And yes, it was exactly as you framed it.
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How would you attribute increasing 'acceptance' of homosexuality and trans people in society to "a higher power imposing our will on our opponents"? One could argue media, or social media, are playing a significant role, but that's not exactly "executing your will", more persuasion.
This clearly isn't the general strategy of 'trans activists', who are all over twitter and are present on left-leaning TV and news websites with stories about legislation to protect trans people, how transphobia is bad, etc. 'Approach people with power quietly' is often a good strategy for actually getting legislation passed, whatever the area.
Here's a very obvious way:
The government passes a "anti-LGBT discrimination law" that allows workplaces to be sued if anything conceivably homophobic or transphobic (by its standards) happens and is not addressed.
Companies don't want to be sued and face punitive damages so they start putting up courses against disliking homosexuality or trans and encouraging acceptance. They institute a pronoun policy to push trans acceptance. They make it clear punishment is the cost of non-participation or flouting the rules. They hire a HR department to watch over all of this.
People care about their livelihoods so they have no choice but to go along. Some falsify their beliefs by acting like they agree, some have the good fortune to be able to believe the things they're forced to conform to. Many go along to get along with yet another tedious corporate mandate like putting pronouns in their bio or introducing themselves with them even when they don't believe in the concept.
This has been the playbook since the Civil Rights movement and explains the rapid acceptance of the trans activist line without anything like the debate over gay marriage; the system is much more refined and entrenched now and so it can pivot very fast - especially by leveraging past successes to create an aura of inevitability that discourages resistance and encourages elite adoption (elites themselves educated in institutions that accept a lot of these things)
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The people who are accepting... aren't your opponents and so you don't need to force your will on them? These two things are completely orthogonal. I'm unclear if anyone even has actually been persuaded to chance their minds, as opposed to the simple replacement of generations.
I know several dozen people who've changed their minds on controversial political issues, including at least six who've changed their minds on either the morality of homosexuality or gay marriage. polling finds that " 13 percent of partisans have switched their affiliation in the last five years.", and switching party seems bigger than switching opinions on gay mrriage
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Like this charming song which is ha-ha only joking, we just mean we'll make everything and everyone nice.
That it comes across as extremely creepy is apparently not clear to this bunch, and gosh mate, that hairstyle? if I had a kid who copied that look, I'd lock him in the shed.
Yes, a bunch of gay men from San Francisco singing about converting kids to disco and rainbows is not at all sounding like "fresh meat fresh meat".
... yeah, that is a joke, and the normal belief really is 'we will make everyone nice and kids will wholesomely discover they are gay'. They'd justify this by pointing to the many gay people who grew up in conservative families, 'knew they were gay' from a young age, but couldn't say anything. They are intentionally playing into the 'creepy' idea of 'corrupting your children', as a joke. This is single joke of a truly massive amount of gay-oriented culture and music for a population of 10M english speaking gays. It doesn't represent the general attitudes or actions of gays at all, because it is a joke.
(as usual) that can all be true and gay can still be bad. but that has to be directly argued for. It seems like there's some vague ideas that there's something wrong with gays, but isn't really developed and just comes out in misdirected grievances against things one sees on twitter or discord.
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And that "our rights" includes taking a scalpel to your 14 year old daughter's chest, or being put in female prison on your say-so.
If that's your argument, that's one of substance not of the right of international institutions to try to promote change abroad.
No, hold on. This branch of the thread went off into the LGBT activism in itself. I still believe in everything I said about international organizations.
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What do you think a (sufficiently intelligent and non-seething) LGBT-supporter would say when they hear that response?
Maybe ">90% of trans people are over 18, and maybe 2% of them are in prison. Trans people just want to be accepted as the gender they are, and put a lot of effort into being, and be treated similarly to anyone else. You're picking particularly contentious niches-within-niches - many trans people don't even get surgery, those that do >95% of the time get them over age 18, and even those who get surgery under 18 are 16-17, not 14. Why focus on those, when the bulk of what we want are thinks like insurance-covered hormones for adults and general social acceptance?"
The non-seething trans supporters are either on my side and cast out as heretics, or keep their head down.
This reminds me to some non-seething socialists' attempts to get to dodge the damage done by the culture war: "right wingers are using culture war to distract you from the real issues like economics, worker exploitation, etc". Well, if it's a ln existential threat to me, and merely a distraction to you, how about a compromise - you concede the entire culture war to me, and I concede the entire economy to you? Win - win! Oddly I never had takers.
Same goes for non-seething trans activists. They'll never agree to not trying to sell puberty blockers as a magical pause button, to minimum age limits on medical intervention, on sex segregation in sports, and all the other "neiche issues", at least not without landing in the same pit I'm in (and bless the ones that took the leap!). It's only so long that I can go by stated instead of revealed preferences.
And that's without going into the object level stuff. I think you're wrong on that too. IIRC the modal trans person today is an adolescent female.
Modal is like the peak of a distribution, or in a discrete sense the 'most common value' - it's plausible the modal age of a trans person is <18 because trans is becoming more popular, but the average or median i'm pretty sure is >18, just because the trans minors of 5 years ago aren't minors anymore, and many transition after 18. Citing a report on a report on studies is bad but The analysis, relying on government health surveys conducted from 2017 to 2020, estimated that 1.4 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds and 1.3 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds were transgender, compared with about 0.5 percent of all adults., which points to >18.
When I said 'non-seething', I meant 'not as a part of a partisan argument'. I think a lot of trans activists aren't that invested in the specific topic of surgery for minors (as distinguished from hormones for minors, or surgery generally). Many of them continue to believe that underage kids aren't getting surgeries, and usually won't directly defend surgeries for minors, in my experience. General trans activists and the transgender medicine community are different - a part of the latter does some surgeries on minors, but much of the former still has the 'common sense' reaction to surgery on minors.
And ... if you believe the 'trans people have severe dysphoria and surgery alleviates that, so surgery on trans adults is good' (which I don't), I don't see why that doesn't apply to kids as well. Of course, in that frame, children are still very stupid and will often say they're trans when they aren't, so it should be gated behind years of 'are you sure' (which was part of the motivation for puberty blockers) - and it is at the moment, I think.
Here's something that could square the circle somewhat: most people, normal or otherwise, are not activists. Activists, people in power, etc, do not care about the opinion of the majority, as long as they can get away with it, which is almost always.
Though that only works until a point, because:
So when you tell them it is true, and show them the evidence, do they thank you for it, and adjust, or attack you as a transphobic rightoid?
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"Why focus on the purges, when the bulk of what we want are things like fair conditions for the proletariat?"
The topic in OP was "gay marriage", though. It's possible to have fair working conditions without purges (see: any modern country) - do you have any reason to believe "gay marriage or trans acceptance" necessitates "scalpel to your 14yo daughter's chest"?
It's much better to actually take issue with trans as a whole.
As an analogy, the gay rights movement came alongside a movement for free love more generally, which included love at any age - hence stuff like this and this. But as gay rights 'won', pedophile rights did not. It's still possible that something about the philosophies behind LGBT also justify pedophilia or transitioning minors in a way representative of why some LGBT things are bad, but that should be argued, instead of just vaguely hinted at with 'scalpel to 14yo daughter's chest'.
The "trans acceptance" part seems to be widely interpreted as requiring a scalpel, yes. (not to mention for everyone to pretend to be happy about it)
Why is this better? I don't really have much issue with 'trans as a whole' in that I think grown-ups should do pretty much as they please -- just that I extend this to all the grownups, including the ones who don't agree that sorting trans people into the bucket of their chosen gender is overly helpful to anyone.
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I guess how stable is "somewhat stable"? In the United States over the 12 years between when sodomy was constitutionally protected and when gay marriage was constitutionally protected popular support for the latter increased from around 40% of the population to around 60%. Was that too fast of a change? Would it be a violation of this "compromise" if, a decade from now, Singapore has a substantial debate about legalizing gay marriage? What if popular support has changed similarly in that time?
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Oh. Then we have a fundamental value difference. I'm not sure how far we're going to get in this conversation with that in the way. I can only gesture wildly hoping you will understand whether I'm talking about my finger, or the thing it's point at.
Here's another one. Have you read the "Samsara" short story by Scott? What's your take on it?
To me it's cosmic horror. I shudder at the thought there's someone out there that could describe such evil acts in such a lighthearted way. The only way I can consider Scott not-quite-past-redemption is to tell myself it's meant as a Halloween story, and was posted a few days late.
Not for all time, but wait at least a generation or two. The other issue is the "nobody", like I said I think Singaporeans can make whatever decisions they want, I take issue with people conspiring to change their mind.
There certainly are differences, but none that I can see that are relevant to our conversation, or the argument I'm making.
In this thread I'm mostly interested in the question of the conspiracy's existence. A lot these are very frustrating for people in my position, because over the long term, people who are opposed to my views end up adopting a "that's not happening, and it's a good thing that it is" stance. If we can agree that it's happening I'm already mostly happy.
No to the latter. Like I said, it's up to Singaporeans to decide what decision they want to make, in this case it also means they decide what measures to take. If they want to be on the Internet, they can. If they want to censor it, it's also their right. I'm just against international elites conspiring to get them to change their mind.
What do you think about peer pressure? Cults? Using PUA mind-tricks to get a woman to say "yes" to sex, so it's technically with consent? None of these can ever count as coercion?
I think some of the tactics employed to try and convince the protagonist are impermissibly coercive, but otherwise am not seeing what evil acts are being described.
Maybe this is another value difference. I do not see what is wrong with trying to change people's minds.
I feel like one obvious difference is that state policies are coercive on other individuals in a way my neighbors preferences are not. Like, we're talking about legal coercion and punishment. That seems quite different to my neighbor having a preference for certain kinds of sex. Indeed, if my neighbors preference for sex involved coercing others (i.e. rape) I think it would become my business, in the same way the states coercion of individuals under the guise of the criminal law is my business. In a similar vein I think my values are universal. They are not just good for me, they are good simpliciter. My own values tell me there are impermissible ways of getting people to live according to my values (such as by coercion) but convincing people to have similar values to me is just good, in itself.
Fair enough! I think the "pro-spiracy" others have mentioned is probably a better conception. There are people in powerful positions that share a certain set of values and want others to also share those values. I'm not sure how much is literal conspiracy (surely some) but I think the pro-spiracy aspect is the dominant one.
I do think these things can be impermissibly coercive, but I'm going to need some evidence that this is what actually happened in particular cases.
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