So you were so utterly unaffected by his flirting you didn't even know it was happening till other people told you ?
Look, if he was harassing you - then you had a legitimate reason to complain, if his flirting didn't even register with you then you suffered no harm and have no cause for any response - let alone to justify laws that target the vast majority of other LBTGI people whom you've never even met for something they've never done.
Just how homophobic do you have to be to feel threatened by one gay person who flirted with you when you didn't even KNOW he was flirting with you at the time? A simple "I'm not interested" would probably had been all it took to reject him, exactly like you would do to a woman who was flirting with you if you weren't interested. So why do you think his orientation justifies anything at all ?
Remember - homophobia is not a fear of gay people, per se, it's a fear of being gay. Only latent homosexuals are capable of being homophobic.
According to these assholes - the problem is the dick you had is apparently the human and you're the part that got cut off from it and ought to be incinerated for public safety... or something like that.
Take heart... I think the time may be near when bigot-bashing will be acceptable to the degree gay-bashing was not long ago. The culture war is over, we won. Too bad there are still these idiots around, they remind me those Japanese soldiers in the caves refusing to believe world war 2 was over 2 decades later.
Eventually - old age will rid us of the last of them - in the meantime, all the good people are standing with you and offering our protection from the remnants of their idiocy.
And now you're just proving your ignorance of genetics. Most trans people who have had DNA tests done - had genuine genetic differences and were not XY or XX. There are least 12 known other combinations of those chromosomes only 2 of which are externally visible (the two types of hermaphrodites) - the rest look male or female outside, but have real biological differences inside (including neurological). XXY for example looks female, can bear children, and would be indistinguishable from XY without a DNA test - yet most XXY women are trans and the rest overwhelmingly identify as lesbian.
Ever seen what happens when a trans-women walks into the bathroom "equipped for people with dicks" ?
They tend to end up bleeding... or dead.
The single biggest reason not to force them to do that is because it kills them. There's no reason to fear them in the other bathroom but THEY have every reason to fear going into the one you want to force on them. The fear that drives this is utterly unfounded as well - there has literally never, ever been a single case of a man raping a woman who dressed as woman - it is borderline impossible for it to happen. The kind of men who rape women, would consider it demeaning to look like one. Male-on-female rape is largely an act of sexual dominance driven by a desperate desire to prove a fragile masculinity... putting on a dress would defy the very purpose of the crime. It's never happened and probably will never happen. And even if you're telling the truth about yourself, that was the reasoning of most people who supported this: to protect people from a non-existent threat by taking one of the most vulnerable and highest-risk-of-assault-and-murder groups and putting them at greater risk.
A person's choice should not be limited between "get arrested" or "get killed".
Practically all of it. But even if it didn't, it wouldn't matter- the whole point of that long (and growing) acronymn is for all these groups to stand together and fight together in solidarity. If you harm one group in there, you get all the others fighting back.
One local libertarian author cited Estonia as the reason we should ONLY care about those the Panama papers implicated in huge atrocities and actively help people dodge taxes. Estonia he says, has built their post-cold-war economy on being a tax-haven which has attracted lots of "investment" as foreign companies headquartered there to pay the low tax, and given the government lots of money to inject into the local economy which then thrived (a very unlibertarian idea that last part but libertarians have never been known for their consistency they'll break every rule they claim to believe in when the beneficiaries are already rich and libertarianism should be more properly known as neo-aristocratism).
Here's the thing he did not, however, consider. At the last G8 meeting, the African Union made a representation in which they said that Africa would gladly forgo all foreign aid - if the G8 agreed to pass harmonious laws to prevent their companies from avoiding taxes when doing business in Africa. It was a smart thing to say too - the taxes lost from taxable business in Africa every year through avoidance is almost 40 times what the continent receives in aid. If every African country cut it's corporate tax rate in half (and most are already among the lowest in the world - here in South Africa the corporate tax rate is less than 3rd of the individual income tax rate) and gave up all foreign aid - but those taxes were actually paid, Africa would be debt free in a year - and every African country would at LEAST tripple it's GDP even if it was so corrupt that 90% of the money was misspent (the actual levels are nowhere near THAT bad) - the remaining 10% invested would all but eradicate poverty on the continent.
So that changes the picture: Estonia has not had a "sound and clever economic policy" - they've enriched themselves not by producing anything, not by selling any resources of value - but by stealing the taxes due to the governments charged with caring for the poorest people on the planet. Every dollar Estonia make in foreign tax, is an African child going to sleep hungry tonight.
There is no reason this should be encouraged, supported or legal.
It comes from a supreme court case in 1910 when a corporation decided to pay it's workers a decent living wage, and cut margins a bit to afford that. The shareholders sued claiming the CEO had no right to pay workers a penny more than the least he could get away with - as that reduced their profits. They won.
However, it's pretty important to know that this was an American case, it has no bearing on any other country nor is it supported by the laws of any other country. German law, for example, does not describe companies in a way that could possibly support such a legal finding - companies there are described as communities existing for the benefit of all involved - shareholders, employees and customers alike and would lose a case where they screwed any of those (which is why in Germany every corporate board HAS to be made up of 50% non-shareholding employees, usually appointed by the union).
So the logic that drives that is uniquely and exclusively American (and to a lesser extent exists in Britain) but the rest of the world is not that insane. This is why laws like these tends to look like they target American companies (look at how facebook got mentioned here) - it's not really the case, they are laws the likes of which European companies have always worked with and complied with happily because *not* complying would require doing unthinkable. The utterly opposite incentives created by US laws leads to US companies feeling targetted since their behavior mostly consists of those "unspeakable things".
Well, actually enforcing international law against shell companies being anonymously owned would make huge strides - and coincidentally basically kill terrorist funding networks. In case you were wondering, Panama is only the SECOND worst about letting people form shell companies without having to provide identifying documentation so the ownership is known... the worst offender is the USA.
There are very few American names in the Panama papers - because Americans don't need Panama to dodge taxes or hide income from atrocities... they can do that more easily in Delaware or Nevada.
I wasnt talking about what is legal. That was a statement on what is physically possible. Private citizens cannot censor one another because its physically impossible. Unless they are prepared to use violence (go to jail) it cannot be done. I can refuse to publish you. Thats the extent of possibility. I cant stop anybody else publishing you. I cant stop you publishing yourself. Choising not to publish you is a basic freedom you cant revoke without becoming the very despit you fear. But it is not censorship vecause it only applies to my domain. Censorship requres the ability to control your domain.
I didnt say that. You do however cease to be a PRIVATE citizen when you run for PUBLIC office. And your proposals for official government policy are definitely not just opinions when you do that. As a public office seeker we gain the right to actively protest by all legal means any policy you propose.
The efficacy of boycotts as a means of protest is beside the point. They are a legitimate, peaceful and legal form of protest that is available in any free country and indeed no country xould be called free if they were not.
>but he has been against "illegal" (which is not a race)
False, he has only spoken against ONE group of illegals - who happen to have a common ethnicity.
> and urges caution in terms of Islam Suggesting we lock up American citizens who have never committed any crime for their religion is not "urging caution" - it's religious persecution, and since the holders of this religion is overwhelmingly non-white, yes it's racist. You don't have to hate a race to be racist, you just have to think your own is better than any or all others. The idea that hating a whole swath of races is somehow better than hating just one is mindbogglingly stupid.
> but a religion that creates more than 90% of terrorists False. In fact the religion that creates the most terrorists is Christianity. The largest Christian terrorist group on earth (the Lord's Resistance Army) kills more people in a month than all Islamic terror groups combined managed in the decade from 2000-2010, 9/11 is every fucking Tuesday for them. The numbers skewed a little when ISIS appeared on the scene, because ISIS has an army and actually kills rather more than any previous terror Islamic terror groups (and still only a tiny fraction of what Christian groups do) - but then again 99% of all the people they have killed were Muslims - so ironically the exact opposite of your claim is true: the vast majority of the world's terror VICTIMS are Muslim. More Muslims are killed by terror attacks in Beirut every month than have been killed in Europe, Canada and America COMBINED in the last TEN YEARS.
Fuck knows why you guys are so afraid... as far as the terrorists go, you're barely even a target. You're so low on the target list you almost never get hit. Europe is complaining about a sharp rise in attacks... 4 big attacks in 4 years... most middle-eastern cities get that many in a week.
>the majority of violence caused at Trump rallies are caused by protestors. Either you read really stupid sources or you're just lying again - in fact nearly all violence at Trump rallies were direct AGAINST protesters and there have been almost no cases where protestors did anything to instigate violence whatsoever. Hell one protestor got beaten up for literally just sitting there silently. No placard. No message. Just sitting there while black.
>Has Trump ever actually issued a call for violence? Saying "I would like to punch his face" is pretty much a not-very-subtle call for your supporters to punch his face (i.e. commit violence). And even more egregiously: "If any of my supporters are charged for beating up a protester at my rally I will pay his legal fees" - that's outright expressing support for the idea of protesters at a political rally (you know - a place where in free countries protesters are SUPPOSED to be) to get beaten up.
> If so, I must have missed it. You seem to miss rather a lot... everything in fact.
The vast majority of Americans do not agree with your assessments on whether those are hate speech or not, but what about when he went full Hitler and proposed that law abiding American citizens be locked up in camps if they happen to be Muslim ?
You don't get to CLAIM first amendment rights when you have actively proposed punishing people (innocent people not convicted of any crime) for their religion - when you are the enemy of free speech you no longer get to HAVE it.
Why should they not ? Companies support candidates they like, and withhold support from candidates they dislike. Frankly carrying or not carrying his trinkets is a helluva lot more honest a way to do that than campaign contributions - and a lot more democratic too.
Assuming you are right - that only further cements the right to express that feeling of loathsomeness, if anything minority and dissenting views are more deserving of protection because they do not have the power of the majority to defend them.
And this is an act of free speech - asking to boycott a politician over a policy proposal is literally the PURPOSE of free speech.
So on one side we have the considered argument of one of the most influential philosophers of all time - coincidentally one of the largest contributors to what may philosophy's single most valuable contribution to society: the scientific method. An argument that was part of a proper philosophical treatise which meant it had to meet the laws of logic and be well supported by significant evidence in order to be taken seriously by his peers.
On the other hand we have an anonymous coward with zero references, no supporting evidence and no shred of a rational argument to back up his counter-claim.
Now which one of these arguments do you find more convincing ? Because for me it definitely is not the latter.
>Someone trying to prevent Amazon to carry Trump products
Nope. Nobody has done that, and since we're talking private citizens, nobody has the power to attempt that. Some customers have asked a business to do something. The business can choose to do as they asked, or it can choose to ignore them. Doing as they asked will gain them loyalty from some customers and disgust from others. Not doing as they asked will gain loyalty from some customers and disgust from others. The business gets to decide which of the two groups is bigger, or maybe even - which of the two groups they agree with.
It is NOT a political opinion. It ceased to be a political opinion the moment he announced his candidacy. As of that moment it became a proposed government policy. We're allowed to protest those and lobby around them in any way we want. Including financially. Companies do that all the time - they give money to candidates advancing policies they like, the make money for candidates contingent ON advancing policies they like and they withhold money from candidates with policies they don't like. Trump is a candidate, his position is a proposed government policy and we have the right to fight against those policies using every means of peaceful protest available to us - up to and including asking companies to share the effort.
The same people who are now complaining about this usually defend citizens united and genuinely believe that buying politicians is legitimate freedom of speech. Well then - refusing to buy FROM politicians is ALSO legitimate freedom of speech and lobbying businesses to not buy from them is also legitimate freedom of speech. You guys made money a form of speech - you can't complain when sometimes the way it talks is by becoming unavailable.
If you actually oppose candidates being financially disadvantaged for stating unpopular opinions (especially opinions unpopular with big, wealthy, corporations) then I highly recommend you vote for Bernie as he is literally the only candidate who supports extensive campaign finance reform.
And please note that with extensive campaign finance reform - this kind of protest will not go away, in fact it will become a lot more powerful because you can do this with far smaller financial resources than the types of donations lobbyists can often muster up. Which is at it should be.
Slashdot Mirror
So you were so utterly unaffected by his flirting you didn't even know it was happening till other people told you ?
Look, if he was harassing you - then you had a legitimate reason to complain, if his flirting didn't even register with you then you suffered no harm and have no cause for any response - let alone to justify laws that target the vast majority of other LBTGI people whom you've never even met for something they've never done.
Just how homophobic do you have to be to feel threatened by one gay person who flirted with you when you didn't even KNOW he was flirting with you at the time? A simple "I'm not interested" would probably had been all it took to reject him, exactly like you would do to a woman who was flirting with you if you weren't interested. So why do you think his orientation justifies anything at all ?
Remember - homophobia is not a fear of gay people, per se, it's a fear of being gay. Only latent homosexuals are capable of being homophobic.
According to these assholes - the problem is the dick you had is apparently the human and you're the part that got cut off from it and ought to be incinerated for public safety... or something like that.
Take heart... I think the time may be near when bigot-bashing will be acceptable to the degree gay-bashing was not long ago. The culture war is over, we won. Too bad there are still these idiots around, they remind me those Japanese soldiers in the caves refusing to believe world war 2 was over 2 decades later.
Eventually - old age will rid us of the last of them - in the meantime, all the good people are standing with you and offering our protection from the remnants of their idiocy.
And now you're just proving your ignorance of genetics. Most trans people who have had DNA tests done - had genuine genetic differences and were not XY or XX. There are least 12 known other combinations of those chromosomes only 2 of which are externally visible (the two types of hermaphrodites) - the rest look male or female outside, but have real biological differences inside (including neurological). XXY for example looks female, can bear children, and would be indistinguishable from XY without a DNA test - yet most XXY women are trans and the rest overwhelmingly identify as lesbian.
Ever seen what happens when a trans-women walks into the bathroom "equipped for people with dicks" ?
They tend to end up bleeding... or dead.
The single biggest reason not to force them to do that is because it kills them. There's no reason to fear them in the other bathroom but THEY have every reason to fear going into the one you want to force on them.
The fear that drives this is utterly unfounded as well - there has literally never, ever been a single case of a man raping a woman who dressed as woman - it is borderline impossible for it to happen. The kind of men who rape women, would consider it demeaning to look like one. Male-on-female rape is largely an act of sexual dominance driven by a desperate desire to prove a fragile masculinity... putting on a dress would defy the very purpose of the crime. It's never happened and probably will never happen.
And even if you're telling the truth about yourself, that was the reasoning of most people who supported this: to protect people from a non-existent threat by taking one of the most vulnerable and highest-risk-of-assault-and-murder groups and putting them at greater risk.
A person's choice should not be limited between "get arrested" or "get killed".
Practically all of it.
But even if it didn't, it wouldn't matter- the whole point of that long (and growing) acronymn is for all these groups to stand together and fight together in solidarity. If you harm one group in there, you get all the others fighting back.
The term "wealth creator" is basically a giant red flag that means "This person is an utter tool or a troll or both".
One local libertarian author cited Estonia as the reason we should ONLY care about those the Panama papers implicated in huge atrocities and actively help people dodge taxes. Estonia he says, has built their post-cold-war economy on being a tax-haven which has attracted lots of "investment" as foreign companies headquartered there to pay the low tax, and given the government lots of money to inject into the local economy which then thrived (a very unlibertarian idea that last part but libertarians have never been known for their consistency they'll break every rule they claim to believe in when the beneficiaries are already rich and libertarianism should be more properly known as neo-aristocratism).
Here's the thing he did not, however, consider. At the last G8 meeting, the African Union made a representation in which they said that Africa would gladly forgo all foreign aid - if the G8 agreed to pass harmonious laws to prevent their companies from avoiding taxes when doing business in Africa. It was a smart thing to say too - the taxes lost from taxable business in Africa every year through avoidance is almost 40 times what the continent receives in aid. If every African country cut it's corporate tax rate in half (and most are already among the lowest in the world - here in South Africa the corporate tax rate is less than 3rd of the individual income tax rate) and gave up all foreign aid - but those taxes were actually paid, Africa would be debt free in a year - and every African country would at LEAST tripple it's GDP even if it was so corrupt that 90% of the money was misspent (the actual levels are nowhere near THAT bad) - the remaining 10% invested would all but eradicate poverty on the continent.
So that changes the picture: Estonia has not had a "sound and clever economic policy" - they've enriched themselves not by producing anything, not by selling any resources of value - but by stealing the taxes due to the governments charged with caring for the poorest people on the planet. Every dollar Estonia make in foreign tax, is an African child going to sleep hungry tonight.
There is no reason this should be encouraged, supported or legal.
Property is theft.
It comes from a supreme court case in 1910 when a corporation decided to pay it's workers a decent living wage, and cut margins a bit to afford that. The shareholders sued claiming the CEO had no right to pay workers a penny more than the least he could get away with - as that reduced their profits. They won.
However, it's pretty important to know that this was an American case, it has no bearing on any other country nor is it supported by the laws of any other country. German law, for example, does not describe companies in a way that could possibly support such a legal finding - companies there are described as communities existing for the benefit of all involved - shareholders, employees and customers alike and would lose a case where they screwed any of those (which is why in Germany every corporate board HAS to be made up of 50% non-shareholding employees, usually appointed by the union).
So the logic that drives that is uniquely and exclusively American (and to a lesser extent exists in Britain) but the rest of the world is not that insane. This is why laws like these tends to look like they target American companies (look at how facebook got mentioned here) - it's not really the case, they are laws the likes of which European companies have always worked with and complied with happily because *not* complying would require doing unthinkable. The utterly opposite incentives created by US laws leads to US companies feeling targetted since their behavior mostly consists of those "unspeakable things".
Well, actually enforcing international law against shell companies being anonymously owned would make huge strides - and coincidentally basically kill terrorist funding networks.
In case you were wondering, Panama is only the SECOND worst about letting people form shell companies without having to provide identifying documentation so the ownership is known... the worst offender is the USA.
There are very few American names in the Panama papers - because Americans don't need Panama to dodge taxes or hide income from atrocities... they can do that more easily in Delaware or Nevada.
I wasnt talking about what is legal. That was a statement on what is physically possible. Private citizens cannot censor one another because its physically impossible. Unless they are prepared to use violence (go to jail) it cannot be done. I can refuse to publish you. Thats the extent of possibility. I cant stop anybody else publishing you. I cant stop you publishing yourself. Choising not to publish you is a basic freedom you cant revoke without becoming the very despit you fear. But it is not censorship vecause it only applies to my domain. Censorship requres the ability to control your domain.
Customers stating a prefference is exactly why its better tgan contributions. The latter has no accountability to the market.
I didnt say that. You do however cease to be a PRIVATE citizen when you run for PUBLIC office. And your proposals for official government policy are definitely not just opinions when you do that. As a public office seeker we gain the right to actively protest by all legal means any policy you propose.
The efficacy of boycotts as a means of protest is beside the point. They are a legitimate, peaceful and legal form of protest that is available in any free country and indeed no country xould be called free if they were not.
>but he has been against "illegal" (which is not a race)
False, he has only spoken against ONE group of illegals - who happen to have a common ethnicity.
> and urges caution in terms of Islam
Suggesting we lock up American citizens who have never committed any crime for their religion is not "urging caution" - it's religious persecution, and since the holders of this religion is overwhelmingly non-white, yes it's racist. You don't have to hate a race to be racist, you just have to think your own is better than any or all others. The idea that hating a whole swath of races is somehow better than hating just one is mindbogglingly stupid.
> but a religion that creates more than 90% of terrorists
False. In fact the religion that creates the most terrorists is Christianity. The largest Christian terrorist group on earth (the Lord's Resistance Army) kills more people in a month than all Islamic terror groups combined managed in the decade from 2000-2010, 9/11 is every fucking Tuesday for them. The numbers skewed a little when ISIS appeared on the scene, because ISIS has an army and actually kills rather more than any previous terror Islamic terror groups (and still only a tiny fraction of what Christian groups do) - but then again 99% of all the people they have killed were Muslims - so ironically the exact opposite of your claim is true: the vast majority of the world's terror VICTIMS are Muslim. More Muslims are killed by terror attacks in Beirut every month than have been killed in Europe, Canada and America COMBINED in the last TEN YEARS.
Fuck knows why you guys are so afraid... as far as the terrorists go, you're barely even a target. You're so low on the target list you almost never get hit. Europe is complaining about a sharp rise in attacks... 4 big attacks in 4 years... most middle-eastern cities get that many in a week.
>the majority of violence caused at Trump rallies are caused by protestors.
Either you read really stupid sources or you're just lying again - in fact nearly all violence at Trump rallies were direct AGAINST protesters and there have been almost no cases where protestors did anything to instigate violence whatsoever. Hell one protestor got beaten up for literally just sitting there silently. No placard. No message. Just sitting there while black.
>Has Trump ever actually issued a call for violence?
Saying "I would like to punch his face" is pretty much a not-very-subtle call for your supporters to punch his face (i.e. commit violence). And even more egregiously: "If any of my supporters are charged for beating up a protester at my rally I will pay his legal fees" - that's outright expressing support for the idea of protesters at a political rally (you know - a place where in free countries protesters are SUPPOSED to be) to get beaten up.
> If so, I must have missed it.
You seem to miss rather a lot... everything in fact.
The vast majority of Americans do not agree with your assessments on whether those are hate speech or not, but what about when he went full Hitler and proposed that law abiding American citizens be locked up in camps if they happen to be Muslim ?
You don't get to CLAIM first amendment rights when you have actively proposed punishing people (innocent people not convicted of any crime) for their religion - when you are the enemy of free speech you no longer get to HAVE it.
Why should they not ? Companies support candidates they like, and withhold support from candidates they dislike. Frankly carrying or not carrying his trinkets is a helluva lot more honest a way to do that than campaign contributions - and a lot more democratic too.
Amazon does not have 7 Billion customers world-wide.
Assuming you are right - that only further cements the right to express that feeling of loathsomeness, if anything minority and dissenting views are more deserving of protection because they do not have the power of the majority to defend them.
And this is an act of free speech - asking to boycott a politician over a policy proposal is literally the PURPOSE of free speech.
>Free speech is demanding businesses stop selling things from people you don't like and publicly shaming them if they don't comply?
It's not "people we don't like" - it's a politician proposing a government policy we don't like and have every right to protest.
So on one side we have the considered argument of one of the most influential philosophers of all time - coincidentally one of the largest contributors to what may philosophy's single most valuable contribution to society: the scientific method. An argument that was part of a proper philosophical treatise which meant it had to meet the laws of logic and be well supported by significant evidence in order to be taken seriously by his peers.
On the other hand we have an anonymous coward with zero references, no supporting evidence and no shred of a rational argument to back up his counter-claim.
Now which one of these arguments do you find more convincing ? Because for me it definitely is not the latter.
Found Jenny McCarthy.
When you are unable to ignore the products of your imagination ... is that not delusional ?
>Someone trying to prevent Amazon to carry Trump products
Nope. Nobody has done that, and since we're talking private citizens, nobody has the power to attempt that.
Some customers have asked a business to do something. The business can choose to do as they asked, or it can choose to ignore them. Doing as they asked will gain them loyalty from some customers and disgust from others. Not doing as they asked will gain loyalty from some customers and disgust from others. The business gets to decide which of the two groups is bigger, or maybe even - which of the two groups they agree with.
There is ZERO coercion here. Just a request.
It is NOT a political opinion. It ceased to be a political opinion the moment he announced his candidacy. As of that moment it became a proposed government policy. We're allowed to protest those and lobby around them in any way we want. Including financially. Companies do that all the time - they give money to candidates advancing policies they like, the make money for candidates contingent ON advancing policies they like and they withhold money from candidates with policies they don't like.
Trump is a candidate, his position is a proposed government policy and we have the right to fight against those policies using every means of peaceful protest available to us - up to and including asking companies to share the effort.
The same people who are now complaining about this usually defend citizens united and genuinely believe that buying politicians is legitimate freedom of speech. Well then - refusing to buy FROM politicians is ALSO legitimate freedom of speech and lobbying businesses to not buy from them is also legitimate freedom of speech. You guys made money a form of speech - you can't complain when sometimes the way it talks is by becoming unavailable.
If you actually oppose candidates being financially disadvantaged for stating unpopular opinions (especially opinions unpopular with big, wealthy, corporations) then I highly recommend you vote for Bernie as he is literally the only candidate who supports extensive campaign finance reform.
And please note that with extensive campaign finance reform - this kind of protest will not go away, in fact it will become a lot more powerful because you can do this with far smaller financial resources than the types of donations lobbyists can often muster up. Which is at it should be.