So the anonymous conservative blogger who runs the blog called, er, Anonymous Conservative, is upset that The Human Rights Campaign, an influential LGBT group, is calling for stricter gun laws in the wake of the Orlando massacre.
To Anonymous Conservative, calling for gun control rather than, well, Muslim control is evidence that gays are too illogical to ever be trusted to tell the truth. Or at least it’s a good excuse for AC to pretend that he thinks gays are too illogical to ever be trusted with the truth.
And if gays are this illogical, AC concludes, gun owners should never vote to convict anyone charged with hate crimes.
Dear reader, your immediate reaction to this leap in, er, logic may be the same as my immediate reaction:
So let’s try to make sense of AC’s rather novel argument. Near the start of his post on this subject, AC sets forth his thesis:
[I]f these gays want to try and attack the rights of gun owners, all gun owners need to point out is that if they begin to feel hostile to gays, and begin to see gays as too emotional and illogical, they might begin to not believe the testimony of gays in trials.
Huh. It sounds like these hypothetical gun owners are deciding to dismiss testimony from gays out of spite, not because they genuinely believe that gays are unreliable witnesses. But AC insists he’s sincere, though I’m pretty sure he’s not being sincere about that.
Personally now, I am quite confident that nothing a gay says could be believed, if they cannot come to terms with the fact that Islamic fundamentalism, and not a gun, was the cause of the Orlando shooting. I can’t help but realize how that realization of their illogicality would contaminate any testimony from any gay in a trial setting. I would even question whether any physical evidence was manufactured by an overly emotional gay, unable to deal with simple reality as it exists.
If all gun owners felt this way, AC concludes,
it would in effect jury-nullify all hate crimes laws, and possibly affect any trial involving a crime committed against a gay.
AC thinks this brilliant scheme would be easy as pie to pull off:
There are about 102 million gun owners out there (32% of all Americans), and all a defense attorney would need to do is find one to put on the jury of a man who beat a gay guy, stabbed a transgender, or murdered a transvestite. Did a transgender man use the girls locker room when a pee wee swim team was changing, and get beaten to a pulp? Don’t think the beater is going to get convicted on the word of the gay.
Yeah, it’s not like there would be other evidence or anything. Except maybe “the gay’s” physical injuries, bloodstains on the assailant’s clothes, an entire pee wee swim team’s worth of witnesses, surveillance camera footage of the beater fleeing the scene, or, wait, that does sound like a lot of evidence.
If gays think guns should be banned, then the gay’s testimony is meaningless, and I would assume any evidence had been fabricated in an overemotional meltdown.
Ah, yes, because gays have the ability to fabricate injuries, video footage, an entire locker room full of witnesses.
[I]f gays are this unable to perceive simple reality, I could probably never vote to convict in any such case. I suspect if I had been on the trial of the Orlando shooter tomorrow, I am not sure I would have been able to vote guilty, given the stories of a second shooter, the gay holding the door shut, and the fact that the shooter himself appears to have been gay.
Dude, you’re aware that the shooter is dead, right? Dead men aren’t generally tried for murder.
It would all have been too convoluted, I suspect. I would probably have let him walk out the door of the courtroom a free man, and I would have felt it was the only moral outcome, given my convictions regarding the gay’s inability to perceive simple realties such as Islamic radicalism, and the fact guns reduce crime when the law abiding have them.
I’m pretty sure it’s not “the gay” who is having trouble perceiving reality here.
The potential consequences against gays would admittedly be dangerous. Millions of people who want to commit crime might begin targeting gays specifically, knowing that they would be unlikely to be convicted, given how all it would take is one of the 102 million gun owners to land on their jury – and the lawyers of the perpetrator would undoubtedly be looking for gun owners to put on the jury.
Nice justice system you’ve got here, pity if something were to happen to it.
Also, dude, you do realize, don’t you, that prosecutors also get to screen jury members, and could veto anyone who seemed to believe any of the nonsense you’re peddling.
Gang members, who need to kill somebody as an initiation might seek out gays as victims, thinking they would be a free kill, and sadly there would be nothing I could do about that.
Would these gang members flash their car lights at gay drivers to get them to pull their cars over?
Those prone to engage in violence against gays specifically because of homophobia might be emboldened, and gay attacks could increase precipitously, and obviously all of those gay attackers going free without any consequence would be unfortunate.
Nice justice system you’ve got here, pity if something were … oh wait, we did that already.
However gays do not seem to consider our safety when contemplating their actions. They are all too happy to try and make us and our families less safe by preventing us from getting the guns we want to protect them. So the idea that gays would be less safe due to our realization that gays are too emotional and cannot be trusted, would not be of concern to me. I would have to vote my conscience – every time – and I suspect most other gun owners would as well.
And as an added bonus, this dumbass idea might bring about the collapse of civilization itself!
Once a group is, from a practical perspective, unable to appeal to the justice system for justice, it will not be long before the entire system’s foundation is in question. I suspect most politicians, rather than see this come to pass, would rather let everything cool off.
Perhaps this is the only path forward for the nation however – one step closer to Apocalypse.
Dude, why wait for the possible apocalypse? Seal yourself up in your doomsday bunker right now and avoid the rush!
@ handsome jack
In the UK at least most trans********* are cis. As trans********* people will tell you themselves they have no wish to identify as a different gender; it’s just a clothing thing. Most trans********* are straight men.
I’m guessing it’s different in the US?
Yet another thing that this genius has failed to account for: “Once a group is, from a practical perspective, unable to appeal to the justice system for justice” what you generally get is not an apocalypse, but rather members of the group in question banding together to form an alternative system for dispute resolution and protection from crime. We generally call these systems “protection rackets” or “mafias”.
not directly related, but in Sunday, a very religious Facebook friend posted a link to an article all about how the Orlando massacre had lead to a “war on Christians.”
I normally try to avoid commenting on Facebook posts that seem likely to lead to heated fights, but I couldn’t resist in that case, cuz seriously, what the fuck? and only one week after, too.
Yeah, in Aus, “Transv*****e” means crossdresser or drag queen. It’s still considered a gross slur and still often thrown at trans women, though (and the odds of the dipshit in the OP knowing
anythingthis are basically zilch).I think this is more a case of SJ language evolving faster than we can keep up with than anything else. =P
@Alan
Okay, yeah, maybe you need to find some trans Britain peep to talk about this because wow. Transv*st*te is used as a slur against trans women at least in the US because people just think of them as men in dresses, so, I mean, maybe don’t do that cis men.
@ Alan
Yeah, I mean, going back many years ‘Transv*st*te’ was somewhat a catch-all term that was used for non cis and/or het men with a taste for women’s clothing, often in a derogatory way, but now we have a range of more specific terms and, from what I see, that is the specific word for a certain thing now. I haven’t seen it used in a derogatory way for a long time, but I’m sure it does happen and I can understand why people would be sensitive about it
I’m both A Gay and A Feeeemale. Does that make me double-overemotional?
Err, “This” as in “This aside about the meaning of the word,” not whether or not it’s a slur. It’s totally a slur.
About 10 years ago I really offended a male performer because I was rattling on at him assuming he was transgender when he identified as ‘a drag queen’ or ‘transv*st*te’. – Can anyone clarify whether his being cis/het (/priveleged) makes his offence at being misidentified less valid than a transgender person’s offence at being misidentified as a transv*st*te (assuming the misidentification was not deliberate slurring)?
It is? Honestly, I thought it was a misnomer but not a slur (as opposed to “tranny”, which definitely is).
@ handsome jack
I know quite a few people in both categories. We’ve discussed that sometimes people get mixed up over the terminology or don’t understand exactly what the two terms mean; but there’s never been any suggestion that trans******** is a slur. One of my friends is an MUA/stylist who specialises in working with both trans women and trans********. We go out on the lash with some of her clients and no one has ever indicated that they find either term problematic. I’ll ask if they’ve heard about this next time we’re out though.
We need more trans women on this forum. I miss Lisa.
OT: Some asshat at Trump’s rally today tried to take a police officer’s firearm and shoot Trump with it.
1. Don’t shoot people
2. Don’t try to shoot Trump, just let him keep running his mouth disgusting more and more of the ~80% of the US that isn’t hopelessly Pro-Trump
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/19/politics/trump-rally-gun-police-officer/index.html
@JoeB
Oh no, I hope…wow, I can’t believe I’m typing this, I hope Drumpf is okay.
Maybe he’ll change his guards so they carry less non-lethal defenses after this scare because, as much as I don’t like him, I don’t want him dead either. Pepper spray does wonders, as long as no one is allergic to it.
@Handsome Jack
Didn’t even disrupt the rally. Sounds like he couldn’t even get the gun out of the officer’s holster before a couple nearby officers tackled him. Everybody totally fine, except for asshat who is probably going to do some prison time over it.
So, sort of exactly the same argument that they use against women?
Someone tries to shoot Trump with a police officer’s gun? Really? I don’t like the putrid little man, but I don’t believe murder is okay at all. I’ve seen people say it’s okay to kill Nazis and the like, but even then, I try to look at things from the Golden Rule.
Stupid fuck deserves all the prison time. What the fuck.
Speaking of…
Also, why do people insist on using gay and transgender as nouns? As a plural, I can understand that. It kinda sounds right. But like, ‘the gay’ or ‘a transgender’? Who hears that and thinks that works. Even on an aesthetic level? I guess it makes sense as a translation error. F[slur]t and s[slur]e (respectively) are often used as singular nouns. When they try to be ‘PC’ about it, they skip a step
Oh, and people need to shut the fuck up about hate crime laws. They exist, they’re here to stay, and they serve a purpose. I don’t mean this dude in particular. 14 year olds, who don’t understand how laws work, ranting about ‘thought crime’ and such. Read a fuckin book
@JoeB
That’s good news. The article says the kid is 19 and has been thinking about killing Drumpf for a year. I’m just happy he just failed to even attempt tbh.
On the subject of the offensiveness of certain terms:
I think it’s important for all of us to remember that not all countries around the world consider the same words offensive to the same degree. We should always remember that not every country is the United States of America, or the United Kingdom, or for that matter Finland, Australia, Sweden… I think you get the analogy by this point. I’m not defending the use of ugly words by any means, I just want to try and remind everyone that we speak different languages, and even when we speak the same language, we don’t necessarily share a culture. This by no means excuses bigoted language and the use of slurs, not by a long shot. It’s just better to not attribute malice in cases where ignorance is the more likely culprit.
I would like to share a little story that may illustrate my point:
I’m a Finnish person of Karelian descent. Three of my grandparents come from an old region of Finland that was taken by Russia after World War 2. Now, during the time before Finnish independence (1917) the Karelian people were essentially serfs to the Russian landowner class. In this environment it was of course natural that certain words developed into slurs, specifically about Karelians and about non-Russian people in general. I know quite a few of these words, mainly because I’ve heard quite a lot of stories about what life was like under Russian rule. I’ve only ever heard the worst of these words used in anger once, by my mother. It happened when a Russian man was quite rude to my mother when we were out in public, and so my mother called that man by the most offensive name in the Russian language, a slur that was used about our people during the oppression. And, well…that was the only time that I have been afraid that someone would be assaulted in my presence in broad daylight. Luckily it didn’t happen but it was a close run thing. Why have I written this tl;dr now, instead of being in bed, as dawn is breaking here? Like I said, not every term is universally recognized as a slur, an offensive term. And I’m pretty sure that you wouldn’t even know if I did use that quite horrifyingly offensive term, that carries with it the implication that you’re non-Russian, a serf, a “mud-blood”.
I’m sorry if I have been incoherent in this post. I’m pretty sure that I have been. I apologize from the bottom of my heart. I haven’t been able to sleep well in recent nights.
tl;dr: Some words are more offensive in some cultures than others. It would perhaps be better if we understood that better.
Yeah, because when they pull people for a jury, they do want to make sure that the jury is as unbiased as possible.
So, a dude who hates gay people being put on a trial for a hate crime against a gay person wouldn’t really happen unless the person lied when asked (under oath) about if they hate gay people.
In other Drumpf news: He fired his campaign manager. The one who assaulted the ex-Breitbart reporter. And (I can’t believe I’m saying this), I’m glad Drumpf didn’t get shot.
“Oh God, won’t anyone think about the poor widdle guns – they weren’t the cause of the Orlando shooting!
“…Except, if Mateen didn’t have any, fifty people wouldn’t have died…”
“How do you know he wouldn’t just use other means, huh?!”
“Even if he did, I doubt it would’ve resulted in fifty people dying.”
“He could’ve made a bomb!”
“Do you think it’s that easy to make a bomb and not arise suspicion?”
“Sure, Timothy McVeigh did it.”
“…And there are now laws that make it harder to produce explosives like he did, after he blew up a building.”
“That isn’t the point: it was Islamic fundamentalism that caused the violence, not guns!”
“Timothy McVeigh’s a Muslim now? That’s a new one to me.”
“You’re totally taking my arguments out of context!”
“And you’ve conveniently ignored evidence that contradicts your ignorant claims.”
@Axecalibur
I’m fairly sure this is done on purpose, to de-humanize the group they’re talking about. I’ve heard people do this in regard to minorities also (“The Blacks/Mexicans/Jews” etc). It makes it sound “sciency” like they are a looking at some other species in a cage: “And Here we see “The Gay” (avoid using the word “person”) in his natural habitat, notice how irrational he is!” I think it’s the homophobic equivalent of calling women “Feeemale.”
I live in San Francisco and this is new news to me.
But now I know and here’s a reference:
http://www.transequality.org/issues/resources/transgender-terminology