Friends and Controversy
I know of people who have recently lost friends over some controversial topics. This has happened in more than one social circle that I am in. I want to state some of my views of what I can and cannot tolerate in a friend. As far as I know, all of you qualify. I do hope so.
I am pro-choice, but I can accept pro-life friends. I do believe that you support immoral laws and I do view pro-life as supporting a form of torture, but I generally assume that you view me as supporting murder. I'm okay with this, because on the pro-life/pro-choice issue, I can actually see how a decent person can reach a different viewpoint. I do have respect for the fact that while pro-lifers try to enact laws that will cause serious health problems for women and destroy countless lives, they believe they are trying to prevent people from being unfairly killed. That's a good goal. And while I will not give a clump of cells the same rights as a I give to you or myself, I can see how one might wish to do so. However, I will have much more respect for someone who is pro-life if they are also vegetarian or vegan. I'll respect your views either way, but it does strike me as a bit silly to get so gung-ho on protecting one lifeform and then kill and eat another that had more self-awareness and intelligence.
I do support limited rights for various lifeforms. I think that torturing animals should be illegal in almost all cases (the almost is just because someone might think up a good reason, but I do not like torturing anything capable of being tortured). Torture to me means that the suffering is part of the point. I also do not support cruel treatment of animals when we have reasonable alternatives. I think it's worth it to pay a little more for our food to treat our animals decently. We can have food from animal sources, but we don't have to be inhumane about it. But I think any issue where you are giving partial rights to something with some claim of sapience is going to be messy. You are stuck on a slippery slope and have to learn to live there. So, I can see how people aren't happy about it and people slide around on the issue.
Anyhow, so you can be pro-life and I will vigorously disagree with you, but we can be friends if you're okay with my fetus-murdering ways. (Although one of the reasons I support abortion is because I feel that a child is an important thing and it is morally wrong to bring a baby into the world if one doesn't have a plan for how it will be raised in a decent and loving environment. That plan can be handing it over to the couple who wants to adopt - that's fine - but you need to have a plan, because every baby deserves an adult who is committed to raising it well and is at least basically competent to do so. So, I would much rather abort a fetus than abandon a baby, and way too many babies get reared horribly, and that includes ones given into the government programs for adoption/fostering. I understand that even with a plan, it may go awry, but at least you made a good faith effort to do the right thing. Bad luck can happen to anyone.)
Marriage equality and general equal rights. I'm fine with you believing that your church should not marry two people of the same sex and even acting to try to keep it that way. I actually do belong to an organized religion (although "organized" is probably overstating the case) and I believe its view is that who a reverend marries is up to that individual reverend. Any reverend may marry any people s/he feels comfortable marrying and may refuse to marry any people s/he is not comfortable marrying. But when we're talking about religious marriages, we're not talking about secular marriages. In fact, if someone talks about marriage as a sacred institution, that's a clue they mean religious marriage. I don't take a stance on religious marriage, because I think each religion can decide for itself. I do support religious freedom. And if your religion is saying how you can't marry two people of the same sex, it doesn't really affect me. The religion I was raised in says you can't wear cotton-poly blends; each religion can make up its own rules for what is and isn't moral.
However, if we're talking legal marriage, that is the secular government-issued marriage, then I am not okay with any discriminatory views, because I cannot see any way to justify it other than you're just plain mean. I'm fine with the view that the government shouldn't be in the marriage business... it strikes me as a messy place for it to be. I support contract enforcement and the government having some easy to print out standard marriage contracts people can use if they don't want to have to write their own, but I don't think marriage should be a special kind of contract different from any other kind of contract. I don't think the government should treat people differently based on whether or not they have this special contract. But admittedly changing that is legally messy and difficult. We made our bed and we're stuck in it for now. As long as the government has this legal marriage thing, discrimination is a clear form of ... what's that word? Oh yes, discrimination.
I have trouble seeing how anyone can justify not allowing for legal marriages for any consenting adults who want one as long as we have to keep secular marriage. This has no effect on religious marriage. If you have a religious marriage in your church or temple or whatever, you already likely view it as different from a purely secular marriage. If I went to a courthouse and married a man, you'd probably not view my marriage as the same as a marriage you had in your house of worship. I can guess this as likely, because if you thought there was no difference, you probably wouldn't have cared so much about having it in your house of worship (unless you just thought it was pretty, as some people do). But most people who take their religion seriously and have a religion that stresses the importance of religious marriage seem to believe that their religious marriage also is God-sanctioned or invites God into the marriage or some other religious element. Something that makes their marriages different from secular marriages already. Which means, you've already accepted the divide between your sacred religious marriage and someone else's non-sacred secular marriage. Atheists can marry, and some even do. So, denying it to people simply on the basis of what sex they are is very hard to justify. It's also sexism. I can marry a man. If the only reason my friend can't marry a man is because he is a man, then that is sexist - saying he can't do something because he is male that females can do. And I'm just not okay with it.
I'm willing to hear views that attempt to justify sexism and discrimination, but I doubt I'll find them compelling.
That said, I really hope my state does not write sexism into its state Constitution. I will be voting against that. But I am saddened to learn that apparently my state will allow Constitutional amendments by a simple majority of the popular vote - making this a really close issue. And taking away such a basic form of equality is beneath us as a people.
I know, humans have an instinctive drive to form into tribal groups. We have an instinctive desire to divide into us versus them and then attack them. And we can always come up with a minority to make be them. But I wish we would put more work into rising above it. Because I do believe humans have great potential. We have great big brains and the ability to not act in some way just because we feel like it. And I think we can train ourselves to be more tolerant, loving, and accepting. To treat each other with more dignity and decency.
So, one of my dividing lines for who I can't be friends with is people who call for legal discrimination. Who want to divide adults into various groups some of whom get rights and some who don't. Or giving different rights to different adults. I don't care if you want to discriminate because the person belongs to a religion you don't like, has a skin color you don't like, has a set of genitals you don't like, or listens to a kind of music you don't like, we need to have people be equal under the law. You are free to dislike people for whatever reasons you wish. Although, admittedly, if you take this too far, I may still decide not to be friends with you. But given my own life and the things I say in this journal, it's unlikely someone who is seriously racist, homophobic, anti-semitic, sexist, etc. has stuck around to read this anyhow.
I just don't want to be the person who says, sure sexism is wrong, but this person is such a good person except for thinking that women should have to do as their fathers say until their fathers marry them off to a husband who they will then obey. Or parallel for any other bigotry. Because if you are an extreme bigot, it really kind of overshadows any other good properties you have, even if you do go out every weekend to save puppies and kittens. Maybe if you ended genocide in a country and cured cancer I would view you as an overall worthwhile person, but I still likely wouldn't want to be your friend. There have been people who have made great advances for the human race and also been assholes. And I am grateful for their accomplishments, and I wouldn't want to be friends with them. But I absolutely cannot tolerate it when it goes beyond your view of what you think is good and bad and into what you want to legislate unless it is an issue where I can really see how good people can disagree and when it comes to taking away rights or preventing equal rights, there aren't a lot of those.
I am pro-choice, but I can accept pro-life friends. I do believe that you support immoral laws and I do view pro-life as supporting a form of torture, but I generally assume that you view me as supporting murder. I'm okay with this, because on the pro-life/pro-choice issue, I can actually see how a decent person can reach a different viewpoint. I do have respect for the fact that while pro-lifers try to enact laws that will cause serious health problems for women and destroy countless lives, they believe they are trying to prevent people from being unfairly killed. That's a good goal. And while I will not give a clump of cells the same rights as a I give to you or myself, I can see how one might wish to do so. However, I will have much more respect for someone who is pro-life if they are also vegetarian or vegan. I'll respect your views either way, but it does strike me as a bit silly to get so gung-ho on protecting one lifeform and then kill and eat another that had more self-awareness and intelligence.
I do support limited rights for various lifeforms. I think that torturing animals should be illegal in almost all cases (the almost is just because someone might think up a good reason, but I do not like torturing anything capable of being tortured). Torture to me means that the suffering is part of the point. I also do not support cruel treatment of animals when we have reasonable alternatives. I think it's worth it to pay a little more for our food to treat our animals decently. We can have food from animal sources, but we don't have to be inhumane about it. But I think any issue where you are giving partial rights to something with some claim of sapience is going to be messy. You are stuck on a slippery slope and have to learn to live there. So, I can see how people aren't happy about it and people slide around on the issue.
Anyhow, so you can be pro-life and I will vigorously disagree with you, but we can be friends if you're okay with my fetus-murdering ways. (Although one of the reasons I support abortion is because I feel that a child is an important thing and it is morally wrong to bring a baby into the world if one doesn't have a plan for how it will be raised in a decent and loving environment. That plan can be handing it over to the couple who wants to adopt - that's fine - but you need to have a plan, because every baby deserves an adult who is committed to raising it well and is at least basically competent to do so. So, I would much rather abort a fetus than abandon a baby, and way too many babies get reared horribly, and that includes ones given into the government programs for adoption/fostering. I understand that even with a plan, it may go awry, but at least you made a good faith effort to do the right thing. Bad luck can happen to anyone.)
Marriage equality and general equal rights. I'm fine with you believing that your church should not marry two people of the same sex and even acting to try to keep it that way. I actually do belong to an organized religion (although "organized" is probably overstating the case) and I believe its view is that who a reverend marries is up to that individual reverend. Any reverend may marry any people s/he feels comfortable marrying and may refuse to marry any people s/he is not comfortable marrying. But when we're talking about religious marriages, we're not talking about secular marriages. In fact, if someone talks about marriage as a sacred institution, that's a clue they mean religious marriage. I don't take a stance on religious marriage, because I think each religion can decide for itself. I do support religious freedom. And if your religion is saying how you can't marry two people of the same sex, it doesn't really affect me. The religion I was raised in says you can't wear cotton-poly blends; each religion can make up its own rules for what is and isn't moral.
However, if we're talking legal marriage, that is the secular government-issued marriage, then I am not okay with any discriminatory views, because I cannot see any way to justify it other than you're just plain mean. I'm fine with the view that the government shouldn't be in the marriage business... it strikes me as a messy place for it to be. I support contract enforcement and the government having some easy to print out standard marriage contracts people can use if they don't want to have to write their own, but I don't think marriage should be a special kind of contract different from any other kind of contract. I don't think the government should treat people differently based on whether or not they have this special contract. But admittedly changing that is legally messy and difficult. We made our bed and we're stuck in it for now. As long as the government has this legal marriage thing, discrimination is a clear form of ... what's that word? Oh yes, discrimination.
I have trouble seeing how anyone can justify not allowing for legal marriages for any consenting adults who want one as long as we have to keep secular marriage. This has no effect on religious marriage. If you have a religious marriage in your church or temple or whatever, you already likely view it as different from a purely secular marriage. If I went to a courthouse and married a man, you'd probably not view my marriage as the same as a marriage you had in your house of worship. I can guess this as likely, because if you thought there was no difference, you probably wouldn't have cared so much about having it in your house of worship (unless you just thought it was pretty, as some people do). But most people who take their religion seriously and have a religion that stresses the importance of religious marriage seem to believe that their religious marriage also is God-sanctioned or invites God into the marriage or some other religious element. Something that makes their marriages different from secular marriages already. Which means, you've already accepted the divide between your sacred religious marriage and someone else's non-sacred secular marriage. Atheists can marry, and some even do. So, denying it to people simply on the basis of what sex they are is very hard to justify. It's also sexism. I can marry a man. If the only reason my friend can't marry a man is because he is a man, then that is sexist - saying he can't do something because he is male that females can do. And I'm just not okay with it.
I'm willing to hear views that attempt to justify sexism and discrimination, but I doubt I'll find them compelling.
That said, I really hope my state does not write sexism into its state Constitution. I will be voting against that. But I am saddened to learn that apparently my state will allow Constitutional amendments by a simple majority of the popular vote - making this a really close issue. And taking away such a basic form of equality is beneath us as a people.
I know, humans have an instinctive drive to form into tribal groups. We have an instinctive desire to divide into us versus them and then attack them. And we can always come up with a minority to make be them. But I wish we would put more work into rising above it. Because I do believe humans have great potential. We have great big brains and the ability to not act in some way just because we feel like it. And I think we can train ourselves to be more tolerant, loving, and accepting. To treat each other with more dignity and decency.
So, one of my dividing lines for who I can't be friends with is people who call for legal discrimination. Who want to divide adults into various groups some of whom get rights and some who don't. Or giving different rights to different adults. I don't care if you want to discriminate because the person belongs to a religion you don't like, has a skin color you don't like, has a set of genitals you don't like, or listens to a kind of music you don't like, we need to have people be equal under the law. You are free to dislike people for whatever reasons you wish. Although, admittedly, if you take this too far, I may still decide not to be friends with you. But given my own life and the things I say in this journal, it's unlikely someone who is seriously racist, homophobic, anti-semitic, sexist, etc. has stuck around to read this anyhow.
I just don't want to be the person who says, sure sexism is wrong, but this person is such a good person except for thinking that women should have to do as their fathers say until their fathers marry them off to a husband who they will then obey. Or parallel for any other bigotry. Because if you are an extreme bigot, it really kind of overshadows any other good properties you have, even if you do go out every weekend to save puppies and kittens. Maybe if you ended genocide in a country and cured cancer I would view you as an overall worthwhile person, but I still likely wouldn't want to be your friend. There have been people who have made great advances for the human race and also been assholes. And I am grateful for their accomplishments, and I wouldn't want to be friends with them. But I absolutely cannot tolerate it when it goes beyond your view of what you think is good and bad and into what you want to legislate unless it is an issue where I can really see how good people can disagree and when it comes to taking away rights or preventing equal rights, there aren't a lot of those.