obfuscator

If I were you I'd seek out some more reasonable news sources...

Most sports are like this though.

Yeah the social aspect seems stronger on the leave side. I think the better economic choice would be to remain. Thus far it looks like leave is performing much better than expected... Scotland/Ireland seem to be voting heavily to stay, but England to leave. If the trend continues leave should win handily, there are way more voters in England.

Person C 2016

But the reason why calling a straight white male a f*g is offensive is because it likens them to a gay man, which is seen as a negative. The very use of this word as an insult further strengthens the idea that being a gay man is something to be ashamed of. This is the point that I think champion is trying to make and is why one of those cases is worse than the other - calling a straight person a f*g is saying that they are similar to something that is to be ashamed of, but ultimately they know that they are still straight and not of the targeted identity and can brush it off. Calling a homosexual male a f*g is telling that person that their existence is something to be ashamed of, which reinforces the hierarchy of them being in lower social standing and can thus cause much more psychological damage. And yeah every single "white racial slur" in that list obfuscator posted is laughable at best. None of those words have the power that slurs against minority groups have towards them. I want to point out that I didn't post that list saying "all of these things offend me", only in response to someone saying "there are no slurs against straight white people".

Specifically, "western/white/christian transgressions against the LGBT community" are much more inclusive than your singular fascination with "the bathroom bill". Which itself is one of countless transgressions throughout the history of oppression and prejudice against LGBTs in America. I meant to refer to contemporary organized/society wide transgressions (which is the most direct comparison to modern Islam). The bathroom bill was the obvious one I could think of from the top of my head. I certainly accept that plenty of individuals commit much more serious infringements against LGBT people, and white/western/christian nations have historically behaved rather poorly towards LGBT people.. Nonetheless, my original intention was to make clear that these things pale in comparison to what is close to a "culture-wide" hatred of gay people, which ends in many cases in torture and death. It's interesting that you're so keen to place me in a particular stereotypical group, rather than judge my opinions and arguments on their actual merit. Is this what members of the LGBT community feel like, I wonder, when they're all lumped in together as one hive-mind with identical political affiliations and opinions?

What makes you think that? He's having fun with my previous words saying the bathroom bill was an annoyance. However, I also qualified that by saying "compared to literal murder", so the comparison isn't really fair. But yes, insults directed at anyone (including straight white males) are an annoyance compared to murder.

This is demonstrably untrue. http://www.rsdb.org/race/whites

I agree with you, but I also think context is important. It's clearly possible to use words in more than one way. For example, redneck is typically an insult, but I refer to some of my friends in that manner (and vice versa) and it's not seen as an insult.

So are only gay people allowed to use that word?

I'd say it's generally being used (from the little I've seen) in an endearing way, similar to how some black people use the N word.

Yeah, downvoting is actually against the rules on canadapolitics for that reason. Of course, some stuff does get downvoted, but it's not too big of a problem. Moderation is a tricky one as well. There are always accusations of bias (and actual bias, of course moderators are only human) but as long as the rules are extremely clear and consistent, and there's a method of appeal, it seems to work. Personally I haven't found the moderation too biased, and I definitely have some unpopular opinions. It's also a fairly small subreddit which makes things easier. The sheer volume of users on the more popular ones would make everything much more difficult...

there are some good politics subreddits. Canadapolitics is quite good I find, but it's really heavily moderated.

This is similar to most partisan politics though

drones, tanks, gas. Lots of nasty things rifles cant touch the gov argument is the most common anti-gun control argument out there Maybe in the states....I'm somewhat active in the firearm community here (Canada) and I barely ever hear that argument. However, it was a strawman because I doubt that many people actually think "a .22 will stop a drone". The actual argument, although somewhat flawed, is more nuanced than that.

straw man spotted

Honestly, a little irrationality is probably to be expected from anyone in queer communities, simply because this a scary time with a lot of sort of inherent cognitive dissonance. Speaking generally, with no backing statistics or anything, but the people who fight against homophobia, etc. are also the people who fight against islamophobia, so now you've got to balance the "most Muslims aren't terrorists" with "this Islamic-associated man killed 50 people in the name of homophobia." Since neither statement is entirely rooted in logic sans emotion, it's an emotional issue to balance them, not a logical/rational one. Fair enough. Still, keeping decorum when it comes to tough events is a good goal. Even in emotional situations, it doesn't serve anyone well to throw logic out the window. I don't know if you're referring to me here, but I've already said the bathroom bill is mostly silly (although I can understand where it's proponents are coming from). I also don't think that Islam is inherently violent, or that an immigration freeze needs to be in place, or any of that related nonsense.

Budapest is awesome, my favourite European city by far. The only thing I didn't like was the smell...

What are my beliefs, exactly? I give a shit about innocent people being murdered, no matter who they are. I'm not suggesting everyone "look the other way", I think that when it comes to formal legislation introduced by the government, there is no reasonable comparison to murder. Are there individuals who hate LGBT people and want to hurt or kill them? Absolutely; across all races and religions. But there is not a country-wide epidemic of anti-gay violence. Even the statistics you cited list approximately 2000 murders perpetrated against LGBT people (of course there is also the question of whether this violence is because of their LGBT status or simply a coincidence), which makes up approximately 15% of all murders comitted in the United States. If you take gay people being 10% of the population as a benchmark, and expand that to include the umbrella of trans and other individuals, it doesn't paint a picture of a disproportionate amount of murder being committed against the LGBT community in general. Of course the LGBT community faces problems. The homelessness and suicide statistics are particularly disheartening, but the LGBT community does not hold a monopoly on either of these unfortunate outcomes. Your previous post did not mention these things, only the bathroom bill, so that's what I contrasted with the murder and torture of gay people overseas. Certainly these things are more problematic and at least somewhat comparable to the kind of life-ending discrimination faced in the middle east. Using such generalizations as "The right cares more about exterminating Islam than the dead" is equally ridiculous. If you include any GOP supporter as being part of the right, this makes over 100 million people. It's not some hive mind where everyone feels the exact same way about every issue. And even then, the most radical GOP politician in recent history (Trump) is not calling for any violence against Muslims, let alone "extermination". It's also clearly an exageration to say you've only avoided the murderous part of LGBT discrimination through pure dumb luck as it is statistically quite rare. You might as well say you've avoided being struck by lightning through pure dumb luck. I'm not going to respond to this emotional diatribe point by point. I will say, however, that on a personal level, I'm disappointed in your behaviour here. I remember you (quite fondly, in fact) as a rational, reasonable individual who was always willing to engage in respectful, thoughful debate, who steered clear of name calling and throwing insults. It's a pity that this seems to no longer be the case.

They don't, I'm just making the point that saying homophobic policies in the states pale in comparison to what is experienced throughout the world. I'll take it one step further and say that hate attacks by anyone against gays are statistically non-significant in the United States. Right, and the greatest threat to gays in the states is being told what bathroom to use. Gay marriage is now legal and and increasing number of people (on all sides of the political spectrum) see nothing wrong with being gay. Compared to being murdered, being told what bathroom to use is an annoyance. I don't deny that the bathroom bill is silly and misguided, but it's not remotely comparable to the actual serious injustice faced by LGBT people in less enlightened places.

Sounds like mostly microbrews that you tried. Although the one macro, Moosehead, is basically moose piss. Yeah moosehead and mill street are mainstream beers, Molson/coors/abinbev etc.

I was hoping to steer clear of this shit show, but here we go... A little perspective here: some members of the GOP want to keep bathrooms single-gender. Muslims all over the world are literally murdering homosexual people. They are not remotely comparable. I'm not even sure what this means. Some people are bigoted idiots? I agree, but there's a pattern here: homosexuality is illegal (in some cases punishable by death) in the vast majority of muslim countries. Once again; have some perspective. It doesn't mean all muslims should be demonized, but western/white/christian transgressions against the LGBT community in most cases amount to an annoyance at best, not literal murder and torture. And the guy who actually killed 50 gay men was a muslim who pledged allegiance to ISIS. Uh, how many people are actually murdered for being gay in the states? I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I haven't seen any evidence it's anything other than extremely rare. Yet in the middle east, people are regularly murdered (or put to death "legally") for being gay. He pledged allegiance to ISIS, shouted "Allah Akbar" at the cops, and was proud of the Tsarnaevs. But it had nothing to do with religion, right? Give me a break.

these tragedies bring out the worst in so many people fight me [racist term] but seriously, what did you have? Canadian? yeah, that sucks....but lots of bars have more interesting craft brews which are much better

it hit 90 a few weeks ago. Nothing unusual for the time of year though

was actually two weeks ago. Last week was fine. The aquarium is good but expensive. if you have time a jays game is fun (not so much for the baseball, more for the experience) and you can get shitty seats for really cheap