> He had some pretty awful views that he was pretty loud about, especially later in life. He also cheated on his wife at one point.
In 1961, in his early 20s. You get ~80 years on this planet to make mistakes and have views that some other people will dislike. If these are the worst things we can accuse him of, while acknowledging all his charitable work, I'd say he fared OK compared to many other role models we have.
This is a tough thing. I do believe in moral relativism to a large extent, but I also think there are some things that are really just objectively morally and ethically "right" or "wrong".
Hating on LGBT folks and trying to restrict their rights is one of those things that is wrong no matter how you dice it. People who believe otherwise are wrong, full stop.
So it's not really so much about people thinking someone else's views are awful. It's about whether or not those views truly are awful. And I feel very safe in saying that if someone thinks my support of LGBT folks is pretty awful, they're in the wrong, not me. And I'm in the right to think their hateful views are awful.
(Yes, I realize how arrogant that sounds, but I have to stand by it.)
I think this is something that transcends politics or culture wars or anything like that. Having these sorts of hateful views are actively harmful to humanity's and society's future. That doesn't mean I think we should censor people (rampant censorship is also actively harmful to our future), but it does mean we need to somehow fix people and shift the culture toward one that lets people live how they want in cases like this where doing so doesn't actually hurt anyone else. I have no idea how to accomplish this, though.
There's disagreement then there's being an outspoken supporter of systematically trying to strip rights away from others because of your religious beliefs. It's much deeper than having differing views on fiscal policy.
Liars according to who? Who gets to say what's a lie? This would still be just as pointless of an argument IMO... I think parent commenter is saying that you simply can't play the same game they are because you look identical to them from the outside; you're both saying the same thing.
Left says you're trying to take rights away... Right says you're trying to take rights away.
This does nothing to educate anyone or try to find a mutually agreeable solution... your arguments carry no more weight than theirs do. You both think you're "right" and the other is "wrong".
Those are pretty wild accusations from someone who doesn't know me or my beliefs. I definitely have not been calling for those things, especially not through the lens of religion.
Everything I said here in regards to his beliefs can be easily verified. It's crazy to me to respond "well you're doing the same to them" as a retort. I'm not?
I'm fine with people disagreeing with me. I'm not fine when that disagreement results in campaigning for legally restricting the rights of others. There's a huge difference.
If every racist, homophobe, and transphobe (and others) would stop trying to enshrine their views into law, I'd have much less of a problem with them. I wouldn't want to hang out with them, but I could safely ignore and not care one bit about their views.
Disagree? I think it's safe to say that someone who campaigned to ban same sex marriage is more than just disagreeing. He's trying to ruin millions of lives.
He was an Obama birther conspiracist.
He thought gays shouldn't be allowed to join Boy Scouts.
He was a big supporter of Netanyahu.
This aren't things that are even remotely in the same ballpark as disagreement. If someone is using their celebrity status to cause harm to millions or tens of millions, I think we can say a few unkind words about them when they go.
And Chuck Norris was brought up to believe that gay people are the devil. I was conditioned to not take my parents traditions as gospel. The taboo against speaking ill of the recently deceased is not universal as we saw after Khamenei's death, and it is possible to debate whether we should discuss the failings of the recently deceased dispassionately, as newspaper obituaries usually do, and whether the impact on society of those critiques is net negative or not. There is the famous case of a premature unflattering obituary of Alfred Nobel upon the death of his brother possibly inspiring Nobel to think about his legacy, for example.
All this to say that I don't think it's necessarily problematic for you to mention that he had and shared some pretty awful views.
There are good people whose politics I disagree with. If you are using your celebrity status to cause harm to millions on the international stage, systematically attempting to strip their rights, I think it's fair to say they weren't a good person.
> Does being a good person also mean agreeing with your politics?
Can we stop framing human rights as "politics"? People hating on others because they don't like that they're gay or trans or black or brown... that's just people being fundamentally awful people, and has nothing to do with politics.
The fact that they are then taking their awfulness and engaging politically to enshrine their awful views into law just adds another dimension to it.
I said this in another comment: if these people with awful views would stop trying to make those awful views laws, then I'd have much less of a problem with them; I could at least just ignore them.
> Is there one way to be a good person?
What a useless, one-dimensional take on the problem.
Farming is harder than people who haven't done it think, and surviving on the production of only your family's property is really, really hard. Source: I grew up in very rural areas, and I've seen what it entails. My grandparents lived through the Great Depression in a farming community on a homestead.
However, I don't think that's the ask, here. You don't have to choose MEGASUPERTROPOLIS or remote solo farm. There's a huge gradient between the two.
It's possible to put a little effort into gardening, share with your community, and massively reduce the overall cost of food while still having free time.
> However, I don't think that's the ask, here. You don't have to choose MEGASUPERTROPOLIS or remote solo farm. There's a huge gradient between the two.
The gradient is where you start to consume a lot of carbon unnecessarily.
Leading a slower existence in harmony with nature and community has its trade-offs.
There are so many things to consider. It's a fascinating topic. For example, if you give up access to restaurants in order to live simply, how does that impact your approach to food in general?
How about losing access to a hospital? What changes do you make to prepare for, or respond to, health crises?
The questions I ask above are from one direction, and only a sample. I think they're demonstrative of the kind of wide context a decision like this has, though.
> if you give up access to restaurants in order to live simply, how does that impact your approach to food in general?
I think many people would develop a much healthier relationship with food. We live so disconnected from the reality of all the resources and labor it actually takes to bring food to your plate that we've lost appreciation for the interconnected nature of how we live.
Oddly enough, it's the individualist style of home cooking for ourself/only our immediate family that's a departure from the more community-focused lifestyle humans once lived, where cooking and eating involved the entire tribe/community. It was a shared experience.
When people in this thread are nostalgic for a more rural lifestyle or debating rural vs urban, I think that's missing the forest for the trees. What we are really longing for is a sense of community and connection that has been lost. And that community and connection can happen no matter what the actual setting is (urban vs rural). "Where ever you go, there you are."
I used something like this tool to create 10 different fonts of my handwriting. Then I wrote scripts to randomize which font was used for each character, ensuring that no word had that same variant of a single letter. It worked incredibly well for a personalized printed mail campaign. It really did look hand written.
edit: basically what DANmode replied to the same parent. I did this 10 years ago while running for political office.
I agree. I make adjustments depending on which parts of the page I'm on and what I'm writing. This is a nice project but I'm not sure id want to use it for anything.
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