I expect simple behaviours here. Friendship, and love. Any advice should be from the perspective of the person asking, not the person giving! We have had to make new membership moderated to combat the huge number of spammers who register
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
Disregard the embedded advert
Anyone wishing to argue that I am bigoted and biased against this enormous and backward once great nation better take it outside. Not in this thread. You can start a new one and I'll either ignore you or pound you with examples of why the USA is not a nation where one can be proud to be a minority.
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
Regret not at all. I received this as an embedded video. For me the the advert is an annoyance at the start and then we get to the meat of the newscast.
Szymanski said he was puzzled by the sudden outrage over shirts that have been in stores across the country since late January.
"It's so weird. We haven't gotten threats in any other city," he said. "Most people support it."
"Despite the threats, both stores continued displaying the shirts. American Apparel posted a statement on its Web site Tuesday afternoon addressing the attacks and reaffirming its commitment to "speaking out on an issue that is important to this company."
It appears we have maybe just one crazy person making threats and throwing rocks.....this never happens in your country.
(\\__/) And if you don't believe The sun will rise
(='.'=) Stand alone and greet The coming night
(")_(") In the last remaining light. (C. Cornell)
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
First, I would like to draw attention to your use of verbs like "ignore" and "pound". This is not the tone we want to set for a group of similar guys in similar circumstances who come together to provide some measure of support and help to each other. Why can't we be friends?
OK. I won't dispute your claim, although there are other events that illustrate the type of bigotry that we deal with in a much more pointed way, like the Matthew Shepherd tragedy. If you could be President Obama, who has likely experienced some first hand bigotry himself, what measures would you take to prevent this type of hate? What measures has England taken to obliterate every trace of bigotry within its borders?
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
Thank you ever so much Anthony. Perhaps if you keep supporting my country's industry in this fashion, we will turn our minds from inventing things like securitized mortgage instruments, in order to developing lycra fashions that further accentuate and enhance the inestimable beauty of your resplendent manhood.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
We have taken formal and semi effective measures of legislating against discrimination. These tend to take about ten years to take effect.
But we educate strongly against discrimination and to acknowledge and respect folk for their differences. And we treat free speech as a right that also carries responsibilities.
Location: U.S.A.
Registered: April 2007
Messages: 907
I don't know, Timmy. I see a vid like the one below and it's hard to picture the UK as the last bastion of human rights in the West. It may be a little less pervasive in your country but I'd say you still have your own battles to fight.
Social Justice Uploaded by 123for_me. - Watch more LGBT videos.
Youth crisis hot-line 866-488-7386, 24 hr (U.S.A.)
There are people who want to help you cope with being you.
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
I never said we were. We're just ahead of the USA, I think.
Peter's story often comes up in such discussions. Everyone who ranged against the kid was wrong. But one also needs to look at that video and research it some more. Last time I did that I found I wasn't wholly satisfied that it represented what had happened correctly. I wish I cold recall why that struck me then.
You also need to remember that this was some time ago. Things have changed, not all for the better, but mainly so.
We now have legal civil unions between same sex couples. This is not welcomed universally, but it is law and is a good thing.
We have prejudice, but not in the way of Fred Phelps, for example. We do have the BNP who are not welcome in most civilised places and are homophobic. And we have the Church of England - a divided institution well past its sell by date.
Location: Worcester, England
Registered: January 2005
Messages: 1560
This seems to be from the stable of Malcolm Lidbury.
as I posted last time one of these videos appeared here:
This is a rather depressing video, and it would be futile to deny that homophobia does exist in the UK.
At the same time, there have been a long series of complaints, videos, some media coverage, and innumerable postings on a number of internet forums and social networking sites against the Devon & Cornwall Police and other local bodies ... which have been investigated in depth and found to be largely unfounded - for example http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-7246.html
The vast majority of such complaints originate from a single person (Malcolm Lidbury). His experience is not born out by the vast majority of the posts I've seen from other Cornish residents replying to him on message boards, and I suspect that it would be unwise to take this video entirely at face value ...
My concerns about Human Rights in the UK are a bit more focussed. The assorted Equalities bodies that formerly existed - Equal Opportunities Commission, Disability Rights, Commission for Racial Equality - were all abolished and replaced by a catch-all Equality and Human Rights Committee (EHRC). This body is also responsible for ensuring that people are not discriminated against on grounds of age, sexual orientation, or religion
The EHRC has been an unmitigated disaster, with mass resignations of senior staff, large-scale resignations of the Commissioners, and refusal by the audit office to sign the accounts off. The EHRC is headed by Trevor Philips, who is widely seems as an "Uncle Tom" - or worse, a failed politico. I knew him slightly when he was President of the National Union of Students, and thought then he was more concerned with personal ambition than by principle ... it doesn't look as though he's changed. And he was ;ast week appointed to a second three-year term at the EHRC, over widespread protests (especially from Disability campaigners).
The UK is currently taking massive backwards steps - paying lip-service to Equality while removing any effective body for ensuring it.
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
Fringe parties often do. They were elected in the backlash against our MPs having their noses in the trough and their fingers in the till. But Euro-Elections are things we also do not care about nor understand (in that order)
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
We educate and legislate against it. in the US too. I guess that the only really effectivr way to combat it is by the way we live our individual lives.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
Location: Israel
Registered: October 2004
Messages: 1367
timmy wrote:
... And we have the Church of England - a divided institution well past its sell by date.
If "sell by date" is the hallmark maybe you should include a head of state whose sell by date is long past. And I have heard from several quarters that you have a head of government who has passed his sell by date. (We have a head of government who should never have been on the shelves in the first place.)
J F R
The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. (Richard Dawkins, 2006)
Location: England
Registered: November 2003
Messages: 1756
Our Head of State should be good for another twenty years if she has inherited her mother's genes.
Our head of government - I think no one else in his party wants the job as basically the country is in Shit Street and it can only be dealt with after a general election.
Hugs
N
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
Location: USA
Registered: April 2009
Messages: 430
I mentioned it before that I have befriended a few conservative folks who are genuinely good people. We never have discussed any hot topic issues. But I know they have their viewpoints as do I. We mesh well. We understand that we have our definite viewpoints and try like hell to accept one another's opinions. In fact, I was rather surprised to find that one woman had definite liberal viewpoints on gay marriage/Prop 8 and was very proud of the election of Barack Obama. There's then a bit of liberal in a conservative and a bit of conservative in a liberal, but not always.
Location: USA
Registered: April 2009
Messages: 430
I hope not. But I can see your point. I guess living in a conservative community, there is few liberal folk about. None the less, we have a good neighborly friendship. We also have some some social gatherings, like attending my daughter's birthday parties or going on walks. We have an understanding that we are not on the same political or religious side of the fence. But we are friends. Did I mention how are friendship is a "works in progress"? (here he goes again ::-) !)
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