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Algerian blokes in cafe: you have to give up homosexuality or go to hell for eternity

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12:29 / 12.12.03

Dude, I raised this possibility, oh, about twenty posts ago.

Yeah, but you were the only one flushing, then. This morning there’s been a torrent of Barbelith comment washing all over the place, all flowing in the same general direction.

But yes, you said it first, Mr Fear

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

13:40 / 12.12.03

Green Lanes can be a scary place and the cafes there tend to be private clubs. The large gun fight that happened their earlier this year happened at th bottom of the street on the ladder my mate lives on. Even without the recent spate of violence surrounding a few of them I've always tended to think of them as safe spaces for the Turkish and Kurdish communities and thus not a place I should really be going or would be welcome. One of these cafes is also the only place I've ever seen job advert phrased "Atrractive young woman sought for waitressing duties." wasn't quite sure what to make of that.

Originally posted by Griffle

"Thanks. Its just that i sometimes drive myself crazy trying to square all these different points of view (religion/homosexuality) inside my head."

You can't.

14:12 / 12.12.03

I don't think Quantum was deliberately making sweeping statements
Well, to be fair, I was making a deliberately sweeping statement so I could justify it with a link to journalistic evidence that it is the case, but it got done for me. Reidcourche knows exactly what I'm talking about, half the clubs are refuges for Kurdish political refugees escaping genocide and the others are the centres of the local Mesopotamian Mafia. Admittedly the 'mafia' arose because of so many people not being able to find jobs, because of our terrible immigration policy enactment, but the fact remains. Running gun battles through the streets don't just happen, it's a side effect of organised crime.
And the sexism, homophobia and racism of some of the people in the area has to be experienced to be believed. If you think I am being bigoted send your girlfriend for a walk on her own down Green Lanes, or if you are gay walk down the road yourself. Palpable hostility.

Anyway, controversial generalisations aside, Griffle- being tolerant breeds more tolerance (Barbelith intolerance of intolerance aside). And congrats on your named Hookah, that rules

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:16 / 12.12.03

Reidcourchie: You can't.

Apart from when you can.

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

14:59 / 12.12.03

That's a good link Fly. At some point I'm going to get round to starting up a quandries of tolerance thread. Something along the lines of how do you square tolerance of culture that are not nesseccarily tolerant of others, if you see what I mean.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

15:07 / 12.12.03

heh.

You Can't.

My, that is a useful conversational gambit. I shall use it all night.

15:27 / 12.12.03

how do you square tolerance of culture that are not nesseccarily tolerant of others

It's very simple, RRR. You just ask yourself, What Would Jesus Do?

15:28 / 12.12.03

Is this where I point people towards Cross+Flame for more in depth discussions of homosexuality and religion?

Because someone should.

15:30 / 12.12.03

Oh, and here's another thread on gay people becoming straight people, the likelihood thereof.

15:50 / 12.12.03

Oh so *that's* where the You Can't gambit comes from.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

16:16 / 12.12.03

heh, again.

02:47 / 13.12.03

Because someone should.

Cheers, Grant. I was wondering when we ought to sell Cross and Flame, the online community where I am still a moderator...

08:29 / 13.12.03

"Tolerance" is a terrible thing. It has overtones of elitism and holier-than-thou.

"I'll tolerate your behaviour, though I do not like it."

Tolerating is snotty.

I do not tolerate toleration.

Try acceptance.

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:04 / 13.12.03

I get so used to ridiculous sweeping statements on Barbelith that I occasionally see them when they're not actually there...

(Whispers, wide-eyed)

They don't know they're sweeping...

11:15 / 13.12.03

Try acceptance.

Try getting off yr high horse.

The problem with your little formulation is--who gets to decide what is acceptable and what isn't? Why, Alpha Beth, of course. How conveeeeeeeeeenient.

There are issues on which people of good will can disagree. Would you really want to force conformity of thought? Because that's what you're talking about here: policing of thoughts. And if ever there were a cure that was worse than the disease...

Is toleration snotty? Seems to me that, y'know, expecting everyone in the world to change their deeply-held views just to avoid offending your tender sensibilities is just a wee bit snottier.

The aphorism "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" seems to me to be a good one to live by; it doesn't demand changes to hearts & minds, but it allows for civil conduct in society, while still allowing people to be free inside their own heads. Which is not only not "a terrible thing," it is the single most vital thing.

11:31 / 13.12.03

I'm quite happy being snotty about homophobia, arranged marriages, the burka etc. I kind of hope they're not forever.

Guess I should be more accepting though. Hey, if my neighbours want to stone to death one of their family for some crime or other, that's their business, its, like, all relative and we shouldn't judge.

12:01 / 13.12.03

Ignatious - interesting you should mention the burkas... on a related note, Marjane Satrapi, comic book author and former Iranian who has been forced to wear the hijab or 'the veil' in the past outlines why the state should neither enforce or ban the wearing of such articles of clothing in an article here.

12:06 / 13.12.03

Ah, but being tolerant does mean tolerating intolerance in others. And it certainly doesn't mean accepting intolerance in others.

It's not intolerant to protest draconian laws, such as stoning someone for adultery. It would, however, be intolerant to deny someone the right to think that adultery is morally wrong. See the difference?

When generations of interreligious tolerance broke down, Inquisition was set up to force the Jews of Spain to accept Christianity.

The central question remains: who decides what is acceptable and what isn't? To you, Ignatius, arranged marriages and the burqa are unacceptable, while homosexual acts are acceptable: to an Algerian Islamic fundamentalist, it's just the opposite.

Who's "right," in an absolute sense? To come down firmly on one side or another would, in effect, criminalize a set of beliefs. Is that the way to prove that your society is more "enlightened" than a society that promotes those beliefs with which you disagree?

12:14 / 13.12.03

Sleaze--thanks for that link.

There's an excellent point there; that morality and legality do not, and should not, always overlap--which is a point that fundamentalists (both right-wing religious and left-wing humanistic) tend to forget.

That is: most people of good will agree that adultery is immoral--but nobody except for the furthest God-bothering fringe wants to see it made illegal.

On the other hand, there's also a censorious pressure that comes from the left: at the risk of invoking the dreaded and ill-defined spectre of "political correctness" here, I would assert that campus speech codes and (to an extent) the movement for hate-crimes legislation are also attempts to give purely moral stances the force of law.

And (IMHO) it's bullshit no matter from which end of the ideological spectrum it comes.

16:07 / 13.12.03

I'm not really arguing about anything except mindless acceptance, which as you say is different to considered tolerance.

19:53 / 13.12.03

Homosexual blokes in cafe: you must give up being Algerian or go to the remainders bin at Harrod's for eternity. Algerians are sinful. Choose the path of Carson Cressley. Give up a wife and find gay sex.

23:13 / 13.12.03

I think you should be asking what the guy's motivation was for saying those things. I don't know a whole lot about Islam, but I have a lot of history with Christianity. There are some Christians who will say these things out of arrogance and a desire to feel superior to others, but there are also those who say these things because they want to save other people from the consequences of what they believe are wrong actions.

I don't know where this guy would be on that spectrum, but he might be saying these things out of concern for a fellow human being. If what he's saying is true (and you can't disprove these religious meta-narratives any more than he can prove them) then he is doing the right thing. I'm not saying his motives were necessarily that good, it might have just been intolerance, but what I'm saying is that for someone who holds that kind of world view, they may feel that keeping their mouth shut on these kinds of matters is irrresponsible and uncaring.

I can understand that your lifestyle choices are very personal, and it's not easy to have someone pull them to pieces, but at least there is some possibility of a good motive in what he said. What was your motive for telling him his religion was "a crock of shit", apart from to vent your own frustration?

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