Why Is It Okay To Hate Openly Gay People?

[Zinegata]

Of course more abortions are a good thing, to a point. When there are more abortions, it means that women have more control over their own reproduction.This means that there are less unwanted pregnancies, which in turn raises standards of living, lowers crime, keeps families together, and has people's self assessment of their own happiness increase.

And lower abortion figure overall due to contraceptives and other measures don't also lead to fewer unwanted pregnancies, raises standards of living, lowers crime, keeps families together, and has their own happiness increase?

Or is it the case that contraceptions simply don't work at all? (I'm not sure, not in the medical profession)

I'm honestly not seeing "more abortions is good" as any kind of good, when unwanted pregnancies are avoidable in the first place. Abortions are legal. And upon considering all the options, it's the woman's right to do it. And a safe, hospital abortion is infinitely better than a back alley one. But I don't really see how "more abortions is good" when "abortions can be prevented".

a happier populace when you have abortion freely available like in the Netherlands than when you have abortion illegalized and hidden away like the Philippines.

Actually, according to some studies the Philippines has a happier population than the Netherlands. By leaps and bounds.

http://goodnewspilipinas.com/?p=6963

It's 14th worldwide according to the New Economics Foundation.

So I'm not really gonna believe that "abortions lead to a happier people". People are not simple. One cannot simply say that "The Dutch are happier and more fulfilled because they know they can have an abortion." There are many, many factors that affect it.

The movement to marginalize abortion care in the United States is one of the reasons that our infant mortality rate is more than twice that of Sweden.

Shooting up abortions clinics is a tad bit different from telling Catholic institutions to start offering it. Marginalizing or threatening abortion care practitioners is wrong. But it's also going on the extreme end to start whining that Catholic institutions don't offer courses on it.

The real way to solve a lack of facilities in places like Utah is to do it in secular institutions. Not every hospital in Utah is run by the Church, is it?

[Username17]

Actually, according to some studies the Philippines has a happier population than the Netherlands. By leaps and bounds.

http://goodnewspilipinas.com/?p=6963

It's 14th worldwide according to the New Economics Foundation.

Dude, that's the "Happy Planet Index" which is a load of bullshit. Countries get big bonuses for following policies that the NEF likes and huge penalties for policies that they don't like. So the United States is ranked 114th, not because Americans do not score highly on quality of life surveys, but because the NEF does not believe that the US way of life is sustainable or leads to a "happy planet."

In actual studies, as opposed to political hack jobs, The Netherlands comes in at a respectable 15th, and The Philippines are not in the top twenty or even particularly close to it.

The NEF may well think that the Philippines has an "environmental efficiency of supporting well-being" but I honestly don't think those words actually mean anything. And for that matter I don't think that any country with a birth rate of 26.42 births/1,000 population has any right to lecture anyone about sustainability.

-Username17

[Zinegata]

Actually, according to some studies the Philippines has a happier population than the Netherlands. By leaps and bounds.

http://goodnewspilipinas.com/?p=6963

It's 14th worldwide according to the New Economics Foundation.

Dude, that's the "Happy Planet Index" which is a load of bullshit. Countries get big bonuses for following policies that the NEF likes and huge penalties for policies that they don't like. So the United States is ranked 114th, not because Americans do not score highly on quality of life surveys, but because the NEF does not believe that the US way of life is sustainable or leads to a "happy planet."

In actual studies, as opposed to political hack jobs, The Netherlands comes in at a respectable 15th, and The Philippines are not in the top twenty or even particularly close to it.

The NEF may well think that the Philippines has an "environmental efficiency of supporting well-being" but I honestly don't think those words actually mean anything. And for that matter I don't think that any country with a birth rate of 26.42 births/1,000 population has any right to lecture anyone about sustainability.

-Username17

Ummm... Frank... If HPI is a "load of bullshit", then why is the HPI one of the main sources cited by your study?

I will direct you to the caption in your article:

The data used to construct the map were extracted from a meta-analysis published by the New Economics Foundation (Marks, N. et al. (2006). The Happy Planet Index. London: New Economics Foundation). Picture Credit: Adrian White, Psychology

Also, your article's list of sources is...

UNESCO, the CIA, the New Economics Foundation, the WHO, the Veenhoven Database, the Latinbarometer, the Afrobarometer, and the UNHDR

I will also note that mine referred to the 2009 HPI from the NEF. Yours is from 2006.

We're using the same source. Albeit obviously the researchers came up with different conclusions, and it's of different years.

Also, my article does actually define what the HPI is:

The HPI index measures happiness combining life satisfaction, life expectancy and environmental footprint — the amount of land required to sustain the population and absorb its energy consumption.

Environmental footprint is actually just one of the measures. And it's actually just a fancy way of saying population density.

Maybe the Philippines went up several notches in 2 years? We certainly have a lot more to smile about nowadays here in Manila.

[Username17]

Zinegata, the NEF collects a lot of good data. They are a perfectly good source for data. But their final rankings, their composite rankings are bullshit, because they massage the data until they can demonstrate that the big bad US isn't "really" happy. It's laughable.

Sure, people in Denmark are a lot happier than the United States, but if you're reporting the US as between Cambodia and Nigeria, your ranking system is fucking ricockulous.

The HPI has three components:

• Life Expectancy
• Ecological Footprint
• Life Satisfaction

Of those three, the only one that has fuck all to do with how actually happy people are is the Life Satisfaction one. And you know what? They fucking publish that separately.

And gosh, wouldn't you know it? On the one that actually has to do with happiness instead of their political agenda, the Netherlands is near the top of the green, and the Philippines is in the red. They can massage the data all they want, and they do, but Manila is still a shit hole.

How do they get the United States to have a red composite rating when it has almost as high a life satisfaction rating as Canada? Simple: they give literal negative points to US "happiness" for the fact that the US is a titanic polluter. Yes, the US ecological position is unsustainable and crazy damaging to the planet, but that seriously doesn't mean that the people in the US are less happy than they think they are.

Shooting up abortions clinics is a tad bit different from telling Catholic institutions to start offering it. Marginalizing or threatening abortion care practitioners is wrong. But it's also going on the extreme end to start whining that Catholic institutions don't offer courses on it.

No. The decision on whether to offer a specific treatment or not should be up to the doctor, not the administrators. Religious owners should not be allowed to deny medical care for anything or to anyone on the grounds of not liking some kinds of people.

Even doctors should have profound limitations on what they can and cannot do as far as denying care. Doctors are not allowed to turn away black people because they think they are Sons of Ham, they shouldn't be allowed to turn away women because they think they are painted Jezebels, either.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Want everyone to hold hands and sing Kumbaya? You need to make them understand something as simple as his:

"People are not simple. They cannot be described with words like "The elves are a lithe, pointy-eared people who excel in poverty"".

Who said anything about me wanting to just hold hands and sing Kumbaya? I just love mocking people with a persecution complex, especially if said persecution complex stems from them not getting to abuse/exploit people the way their fathers used to.

The reason why gay rights is a problem at all is because people become crybabies at the thought of them not hogging all of the privilege. I find their self-inflicted suffering delicious.

[Cielingcat]

When we actually did major studies with controls on sexual reassignment surgery performed on intersexed children, we found that suicide rates went up.

Huh, it's almost like performing a life changing procedure on a child against their will is a different situation than giving a much desired procedure to adults.

Yes, all the data on post-op satisfaction is going to be freely volunteered or it isn't going to exist at all. But out of the information we do get, which is in the form of patient testimonials, almost all of it is positive. The number of people who regret their decision is extremely small, which makes a lot of sense-the number of hurdles you have to jump through to get srs is a pretty fair deterrent to people who don't want srs. The bar is set so very high that it'd be hard to set it higher while still letting anyone transition-which is exactly why some people want to set it higher.

As for it being an elective surgery, for a majority of the people who get it, it is not elective any more than removing a benign tumor or fixing a cleft palette. It is something that won't actually hurt your ability to live your life, but will massively improve your quality of life. The people who report on their feelings about getting voluntary srs overwhelmingly report positively. And while no one who committed suicide over it would be able to respond, wouldn't it stand to reason that there would be a least a sizable minority of negative reports if it really had such a low success rate?

Treating a birth defect cannot be an elective cosmetic surgery, because "elective" means "insurance won't pay for it." And because of certain people, most insurance will get away with not paying for any part of medical transitioning.

As far as mutilation goes, Merriam-Webster lists it as:
1 : to cut up or alter radically so as to make imperfect <the child mutilated the book with his scissors>
2 : to cut off or permanently destroy a limb or essential part of

Anyone who argues that voluntary SRS is "to cut up so as to make imperfect" or that unwanted and harmful organs are "essential" is a disingenuous fuck who has no part in this conversation. The people who use mutilation to refer to srs have an agenda, and that agenda is always to hurt trans people. They hurt us with their words, and they hurt us with the reactions others have to their words. Because of people who have no idea what they're talking about, and people who know just enough to formulate arguments with the goal of hurting trans people.

As TavishArtair said, people who say "mutilation" are using it specifically as a scare word to dredge up negative feelings against trans people. It is used to make people disgusted with us, to make people think we're insane, and to make people support legislation that has the stated purpose of hurting us. And because of people like this, this legislation passes. Often.

[Zinegata]

Of those three, the only one that has fuck all to do with how actually happy people are is the Life Satisfaction one. And you know what? They fucking publish that separately.

Ok. Gotcha. That makes a lot more sense.

And gosh, wouldn't you know it? On the one that actually has to do with happiness instead of their political agenda, the Netherlands is near the top of the green, and the Philippines is in the red. They can massage the data all they want, and they do, but Manila is still a shit hole.

Pfft. I live here. Only some parts of it are .

No. The decision on whether to offer a specific treatment or not should be up to the doctor, not the administrators.

I would presume no doctor would really want to serve under a Catholic institution if they are planning to perform abortions. But yeah, that's reasonable.

[Zinegata]

Who said anything about me wanting to just hold hands and sing Kumbaya? I just love mocking people with a persecution complex, especially if said persecution complex stems from them not getting to abuse/exploit people the way their fathers used to.

The reason why gay rights is a problem at all is because people become crybabies at the thought of them not hogging all of the privilege. I find their self-inflicted suffering delicious.

That's kinda mean -_-.

[violence in the media]

Who said anything about me wanting to just hold hands and sing Kumbaya? I just love mocking people with a persecution complex, especially if said persecution complex stems from them not getting to abuse/exploit people the way their fathers used to.

The reason why gay rights is a problem at all is because people become crybabies at the thought of them not hogging all of the privilege. I find their self-inflicted suffering delicious.

That's kinda mean -_-.

Oh please. It's not even in the same universe of mean as the sort of bullshit the people with this type of persecution complex espouse.

[Zinegata]

Who said anything about me wanting to just hold hands and sing Kumbaya? I just love mocking people with a persecution complex, especially if said persecution complex stems from them not getting to abuse/exploit people the way their fathers used to.

The reason why gay rights is a problem at all is because people become crybabies at the thought of them not hogging all of the privilege. I find their self-inflicted suffering delicious.

That's kinda mean -_-.

Oh please. It's not even in the same universe of mean as the sort of bullshit the people with this type of persecution complex espouse.

Hence "kinda" mean?

[Kaelik]

Yes, all the data on post-op satisfaction is going to be freely volunteered or it isn't going to exist at all. But out of the information we do get, which is in the form of patient testimonials, almost all of it is positive. The number of people who regret their decision is extremely small, which makes a lot of sense-the number of hurdles you have to jump through to get srs is a pretty fair deterrent to people who don't want srs. The bar is set so very high that it'd be hard to set it higher while still letting anyone transition-which is exactly why some people want to set it higher.

This is disingenuous and wrong. People often go in to attempt to reverse the procedure, if that's not dissatisfaction wtf is?

Likewise, the testimonials of how great it as very few even relative to the number of surgeries performed, and it's not out of line to suggest that people who have nothing to gain by complaining will not complain. If being a man wasn't what you wanted, and being a woman also wasn't what you wanted, complaining that the second thing didn't work isn't going to help, so people in that situations just have to accept that life sucks.

As for it being an elective surgery, for a majority of the people who get it, it is not elective any more than removing a benign tumor or fixing a cleft palette. It is something that won't actually hurt your ability to live your life, but will massively improve your quality of life.?

Except that as stated, it doesn't always improve your quality of life at all, much less massively. And it in fact does hurt the ability of many people to live their lives.

So yes, it's elective.

Treating a birth defect cannot be an elective cosmetic surgery, because "elective" means "insurance won't pay for it."

It's not a birth defect. It's your brain that is backwards, not your body. If someone is born with two arms, and really wants four arms, it's not a birth defect. I'm still in support of his elective surgery to add two arms (when we reach that point) but it's not a birth defect.

2) It's elective. Tough shit. How about you argue that elective shouldn't determine who has to pay for it, instead of arguing that insurance policy regulations + your personal feelings about who should pay for it alter reality and change the meaning of the word elective?

As far as mutilation goes, Merriam-Webster lists it as:
1 : to cut up or alter radically so as to make imperfect <the child mutilated the book with his scissors>
2 : to cut off or permanently destroy a limb or essential part of

Anyone who argues that voluntary SRS is "to cut up so as to make imperfect" or that unwanted and harmful organs are "essential" is a disingenuous fuck who has no part in this conversation. The people who use mutilation to refer to srs have an agenda, and that agenda is always to hurt trans people. They hurt us with their words, and they hurt us with the reactions others have to their words. Because of people who have no idea what they're talking about, and people who know just enough to formulate arguments with the goal of hurting trans people.

1) It is imperfect. A non working reproductive system is imperfect. You might want that imperfection, but it's still imperfect.
2) You could argue about "essential" maybe, but yes, you are destroying a limb or essential part of your body.

People don't really need a penis/ovaries. But likewise, people don't really need a left pinky finger. But cutting it off is still mutilation.

Hell, deliberate scarring is mutilation.

[mean_liar]

Of course more abortions are a good thing, to a point. When there are more abortions, it means that women have more control over their own reproduction.This means that there are less unwanted pregnancies, which in turn raises standards of living, lowers crime, keeps families together, and has people's self assessment of their own happiness increase.

And lower abortion figure overall due to contraceptives and other measures don't also lead to fewer unwanted pregnancies, raises standards of living, lowers crime, keeps families together, and has their own happiness increase?

I think it's more a case of abortion being so polarized in the US. I believe everyone agrees that a comprehensive approach to responsibly controlling fertility, pregnancy and birth is going to be better than focusing on any one specific area (ie, freer access to abortions only). However, in the context of the US, abortion is the first thing to get excised from any "comprehensive approach" during negotiation and/or implementation.

Therefore, in the US emphasis is placed on abortions.

[Cielingcat]

This is disingenuous and wrong. People often go in to attempt to reverse the procedure, if that's not dissatisfaction wtf is?

De-transitioning post srs is incredibly rare, I don't know wtf you're talking about.

If you're talking about intersexed people who have srs performed on them against their will before they're even capable of consenting, then, um, no shit?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Hence "kinda" mean?

Oh, sod off. I didn't think that I would have to explain this on the Den, but apparently I have to.

When libruls do something like this it's not that they enjoy schadenfreude for the sake of it, it's a form of direct retaliation against people so insecure that they're willing to abuse other people for peace of mind. It's the same reason why we accuse homophobes of having repressed homosexuality or the reason we say that chauvinists have tiny dicks.

No, I don't literally stay up at night giggling at how fundies are going to have to put up with gay marriage in 20 years, but it's fun to troll them with the knowledge anyway when they pull shit like Prop 8.

[Crissa]

Study finds over ninety percent of hospitals have no protections for the violation of LGBT patient rights.

-Crissa

[Kaelik]

I'll be honest, the Obama Memorandum is news, the fact that 90% of hospitals are assholes is not.

In my experience, you need to fight tooth and nail to see anyone if you don't have explicitly the same last name, and my parents have always had trouble seeing each other.

[Crissa]

Yeah, explicitly protecting the rights of gay people will help the rights of not-gay people even more, if only because there are more of them.

-Crissa

[Kaelik]

Yeah, explicitly protecting the rights of gay people will help the rights of not-gay people even more, if only because there are more of them.

Well it does depend on how they do it, I don't want to have to lie that I'm his lover to see my brother if he's in the hospital again. But ideally just not being assholes about people visiting when the patient is conscious and can actually say yes/no would be a start.

After that the more tricky issue re: unconscious people could be addressed.

Also, I'm not the actual target, but everytime someone says something about "your sister" it makes me want to punch them.

[Red_Rob]

I don't want to have to lie that I'm his lover to see my brother if he's in the hospital again.

Whe i first read this, I wasn't sure if the "again" was the hospital bit, or lying about being his gay lover. I wondered just how often that had come up.

But this is good news. Obama really seems to want to do something about LGBT discrimination.

[Kaelik]

I don't want to have to lie that I'm his lover to see my brother if he's in the hospital again.

Whe i first read this, I wasn't sure if the "again" was the hospital bit, or lying about being his gay lover. I wondered just how often that had come up.

Hospital bit. My mothers both being present at the same time and confirming that we were both both of their children was enough that they let me in after that.

[Crissa]

Retired General reaffirms stance that gays are out to destroy the country.

-Crissa