I Just Want To Say I Told You So. RE: LGBT

a reply to: Dfairlite

Nope

Did you know that back around the turn of the last century there were 0 gays? Yup, that's right none. Not a one.

a reply to: roadgravel

4.1/3.5

a reply to: luthier

Read the OP.

Later folks. I'll check back tonight.

originally posted by: Dfairlite
a reply to: Krazysh0t

The United States. And if you enjoy the way life has been in the US for the last 50 years, compared to other parts of the world, then normalization does pose a threat to your way of life.

It sure doesn't. My way of life is A-Ok and appears to be getting better. I'm sorry that you don't like the fact that gay people can't be openly persecuted by intolerant assholes anymore, but oh well. Times are changing. Deal with it.

originally posted by: Dfairlite
a reply to: roadgravel

4.1/3.5

That would be the wrong maths even if it was not expressed in percentage.

It was a 0.6% change.

Or alternatively the shifting statistics reflects the openness of society that allows more people to come out of the closet.

Bob and Alice are concerned over the gay population.

At first look, they believe there are 10 gays.

At second look, they believe there are 12 gays.

12 - 10 is an increase of 2.

2 / 10 means that increase is .2 or 20% from the first look.

Holy crap Alice, the gays have increased by 20%. We are doomed.

a reply to: Dfairlite

Who gives a flying f**k what people identify as--it's their liberty to be whomever they choose to be.

Get over yourself.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

Agreed, and I have something to add, if I may, in response to Dfairlite's ridiculous post.

Dfairlite, you have suggested that you are living in the most open society in history, but the only reason for that, is that approximately fifty years ago, there was a movement which sought to end discriminatory behaviour and the acceptance of that behaviour, sought to see people have equal rights, no matter their demography.

Previous to that, when your soldiers visited the United Kingdom, they had to be instructed as to how to behave in our country, so that they would not be arrested for poor conduct toward persons different than themselves. They had to sit through special training videos, to educate them as to how to behave in an open society, and even THAT, comparatively advanced society, was imperfect enough that the man who solved the Enigma code was also arrested for being homosexual.

So I ask you to reconsider. You are not living in the most advanced culture or society on the face of the world. For all your technological prowess, advanced systems designed to kill people, your mass surveillance systems and your computerised ordering terminals in your McDonalds, your society is not and never has been the most advanced in the world, because it is still afflicted with some of the most backward, arse about face thinking, some of the most hateful bias and hypocritical nonsense, ever devised by the human mind.

You live in a country which denied one of its war heroes a medal for DECADES, simply because his commanding officer felt that he would be "damned if I am recommending a Jew for THAT medal". You live in a country where the law had to change before persons of colour could be considered as properly equal to any other people, despite the obviousness of the truth. You live in a country which just elected a leader who wants to put a border wall up, during a period where immigration across the border it pertains to, has not been lower for an age.

You are living in the intellectual equivalent of a backwater, a sociological dumping ground for some of the worst ideas mankind ever had. Your country is NOT advanced. It is merely a country, and your arrogance and your disgust at the process of others lives, is nothing more than a fantastic example, of everything that is STILL wrong with it, despite the best attempts of the only decent people ever to live in your country, to alter it for the better.

originally posted by: Dfairlite
a reply to: Abysha

You don't think that perhaps the personal liberties we've gained as a society has simply lent to people coming out of the closet?

The only generation that has anyone coming out of the closet is millennials, so those personal liberties must not be doing much for everyone else...

Bingo!

The thing about humans is that they are changeable when they are very young, as they age they grow and all things tend to settle into place, for better or worse. Do you honestly expect people in their 40's to make radical changes in their opinions or the ways they display their opinions, just because Caitlyn Jenner poses in magazines or because gay marriage is legalized somewhere? Some will, but not many. Because they have already established themselves. And what about people who are older than that?

On the other hand, millennials aren't just little babbies who are mindlessly receiving this change into their heads through their iphones, like a magic bullet. No, they are the change. The statistics you quoted go hand in hand with the media exposure you blame for them. Gay marriages has only just been legalized in several places, and trans people have only very recently come into the mainstream. This is exactly when we'd expect to see a large increase in LGBT identified young people, if some of them used to be hidden before. I don't know what kind of bizarro world you live in if you'd expect the old folks to suddenly go pride parading in the multitudes. Now if that happened, then I'd actually be worried that some brainwashing was happening!

I'm not going to say whether gay people, for example, are born gay or not. We both agree it's not a choice, but does the environment have an effect? Honestly I don't think science can answer that question yet, psychology and neurology still have a long way to go before we can understand ourselves. But I don't thinks it's too relevant to this argument.

I share your concern about the birth rates, it could be a real problem. I just don't think "straight-washing" the gay away is going to solve that, if anything it would cause resentment. The problem is people don't want to be adults, they want to keep living their youth. But birth-rates where already down before this new LGBT age of acceptance came along. And look at nations like Russia; Russian birth rates are even lower than in the US, even though LGBT groups are very marginalized there.

What do you think would have been an acceptable increase in the survey? As in, wouldn't have made you worried? Do you agree in older surveys the numbers have likely been skewed down, due to lower acceptance?

Also, I wonder what caused the decrease in the traditionalists category. I'm guessing it's people who are not straight, but who feel things have gone too far, or something like that.

originally posted by: Dfairlite
If people were simply more open to identifying now that it's become normalized, we would see gains across generations. After all, there should be the same percentage of people born gay at any given time so the only reason for an increase at all is less fear of reprisal. Yet it seems only the young and impressionable are identifying more readily. Hmmm, who would have predicted that? Oh, that's right, me (and many other reasonably minded people).

But if that wasn't enough to convince you that, yes, I was indeed correct about what would happen. Take a look at the numbers since legalization of gay marriage by generation. (legalization, nation wide in June 2015)

Millenial: 2014: 6.3% 2016: 7.3%
Gen x: 2014: 3.4% 2016: 3.2%
Boomers: 2014: 2.7% 2016: 2.4%
Tradition: 2014: 1.9% 2016: 1.4%

Boomers should be identifying in much larger quantities if the theory of the left was to hold water as they're getting older and the legal benefits of marriage should be causing even those who wouldn't have otherwise identified, to identify.

I've highlighted the bits that cause your argument to fail.

The short answer is: "Sez you."

Different age groups always react differently to social changes. In a nutshell, the old argument about becoming more conservative as you get older is broadly true. You become less adventurous, less appreciative of innovation, and are more likely to be called "set in your ways."

To take an even bigger social upheaval than the normalisation of minority sexualities, look at the 1960s. There were still genuine Victorians pottering about Britain - basically anyone aged 65 or over.

Do you suppose that they swapped their old-school clothes for tie-dyed kaftans, stopped drinking tea and smoked hash instead, and listened to the Beatles rather than embroidering Bible verses? No, of course they didn't, that would be a bloody stupid idea wouldn't it. They fretted about the youth of today and how the world was going to hell in a handcart, like everyone else who has attained retirement age or thereabouts.

When the behaviour of the young has stopped making sense, you know that you are old. That's the way it has always worked.

I Just Want To Say I Told You So. RE: LGBT

Well, you were wrong. I was right. Hahaha.

who would have predicted that? Oh, that's right, me

How is that possible? Well I was right, that's how

(I was right, after all)

I'm not an idiot

Keep telling yourself that, sweetheart.

a reply to: audubon

Well put. There is no basis at all for the claims you highlighted. People who have grown up and even grown old in a world where gays simply don't get married to each other aren't suddenly going to change their ways when it becomes a possibility.

a reply to: Kettu

And maybe, just maybe with marriage being legal more people are deciding it's OK to admit they're gay?

And why is that suddenly such a bad thing?

Exactly.

So? Who cares?

Apparently, some people think "The Gays" and "The Transfolk" et al. are destroying the sheer fabric of our society, as our fearless OP said himself:

why should I care? Because I love our society and our foundation. This is a direct threat to both of those things.

a reply to: Liquesence

Apparently, some people think "The Gays" and "The Transfolk" et al. are destroying the sheer fabric of our society

There is that special paranoia that gets into some people. I wonder if it's percentage has gone up also. I thinking yes.

And a word on birth rates...

You cannot win with some people. Look, this is fairly simple stuff. People are being told by the right:

If you cannot afford to have kids, you should not have kids.

They are also being told:

No planned parenthood, A) because we do not properly understand what it is or does, and B) because sex is for procreation only, so there is no need for this PP stuff at all.

But at the same time:

We need to be concerned about the Gays, because the birthrate is declining.

This is some bogus, double standards nonsense. Lets be realistic, shall we?

If you want people to be having children, then you have to silence the sort of people and the sorts of political figures and movements, which prevent women being able to afford children, whether they have a high paying job or an entry level one. You have to make a society which WANTS more children in it, and does not care whether their parents are rich, poor, gay, straight, black, white, brown, maybe beige, or any other thing, does not care whether those children grow up Christian, Muslim or Atheist or any other damned thing, and does not care how they turn out, save to say that they grow up healthy, happy with themselves and who they are, and free to be, believe, and do, whatever the hell they like.

But you do not have a society like that. You have a society which has not yet eradicated intolerance, which has not yet decided what it actually wants, and a society which is lead around just now by the genitals at the hands of an oxymoronic movement of Christian Conservatives (which are indeed an oxymoron, because conservatism and Christ go together about as well as soft cheese and anthrax spores).

You cannot have it both ways. If you want children to be pitter pattering around the place, then you need to start running your society in such a manner that those children can legitimately aspire to something other than destitution. I can assure you that you do not live in such a country now. The United States does not support its workers, it does not support the continuing availability of good, properly paid work to do, nor does it support those within it who cannot work due to disabilities which which they were either born, or gained trying to earn money, with which to pay taxes and purchase goods.

Why would ANYONE want to bring children into a country which is perfectly happy to spend money on bombing people who cannot harm it, but where a significant portion of society want to end abortion, but also refuse to even think about paying for universal healthcare via taxation? Why would anyone want to bring a child into the world, in a country where education costs money, where Universities are permitted to charge students and/or their parents for the privilege of educating them or their offspring? What possible motivation could anyone, straight or otherwise, have for bringing a child into the world, in a country whose politics is corporatist at best, whose constitution is so removed from the realities of the law, that it operates more as a story that people tell themselves to remind them what could of been, to escape what has become of the place in a moments reverie, than as ACTUAL direction for the lawmaker?

Either you want sustainable birthrates, which means paying out for things you will not be personally using, or you want to be free of as much tax as possible. Either you are prepared to pay the cost to society of dirt poor parents having children, or you aren't. You may not have your cake, and eat it.

originally posted by: roadgravel
a reply to: Liquesence

Apparently, some people think "The Gays" and "The Transfolk" et al. are destroying the sheer fabric of our society

There is that special paranoia that gets into some people. I wonder if it's percentage has gone up also. I thinking yes.

I would have to agree. It would only make statistical sense that what with the increase in gay/trans/etc identity there would be an increase the fear of (since the OP is about statistics and all).

I'm also beginning to wonder if cultural acceptance has some people feeling The Gayness seeping out of themselves, which scares them, hence the need to fight so hard against that acceptance, or rather to keep things in the closet.

I have to say, I particularly love the idea that giving around five per cent of the population the option to marry is in any way a bigger threat to cultural norms represented by traditional heterosexual marriages... which have an estimated divorce rate of around 45 per cent.

Think of all the broken homes, traumatised kids, legal rows that last a lifetime, not to mention the percentage of divorcees who are then encouraged by lax divorce laws to remarry again (and again).

Forget gay marriage - Outlaw "straight divorce" now!