Theta: well, maybe civil rights are a subset of human rights? i think there's a case to be made here about that at a legal level... but when you say "human rights violation" you imagine some third world dictator using chlorine gas against some ethnic ghetto, not tax breaks and visitation rights, and there's a reason for that. We intuit that for something to be a violation of human rights it needs to be like... really really bad, like mass deportations and whatnot.
That's a "dear muslima" fallacy, which was already a bad argument before it was called that.
no it's not, it will become obvious why in a second
also, zompist, yes I am for all intents and purposes here a regular first worlders, as is most of the well off segments of my country, thank you very much. I have no idea what relevance that might hold. It doesn't make me less serious, because it's not somehow not serious to care about something which isnt' the most dire and terrible injustice in the planet: What *is* not serious is pretending that everyone who doesn't care about this particular issue, which is far from being the direst, is somehow a terrible terrible person: If we were speaking about someone saying "i don't care about the most evil thing that's happening right now" then *maybe* there'd be a bit of a case there -thought it still strikes me as fanatical to insult people simply for not sharing one's values and concerns-, but this is not even the case. I'm as first world as you here, but it's not me who's saying "either you care about my first world problems or you're awful", important as first world problems are.
So only people having their homes bombed need to have their problems solved?
By the same logic, if you break a bone you should not bother to get it set, because it's not cancer.
Of course not. This is transparently not what i was saying. see, because this is what you missed.
You're playing at being Very Concerned With The Really Serious Things simply to shout down somebody else's issue
I'm not. Unlike the rest of the fine guys and gals here, who are offering various defenses of Caring
like jal, calling my argument a dear muslima, which basically boils down to saying yes we should Care about that but also we should Care about this.
What i'm offering here is not a redirection of everyone's Caring, saying
"you should care about kids being slaughtered instead of a certain legal status that's slightly advantageous and not available to a certain subset of people in affluent countries. " I'm saying people are not obliged to care about whatever it is you care about, and whatever you care about being a true and just cause doesn't change this reality. Kath's whole sin here, for which everyone promptly jumped to shout her down [sorry if i'm mistaking pronouns here, Kath, i've dreadful memory] is saying she doesn't Care about this issue and that she's tired of hearing about it. A good advocate for a cause, upon finding someone who doesn't Care about what the advocate Cares about tries to persuade, or leaves them be. A fanatic, on the other hand, immediately jumps at whoever doesn't Care for
That Which Everyone Must Care . You don't speak that way about Our Savior, billy, he saved your soul and you're grateful and you will experience the appropriate emotional response to this which is sincere gratitude, and if you don't experience this sincere gratitude you're going to go to hell, mister. so repent.
No, I'm not offering a defense of Caring. I'm offering a defense of
not caring. The struggle for equal rights for gays in the first world is important enough, but it doesn't mean you can get on some high horse and shout down people for not caring about it simply because you think it's important. The only reason i bring genocides and slavery to the table is to point out that there are plenty of causes that are Just and Good, such as gay marriage, and slavery, and all those other things. and someone not caring about any one of them, while it may be wrong, is certainly not good grounds for bile and scorn. Try to convince someone that gay marriage is indeed important and something they should care about? fine. shouting them down for failing to care about this one cause which you should happen to care about? not fine.
I don't approve of such behavior, of shouting down someone for expressing lack of concern for the shouterdown's pet cause, much less in a thread the sole purpose of is precisely expressing grievances, and I express this lack of approval. If the struggle is so acrid that doing that is now letting down the proglib side, or helping homophobes, or "setting back progress towards social justice" then maybe we're losing a bit of perspective here.