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2 yr. ago

  • I dunno if anyone is interested but of you got some spare coins laying around the Canadian based charity Rainbow Refugee has been helping get out threatened LGBTQIA+ folks from multiple countries including Russia for quite a while now by arranging sponsorships and legal support and advice for LGBTQIA asylum seekers. If you know anyone looking to get out or would like to donate here's a link :

    https://www.rainbowrefugee.com/

  • I would argue that the zealotry is yours. I am not arguing for the removal of whole subsects of people from positions of government as though atheism ( or whatever term you want to use for your complete absence of belief since you refuse to identify as an atheist) is the only approved belief set of the state and that we should be expunging all others.

    I don't see much value in going through an itemized list of mental health issues to see which ones meet your personal approval either. If an illness causes no physical or mental harm to other people then it's not a concern. Criminal behaviour is a category apart and I don't endorse harm done to others intentional or otherwise. Mental illness is not a mandatory prerequisite for people doing terrible things to each other and a lot of people we convict do not actually show signs of a defined mental illness. Indeed there are a lot of mental illnesses make people more likely to be a victim of violent crime rather than particularly predisposed to committing it. A mental illness isn't an excuse for people being an asshole to other people. Having a mental illness is also not a carte blanc invitation for other people to be assholes towards you.

    That I am your archetype for religious zealot I find personally very entertaining given I really don't care on that front. I don't believe there's any justice to be had in an afterlife so making the limited time and place we live kinder is the ethical move. You however seem to have just decided to change your tactics to ad hominem attacks to categorically dismiss me which makes it appear you are operating on a very emotional trigger. Chucking me in a "religion" box is your best attempt to emotionally satisfy your need to not have to deal with anything I say. It's a tantrum reaction. Are you always this sensitive?

  • I feel like this doesn't adequately explain why I can't manage to force myself to do an evil playthrough of Baldurs Gate 3...like the social sphere there isn't even real. Nobody bloody cares and I am missing out on a fair chunk of game content that I purchased but I feel too bad about being a dick to imaginary people who don't exist to betray or kill them.

    I have the feeling that if I ended up with a sort of superpower that made me able to stop time I would barely use it for anything like mean spirited pranks and probably just use it to get to work on time, take breaks when I feel like and have more free time to read.

  • I would not be welcome in a Church. I grew up essentially an atheist and do not believe nor ever have believed in the God prescribed by the Christian, Jewish or Muslim faiths. I am now closer to agnostic. As a queer kid from an extremely Christian town I have my own complicated relationship with Christianity as an outsider and my own history of inflicted traumas. Yet, I hold no issue with those who do not attempt to force their beliefs on me because those people who have harmed me do not represent everyone who has a religious belief. How people comport themselves towards others and their empathy and kindness towards their fellow humans matters to me more than what particularly they individually believe exists.

    I recognize that for those people who hold beliefs that they do in fact believe them. They aren't simply pretending to entertain you and that means that their dogmas have perceived consequences. Religious beliefs aren't something people can change like their socks. It often lies very close to their personal conception of what it means to be human. To shake that belief they require a lot of evidence that makes a high degree of sense to them and disbelief often causes them to be at odds with their own families and communities.

    It is enlightening to see that your definition of "religious nutcase" is someone who has any religious beliefs at all regardless whether they ever attempt to spread them or impact you in any way. I imagine you likely have experienced some sort of religious related trauma yourself but that does not make reacting to everyone with a belief system the way you are right now okay. You also seem to place people who experience mental illness or addiction as a category that makes it ok for you to dehumanize people. You place yourself as the only viable model of intelligence... Something which isn't healthy. You may just be very young in which case you might grow out of these beliefs naturally over time but if not then you should really be seeking some therapy.

    As for addictions and mental illnesses, people's individual struggles are not my business either. Some people do struggle and it's not my place to judge them on their quality of life, only the quality of their work.

  • Being religious is not a mental illness. A lot of people grow up inside the culture and a belief held that dearly is not one you can change so easily. Life is difficult and what helps people navigate it particularly given it's remaining mysteries isn't really your problem. People draw their comfort from many sources and stripping them of it isn't ethical. Nor is it entirely right to look at atheism as not a set of religious beliefs themselves in the context of government work. If a government agent started rattling on about how someone's beliefs were stupid and that they thought little of them for holding them it would be just as alienating and threatening to the person seeking help as if some religious person decided to use their captive audience to proselytize to an atheists.

    But if you still insist on pathologizing the one coming across here as deranged is you. Your complete lack of empathy for your fellow humans sounds like it has it's root in a particular form of narcissistism or other type two personality disorder. Being an atheist is fine. Being an asshole about it and demanding everyone be exactly like you to be considered worthwhile to participate in their society makes you no different than the religious assholes who insist the exact same.

  • Threaten marriage...

    Why the hell should we protect marriage like it's an animal in danger of going extinct? It's just a custom. I know a lot of people who have neen together for over a decade as a couple perfectly happy to never marry and they are often the strongest and most long lived couplings I know.

    Shouldn't we just be advocating for the happiness of people and not whether or not a bit of legal paper is signed as a meteic of success?

  • Like it or not religion is a formative part of people's lives. If letting someone essentially wear a hat to work is "favouring on religion over another" then I can only posit that comes from a place of extreme pettiness. Where I am we have a large number of Sikh folk and I have gone into government offices and been served by agents wearing turbans a number of times. Not once has it ever been commented on. Not once have they ever mentioned their religion to me nor I commented on it to them. Neither would have been particularly proper because between the both of us in that professional setting it is quite strictly none of our business. I can't say that what the agents were wearing ever in any way altered my experience.

    It is the attitude of killjoys and sour grapes to strip people of the things that make them feel confident in the way they conduct themselves when out in the world or at their workplace. Your feelings about a piece of cloth are not most important. You only have to deal with a government agent once in a while in a professional capacity and your very temporary discomfort is not to be highly weighted. For the person forced to give up the things that make them feel supported and comfortable they feel that lack every single day. It is a crushing and disheartening experience.

  • Refusing to do part of the job would be an impairment of government function. A headscarf does nothing to impair function of the employee to do their job.

    Rather by banning it there creates a undue barrier to the participation of women of this religious backgrounds in government by not realizing the modesty principles of their culture. It is more akin to not allowing a woman to work in a field unless she does so wearing nothing but her underwear.

  • I know a fair chunk of my friends who have given up on the dream of kids. When both parents have to work full time at jobs their post secondary education qualified them for and court mental health issues because nothing they do for work feels meaningful just to scrape by with the bare minimum and accrue damn near nothing in savings... They don't really want to have kids.

    A lot of mammals when they don't feel safe or secure in resources abandon or kill their young. Humans given control over their reproduction just seem to settle on raising dogs because they are cheaper.

  • It's something that I have gotten used to hearing even within the "community" particularly from "centrist" gay, lesbian and bi folk. This idea that my freedom to live my life is an impediment to wider acceptance. The implications being that our time is just a little further down the road once things are secure for them then we can have our turn. Maybe... If they feel like it.

    Like that means people I know might not get stranded for years between surgeries stuck in pain, have their medications revoked making their endocrine system a fucking mess, be subject to violent crimes because we are not respectable enough to listen to or fight for... That we have to exist with the battery of hope that things could be better running quietly out... To ask yourself if someone you know is going to die in the next election cycle. And then you see the gay guys on the picket lines of the anti trans rallies flaunting their gayness as a weapon to say "even we think they are crazy!" or who act like utter feces when a gay trans man enters a gay club.

    The reason the LGBTQIA+ has their no person left behind solidarity is this. The recognition that there is a fight on many fronts and that no one is a fungible pawn because once someone's got theirs then having gratitude and empathy for the past help of those still fighting is the right thing to do. When people talk about the left abandoning the identity issues they are openly discussing sacrificing us and thankfully some notice and take them to task. True allies understand that to us we are stuck in a Catch 22 and just like the book says "The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on."

  • Played a lot of games... But the NES didn't really have that many standouts for me. I could write an extensive list of games I played for a lot of hours but out of the raft of games there wasn't many that particularly were a favorite more like a dichotomy of whether each bit of the list enjoyable and not. The SNES was definitely Super Mario RPG, Donkey Kong Country and Chronotrigger but it was the N64 that got me games that I replayed like crazy.

    Zelda Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Super Smash Bros, Harvest Moon 64, Snowboard Kid's 2 and Diddy Kong Racing made the top of that list. Those were fucking awesome games.

    By the time I got a PS2 I was technically an adult and Nintendo never really recaptured my heart like it did when I was a kid. I have been a playstation loyalist since then but that N64 still has a spot in my basement.

  • This is an inadequate summation I am afraid. Most of the world right now is experiencing a mental health crisis. A lot of the countries with similar populations and cultures to the US with primarily English speaking approximations - Australia, UK, Canada and the nordic nations... All of them are experiencing massive mental health and economic issues on a systemic level. There is something unique to the United States... The guns. Not just the lack of public safety measures to control guns but the culture of entitlement to weaponry and maintaining the fantasy of utilizing them against other humans in some sort of nebulous future extralegal event when some sort of universal concensus is reached that war is declared on the US government by it's rag tag highly individualist citizenry.

    Unfortunately you cannot divorce the mental health issue from the gun issue in the States but neither can you solve the issue without actually addressing that guns at that level of saturation are a nightmare that causes a unique presentation of crisis. Calling for it to be addressed strictly as a mental health issue will go no where... And it's designed to go no where because as long as we are having this debate of whether it's a gun or a mental health problem neither get addressed... And quite frankly there are simply not enough mental health professionals in the field to address that demand. The burnout rate is real amongst professionals.

    There were also mass school shootings before Columbine. The Ecole' Polytechnique massacre for instance in Canada had 22 victims in 1989 and was committed with a semi automatic weapon and it spurred a massive surge in gun regulation and restrictions for automatic weapons and maximum clip size capacity. The US is unique in that it is the only country to experience these mass shootings and yet refuse any wide ranging gun control reforms at a federal level in response.

    The problem also spills over borders. 85 percent of weapons found to be used to commit crimes in Canada have been traced to purchases made in the US.

  • This is basically how gun laws have worked in Canada for ages. Treating access to guns the same way you do cars just makes sense. Of course the ease of being able to smuggle weapons bought from the unregulated US sources has meant that gun crime here is still a major problem compared to countries who share borders with others with similar gun control laws. The majority of gun crime in Canada happens with illegally sourced weapons 85% of which has been sourced to guns purchased in the US. Mexico experiences a similar issue.

    Gun pollution spreads over our borders and the US is simply big enough and self obsessed enough to not care. Every democratic nation has it's own version of the US Constitution and unlike when the US Constitution was written, democracies now make up the majority of government systems on the world stage. There are now a lot of democratic societies who have been stable and just fine without massive amounts of citizen gun ownership. In a very real way American gun law structured as it is interferes with our country's ability to address guns on our own democratic and constitutional grounds.

    Democracy and freedoms of the kind the US bills itself on is now considered pretty basic worldwide. Anyone operating on an originalist veiw really needs to unbury their head from the sand and realize how much the world has changed since it was written.