h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Evening all. I have noticed recently that there's an unacceptable-well, any is unacceptable, so instead, disgraceful amount of homophobia on this site. No doubt many will be aware of recent discussions (mostly fruitless) on this topic, however I am seeing it more and more. It is unashamed, blatant, offensive and worst of all, 'justified' since 'my religion says so' and therefore you can't argue about it.
I don't care that someone thinks I'm going to hell for my beliefs, however they can leave my love interests out of it, especially on a public forum like this one. Perhaps an onsite campaign is in order?
ta,
Mandragora

I did attempt an onsite campaign a while ago, but was met with such resistance, I put it on the backburner. And of course, I couldn't accuse the people doing it of being homophobic bigots without severalthousand people turning round saying "what's wrong with being a bigot?" It would appear to be a sad but true fact that bigots are more popular on site than LGB people!!! I don't think the campaign is worth another try, but I'm still resisting on a conversational level.

Resistance? ugh... from the Eds, or just generally?

'what's wrong with being a bigot'- well, I'm sure everything has its sunny side- bigots, leprosy...
What form did your campaign take?
I wouldn't know how to go about one, but at least in conversations I've been in with the less-tolerant there's always been an intelligent and reasonable group willing to argue against them, and hopefully educate. Mostly we concluded that bringing them into open debate, no matter how ridiculous their argument might have been, was better than yikesing every objectionable comment. Maybe what some are afraid of is that the removal of bigotry would result in forced acceptance of that which they dislike, which is not at all what I'd advocate. Tolerance can mean as little as simply being politely ignorant of something that's not your business, even if you still find it personally unpleasant.
Sometimes it is wearisome but is hopefully improving my debating skills. Trouble is, opponents usually leave- either without warning, which is *very rude*, or with some comment like 'I am not as clever as you, sorry but I can't talk to you any more but I still think it's sick and so does everyone I know.' You'd think if they had that much conviction in their beliefs they'd stay until the killings started.

Just generally. I went and hid and edited M2M2 (albeit badly) for a bit instead...
Can't remember who it was specifically, (alright, I can, but I'm not telling) but they made some fairly insulting comments (on all sorts of things) and when I made an anti bigot comment tens of people showed up to say, 'you can't penalise him for being a bigot, that's just the way he is' Go figure.
The campaign took the form of everything I could think of to do online bar spamming.
What you say is true. Apart for the killings, I really think we don't need to go that far...

(wow, a thread of mine! I'm picking them all up tonite. Soon I will have a tapestry.)

I wouldn't do any killings personally. Just virtual ones, involving lethal smileys.

as for bigots, it turned out one of my main offenders is pretty much not in favour of women, either. Which bothers me less (no idea why), maybe because it requires less effort than general intolerance.

I think that makes sense. What sort of lethal smiley had you in mind?

Keep working on the tapestry! It'll look nice when it's done.