I’ve never seen this put so well before.
I’m really fucking sick of “both sides are the same” arguments/excuses where one side is clearly extreme and the other is more middle of the road or “default”.
"Opinions aren’t some sacred right that can not be questioned. How would the human race ever even make progress if we just sat around spewing out opinions that make no sense and expect everyone to accept them."
—
abaldwin360 on giving littlemisspolitical a break in reply to aceisonfire (via ilamme)
Can not resist reblogging people who quote me! :)
(via bitchromney)
More arguments I’m sick of hearing.
Freedom of Speech
Every time a public figure makes a statement (or several statements) filled with hateful bile and faces backlash, the first thing you hear from them and anyone who supports their hate is “Freedom of Speech”. It happened with Hank Williams Jr. and it’s happening with Rush Limbaugh.
Sure, they are exercising their freedom of speech, they weren’t arrested for what they said. Freedom of speech protects you from being silenced by the government. That’s it. Everyone else who is against what they say are practicing their freedom of speech too. That’s how it works. Freedom of Speech isn’t freedom from being criticized or protection from responsibility for what you say, and if people don’t want to support companies advertising (paying for) their hateful rhetoric, they have every right to tell said companies, who will exercise their freedom to pull financial support.
Just like fools like Rush Limbaugh have the right to say what they want, everyone else is allowed to say what they want too.
Statements like “but what about his freedom of speech” in these cases demonstrates a lack of understanding and a lack of critical thinking.
Freedom of Religion
This is another one, in Tennessee and Michigan groups are trying to make exceptions in laws against bullying in school that exclude bullying homosexuals for religious reasons. They are arguing that it is part of their religion and violates their rights not to be able to do so.
Then there is the argument about health insurance covering contraceptives that I just wrote a lengthy post on earlier today.
Your religious freedom doesn’t give you the right to infringe on other people. Your freedom is no more important than anyone else’s. It’s as simple as that.
Secular Society
When a group says that a lack of publicly lead prayers or religious affirmations in public places (that is places paid for by taxpayer dollars) is an endorsement for non-religion and taking away religious freedom.
No, it’s not. It’s a show of respect for all religions, not endorsing one over the other. It’s in the first amendment. You are still free to pray to yourself or in a group of your peers, you are still allowed to freely practice your religion. Your religion is no more important than anyone else’s under the constitution. Deal with it.
Hating bigots makes you a bigot.
The astounding lack of logic in this statement only demonstrates a lack of critical thinking facilities in the person making the statement.
This is like saying getting angry at someone for vandalizing my car makes me just as bad as someone who vandalized my car out of anger.
Disliking a person who is a terrible person does not make me a terrible person.
You dislike me just because my opinion is different.
Damn straight. If your opinions are based on hate, bias, willful ignorance, oppression, or intentionally misleading, there’s a pretty good chance I’m not going to like you. This ties into the “hating bigots makes you as bad as a bigot” statement and demonstrates a lack of logic, as well as trying to make one’s self a victim.
You are not being very open minded
I’ve run across this one a lot. Someone will (for example) call out a person or a group of people who made hateful, bigoted or untruthful remarks and someone defending those remarks will accuse you of being close minded.
Being open minded doesn’t mean you are accepting of everything. It means you will look at something from several angles and independently come to your own conclusion based on information presented to you.
It means you draw your conclusions and form your options based on the best available information free of the opinions of others.
The same goes for being a free thinker.
“MY OPINION” does NOT mean:
- I am automatically correct!
- You’re not allowed to disagree with me or vocalize this disagreement!
- Anything you say to me in disagreement is immediately invalid because that’s just your opinion!
- Your facts are just your opinion!
- I have the right to never be questioned!
- I’m just as informed as you are even though I’ve not looked at the facts!
- I don’t NEED to look at the facts, because I don’t NEED to change my opinion!
- Opinions are sacred!
“MY OPINION” DOES mean:
- I am not automatically correct!
- If the facts disagree with my opinion, then my opinion is wrong!
- People are allowed to tell me about the facts!
- People are allowed to to tell me that I’m wrong!
- Just because it’s my opinion doesn’t mean I get the free-for-all card to be an ignorant douchenozzle on the subject!
- Disagreeing with FACTS just because I’d rather cling to your OPINION doesn’t make me RIGHT, it makes me STUBBORN.
- All opinions are open to criticism, mine included!
Personally, I don’t think I’m a bad person for being against abortion.
I’m completely aware that I’m an asshole to people who don’t give a child a chance to experience life. I honestly think that person is being selfish just cause they don’t want their parents to be mad at them or whatever it is. I know I didn’t have the best life before I got pregnant, and getting pregnant just made some things more complicated, but I can’t see myself living my life without her and she’s not even here yet. She’s the second best thing that has happened to me.
I don’t understand why people open their legs if they’re not ready to deal with the consequences. Now rape, that’s a whole different story. But I’m not gonna get into that. And another thing I don’t understand is why people don’t consider adoption. There are couples out there who would DIE to have a baby but physically can’t. You can make another couple happy and make sure that baby you’re carrying has a good life with a couple that really wants to raise a child and are ready for it.
I know I’ll probably loose followers and get shit for this, but I’m just stating my opinion.
It’s understandable to state your opinion, but I’m going to preface this by warning you to not get your panties in a bunch if people decide to explain to you how ignorant your opinion is.
Pregnancy is not a consequence of sex. Let me say it again, to emphasize: Pregnancy is not a consequence of sex, pregnancy is not a consequence of sex, pregnancy is not a consequence of sex. If you actually believed that engaging in sex is a 100% agreement to pregnancy and parenthood, then I would like to see you fighting to make sex between individuals who are infertile illegal. Anyone who engages in sex and does not conceive needs to head down to the Adoption Agency and fill out the paperwork because, hey, you should only have sex if you’re ready to raise a kid, right?
Does that sound ridiculous? Yes? Good. Because that’s what you and everyone else sounds like when they start saying things like “You shouldn’t have opened your legs if you didn’t want to get pregnant.”
Saying you wont get into rape is saying “I don’t feel like dealing with this crime which has affected thousands of women in the world.” It’s insensitive. If you’re going to look at abortion and the reasons why a woman would seek one then don’t be an asshat—look at them all and have the common decency to talk about it, because it is a problem that needs to be given voice.
And clearly you don’t understand is adoption. Do you have any idea how defunct the Adoption system is in the U.S.? Do you know how many thousands of children outgrow the system, waiting or who will never be adopted? Please feel free to Check my facts. Not that I am in anyway dismissing the pain a couple faces when they cannot have a child of their own, but please explain to me just where all the tons of wanting families are, and why they’re not adopting these hundreds of thousands of children?
Furthermore, adoption is a solution to parenting—not to pregnancy. The woman in question must still contend with 9 months of pregnancy. 9 months of sickness, pain, missing work or school and the slew of societal problems (such as shame from school/work/family or any other source) that she did not consent to. Remember, the difference here is that the woman consented to sex, not to pregnancy.
When a woman complains about the cost and finances of raising a child, many anti-choicers love to scream about adoption and how you don’t have to pay anything—but childbirth costs thousands of dollars. Sure, if your insurance covers it, that’s fine and dandy—but you still wind up paying $500 to $3,000 out-of-pocket (for births without complications, as well.) 27 million women are without insurance in this country—that’s 18%.
Adoption is not an alternative to abortion, it is quite frankly a silly and uneducated argument posed by those who either do not understand what they are talking about, or who see the facts and yet refuse to listen based upon self-righteous, unwarrented indignation over what another woman chooses to do with her own body.
^^
