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Disarming Absolutists and Authoritarians: Defending LGBTQ, Gender Identities, Gay Marriage

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When it comes to the LGBTQ cohort and issues of gender, I do not have all the answers. Like everyone, I am not personally connected to the whole of our diverse humanity, so I will always be at a disadvantage in explaining one perspective or another. Nor can I, or will I, justify every thing that everyone says or does. That said, it confuses me on many levels why people fear those who refused to fit into the non-binary gender category, and why are those same people horrified by the sexual habits of some of their neighbors — who are generally good people.   Unfortunately, being ‘good people’ isn’t enough for many Americans. Their ideas of human ‘perfection’ and individualism have different points of reference than mine. Though imperfect themselves, these ‘deciders’ believe in their ability to determine what ‘perfection’ is, and how far individualism can be taken. A short definition of the latter would be ‘static-quo individualism’ (notice its oxymoronic futility), and the other is pr...
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The Secular-America-is-Becoming-More-Decadent Narrative

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Are secular elements of society any worse now compared to previous eras? Photo by   Bob Coyne   on  Unsplash First posted on Medium . . For over 5 decades we’ve heard how the 1960s was so damaging to American society. There are many reasons to be doubtful of such pronouncements or assessments. The   secular-society-is-more-decadent-then-or-now   narrative is too scripted and trite. The ringing of its supposed truth should even set off a tin-eared bullshit detector. Its dissonance is deafening, and definitely disconcerting.   How were the anti-war demonstrations, riots caused by racists, summers of love, and checking out via LSD of the 1960s worse than the 1930s, when America sat on its isolation ass, and let the Nazis annihilate Jews and destroy Europe?   Americans who quickly discern decadence have never been too aware of human suffering, and barely concern themselves with it. . We went into Vietnam, other Asian nations, Caribbean and Middle East nati...
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“Incremental Progress is Best” Fallacy

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Incrementalism or gradualism is a social construct and a historical façade. Photo by   David Clode   on   Unsplash ,   Always Baby Steps??? Also published on Medium . . The main reason   incremental progress is best   rings false has to do with our selective memories, and historical   flattening . It is like saying humans are the greatest animals that evolution could have produced merely because we are the most advanced   hominid   species that survived.   Modern   progress occurs in various spurts and starts, leaps or lurches forward, retries and redos, and backpedaling. The Middle Ages for western culture was a stalled era in many ways, and a backward move in others. Going further into the past, there have been   five mass extinctions   since life began on earth, and before humans arrived on the scene. For evolution, often considered a gradual process, this means — in the most profound sense — it is   the surv...
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