Well, to be fair, I mainly had in mind

That is true, though very insulting, but also the end of a reply he posted to one of the OPs responses. However, the OPs line about Robamacare mandating transgender “therapy” in the form of smacking people in the head until they accept a gender matching their sex and denying their identity was rather insulting and provocative. Cannoli so consistently ignores Poes Law and his posts are so consistently over the top that I can never be sure what is hyperbole and what earnest, but taking the quoted statement seriously is consistent with his tone toward transgendered people (among others…) throughout this thread. And yeah, that is part of his style (one of the few significant stylistic differences I note between us,) which is fine when bashing fictional (and annoying) people like Egwene or Elaida. It is far less “tolerable” when directed at ACTUAL people, particularly those his audience members care about (or happen to BE.) People dislike others “tolerantly” going on at length about what sick filth their loved ones are; he has the right to do it (short of violence) but everyone else has the right to tell him what an SOB he is for abusing his rights as a verbal bludgeon.

Oh, fear (me) not: I am no englishian, just an enthusiast. You know how it is; I started a garage journal with some friends because one guy had a typewriter and a ribbon, and we played some of the local poetry clubs and coffee bars, plus the occasional HS commencement or wedding toast when we REALLY needed money, but never got picked up by any big newsstands, and eventually we all had kids and got jobs. I still miss it sometimes; take out my pen and just jot a little for fun, but no one can be a kid forever, man. We wrote pretty hard though, back in the day: It was awesome!

That is a valid point, but illustrates an idiosyncratic English limitation rather than sex and gender being synonymous: Americans have always SEEN gender and sex as synonymous DESPITE the fact they are NOT, because our language obscures that fact and most of us have little need to learn any other, so never do. People whose native language is strongly declining, and/or who have compelling cause to gain fluency in one that is, know better, but it has been about a century since most Americans knew what happened in other countries, much less cared.

One of the ironic ways our hegemony is undermining itself by discouraging the very things that achieved it: We rocketed to the top in large part because we dismissed traditions counterproductive aspects in favor of innovation, often driven by immigrants (and thus their unique cultural advances) from all over the world. Now we just want to keep forever doing the same things that USED to work even though they long ago ceased doing so, despite other nations steadily closing the gap for 40 years until EU GDP finally passed ours two years ago. And, of course, any nation doing better (e.g. ALL Nordic ones, Germany and France) are just godless commie foreigners who can never understand American Exceptionalism. Mainly because we are no longer truly exceptional, just weirdly devolving.</tangent>

Anyway, many Americans conflating two distinct things just because our language lacks the MEANS to distinguish them and most of us lack the incentive to learn another equates distinct things nowhere but in our minds.

Been there, too. No worries: I pretend no expertise, and few RAFOlk who DO possess it remain active, especially on the CMB; maybe under a third.

Yeah, no argument there (quite the opposite.) But remember: It applies to labels like “liberal” as well as “religious.” Especially for people to whom BOTH labels apply, whose numbers are tens of millions. Check the stats on self-identified US liberals and Christians, do the math, and ask yourself how many of them necessarily overlap. When his unconscious juvenile son lay in a rainy ditch awaiting an ambulance after a wreck, Gore got down on his knees in the mud and prayed to Christ, not Richard Dawkins. The REVEREND Dr. Martin Luther King was a (SOUTHERN) Baptist minister named for the man who turned the Reformation into Protestantism, and his protégé Jesse Jackson is also a Southern Baptist minister. So is Sharpton. People most prone to call Obama Muslim (as if Islam were illegal) are also first to bash his hometown CHRISTIAN church.

They got in before a bunch of Republican politicians staged a coup to takeover and exploit the Southern Baptist Convention at its annual meeting in my hometown back In ’79, but even now there are more seminaries than Liberty University (whose founder was the son of a CONGRESSMAN and never attending ANY seminary; his sole seminary degree is honorary.) The others just make Defender of the Faith a full time job for those of us not self-serving bigots turning the crucifixes into campaign buttons.

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Nah, everyone still has the right to be heard: Including those disgusted by some things they hear from some others. Likewise, everyone remains entitled to their own opinions and beliefs--which in no way precludes bigotry, something almost entirely a matter of opinion, often in defiance of fact. Simply disliking one INDIVIDUAL, or even several, does not prove bigotry (at least not beyond being a "Frankist"--but disliking ALL people with a certain attribute DOES prove one bigoted against that attribute. So does disliking all people with that attribute "except my [token] friend so-and-so; s/he is one of the good ones." Anyone who feels a group so CATEGORICALLY bad the "few" exceptions merit special notice simply for BEING exceptions to bigotry remains a bigot.

I am prescriptivist enough to dislike the term "-phobe" (although fear is a common cause of hatred, or hatred a common cloak for fear, if one prefers) but someone who "dislikes gays" (i.e. not a particular incidentally gay person disliked for something that particular person did, but ALL gays, even those of whose existence they are unaware) is definitely a "homoist." I DISAGREE with homosexuality, but neither fear nor hate homosexuals. Like all decent people, my bigotry is against conservatives.

Yes, everyone does have the right to be heard, and yes, everyone is entitled to their beliefs. I've never argued against someONE saying I'm a -phobe, I've simply argued against anyone being labeled in any way. If someone reads my posts on this thread and decides I am the asshole spawn of Hitler and Stalin themselves, fine, that's your opinion and I have no issue with that. But label me a 'nazi communist fuckwad', and that's where I have problems.

Would “freak” be better? Maybe if the person calling you that also suggested someone knock some sense into you?

Whoa, now, that is TWO labels: Not just “religious” but “LEGITIMATELY religious.” None but God is arbiter of anyones faith nor lack thereof. I happen to agree those contending Christian doctrine allows practicing homosexuality are mistaken, but cannot know them insincere.

Lack of empathy is not a moral issue? What did Christ call the second greatest commandment, and why did He say it is like the first? He said the two between them contain ALL the Law AND Prophets, and that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us, so empathy is both fundamentally integral to Christian doctrine.

As for trickle-down, ignorance would be excusable, but it is implausible to believe AUTHORS of a policy sincerely ignorant of its mechanisms and effects: Cheap labor is (temporarily) good for business, and mass unemployment creates labor gluts (i.e. cheap labor.) It also destroys demand, so the independently wealthy with no fear of how to pay rent or buy groceries can stock up on supply at fire sale price, pay taxes on it until the inevitable recovery, then sell everything for many times what they paid. Supply-side is easy to grasp, just hard to EXCUSE; look at the Depression, or what France and Germany did to what they derisively call the GIPSIs (or PIIGS) when victim-blaming.

What did Christs half-brother, first leader of the Jerusalem Church, say about THAT? What did pretty much ALL the Prophets repeatedly say? IF one accepts the US as “New Canaan” the principal cause of Gods destructive wrath on Israel and Judah is a MORAL as well as pertinent issue, no? What was the SOLE case of CHRIST COMMITTING VIOLENCE in the Gospels? How many masters can a man serve? How does serving one REQUIRE he regard the other? Christians can remain in fellowship with (equally Christian) Mennonites, but never Mammonites.

I included the smiley in deference to Poes Law, but it is my enduring shame that some of my states Republican officeholders made the Southern Baptist Convention apostate (expelling all who resisted) in my hometown. Not to say it got very bad very fast and remains so, but: The state judge who engineered it eventually HIMSELF President of the Southern Baptist Convention. It was his ranch GOP religious conservatives used for a meeting seeking a consensus Christian alternative to the GOPs Mormon presumptive 2012 presidential nominee. Yet when Wall St. finalized its choice, those devoutly Republican Protestants went right out and voted for the Mormon anyway. “Their god is their belly.”

As noted in my response to your response to beetnemesis, the question of Mayos mental illness criteria turns on whether people are stressed and lose their ability to function because they are TRANSGENDERED or because of REACTIONS to it. EVERYTHING I have EVER heard from ANY transgendered person says the trauma comes from concealing/denying their identity and how others react to it (or are expected to react.) NOTHING I have EVER heard from ANY suggests otherwise. That strongly suggests the mental malady is not being transgendered, but the attached stigma.

It is not: It is a good old fashioned CMB threadjack. But look at the responses to Cannoli: Toms responded to Cannolis thesis in its SUBJECT LINE (which is the best place for a posts thesis; Cannoli actually did the same in his OP.) But the OP contained far more than just a thesis, and rebutting a thesis without giving its purported supporting arguments proportionate rebuttal is impossible.

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"Theses," and which cannot be constructively debated without also addressing their supporting arguments. Since those arguments are (ideally) the bulk of arguments of which the thesis is only the principal one, and since that principal argument stands or falls SOLELY on those supporting arguments, those are the primary ones responders have addressed. No one has ignored the thesis, only defeated it in detail, as it advanced in detail, as is proper.

Shit! I should have known that.

It happens.

I have been up way too long to want to hunt through all the replies directly to Cannoli, so will not dispute that, except to again note that Toms subject line (to name at least a prominent one) responded to Cannolis thesis.

Again: Calling transgendered people “freaks” and suggesting they be “therapeutically” hit in the head until they “come to their senses” or whatever is extremely (and deliberately) offensive. And passionate, sure; hatred is a type of passion.

Well, a perennial troll is bound to get a few goats; that IS the point. You talked me into reviewing the thread: We have between us established at least three people responded to Cannolis thesis, and the subject line of rts first response also referenced it. He did gloss over the transgender aspect—but still spawned a thread where FIVE people addressed Cannolis thesis, included two who had not previously. None of that counts you, which we obviously should. So 60-70% of thread responders addressed Cannolis thesis (depending how we count rt,) either immediately or eventually. Maybe as many as 80%; I have not checked Dions YouTube link, because I do not know how long it is, and do have a toddler to regularly wrangle. Either way, that is more than a majority and quite a bit more than “few.”