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Ranvier ,

“I’m almost anti-gay,” Dorman told The Post. “It’s an embarrassment to see this kind of behavior… I’d really invite them to go to Iran or Gaza. See what that does for you. See how fast they throw you in prison or kill you.”

The internalized homophobia is strong with this one. It’s honestly really sad. I mean, he’s an ass. But it’s still kind of sad.

HomerianSymphony ,

The internalized homophobia is strong with this one.

And let’s not forgot the Islamophobia.

chalupapocalypse ,

You don’t have to be smart to be gay

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

The person I really don’t understand- I mean I know she’s a horrible person, but I still don’t understand it- is Caitlyn Jenner. She’s supporting a party that openly wants to erase her.

norimee ,

She is the typical Republican -“Oh, but I’m the exeption. Thats different.”- type. She also speaks out publicly and loudly against trans women in women’s sports and then turns around and plays a women’s golf tournament.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

I guess I can’t fathom the level of cognitive dissonance it takes to vociferously get behind people who want you dead, but I guess these people existed too- en.wikipedia.org/…/Association_of_German_National…

solsangraal ,

level of cognitive dissonance

it’s doublethink. there is no “dissonance.” they literally believe two completely contradictory things simultaneously and have no problem with it

catloaf ,

Yeah. Cognitive dissonance is “the mental disturbance people feel when their beliefs and actions are inconsistent and contradictory”. If you’re happy with holding contradictory beliefs, that’s doublethink.

theangryseal ,

I’m glad you guys always come packing this link. Folks should know about this.

Pulptastic ,

Yeah but golf isn’t a sport.

todd_bonzalez ,

It’s Wealth.

If you have more money than most people, you convince yourself that you are different and more important than other people. The way you are treated validates that notion.

So politically, you’ll vote for people who protect your wealth rather than people who will protect your identity, because your wealth already protects you better than any anti-discrimination law could.

RustyShackleford ,
@RustyShackleford@programming.dev avatar

Money talks.

Fuckfuckmyfuckingass ,
@Fuckfuckmyfuckingass@lemmy.world avatar

And bullshit walks.

Fuzzy_Red_Panda ,

I never thought about it that way but that makes perfect sense.

LaunchesKayaks ,
@LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world avatar

She has money. It’s a total “rules for thee but not for me” situation

WindyRebel ,

They’re going to find out, too late, that they’re not immune to bullets, windows, or poison and that their money can be seized by the ones who disappear them.

LaunchesKayaks ,
@LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world avatar

Yep. I’m absolutely terrified that I’ll have to go into the closet again. I’m afraid my one homophobic and transphobic coworker would report me if being gay becomes straight up illegal. Only person I know personally who isn’t cool with it.

AA5B ,

It’s both better and worse than that. It’s extremely unlikely that being gay could become straight up illegal, but is it really any different if discrimination is ok, gay marriage and family benefits are outlawed, being gay is again a “security concern”, police harassment is ok, and people again become hostile?

kerrigan778 ,

They think it’s ruining their lives now? Wait till after the election

Zier ,
@Zier@fedia.io avatar

I would never suck a MAGA dick. Enjoy being lonely while your cult worships the orange fascist!

MindTraveller ,

MAGA isn’t a cult. Cults are small. MAGA is big enough to be a religion, which is far more dangerous.

Sterile_Technique ,
@Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world avatar

https://media1.tenor.com/m/fHz7wfvakO8AAAAd/theyre-the-same-picture-the-office.gif

MindTraveller ,

Well, no. When you’re talking about the kind of massive institutional power of the kind that buys politicians and institutes theocratic dictatorships, that kind of power is exclusive to larger religions. You won’t see that kind of thing from a cult. Now a cult may well have beliefs just as vile as a religion, and it may ruin lives, but it doesn’t have the institutional power it takes to crush all opposition like you see from MAGA and Christianity.

davidagain ,

The church of scientology.

MindTraveller ,

Also not a cult.

davidagain ,

Look into it. But not too hard or too publicly.

MindTraveller ,

Were you paying attention earlier in the thread when I said cults are small, or are you expecting me to investigate Scientology and find that surprise, they’re actually very small and don’t have many members?

davidagain ,

I thought they were global and pretty large scale, but I haven’t got any numbers for you and I wouldn’t dream of comparing their size with major world religions.

My assertion, which I admit I didn’t express, is that the distinction between cult and religion is less about size and more about how much members lose personal autonomy and how secretive the organisation is about its beliefs and practices.

That’s the way I see it anyway, otherwise there’s not a lot of point having two different words for it. There are grey areas, sure, but that doesn’t mean that there is no distinction.

MindTraveller ,

You’re using a definition invented whole cloth by Christian pastors in the 70s with absolutely no basis in historical tradition, which was created solely with the intent of confusing people in order to push a political agenda.

davidagain ,

Oh. Wikipedia says that the anti-cult movement in the 70s was secular? Did you mean the anti-cult movement of the 40s? I didn’t know anything about that stuff till you brought it up, sorry.

I’m not particularly wedded to a particular definition of the word, but you seem to be using the modern and more critical meaning when you claim all religions are cults, whilst criticising me for not using the more neutral meaning of the word from antiquity, which I find confusing.

irreticent ,
@irreticent@lemmy.world avatar

which I find confusing

Some people like to argue just for the sake of arguing.

MindTraveller ,

I use the neutral meaning from antiquity, and I never said all religions are cults. You must have me confused with someone else

davidagain ,

Why not use the contemporary meaning so the rest of us don’t argue with you just because you’re using a definition that was only current about a century ago?

I never said all religions are cults

Actually, yes, you’re just the one that asserted that scientology isn’t one. There’s an inconsistency where you use the older, broader definition and then deny that it applies to scientology, and I’d like you to state for clarity what you mean by a cult and why you feel it doesn’t apply to the church of scientology.

MindTraveller ,

A cult is a small religion. Scientology is big. The new definition platforms ahistorical biases that attack smaller religions, particularly those with hundreds of years of history as cults, through linguistic association with abuse. That’s bad. It perpetuates satanic panic dogma.

davidagain , (edited )

Earlier you insinuated that scientology was small, now you’re saying it’s big. You don’t like the usual meaning of the word cult because you prefer to make cult mean “small religion” (which I think is a pretty pointless definition and confusing for most people). You claim that this is because it’s bad to have a word for a secretive group whose members lose personal autonomy or is otherwise particularly abusive. I don’t see it as in any way bad to be able to make that distinction, and I’m suspicious of the motives for removing it.

Citing “satanic panic dogma”, you mysteriously conclude the mere existence of a word with connotations of abuse is bad. It smells like a cover up, but I have no idea what you’re trying to blur the lines between because you haven’t made it clear which group that we saw as abusive you want us to reinterpret as merely small, or which group that we saw as merely small (and not cultish) you want us to use the word cult for.

You claim that something is ahistorical, but it’s never really clear what, since you aren’t using many of the key words to mean the same as the rest of us and haven’t made explicit the context that you’re referring to. I’d guess it’s something to do with the 1970s, but that’s really just a guess, I have no idea.

MindTraveller ,

Earlier you insinuated that scientology was small,

No I didn’t. I said scientology isn’t a cult. My reasoning was that it’s too big. You’re just bad at listening.

You claim that this is because it’s bad to have a word for a secretive group whose members lose personal autonomy or is otherwise particularly abusive

No I don’t. You really need to work on your listening skills. I’m saying that using an already existing word, which already describes a set of marginalised groups, as a slur is bad. For example, suppose white Christians went around saying that “person of colour” means criminal. That would be horrible, right? Do you understand why? It’s because using a term that already describes vulnerable people as a bad word is bad.

davidagain ,

No, I’m not bad at listening, you’re bad at being clear and honest about what you mean.

I read some of your comments elsewhere in this thread, and you feel that the word cult has been used negatively against Wiccans and Hellenists. You spend some time arguing that only big religions have the clout and money to be harmful, and you want the word cult to mean specifically just small rather than abusive.

The problem is that you lost the battle over the meaning of that word about 80 years ago from what I can tell from reading it up. You may as well try to stop people from using the word fantastic in a positive light and just use it to mean absurdly implausible. It’s too late. The meaning has changed. Rather than saying things like “Wicca is a cult, it’s just not harmful because it’s not a religion, stop using the word cult to mean harmful” instead, say things like “Hellenism isn’t a large, harmful religion, it’s a small harmless one”. You seem to identify with “cult” and you see that as positive and you dislike larger religions which you see as harmful. Instead of arguing over the meaning of the word cult, argue with people who criticise Hellenism.

You picked a big long argument over the meaning of the word cult because you can’t let go of a meaning from a century ago. Meanwhile your intent was lost because you didn’t make your perspective clear early on.

Here’s how society is: when it sees an abusive group using religious ideas led by someone with a big personality, it calls it a cult, meaning it loosely and negatively, and then you shoot into the argument saying “no, no, don’t call them a cult, they’re a religion”. To everyone else, you sound like you’re defending them, whereas what you mean is “don’t use the word cult for bad things”, but that’s not what you say! Not for a long time! It’s a different day and we’re tens of comments away from when you first tried to intervene! You obliquely say stull like “no, they’re not a cult they’re too big, and they’re too powerful” and then people say “but cults can be big and powerful” and you say “no, cults are only small. big powerful ones are called religions” and the whole argument isn’t explicitly about what you mean. Your point is lost.

It’s like saying “no I’m not a troll, I live in a 1980s semi” when you’d be far better off saying “no, I wasn’t being sarcastic at all - I meant it, we just disagree”. The word troll has changed its meaning, and trying to talk about height or whether someone lives in a house in an argument about whether someone is arguing in bad faith, without ever mentioning caves, which was your real point, because your great aunt lives in one of the ancient cliff homes of Matera in Italy, but inexplicably you never mention it.

Rebrand. Give up on the word cult. I know it has all kinds of positive connotations for you, but that ship has sailed for the rest of society. You’d get a lot more sympathy if you were just open and honest from the start, like “I’m a pagan and we always got called a cult pejoratively in the 1970s and I don’t like people using that word negatively. Could you use the word religion instead?” and then at least the people arguing with you know what they’re arguing about. You’ll still lose that argument, but at least you wouldn’t waste as much time being indirect. It’s simpler to give up on the word and rebrand. After all, “Wicca” and “White witch” are rebrands, avoiding the negative connotations of witchcraft (eg poisons and love potions aka date rate drugs). Rebranding works. The satanists regularly troll rightwingers/christofascists by asserting their religious freedom to oppose the abusive anti-minority practices of the alt-right in ways that are popular online. Not by saying “stop calling bad religions satanic”.

By the way, wikipedia thinks there are somewhere around 800,000 wiccans and less than 40,000 scientologists, so I think even that by your own definition, scientology is more of a cult than wicca. But in terms of using the legal system to silence opponents, it’s certainly much more powerful. Did you want me to stop calling things cults if they’re powerful now?

Zier ,
@Zier@fedia.io avatar

MEGA cult. Not to be confused with MAGA cult.

ImADifferentBird ,
@ImADifferentBird@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

You telling me that the “religion” that sued the Cult Awareness Network into oblivion so they wouldn’t be labeled a cult is not a cult?

MindTraveller ,

The Cult Awareness Network presented itself as a source of information about “cults”; by 1991 it was monitoring over 200 groups that it referred to as “mind-control cults”. It also promoted a form of coercive intervention by self-styled “deprogrammers” who would, for a significant fee, forcibly detain or even abduct the cult member and subject them to a barrage of attacks on their beliefs, supposedly in order to counter the effects of the brainwashing. The practice, which could involve criminal actions such as kidnapping and false imprisonment, generated controversy, and Ted Patrick and others faced both civil and criminal proceedings.

Gee, I fucking wonder why they lost that lawsuit. Scientologists are evil, but so was the Cult Awareness Network. You’re not going to convince anyone that those assholes were doing the right thing. You can’t expect a bunch of kidnappers to have a good opinion about what is and isn’t a cult. Scientology is a large scale religion, which makes it much worse than a cult. Now I don’t want to hear you defending the Scientologists by calling them a cult again.

neidu2 ,

Cult is just a word the big congregation uses about the small congregation

Agent641 ,

The new lexicon is “High demand group”

This encompasses cults, religions, MLMs, and all sorts of other groups that behave cult-like attributes

Lemminary ,

Cults are completely different from religion and size is not a defining factor. They’re more similar to a con and will sometimes use religion to exert control.

Knitting Cult Lady is great! She has a video outlining 7 defining characteristics of cults but I can’t find it.

MindTraveller ,

That’s a myth perpetuated by Christian mums during the satanic panic. Back in the 60s the hippie movement was in full swing and young people were abandoning Christianity to follow pagan religions like Wicca and Hellenism. Christian pastors felt threatened, so they came up with a conspiracy to take the word cult (which up until then had meant a small religion) and make it a bad word by association with abuse. That’s why all the historical examples of cults that predate the 60s have no association with abuse. You take an example like the Cult of Dionysus and there’s no pejorative meaning to the word.

Lemminary ,

I don’t think it’s a myth if it has become an area of study. Yes, words have different meanings like “theory” does in and out of academia, but the current understanding of the word is much more comprehensive than a small religion. And MAGA is most definitely a cult of personality that uses religion as a tool.

MindTraveller ,

You can do science on any made up word and reach genuine conclusions with flawed premises. Look at phrenology and scientific racism. If you ignore the question “is this thing real?” and skip straight to “what are the associations with this thing”, you’ll find something. It’ll be nonsense, but it’ll be there.

For example, suppose I look at the habits of clowns and roofers. I don’t question why clowns and roofers are associated, I just assume they are and check the data. The data I find will be the overlay of two different trends. I’ll reach all sorts of conclusions about clowns that are only true of roofers, and vice versa. The data will say clowns love a good beer after being outdoors all day, and roofers visit party stores a lot. That’s nonsense, but if I don’t question the association, the data will show it.

Associating small religions with abusive religions is the same mistake. The data will tell you all sorts of things about small and abusive religions, but it won’t tell you which trend belongs to which group, and people will make all sorts of wrong assumptions based on the wacky data.

Lemminary , (edited )

Yep, science has churned out some whacky stuff before. But what? So you’re saying that the study of non-religious or coincidentally religious cults as a means to exploit and control is pure made-up nonsense? That’s kind of wild to me considering how characteristic and consistent their modus operandi is. MAGA fits the bill so well, for example, that I have a hard time believing they don’t exist. And I’d like to hear some opinions from people in the know, like Daniella Mestyanek from the link above, who you’re essentially saying her entire field of study is based on a lie.

Zier ,
@Zier@fedia.io avatar

Same thing. Cults are never small.

theangryseal ,

You’re right. Even the moonies had big politicians kissing up to them once they got big enough and no one blinked, despite their leader openly claiming he was above Jesus Christ of Nazareth on the heavenly totem poll.

We’re dealing with a very strange religion.

Enkrod , (edited )

Anti-theist here, religion in all it’s forms is a blight on humanity, but let’s not muddle the waters with misused vocabulary.

The difference between a cult and a religion is not the number of believers, it’s how much they enforce groupthink, how hard it is to leave and if they are based around a charismatic leader who profits directly from the imposed sameness and thought control. Generally cults:

  • Rush you into joining and discourage or disallow questions.
  • Followers are encouraged to worship a specific group leader.
  • Leaders dictate in great detail all aspects of followers’ lives.
  • Followers are personally monitored to ensure they’re following guidelines.
  • Methods of control are used to keep members close.

That’s how, for example the catholic church isn’t a cult but scientology is. The sharp surveilance and strong measures in place to prevent deviancy make all the difference. It’s easy to leave catholicism, but leaving scientology can even be dangerous.

MindTraveller ,

That’s a measure of the abusiveness of a religion and has nothing to do with its size. I already explained in depth in another comment the political motivations for creating a second, fake definition of the word cult. If you consult Merriam Webster you’ll see the first definition of the word cult is “a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious”, and none of the definitions mention abuse, because your claim is ahistorical myth.

prole ,

Give it a few months after Trump wins and it will literally ruin their lives.

intensely_human ,

All that anti-gay legislation Trump signed last time? It’s gonna be double this time!

necromancyr ,

“I don’t understand why other people at the synagogue treat me this way,” says member of Jews for Hitler.

return2ozma ,
@return2ozma@lemmy.world avatar

GOOD!

Retrograde ,
@Retrograde@lemmy.world avatar

“Gay man who put face inside the leopard cage is sad that his face keeps getting eaten”

owenfromcanada ,
@owenfromcanada@lemmy.world avatar

Once again… leopards, faces

ghostface ,

Damn, black gays for trump must be getting pounded then. Pun intended 🙂

PRUSSIA_x86 ,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/5c527415-c907-450f-85f2-ab1262a53956.jpeg

Blackmist ,

A hundred years on, and lessons are still not being learned.

en.wikipedia.org/…/Association_of_German_National…

cupcakezealot ,
@cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

the same gay people who would tell the cops stonewall is right up the street

RIPandTERROR ,
@RIPandTERROR@sh.itjust.works avatar

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/aa39ac0e-0a8d-44a2-8ceb-706edb498504.gif

pelletbucket ,

when do we start testing people’s lead levels before letting them in office

EgoNo4 ,

When do we start testing people’s lead levels before letting them vote?

pelletbucket ,

I don’t think it matters how brain damaged you are, you’re still allowed to vote. you do have to be competent to hold office though

dudinax ,

You do?

pelletbucket ,

yeah you’re allowed to expel people from office for gross incompetence

wreckedcarzz ,
@wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world avatar

reproduce*

davidagain ,

I’m not sure that the 64-year-old gay man featured at the end of the article is gonna do a lot of procreation.

wreckedcarzz ,
@wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world avatar

Nah this is a blanket-rule, you get tested and you get tested, everybody gets tested!

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