So can we please not jump from "this person disagree with me or thinks something about my life choices are immoral" to "this person denies my whole existence"?

Yes, there are some people who fall into the latter category. But there are others somewhere in between, and it might be useful to exchange world views and increase mutual understanding, and maybe even change some minds.

I think it's ridiculous so many political discussions these days jumps to an existential fear of your side's complete eradication, and a mindset that any action is justified to avoid that outcome.

Being gay is a life choice now?

That’s what I mean when I say denying one’s existence. There is clear intent behind those words. I didn’t pick them arbitrarily. That’s a necessary condition for tolerance to become abhorrent.

You are either attacking some weird fantasy or you honestly believe that being gay† is a life choice.

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† This obviously includes everything heterosexual people are able to do with no one blinking an eye, like mentioning their partner in casual conversations, bringing their partner to work events when partners are allowed to attend, etc. That just logically follows. Obviously how openly you talk about your romantic partner to someone else is definitely a life choice – I’m just saying that it logically follows from being gay not being a life choice that gay people have to be tolerated to talk about their romantic partners as openly as heterosexual people. Or else there wouldn’t be equality at all.

> That’s what I mean when I say denying one’s existence.

No, that would not be "denying your existence". That is hyperbole.

The issue with refusing to tolerate intolerance tends to be the difficulty in defining intolerance. There are strong incentives to define intolerance as today's political foes, and weak incentives to resist this urge.

For my own part, I exist in a political context where I know that lots of people want to deny my whole existence. And so long as society is willing to keep them to nothing worse than the occasional unkind word, I'm willing to live with that. I prefer it to the endless mission creep that all too easily comes when the ostracism and purges start.

I know that this didn’t work out in the past and the result were not hurt feelings, the result were millions of murdered people. I know that tolerating intolerance is not solely to blame for that, it probably didn’t even play a major role, but it did play a role. And that‘s why I want to avoid making that deadly mistake in the future.

Yeah, deciding when it is ok is then a hard problem but I’m willing to accept that.

It might be worth recalling that historically, trying to supporess interolant viewpoints often helps make them more popular. Which is to say that intending to avoid repeating a historical mistake may wind up encouraging the exact opposite. Cautious consideration of the possible effects of deliberately adopting intolerance may be worthwhile.

It may also be worth inquiring about what a person means when they refer to their own lives before going on to describe genocide. There's potentially some awkward outcomes there.

I've concluded the opposite- you have to tolerate even people who want to kill you. While simultaneously preparing for and preventing war.

This is sort of the lesson of Europe from the 30 years war to doay.

Be careful that you do not want to deny their whole existence in return.

The example given was a gay person who encounters someone (a Muslim, say) who thinks they should be sentenced to death. But if the gay person decides in response that Islam should be eradicated, that's (at a minimum) cultural genocide.

Note well: I am not an apologist for Islam. I consider their theology to be wrong. But in opposing them, don't become them.

Yeah, something has to give and we as a society have to find out what.

I don’t get why people shy away from making these hard calls. I mean, I don’t even think this one is a hard one to make.

Of course all of this does not exist in an ideology free completely politically neutral space. You have to make some assumptions and some value judgements. That’s ok. There is nothing wrong with that.

I’m also so weirded out when people try to construct working societies from this maximalist non-interference maximalist neutrality point of view. I don’t think societies have to be neutral.

You are also constructing one very weird case that just doesn’t work at all and makes no sense.

There's a significant difference between an ideology and an identity.

Eliminating the former is not genocide, eliminating the latter is.

Why—whenever the question of hate comes up—is HN so quick to rise to the defense of the hateful?

> There's a significant difference between an ideology and an identity.

I suspect that many Muslims consider that to be their identity, not just their ideology.

> Why—whenever the question of hate comes up—is HN so quick to rise to the defense of the hateful?

Because I'm hateful (to at least somebody). And so are you. We don't defend the hateful because the hateful are so wonderful. We don't defend them because we agree with them. We defend them because we're defending us some time down the road.

"I'm a shitty person, and so are you." is a cop-out and frankly insulting.

> I suspect that many Muslims consider that to be their identity, not just their ideology.

I can't believe I have to explain that the difference is between what's a choice and what's not: You can't change your identity. Ideology is arbitrary.

That isn't what I said. I said that there is someone who thinks you're a terrible person. It doesn't matter whether you are or not. They think you are, because you're too gay, or too straight, or to conservative, or too liberal, or your skin is too dark, or your skin is too light, or you're too old, or you're too young, or you're too religious, or you're not religious enough, or you have the wrong religion, or whatever. There are people who think that you are a terrible person.

So be careful of justifying intolerance of the terrible. That rationale can be used against you, perhaps by people a whole lot less well-meaning than you are.

There's also a line between terrible and hateful.

Hateful is willfully terrible.

If there's anyone out there that thinks I'm hateful, then they're factually incorrect.

> I can't believe I have to explain that the difference is between what's a choice and what's not

You don't, you just need to understand that the idea that identity is always centered on immutable characteristics is wrong.

Are you saying that people can never change the gender/sex/etc they identify with? Some people would find that hateful!

We let literal Nazis March in Skokie, the world did not end. Tolerance except for those one thinks are immoral beyond reason is gives just as much license for, say, an anti-abortion activists who genuinely sees abortion as murder to remove people who support abortion.

I disagree. In the interest of peace, I "tolerate" working alongside people who I know believe that, for instance, I will doomed to a fiery hell because I don't believe in their Savior. (I'm Jewish).

And you know what? I work alongside these people just fine! We talk about computer engineering at work, not religion. And everything moves along.

The problem with Google is they have a bunch of immature children who are not interested in "peace."