More correct and less inflammatory version: "Think of the US less like a single (European) country and more like a collection of countries (states) representing various different cultures, some of which have widely divergent or more conservative values."

Single European countries can have extreme differences in culture and politics as well. Go visit Berlin and rural Saxony in Germany and you'll feel like San Francisco and Mississippi culture wise.

When's the last time the US publicly executed a homosexual person or adulterer, with or without trial?

If you include lynchings (and I am), very recently:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_LG...

Mob violence and hate crimes =/= state sanctioned violence.

Readers should note that all of the cited examples here are considered criminal and illegal in the United States.

They literally asked "with or without trial"

i.e. state sanctioned execution without trial.

No law on earth can prevent someone from acquiring a weapon and killing members of the LGBT community, the difference is whether this is tolerated and/or endorsed by the state.

You provided a list of heinous crimes that in no way reflects the views of the United States.

To make it even clearer, recent LGBT violence is not even remotely relatable to the widespread lynchings of Black Americans (which you are invoking with this word) that was 'illegal' yet systemically tolerated in the early-mid 1900s.

Literally none of these LGBT crimes were associated with a mob proclaiming justice as was the case with historical lynchings.

With trial seems to be 1785 [1]. Without trial here's a list of killings in the last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_LG...

[1] https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=h...

I'm sure you understand the difference between an individual committing a crime (of which most in your list are not even killings) and a state-sanctioned execution. So what's the purpose of this comment, other than to mislead?

Not execute. But there were laws against “sodomy” - ie consensual non heterosexual sex between adults in some southern states as late as the 80s and people went to jail.

> there were

There still are! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_Stat...

> As of March 2023, 14 states either have not yet formally repealed their laws against sexual activity among consenting adults or have not revised them to accurately reflect their true scope as a result of Lawrence v. Texas.

While Lawrence v Texas does limit these laws, there's a concerted effort to repeal it, and if that happens, these laws will go back into effect.

ummm. Don't think of the US this way? Think of it as a complex representative government that is federated and representing a highly diverse population, unlike Iran, which is not exactly pro-immigration.

Our government is at least partly reactive to our votes. Utah is very different from Colorado or California or Connecticut. So, no, nothing like rich Iran.

>Our government is at least partly reactive to our votes

So is Iran's. Keep in mind the country is a theocratic Republic that turned out this way because of a popular religious revolt against a secular absolutist monarch. That bottom up, democratic, religious zealotry is something you also have in the US but virtually nowhere in the developed world.

So you're saying there is no religious zealotry in Europe?

What about the Christian Democratic Union of Germany which officially believes in Catholic Democracy and didn't recognize same-sex marriage until 2017?

Don't know what to tell you, man. The US is drastically more diverse than Iran, and as a result is not nearly as hegemonic. Also, the US is a lot more moderate in its views and policies than Iran. The US political party rhetoric is quite different than a lot of our policies actually are. Sure, much of the political right in the US leans puritanical, but, that leaning is a still more lip service to a small, vocal base than broadly representative of our population.

My friend likes to refer to the US as a "third world country with a Gucci belt" and sadly I don't think this too far off.

Sounds like you and your friend both spend a little too much time on the internet.

Yea go tell that to someone actually living in a third world country. How out of touch and spoiled can you be?

go to any impoverished town or neighborhood in any part of the USA and see for yourself: the running water is undrinkable, the food will slowly kill you, education is severely lacking, etc.

Please stop reading reddit for your own good

Isn't the US still the world largest producer of porn?

Honestly we (Europeans) make the same mistake the Americans do in regards to us, we view the US as one homogeneous mass. The difference between states seems like it's often as great as between European nations. I'd be less concerned about the laws of the individual state, if companies did target the lowest common denominator for the entire US, just to make business easier.

PornHub is in my mind doing the right thing, blocking the state that's causing issues.

> Isn't the US still the world largest producer of porn?

Yeah, but only in a few areas in terms of studios, not individual creators. iirc studios/companies are mostly in California (LA mostly), Florida (Miami), and NYC.

> PornHub is in my mind doing the right thing, blocking the state that's causing issues.

Curious to know if this is strategic, in the sense that they're hoping their blocking of the state will piss off enough people to reverse the policy.

Yes you have it correct.

When introducing myself to Europeans now I've started saying the state I'm from, such as "I'm from the state of Idaho in the US". Utah is a different state/place than Idaho (see liquor laws, state lottery) and both are very different than California or New York. They're almost like different countries in some ways, especially over the last 10 or so years. Not too long ago you could pretty much live anywhere and the main difference would be where you buy your booze and your tax rates, but that's increasingly changing.

On the rather extreme end, there are some serious movements for secession from the US. Funny enough they don't usually go very far because (shockingly /s) the red states drop their enthusiasm when a red president gets elected, and the blue states drop theirs when a blue get elected. But if we had a steady president for 3 or more terms, I would bet you it gets serious again.

If every half-serious scheme for dividing the US didn't end up stranding some parts or splitting control of the Mississippi, I bet we'd have amicably split in two several decades ago, if not back in the 19th century.