I can't really imagine how you could be openly gay and openly discriminated against, yet still be better off than you are today.

For starters, I much prefer open discrimination to hidden discrimination; I prefer hearing "we don't want to hire you because you're gay" to lame excuses, or worse, ending up in a workplace that doesn't accept me.

I could go on, but my general point is that the progressive activist approach of "demanding equality" through legislation is only one of many possible approaches, and one that I believe is ineffective and potentially harmful. So-called "LGBT rights activists" do not speak for all gay men and women, and their means aren't necessarily right just because they pursue ends I may agree with.

Do you really think that gay people want "equality of outcome" when they ask for the right to be married? Do you imagine they are demanding brides and husbands be allocated to them or something?

If you're not gay yourself, stop dehumanizing us by thinking of us as some homogeneous group. And if you are gay, grow up and stop assuming that your preferences represent the preferences of every gay person on the planet. Believe it or not, there are many good reasons for gay folks to oppose the push for gay marriage.

These opinions are harmful to express in their current prevalence due to the harmful social effects on many gays (with consequences including poverty and suicide), and in that sense they are unacceptable.

Harmful social effects are when you get beaten up for being gay, as I was as a kid. Harmful social effects are not some Christian conservative voicing his disapproval of gay marriage. Perhaps you are too pampered to understand the difference.

Any imperative to accept all political opinions as valid doesn't apply. ... What draconian attempt?

You said "disliking homosexuals is not acceptable". That isn't a statement about "accepting a political opinion as valid" and sounds threatening to me. Maybe you can clarify what exactly you mean by "disliking homosexuals is not acceptable".

Disliking homosexuals is acceptable in the same way that disliking Catholics, disliking whiny progressives, or disliking having sex with women is acceptable. It may not be a feeling you share, you may prefer that other people didn't have these dislikes, but in the end, you better learn to live with them.

Well, take it from the founder of GOproud:

“I just came to the realization that the Republican Party doesn’t represent my principles and values,” LaSalvia told POLITICO. “I’m a small government conservative and they’re for big government. They’re happy to have big government as long as they’re in charge, More importantly, I don’t tolerate bigotry of any kind, whether it’s anti-gay bigotry, anti-Muslim bigotry. And they do and that’s just not OK with me.”

http://www.politico.com/story/...

What matters is that rather than addressing concerns that he might be non-inclusive, he insulted those who were concerned.

And who was "concerned" exactly? And how did he "insult" them?

I think I was "concerned" and I didn't feel "insulted", I simply thought he was wrong. If you can't work with or for people who hold political or religious beliefs you disagree with, you have a problem with professionalism.

Being gay means you must be on the left. Ask any homosexual if you doubt.

Well, given the large and hostile Christian conservative presence on the right, it's not like being on the right has been much of an option. The US still lacks a truly liberal party: laissez faire in both social and economic questions.

By your reasoning, any rule that the state imposes could be justified. But just because the state takes my money and builds roads with it, hands it to crony capitalists, and forces me to register my business, doesn't make engaging in social engineering any more legitimate.

And, apart from legitimacy, the problem with the state "requiring that your business not be racist, sexist, etc." isn't that those aren't laudable goals, it's that as policies go, such policies end in failure, if not outright disaster.

Your entire statement is premised on the erroneous idea that being anti-gay-marriage is being anti-gay.

Yeah, but the effect of disliking powerful idealogical groups is pretty different from disliking weak inherent groups.

I find it offensive that you consider gay men and women to be "inherently weak".

One, while having a persecution complex, is generally safe from actual effects of that dislike, while the other has legitimate fear of how that dislike will impact their life.

The effects of that dislike will only get exacerbated if you try to mandate it away.

Being gay isn't an ideology. Disliking homosexuals is completely different from not liking capitalists, conservatives, liberals, etc. Disliking homosexuals is disliking people for something that they didn't choose and cannot change. It is not a political opinion, and it is not acceptable.

As a gay man, I have had to accept that people dislike me for something I didn't choose. Your draconian attempts to force others to accept me make things worse for me.

The key issue for LGBT rights activists is freedom to marry, which is "equal treatment under the law," not "equality of outcome."

Organizations like the HRC very much push laws like ENDA, which goes far beyond "equal treatment under the law". As for marriage, a far better way of achieving "equal treatment under the law" is to stop having the state interfere in how people arrange their personal lives or try to come up with legal definitions for religious concepts.

Back when the whole Mozilla controversy was going on there were endless posts about how "just not liking gays" was somehow a perfectly okay position to take, and blaming them for daring to demand equality and human rights.

Yes, not liking a group of people is a perfectly okay position to take. Lots of people who claim to stand up for "equality" themselves dislike lots of other groups (capitalists, conservatives, etc.). Likewise, equality [of outcome] and [positive] human rights are something many people reject, including people ostensibly intended to be "beneficiaries" of such policies. What you are complaining about are valid political positions you simply happen to disagree with.

Under my system, the minor variants get a much shorter patent period while the original drug gets a longer patent period. Well, a longer sales period.

Nothing under your proposal seems to result in longer sales periods for more innovative drugs. I'm not even sure how you would make a determination of which drug would be considered a minor variation.

I'm also unclear as to why "socialized costs for prescription drugs" causes minor variants to be favored over new drugs.

If people had to bear the cost of drugs themselves, they'd choose generics. That would both lower cost and make the development of minor variants unprofitable.

It's possible that the FDA's standards are arbitrary and could be relaxed, but even if they are, it doesn't solve the problem. Currently, if a company finds a problem in testing, they are highly incented to avoid doing additional testing to explore the problem.

Yes, that's because both drug companies and doctors can often avoid paying for the harm that a drug causes, in part because FDA testing and approval gives them cover (and they are immunized through various state laws as well). Civil liability for both drug companies and doctors without the cover of FDA approval would provide incentives for both drug companies and doctors to be more careful when they have to be.

Like all investments in something unproven, there is a lot of risk. And frequently, people who don't know what they are doing are making stupid bets. I don't see the problem.

YOU are the one claiming that this is just an analogy with the past; you people have to back up your claims since you are the ones making them; the skeptics on my side do not have to prove jack.

Well, no, I'm not claiming that it is an analogy with the past at all; I think this technological revolution is completely different from all past ones, just like they have been completely different from each other. It will change human society in ways we can't even imagine yet.

I know two things. First, reducing the amount of labor needed to produce stuff is always a good thing for humanity. Second, people can deal with huge economic and technical advances pretty well and adapt.

there is going to be a huge upset as large job markets are eliminated and people try to migrate into new areas

Yes, isn't it great?

As TFA...TFV points out that this is fundamentally different than all the other technology

Yes, it claims that. Where is the evidence? Past technological revolutions have eliminated 99% of the traditional jobs. Are 99% of our population unemployed? If you want to claim "this time it's different", you need a much more compelling argument than TFV provides.

When people don't have to waste their time on accounting, ghostwriting, long distance driving, clearing tables, whatever, they are free to do other fun stuff: develop space tourism, engineer lemons with high THC content, provide tantric massages, invent and sell new sex toys, whatever.