2025 Pride - Day 4
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Sorry! Was busy yesterday, so I’ll make it up with two today, I’ll post the second later.
Meet Andy (Andrea) Balcer
He stabbed his mother 9 times on Halloween, in 2016. Then stabbed and killed his father when he was investigating the screams. Then he killed the family’s Chihuahua because it was barking too much. As an owner of a Chihuahua I’m kinda sympathetic to that last one…
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To balance this, perhaps we should do a series on religious leaders doing fun things...
In January 2025, Johel LaFaurie, lead pastor at Iglesia Cristiana Verdad Viviente in Watauga, Texas, was arrested on charges of continuous sexual abuse of a young child under 14. This arrest marked the second North Texas pastor facing abuse allegations that month.
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To balance this, perhaps we should do a series on religious leaders doing fun things...
In January 2025, Johel LaFaurie, lead pastor at Iglesia Cristiana Verdad Viviente in Watauga, Texas, was arrested on charges of continuous sexual abuse of a young child under 14. This arrest marked the second North Texas pastor facing abuse allegations that month.
@kluurs said in 2025 Pride - Day 4:
To balance this, perhaps we should do a series on religious leaders doing fun things...
In January 2025, Johel LaFaurie, lead pastor at Iglesia Cristiana Verdad Viviente in Watauga, Texas, was arrested on charges of continuous sexual abuse of a young child under 14. This arrest marked the second North Texas pastor facing abuse allegations that month.
Please feel free. My guess is that per population, you will find there to be far more problematic and violent criminals among the Trans community…
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And public school teachers are 100 times worse than clergy… https://www.academia.edu/21997616/A_Forgotten_Study_Abuse_in_School_100_Times_Worse_than_by_Priests
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Why not do a series on blacks? Or how about Jews?
I find this anti gay stuff extremely fucking tiresome. I'm sure I'm not alone in having friends and loved ones who are non-binary.
I was only joking
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Why not do a series on blacks? Or how about Jews?
I find this anti gay stuff extremely fucking tiresome. I'm sure I'm not alone in having friends and loved ones who are non-binary.
@Doctor-Phibes said in 2025 Pride - Day 4:
Why not do a series on blacks? Or how about Jews?
I find this anti gay stuff extremely fucking tiresome. I'm sure I'm not alone in having friends and loved ones who are non-binary.
You are not alone. These threads make me extremely unhappy.
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LD tested the waters before he did it this year, asking whether it was appreciated. Nobody raised any concerns at the time. Now all the moralizing me-tooers are piling on. Sad.
I think we've all learned a valuable lesson here today.
Education is extremely important.
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I think mental disorder is the wrong term, 89. Best way I can explain how I think about it is like the continuum of a bell curve, where there will always be a smaller number of people out towards the edges in any category, outside of what the ‘average’ is, whether physical characteristics or mental characteristics. It’s not “wrong”, it’s normal, as in it’s the way life works. And vilifying the people on these edges isn’t helpful. We breed for unusual characteristics in plants and animals for Pete’s sake. And we can’t accept any unique differences in our own species. It’s really sad.
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I'm sure LD can speak for himself, but I believe he's engaged in a rhetorical debate with the mainstream angle that there is no overlap between considering oneself to have a soul gender different from one's biological gender, and mental illness. Like, if you plotted the bell curves for "connection to reality" for both groups - those who believe their soul is gendered differently than their body, and those who do not - they would be identical. Meanwhile, while there may be some people who are totally normal psychologically but with that one characteristic of gender dissonance, the statistics show that people who self-identify that way are not otherwise normal statistically. Which obviously stands to any basic reason, even if it hurts to say, for those of us whose best friends are trans.
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I can imagine that there are some people with gendered souls who are otherwise indistinguishable from normal and healthy psychologically. The problem is that their category of "transgender" will always be polluted by people who are there due to self-hatred, depression, delusion, suicidality, or whatever else motivates someone to escape the biology they were born to.
And I find it difficult to believe that if a person were "forced", due to social norms, to just present as the biology they were born to, that they would be facing a life of pain the likes of which most people could never comprehend. Imagine listing as your life's greatest emotional torment, that you couldn't wear makeup and the clothes you wanted. This is a joke in the context of the pains of normal human life.
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I think mental disorder is the wrong term, 89. Best way I can explain how I think about it is like the continuum of a bell curve, where there will always be a smaller number of people out towards the edges in any category, outside of what the ‘average’ is, whether physical characteristics or mental characteristics. It’s not “wrong”, it’s normal, as in it’s the way life works. And vilifying the people on these edges isn’t helpful. We breed for unusual characteristics in plants and animals for Pete’s sake. And we can’t accept any unique differences in our own species. It’s really sad.
@jodi said in 2025 Pride - Day 4:
I think mental disorder is the wrong term, 89. Best way I can explain how I think about it is like the continuum of a bell curve, where there will always be a smaller number of people out towards the edges in any category, outside of what the ‘average’ is, whether physical characteristics or mental characteristics. It’s not “wrong”, it’s normal, as in it’s the way life works. And vilifying the people on these edges isn’t helpful. We breed for unusual characteristics in plants and animals for Pete’s sake. And we can’t accept any unique differences in our own species. It’s really sad.
I see what you're saying, but it's hard for my to wrap my mind around any scenario where a male person "thinks they are a woman" without some form of mental issue. I'm not even saying having gender dysphoria "is wrong", but the idea that there isn't an underlying psychological issue is hard to justify. Before Matt Walsh made it so trendy, I used to ask the same question... what makes a male person "think they are really female?" (aka, what is a woman?). If it's just association and preference of the traditionally feminine culture (dress, voice, attraction, interests), ok... then you're a feminine man. Similarly, there can be masculine women. But to think this actually changes your gender or makes you genderless... I don't think will ever make sense. I suppose it could if you equate "feminine culture = woman" but that's not how I understand the differences between sex, gender, and femininity/masculinity. I'd imagine those on the pro-trans side of the debate see no difference between gender and the femininity/masculinity traits that define gender.
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I get that it is hard to wrap your mind around the scenario, but that doesn’t mean someone else can’t be that way - and it doesn’t have to be labeled an “issue” - like it’s something that needs to be fixed, if that makes sense. It’s just a difference. Ok, these may not be the best examples, can’t wrap my head around anyone wanting to fly into space or climb Mount Everest, but that doesn’t mean there are not people who feel like that is what they need to do to lead a fulfilled life. I don’t have to understand it, but i do accept it. There are things I won’t risk for myself (unnecessary surgery, like plastic surgery) but a lot of people do body changing surgeries to feel better about themselves. Breast implants, nose jobs, facelifts, whatever. I wasn’t someone who did hormone therapy for menopausal issues - but people do take hormones for all sorts of reasons, and though I wouldn’t do that for myself, I accept that others may want to. I know this is complicated. And I don’t have any answers for the sports stuff - though rare when it actually makes a difference, that feels like a wicked problem to me. But I do have a relative (through marriage ) who is trans. And a kid who is non-binary. These people are our loved ones. And they deserve to be accepted and loved for who they are.
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Didn't mean for this to be a gang up on LD. From what I know of him, he's a good and thoughtful person. My apologies, LD. My intent was just to reinforce the notion that questionable morals are not the unique attribute of a single group - and in fact, some of our allegedly most moral people (clergy and such) have failings as well. As for the trans movement, I'm sympathetic with people who were born with a predilection for unusual desires. At the same time, I think the woke agenda with respect to "trans rights" has had some significant adverse impact on children in particular. It may take us as a society a while to sort that all out. Looking at our society generally, I wish people were more like the characters in Andy Griffin's fictional town of Mayberry. The illusion of homogeneity had some benefits.
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There are extremes of "acceptance", which are really masquerading "promotion", where, for instance, certain people coincidentally have an entire family of trans kids. At that point we have to ask whether social norms might play a productive role in helping people through often-temporary psychological states that produce profound fundamental confusions and aspirations that they should be careful to wish for.
In these discussions, we inevitably get the categorical truisms such as "people deserve to be loved unconditionally", or "bad people exist everywhere in every category", but none of those statements is really up for debate. Almost everybody acknowledges the complexity of the real issue being discussed, but where we differ is in which truisms we feel necessary to say out loud. This depends on where we feel the mainstream is currently centered, and which direction we'd like it to go. LD, according to his prior writings, is pretty concerned with the child abuse angle (unintentional though that abuse may be).
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I'm with Dave Chapelle. I support anyone's right to live as they wish so long as it's not harming someone else. But the question is to what degree do I have to participate in their self-image? It's fine to be who you think you are up until you are demanding others change their behavior and/or vocabulary when referring to you.
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I appreciate all of your comments. My intent was not to gang up on LD. The screaming far left isn’t any better than the screaming far right. And we always hear about the extremes in the media. But there are real people in the middle of this. I agree with Ken, sorting it out is going to take awhile. We need more compassion and less fear and anger.
