AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Okay, my bad then!

I'm genuinely concerned that you're ignoring the fact people are abused and made to feel like they're abnormal and treated as subhuman and driven to suicide just because they're not straight and/or cis in favour of bringing up the stupid fucking cake thing

Like yeah, it's not cool to just straight-up spit on someone, but at the end of the day it's not even remotely comparable to what these people have had to suffer through?? It's spit for cryin' out loud, it's hardly going to leave any emotional scars.

Got to listen to my folks find out about this and they both stated casually that he didn't have any right to retaliate. He's been dropped from the team as well.

/sigh

I could just as easily say "It's a cake/photographer/whatever for crying out loud, pull up Google and find the next one down the road", but apparently people are completely okay with suing for tens of thousands of dollars. Why does the "it's far from harmful" excuse work one way and not the other?

If she attacked him, he had a right to defend himself. I'm so sick of hearing about a guy hitting a woman after she instigates and takes the first swing and everyone saying all sorts of shit about him.

Like that shit with Beyonce's husband defending himself from her sister. He shouldn't have hit her, but she shouldn't have attacked him.

I'd like to think there are better (less barbaric) means of retaliating to a racial slur than hitting someone, a woman especially.

Not really. They wont learn one way or the other anyway, so violence is the most carthagic reaction

Why should she get preferential treatment because she's a woman? Granted, people shouldn't be resorting to violence for the hell of it, but being a woman doesn't make it any worse. Or, rather, she shouldn't get more protection based on that.

It doesn't. I think a lawsuit over that is needless. But how often does it really happen? I'm willing to bet that it's happened fewer than a dozen times, out of a couple million LGBT people in the U.S. alone. You are taking a few individuals' possible overreactions (some people will disagree with me that the lawsuits are overdoing it, but hey), and using those few, specific instances to try and outweigh massive strife that is unfairly inflicted on these people. That is the part that I am not okay with.

Did anyone say it was justified for a couple to spit on someone minding his own business? I think the main argument was with Otherwise's understatement of the problems many people have with gay people

That wasn't an understatement, considering those kinds of temper tantrums actually happen. I don't like the "well gays have had it rough in general so it was understandable they'd want to spit on him" sentiment because it isn't applied at large, only to gays - and if it is applied at large things get worse. "Blacks have had it rough so their anger is understandable" - boom: Ferguson and Baltimore. Hell, you could probably make those kinds of sentimental arguments for just about any group, including religions.

What I'm saying is there's plenty of people don't like certain other people, and possibly never will, but it doesn't give you leave to go acting like a prick to other people especially if they're not immediately involved. You're still expected to act like a civilized person. Got a problem with how gays have been legitimately harmed that hasn't been addressed? Start a blog, get a fundraiser going, get a lawyer's attention, whatever - this kind of "understandable" douchebaggery only makes people reconsider whether this brand of "equality" is worth pushing for, or granting.

I think I have to agree that spitting on someone unprovoked isn't acceptable no matter the circumstance, and making excuses for it doesn't help anybody. At the same time, this is a really minor and singular altercation (opposed to say the young man being charged with battery for defending himself also in this thread) and it isn't really newsworthy. Trying to make a big deal out of it seems to be indicative of pushing some sort of agenda. I don't think that's what you were trying to do though, the debate just spiralled a little out of control.

Are you saying the protests in these cities were temper tantrums?

No. He's saying that ignoring personal responsibility because of discrimination is a bad thing. Stop trying to make everything into a strawman.

I'm not sure if I understand what you mean. Of course you shouldn't ignore your personal responsibilities in favor of your discriminatory beliefs, but how was Great Handsome Oppressor was implying otherwise, if that's what you're trying to say?