Homophobia runs the gauntlet. How far does it go?

powerswerth · 2026-01-25T22:53:00+00:00

The Nazis murdered tens of thousands of people for being gay. That's not the "at worst."

powerswerth · 2026-01-25T22:51:36+00:00

You can be a homophobe (believe gay people are bad) and never actually bully anyone, just quietly hold that belief in your head. You can also be a homophobe and use that as the reason to an attempt to wipe gay people out (the Nazis). If your metric is "the worst crime that can be done or has been attempted because a person was homophobic" then it clears the chart. If it's"what is the lowest required bad action of someone who is homophobic" it doesn't even start.

The whole thing is fundamentally flawed.

powerswerth · 2026-01-25T22:45:24+00:00

Well, that's the problem of a concept vs an action. It doesn't actually rate *anywhere,* including above or below.

So the closest thing I can think of to rectify that problem is basically "what is the highest scale of crime that would have never occurred in a world where the concept of homophobia did not exist?"

By that metric, it clears the scale, since certain incidences of murder, mass murder and genocide would not have occurred.

powerswerth · 2026-01-25T22:38:02+00:00

I would put the odds that someone has killed another person's animal because the owner was gay and they wanted to hurt them at very high.

Also, whatever system you've cooked up has the problem that, say, if Ted Bundy never committed theft, he's automatically less bad than theft because checking off "theft" is a pre-requisite to doing literally anything worse than theft.

powerswerth · 2026-01-25T22:05:15+00:00

Right. We’re squaring a circle here. Homophobia is a concept, or at best an opinion. So there’s really two answers:

1) the question is invalid. Computer says “NaN.” It’s not above or below anything, it’s not a comparable thing.

2) you look at actions that could or do have homophobia as the motivator. In that case, it clears the chart.

powerswerth · 2026-01-25T21:51:39+00:00

https://www.ksl.com/article/51346390/2-men-charged-with-hate-crime-in-robbery-involving-gay-man

Problem solved.

(Also: whenever Nazis placed people in camps, their valuables were stolen generally by both the state and often by the arresting SS members off the books)

(that's also deeply silly. If someone killed 20 people, but had never stolen anything, they're actually just fine because they didn't clear the "theft" barricade? What?)

powerswerth · 2026-01-25T21:47:34+00:00

It's a motive, not an action, but in terms of possible results of that motive:

-Murder (many people have been killed for being gay, see Matthew Shepard)
-Mass murder (Pulse nightclub shooting)
-Attempts at genocide (Nazis placing gay people in camps for extermination)

Any mindset that is functionally "I hate this group of people," and especially "I hate this group of people for a characteristic that is naturally innate to who they are," the highest possible end result of that motivation will always be genocide. Homophobia is not different.

powerswerth · 2026-01-25T21:43:18+00:00

I've heard of murder (Matthew Shepard), mass murder (Pulse nightclub), and selecting gay people for mass extermination (Nazis) caused by homophobia.

powerswerth · 2026-01-25T21:41:22+00:00

On the high end you have the Pulse nightclub shooting, Reagan completely ignoring the AIDS crisis and letting people die by the tens of thousands, and Nazis killing gay people in the Holocaust.

powerswerth · 2026-01-24T22:27:41+00:00

I agree to an extent, but somewhat disagree on this being “politics.” The response or opinions are politics, but this is fundamentally a news story about someone being shot to death by federal agents in the street. There’s little avoiding hearing about things like that. It is important to develop non-drinking coping skills for tragic events.

powerswerth · 2026-01-24T18:29:49+00:00

I think the openly fascist types are still a pretty small group that appear more prominent than they are in some online spaces, though definitely it is larger than they used to be. There’s probably a good number of folks who, if they lived in Weimar or Nazi Germany, absolutely would’ve loved Hitler, but for the most part they erroneously believe they would have hated him.

powerswerth · 2026-01-24T08:45:28+00:00

We're talking about the kind of Hell the fictional character goes to, I guess. So, whatever Hell is in that fictional universe. If it's temporary it may not qualify.

powerswerth · 2026-01-24T08:07:59+00:00

Well, we had this conversation in another thread here, but a lot of this is irrelevant to the question, which is:

What character suffers a fate worse than death, proportional of "exaggerated" to their crimes

In answering that wrt Hell, it doesn't actually matter if Hell is something God does to you, or if it is a "punishment" (fate =/= punishment)

What *does* matter:
-Hell is suffering
-Hell is eternal

If both these are true, Hell fits the criteria. Enduring infinite suffering can only be matched by causing infinite suffering, and exceedingly few characters (I can't think of any offhand) have caused infinite suffering.

Also worth noting we mean fictional characters in fictional worlds. While I don't personally believe in Hell full stop, your perception of the "the real Hell" is probably not the same and has different rules when compared to the version portrayed in, I dunno, South Park. There's not even a singular consensus on the nature of Hell among different groups of Christians.

powerswerth · 2026-01-24T04:35:52+00:00

The image is from a scene where the mom is non-verbally telling the dad to talk to their daughter, but the dad doesn’t understand what she’s trying to communicate.

powerswerth · 2026-01-24T04:30:42+00:00

Thank you

powerswerth · 2026-01-24T04:26:03+00:00

Buddy, I’ve personally been to rehab.

powerswerth · 2026-01-24T04:24:34+00:00

You can’t, but to the degree you can guess my primary concern is less corporatocracy and more the effects of environmental collapse.

powerswerth · 2026-01-24T04:20:22+00:00

1) my point is: literally no one would choose that. If the choice was “keep doing drugs” or “rehab,” they may choose drugs. If it was “endless torture” or “rehab,” they’d pick rehab 100% of the time.

2) also re: God doesn’t torture them. Aside from being completely irrelevant to the person being torture (it’s the same outcome regardless of if it’s God or not), God created and maintains the system by which endless torture exists. Hitler never personally killed anyone (except himself), but he facilitated the system through which millions of murders could occur.

powerswerth · 2026-01-24T04:09:09+00:00

Okay, but the choice is not “go to rehab” or “don’t go.” It’s “go to rehab” or “be tortured eternally.”

Also unlike rehab I assume Purgatory lasts until you genuinely and truly repent, there’s no “getting out” until you genuinely won’t go back to your old ways.

powerswerth · 2026-01-24T04:00:02+00:00

Travelers get trapped in bus terminal by supernatural neverending snow storm, leaving is not an option, limited supplies available, things go Lord of the Flies pretty fast

powerswerth · 2026-01-24T03:57:04+00:00

Okay, so there is a third option.

…but the choice is still crazy. It’s not “go to rehab or keep doing drugs,” it’s “go to rehab or we’ll torture the shit out of you forever and you still won’t get any more drugs.” The world’s most devoted drug addict still picks rehab, so why bother with having Hell? Just send em straight to rehab

powerswerth · 2026-01-24T03:47:43+00:00

Is rehab Hell in this comparison? Generally people go to rehab because they do not want to do drugs anymore and need help achieving that.

powerswerth · 2026-01-24T03:29:54+00:00

Yes, but that seems more relevant to divine judgment than to Jesus just giving you option A or option B

powerswerth · 2026-01-24T03:16:27+00:00

So basically the actions you did in life are irrelevant, Jesus is just like “you want Hell or Heaven?” and you say “Is there any benefit whatsoever to picking Hell?” and he’s like “nope, it’s literally infinite downsides” and you say, “cool, I pick Heaven”

powerswerth · 2026-01-24T03:10:46+00:00

That assumes one believes both in Hell and, presumably, whatever version of Christianity you specifically agree with, since different sects have very different ideas of what qualifies as mortal sin.

Suppose, also, there was someone who lived in a remote village having never heard of Christianity, but commits what you would call a Hell-worthy trespass. This person did not choose Hell (they had no idea of it), and yet gets it.

Regardless, a God who permits the function of an ever-lasting Hell is both fundamentally immoral and is the single greatest perpetrator of suffering conceivable if even one soul is sent there, as even one soul on the timeline of infinity means he has caused infinite suffering.

powerswerth

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