re: Joy and Love are Good for a Community

submitted by Dittman


I think, although I agree with your base point, that we need to be careful, as our rhetoric is sliding slowly buy surely into some pretty dramatic logical fallacies - we're building strawmen of "some people" and "they" and suggesting that the AFN is directly responsible for the insanity of Waagner.

These are the same shady tactics that are used against people who are gay and, although turning the swordman's own blade on himself may feel good, ultimately it's destructive to the goal.

To co-opt one of my favorite quotes:

"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."

Why not bring some hard facts (starting with Richard Florida's research, for example) about how much more economic development an accepting community enjoys versus a closed minded community.

I can't quantify joy and love , but I can point out the Urban Institutes' hard research that, credits "the gay and lesbian population for breathing new life into aging neighborhoods in cities throughout the nation. . . . Silver Lake (CA) [is] . . . an example of this.

“Silver Lake was considered a deteriorating community a decade ago, but since gays and lesbians began moving in, it is not only more aesthetically attractive, but a safer neighborhood for everyone else who lives there”