I Used To Be A Fan But I Am Now Shocked, Disgusted And Appalled With Sam Harris

[SteelCurtain]

It's one thing to let bigots explain themselves and expose their beliefs for discussion. It is another thing entirely to egg it on by showing disingenuous approval. From what you and Ham have stated, a most charitable read would be that - he egged it on by presenting a disingenuous approving facade.

That's one thing that gets lost by the whole "we must listen" bullshit that I keep seeing put forth - you should ask why but it doesn't mean you should be jovially laughing about depriving people of their rights (I submit Maher's conduct with Yiannopolous falls more into that category - but then again Maher has a habit of making provacative statements for shits and giggles. I detest him.).

I don't think one should have much humor about that at all. Inquisitiveness, sure. Socratic questioning? Wonderful. Acting like what they're advocating is as mundane as planning a mail route? Jesus Christ.

That's the thing---nobody was joking about depriving anyone of any rights. Murray, again, a gay man---which is important because in my experience there are a lot of gay men that are harshly crass about gender issues---were making fun of Caitlyn Jenner and someone else for their decisions around transitioning or not. Whether it was a good thing that Caitlyn Jenner gets the cover of Vanity Fair as 'woman of the year' after being a woman for a couple of months---all while being indicted for vehicular manslaughter and publically being a shitty human on reality TV. The way he questions this is crass, but not once that I heard did Murray say she shouldn't be allowed to be herself. He questions the idea of 75 genders, he questions the idea of trans women competing in gender specific competitions. While I absolutely disagree with questioning or demeaning someone else's life decisions, I think there is a big difference between this and denying someone rights.