We must all do the right as we see it. We should all strive to see the right as best we can, but at any moment must work with that vision we have. Doing what _you_ think wrong is wrong. Omitting what _you_ think right is wrong.
Which brings us back to the OP's excellent point that expecting one's self to always meet one's own standard builds a sort of muscle, and leads to an undreamt of excellence.
Hmm.. this seems like a form of relativism. Are you implying the inverse as well: Doing what _you_ think right is right?
How do you defend that if "right" for me happens to be walking around nude in public, or more extreme, shooting people that I disagree with?
Moral principles are absolute and unchanging. But their _application_ is always subject to a context, and that context is often full of many different considerations of various weights. You may be of some Nudist religion but appreciate that your other duties require a prudent respect for the social requirement of clothing when earning the money required to meet those duties.
If you believe something wrong and dangerous I will try to persuade you that you are _wrong_. I will try to persuade you to change your principles to better ones, or at least doubt yours enough to do nothing while you figure things out. But I won't try to persuade you to not live with integrity.
If you believe in shooting people you disagree with, and I think you're actually likely to act on that, then I will act to stop you. Because I have a duty to the just and the innocent to protect them from people who believe stuff that crazy. But just because I oppose you doesn't mean I don't think you mean well, just that you're wrong and must be stopped.
For example, we should not punish an innocent man. But that's because it's a contradiction in terms.
If you try to stop someone who is looking to shoot someone they disagree with (regardless of their reasoning), presumably by calling in the police or other agents employing lethal force, you're ultimately just shooting people you disagree with by proxy.
If you believed words were a better solution than violence you'd need to talk, and accept the results of that discussion, instead of drawing lines and deciding to perpetrate your own violence.
Pacifists can't call the police or they're merely cowards.
If A wants B, then they should do C <=> If A does C and B doesn't happen, then it's not A's fault <=> If A does C and B doesn't happen, then any person Z (in the set of people we care about) who wants to appear reasonable should not blame A in a conversation about what happened.
So really, "should" is defined in terms of expecting anyone who wants to be reasonable not to blame you.
Many people think "should" is some absolute thing, such as "A should do C" regardless of what they want. It seems to me that absolute morality requires tons of adhoc exceptions and rules, and that relative morality gives a much more fitting description of what happens.
The fact that is right for you to do something doesn't mean it's not right for me and others to stop you from doing it. Since they're relative, there's no inconsistency.
Incidentally, I find it amusing how you just implicitly judged whole societies (where walking around nude in public is/was the standard) as being morally in the wrong. I've always found the moral absolutism argument to have a disagreeable taste of superiority.
Your sexuality informs and alters 100% of your life.
No it doesn't. And choice exists in almost everything.
The stakes: one upvote.
Can I have my upvote?
The scientific evidence is not on your side, if you're interested in that sort of thing.
The choice is in your actions, not your feelings.
Unfortunately that's a difficult topic to avoid since we can hardly start referring to our partners as 'it' when the topic comes up.
Choosing to answer vaguely and switch the topic is the easiest way for gay people to get out of these issues, but it is also how you end up staying in the closet to a lot of people.
This article talks about choosing, in those situations, to not closet yourself and let the conversation flow as though the sex of your partner were a normal thing, knowing full well that it isn't for many people.
Hence the circle. By pointing out that I'm gay, when NO ONE (literally, I mean no one, most people don't believe me) expects it, I break that assumption and cause that person to second guess that assumption in the future.
Asking someone to be private about who they're partners with is very discriminatory. It's not required of opposite-sex couples. And very simple freedoms you might take for granted, like holding your partners hand in public, or engaging in simple discussions, can be a battle sometimes. Compare to mixed race relationships in US history and the present day.
It's no more fair and civilized to suggest a 'don't ask don't tell' on same-sex partners than any other type of partnership. And comparing same sex attraction to a sexual fetish is frankly insulting.
You misunderstand the idea of "it's no one else's business" with "you must be silent!" Holding your partner's hand in public is already publicly declaring the very thing that would alter the direction of a conversation regarding the sex of your significant other, which has no bearing on the original post or my response. This is about feeling the need to actively correct the incorrect assumptions of people who have no meaningful value to you and your partner's life.
As for suggesting DADT, well when I suggest such a thing feel free to argue against it.
Just because I'm gay doesn't mean that I go around proclaiming the fact to others unless it's relevant to the context of the conversation.
If a cab driver asks me how my day was, and i'm exhausted, I say "good" and stop talking. This is true whether you are gay, straight, or whatever.
In the example in the article, if he was too exhausted to tell "the truth" (as he calls it) and have a "transformative conversation", he should have just said "i'd rather not talk about it". This does not require denying anything, pretending about anything, etc. It's unlikely the cab driver cared either way, to be honest, and if you give them the hint that you'd rather just drive in silence than spend your energy , they will.
Again, it just seems the author acts as if he has to educate everyone, and it's a laborious process. I agree there are plenty of cases he needs to educate people, and that is laborious. But I think it goes too far when he gets into the realm of people just trying to make small talk, who actually don't care one way or the other.
The cabby is likely just trying to stave off boredom and get a good tip, not an ignorant person whose mental state about the world needs to change. In all likelihood, he's probably playing a probability game (IE i'm sure he asks young drunk looking college kids about women or partying, forlorn looking businessmen about where they are traveling from, etc). You can see this as offensive if you like, but it's really not about ignorance.
As the parent said, small talk is small talk.
Otherwise, they have exactly the problem you mention in the last sentence. They see people from all walks of life. If they didn't make some set of assumptions (be it about sexuality, gender, typical behavior of males, typical behavior of females), they'd never be able to engage in any small talk, lest they offend someone's sensibilities.
As I said, you may find this offensive, but it's not about ignorance.
It's the same problem with the people that say "Oh, women at conferences should be flattered by the attention". They want to be seen as equal. I want to be seen as equal. Having to stop and explain, "No, I don't have a wife" is a reminder of the fact that most of our society still walks around assuming every stranger is straight.
I can imagine that regularly responding with "I'd rather not talk about it" when people make basic, friendly conversation is not a pleasant option. And it really doesn't seem the same as saying "good" when someone asks me how my day is.
Just substitute internet for real life.
There is a time and place for everything.
By responding to, "How's your wife?" with "My husband's fine," he's admitting homosexuality to a potential homophobe. You could lie and say, "She's fine," and that'd be that. You could be neutral and say, "Fine," but that just postpones it. And for some people, they're aware that's a deliberate skirting of the issue and is basically a lie by omission. That atrophies the very muscle the author wanted to discuss. You might find it acceptable, but it's clear that the author does not.
There are plenty of other reasons you might have kids but not a wife. Maybe you're a widower. Maybe they're actually your brother's kids, but he and his wife were killed by a drunk driver, and you're the godfather.
Perfectly legitimate cases where you just have no reason to get into it with the freaking cab driver, and probably don't get into a serious conversation, and probably also don't tell him to mind his own damn business.
Wouldn't it also be inappropriate for the cab-driver to follow up, "Do you have kids?" with the question "Are they biologically yours?"
You're also operating under the presumption that a same-sex partnership should be something hidden, or that it should be a touchy topic and only brought up sparingly, when frankly that's oppressive and discriminatory.
That's miss-representing the example. In the article the cab driver, "Then asks about your wife." Answering that question by saying that he doesn't have a wife isn't the same as talking about "the intricacies of being himself," just basic facts.
I think that pretending to have a wife for the sake of smalltalk feels like going into the closet again, like admitting you must be guilty of something.
Usually when you are making small talk with someone who you will most likely only be in the company of for 5 minutes they are more interested in avoiding awkward silence than actually finding out details about your life.
If you don't bring up a wife they will just as easily assume that you are single or divorced as much as gay.
Besides , people who work in a public facing role like a cab driver or florist will most likely meet gay people all the time and won't find it the slightest bit novel.
Yes, there are no cab drivers anywhere who might be perturbed by someone saying they are gay. Thanks jiggy2011, for reminding everyone that our societies issues around homophobia have been solved once and for all.
I don't hang around in typically "gay" circles or even know that many people in general but I know enough gay people that homosexuality is not surprising for me at all.
For the purposes of casual conversation with strangers, if someone asks about a wife surely it's simple enough to say "I'm not married" and allow them to assume whatever they like unless you feel like sharing more.
In this example, straight people don't have to lie about not being married just to shut down small talk. Instead they use short responses, avoid eye contact, and give off the general vibe that they're not in the mood to talk. But why can't gay people do the same?
For example Muslims will not drink but almost every off license within a square mile of me is Muslim owned.
It's not that it "surprises" a lot of people (although often enough it does), it's that they don't understand it and they don't agree with it, and many feel like their religious beliefs justify being vocal about it. Being trapped in a car with someone like this is uncomfortable, particularly when they could leave you stranded at the drop of a hat.
A friend was recently sexually assaulted by a cab driver who was out on bail and back to work the next day. It's naive to think that because of their job that they are any less prone to having an opinion and saying or doing something socially unacceptable because of it.
All taxi drivers I have known have met all kinds of somewhat crazy/scary people I would really have a hard time believing that a gay person would be the slightest bit controversial.
Of course there is always some risk but if it is large enough that you are seriously concerned about being randomly assaulted just for being gay you have probably chosen a bad place to live.
We are often inclined to contain our political views for the sake of civility because they are opinions, and even those of widely differing views generally recognize that. Are disagreements are about the relevance of facts or the validity of their measuring. Generally the arguments are not about what exists in the shared world.
While the distance between religion and politics may be small historically, outside the political realm, the distance between disagreement about politics and about religion can be huge.
Religion asserts as fact a description of each person's position in the world. Thus, religious claims are about me personally, and unlike political claims, the speaker does not acknowledge that their view about me personally is opinion.
As political speech, I may treat it the expression of civic opinion. When it characterizes me personally, it is another matter just like characterizations of my sexuality.
So your answer would be no? Then you'd have to lie each time. Or would your answer be; sorry but i won't answer that question. That would work i guess but it would get tiring as well i'm sure.